Austria
Client Onboarding
Fill this in once and we have what we need to open a file: who you are, what you want to register in Austria, and what you want us to handle. We read the answers and reply by email.
How it works
You send the answers.
Four blocks, ten required fields. It posts straight to us. No account, no upload, no card details, and nothing about you is stored on this site.
We read it and reply by email.
The reply says which route fits what you described, which documents the register court will want, and what we need from you next. You can ask anything back.
Documents, then the filing.
We send you a document list and a secure link for identity papers, the deed is signed with a notary where the form needs one, and the application goes to the Firmenbuch.
- 01 /
You send the answers
Four blocks, ten required fields. No account, no upload, no card details.
- 02 /
We read it and reply by email
Which route fits what you described, which documents the register court will want, and what we need from you next.
- 03 /
Documents, then the filing
A document list and a secure link for identity papers, the deed signed with a notary where the form needs one, then the application to the Firmenbuch.
No stage here carries a duration.
Start your Austrian company
It is one page and it works without JavaScript. Ten fields are required; the rest let us answer properly the first time. Not sure which form you need? Compare the eight.
Label specification for the build. Four
<fieldset>blocks, in this order, with these legends. The column "Options and help text" is what the reader sees under or beside the control. Nothing here is a data table and the build renders none of it as one.
Send the questionnaire
By sending it you agree to the privacy policy.
What we will need from you
| What you are registering | Core documents | Certification and translation | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| GmbH, FlexCo | articles of association in notarial issue; the appointment documents for the managing directors in certified form; specimen signatures; the written bank confirmation of the paid in capital | a foreign corporate shareholder's register extract and articles, certified and translated | the application is signed by all managing directors (GmbHG § 9 Abs. 1) |
| GmbH or FlexCo, simplified route | one shareholder who is also the sole director, a passport, and the bank's own identity check in person | none for the bank documents: the bank sends the confirmation, the ID copy and the specimen signature to the register itself | only for a single natural person founding alone (GmbHG § 9a Abs. 1) |
| AG | articles as a notarial deed; subscription and appointment documents; supervisory board appointments; bank confirmation | as GmbH | three organs from the start, so more appointment documents than a GmbH |
| OG, KG | the partnership agreement, in no prescribed form; certified specimen signatures of the partners | a foreign partner's identity and corporate documents, certified and translated | at least two partners, and for a KG two of different kinds |
| Einzelunternehmen | a passport and the trade registration | translation of a foreign qualification certificate where a regulated trade needs one | registration in the Firmenbuch only when the accounting duty bites |
| Zweigniederlassung (branch) | certified specimen signatures of the foreign entity's representatives; the resolution establishing the branch; a certified extract from the home register; the articles; a tax clearance certificate (Unbedenklichkeitsbescheinigung) | the home register extract and the articles, certified and translated | a non EU or EEA parent must also appoint a permanent representative resident in Austria and show it trades at home |
| Privatstiftung | the foundation deed as a notarial deed; the board appointments; the bank confirmation for dedicated cash, or a court appointed formation auditor's report for assets in kind | as GmbH | at least three board members, two of them habitually resident in the EU or EEA |
| A ready-made company | passport and proof of address of every buyer; the transfer deed; the resolutions changing name, seat, object and directors | a foreign corporate buyer's register extract and articles, certified and translated | a GmbH share transfer needs a notarial deed, a FlexCo share transfer a private deed drawn by a notary or an attorney |
| Every one of them | a passport for each shareholder, director and beneficial owner, and proof of address | translated where the document is in neither German nor English | for a beneficial owner with no Austrian domicile the company additionally uploads a photo ID copy through the USP portal |
What the register court and the bank ask for, by what you are registering. The enclosures to the application are GmbHG § 9, in force from 1 July 2006; the written bank confirmation of the paid in capital is GmbHG § 10 Abs. 3, in force from 1 January 2024; the bank's own identity check and its direct transmission to the register on the simplified route are GmbHG § 9a Abs. 6 and Abs. 7, in force from 1 January 2024; the photo ID upload for a beneficial owner with no Austrian domicile is WiEReG § 5 Abs. 2; and the branch filing package is USP, Zweigniederlassungen. All five read 18 September 2026. This is what the authorities ask for. What we ask you for is only ever a subset of it.
How we handle your information
What you send arrives as one email to [email protected] and nowhere else. This site stores no client files: there is no upload field here, no document is accepted on this page, and identity papers are requested later over a secure link. The privacy policy says what is kept, on what ground, and for how long.
Questions about the form
Do I have to fill all this in just to get a price?
No. If you have a question, the contact form is three fields and a captcha, and it is the right place for it. This page is for the point at which you have decided to go ahead and want a file opened. Prices are quoted on request either way, and nothing here commits you to anything.
I do not know which company form I need. What do I put?
Choose "Not decided yet" and describe the business in the activity field instead. That is the answer we can actually work with: the form follows from what you intend to do, how many owners there are and whether anyone is resident in Austria, and all three are questions this page already asks.
Can I attach my passport and the company documents here?
No, and deliberately. This page accepts no files at all, so nothing of yours is stored on a static site that does not need it. Once we have read your answers we send a document list and a secure link for identity papers, which is where certified copies and translations belong.
I am interested in one specific ready-made company. Is this the right form?
The faster route is the Request button beside that company in the ready-made list: it carries the reference straight into a short enquiry. Use this page when you already know you want the company and want the file opened, and put the reference in block B.
