Worldwide Company Legal Forms (ISO 20275 / GLEIF ELF) — Clean Dataset + Free REST API

Company legal forms are a mess to work with: every jurisdiction names them differently, the same form appears as S.r.l., SRL or Srl, and the official list ships as a spreadsheet you have to re-download and re-clean by hand. This repository is a clean, normalized dataset of every ISO 20275 Entity Legal Form (ELF) — plus a free REST API so you can query it live instead of parsing a CSV.

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Try the live API (no key required)

Recognize a legal form inside a company name — paste a raw company name, get back the legal form and the cleaned-up name:

curl "https://regdata-marketplace-demo.up.railway.app/api/v1/public/datasets/elf/match?q=Rossi%20Costruzioni%20S.r.l.&countryCode=IT"

{
  "input": "ROSSI COSTRUZIONI S.R.L.",
  "matched": true,
  "matchedTerm": "S.R.L.",
  "position": "END",
  "cleanInput": "ROSSI COSTRUZIONI",
  "candidateCount": 1,
  "ambiguous": false,
  "record": {
    "elfCode": "OV32",
    "countryCode": "IT",
    "localName": "Società A Responsabilità Limitata",
    "enName": "Limited Liability Company",
    "elfStatus": "ACTV"
  }
}

Browse legal forms by country:

curl "https://regdata-marketplace-demo.up.railway.app/api/v1/public/datasets/elf/records?countryCode=IT"

{
  "content": [
    {
      "elfCode": "135L",
      "countryCode": "IT",
      "localName": "Società Costituita In Base A Leggi Di Altro Stato",
      "enName": "Company Incorporated Under the Laws of Another State",
      "elfStatus": "INAC"
    }
  ],
  "page": 0,
  "size": 20,
  "totalElements": 57,
  "totalPages": 3
}

More recipes (filter by ELF code, search, pagination): examples/curl.md.

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Download the dataset

Static snapshot, the full dataset, same content in two formats:

File	Rows	Format
data/legal-forms.csv	4,000	CSV (array fields are |-separated)
data/legal-forms.json	4,000	JSON (array fields are real arrays)

Covers 129 countries / jurisdictions. Both files carry the same 18 fields — see Dataset schema.

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Static snapshot vs live API

The files above are a point-in-time snapshot. Legal-form lists change: forms get added, retired, renamed. The live API is the same data kept current, queryable, filterable and paginated — and it exposes capabilities a static file can't:

	This repo (snapshot)	Live API
Format	CSV / JSON download	REST / JSON
Freshness	Fixed at 2026-04-08	Maintained & updated
Filter by country / status / code	Grep it yourself	?countryCode=IT&elfStatus=ACTV
Full-text search	—	?search=responsabilita
Name → legal form matching	—	/match?q=Acme%20GmbH
Pagination, all fields	—	API key

Public endpoints need no key (rate-limited per IP, first 20 records, reduced projection). Full access — every field, deep pagination — uses an API key.

• API base: https://regdata-marketplace-demo.up.railway.app
• Get a free API key & docs: https://regdata-marketplace-demo-fe.dedo-dev.workers.dev/docs

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Dataset schema

18 fields per record. ⭑ marks fields that are RegData enrichment (not part of the raw GLEIF list) — the canonical English name and the searchable variants that power /match.

Field	Type	Description
elfCode	string	Four-character ISO 20275 code of the legal form.
countryCode	string (ISO 3166-1 α-2)	Country of the jurisdiction.
countryName	string	Country name.
jurisdictionName	string	Jurisdiction of formation.
countrySubDivisionCode	string (ISO 3166-2)	Sub-division, when the form is regional.
localName	string	Legal form name in the local language and script.
transliteratedName	string	Latin-script transliteration (ISO 01-140).
language	string	Language of the local name.
languageCode	string (ISO 639-1)	Language code.
localAbbreviations	array<string>	Local-language abbreviations, e.g. SARL, GmbH, S.r.l.
transliteratedAbbreviations	array<string>	Transliterated abbreviations.
enName ⭑	string	Canonical English name of the legal form.
enVariations ⭑	array<string>	Searchable English variants: singular/plural, abbreviations, hyphenation.
elfStatus	enum	ACTV (active) or INAC (retired).
dateCreated	date (ISO 8601)	When the form entered the ELF list.
modification	string	Kind of the last change.
modificationDate	date (ISO 8601)	Date of the last change.
reason	string	GLEIF note on the modification or the form's scope of use.

In CSV, the three array<string> fields are joined with a pipe (|); no value contains a pipe, so it round-trips cleanly. In JSON they are real arrays.

The live API also carries an internal recordKey (elfCode|languageCode|localName) used to address a single record — omitted from these flat files as it is an API-access artifact, not dataset content.

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Data source & attribution

The base data is the GLEIF Entity Legal Forms (ELF) code list, the ISO 20275 standard: https://www.gleif.org/en/about-lei/code-lists/iso-20275-entity-legal-forms-code-list

GLEIF publishes this data under the CC0 1.0 public-domain dedication (see the GLEIF LEI Data Terms of Use). The ISO 20275 standard and the ELF codes are GLEIF's.

This repository is a normalized, repackaged version of that list (consistent field names, typed values, arrays for multi-valued fields), plus the RegData enrichment fields marked ⭑ above.

License: the underlying GLEIF facts remain CC0; this compilation and the RegData enrichment (enName, enVariations) are licensed CC BY 4.0. If you use the data, credit: "Legal forms data by RegData, based on GLEIF ISO 20275 ELF (CC0)." Full details in LICENSE.

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Other regulatory datasets coming

RegData normalizes and serves regulatory reference data through one API. Legal forms are the first dataset. Next, each in its own repo:

• Sanctions lists — consolidated sanctioned entities, with name matching.
• Country risk — jurisdiction risk ratings for enhanced due diligence.

Watch https://regdata-marketplace-demo-fe.dedo-dev.workers.dev for the full catalog.

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_{Keywords: company legal form, ISO 20275, GLEIF ELF, entity legal form code, legal entity form by jurisdiction, legal form dataset, legal form REST API, KYC / compliance reference data.}