The four open option lists, settled here (notes for the build)
The structure left four points to the content stage rather than inventing them from another country's example. Each is settled below from this project's own sources, and each is a decision a reviewer can overturn in one line.
1. entity_type. Ten options: GmbH, FlexCo (FlexKapG), AG, OG, KG, Einzelunternehmen, Zweigniederlassung (branch of a foreign company), Privatstiftung, a ready-made company, Not decided yet.
The first eight are exactly the eight legal forms /company-types-austria/ covers, in that page's order and with that page's names, so a reader who used the comparison to decide finds the same words here. "A ready-made company" is a route rather than a form, and it changes every question after it, which is why the rule's own example carries the same option; ready_made_ref records which company, not whether. "Subsidiary" is deliberately absent, although /subsidiary-austria/ exists as a page: an Austrian subsidiary is a GmbH or an AG with a corporate shareholder, which block B already records in corporate_shareholder, and listing it as a ninth form would make two options mean the same thing and split the data for no gain. "Not decided yet" is there because the field is required, and choosing among eight forms is the service rather than a prerequisite for asking about it; a forced guess is worse data than an honest blank, and it would also reach the email subject line as a fact.
2. preferred_language: English and German, no third option. The site publishes in English and the work it describes is done in German: the notarial deed, the Firmenbuch application, the Finanzamt forms and every statute this site cites are German documents. Those are the only two languages the project can point at. The rule's illustrative list ("en/it/de/fr/ru...") is an open list from an Italian example, and offering Italian, French or Russian here would be an invented capability of the same class as an invented client count, which research/_subagent-context.md section 3 bars. The help text therefore states the default rather than implying a choice: we write in English unless we agree otherwise. This is the one option list on the page that needs a client answer before launch, and it is listed as an open item below.
3. directors_count and licensing_type.
directors_count becomes a select: 1, 2, 3, 4 or more, Not decided yet. A number input accepts 0, 2.5 and 400, each of which the handler would have to reject anyway, and a select cannot produce an invalid answer. It also matches the shape the rule already fixes for shareholders_count, which is a select of ranges, so the two adjacent questions behave the same way. The buckets sit where Austrian law actually changes: one managing director is the normal case for a GmbH, while a Privatstiftung needs a board of at least three.
licensing_type stays a free text field, because the rule defines it as one and a select would reject an answer nobody anticipated. It gains a <datalist> of the seven authorisations this site actually covers: crypto-asset services (MiCA CASP), token issuance, payment institution, e-money institution, investment firm, banking licence, and the trade licence (Gewerbeberechtigung). A datalist suggests without constraining: anything typed is accepted. Trade mark is deliberately not in the list, because block C already has its own trademark checkbox and one need should not be recordable in two places.
4. phone carries no format mask. No pattern, no country-code dropdown that rewrites what is typed, no mask that inserts spaces. A number under E.164 runs from 8 to 15 digits, national conventions for grouping and trunk prefixes differ everywhere this site's audience lives, and every regex tight enough to be useful rejects somebody's real number. The field is optional, so a rejected one is a lost lead for nothing. The build sets type="tel", inputmode="tel" and autocomplete="tel", the help text asks for the country code, and the handler accepts digits, spaces, +, -, ( and ), trims the rest and applies only a sanity bound on length. A human reads it before anyone dials it.
Handling and protection, notes for the build
| Layer | What it is | Where the secret lives |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Honeypot field website, hidden, aria-hidden="true", tabindex="-1", autocomplete="off". A filled honeypot returns the same 303 as a success and sends nothing | no secret |
| 2 | Cloudflare Turnstile. Site key in the HTML, verified server side against TURNSTILE_SECRET_KEY | Cloudflare environment |
| 3 | Rate limit, 3 requests per 10 minutes per IP, key rl:<ip> with a 600 second TTL | KV namespace FORM_KV |
| optional | A 30 day copy of the lead, key lead:<ts> | KV namespace ONBOARD_KV |
| delivery | Resend, one structured field to value email. FROM and TO [email protected], reply_to the visitor's address | RESEND_API_KEY in the Cloudflare environment |
Hidden and non-user fields: site, page, utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, ref, the honeypot website, and the response the Turnstile widget injects. The ref value arrives from a ?ref= parameter and also populates the visible ready_made_ref field.
Open items this page carries, for the build and the client
| # | Open item | What is written meanwhile |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Is German correspondence available? preferred_language offers English and German. If nobody can write German, the option list is English only and the field becomes a formality; if more languages are available, they are added here and nowhere else | Two options, and help text saying we write in English unless we agree otherwise |
| 2 | The accounting checkbox in block C touches the open reserved-professions question (master.md, item 1): bookkeeping and payroll are reserved to a licensed Steuerberater or Bilanzbuchhalter, and WTBG 2017 § 124 Abs. 1 Z 1 makes even offering them an offence. The block is therefore headed "What you need help with" rather than "Services", which asks what the client needs instead of stating what we sell, and the help text names the reservation | The checkbox stays, because the rule fixes the field; nothing on the page offers the reserved activity |
| 3 | The ISO country list for country_of_residence: whether any jurisdiction is excluded up front on sanctions or policy grounds | The full list, with the filtering question left to the reply rather than to a select |
| 4 | Whether a ?ref= value that matches no company in data/shelf-companies.json should be dropped silently or echoed back | The field is populated from the parameter and the handler passes it through to the email either way |