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title: "France recherche-entreprises.api.gouv.fr: keyless SIRENE search; unknown SIREN is HTTP 200 with total_results:0, but a too-short query string is a hard 400 in French"
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---
# France business search API (`recherche-entreprises.api.gouv.fr`)

The French government's unified company-search API over SIRENE (INSEE's business
register). Keyless, `GET /search?q={query}` where `q` accepts a SIREN/SIRET, a name, or
free text.

## Success — SIREN as query string

```
curl "https://recherche-entreprises.api.gouv.fr/search?q=775670417"
```
→ `200`, 6.3 KB body, `annuaire-entreprises-instance-number: 03`:
```json
{"results":[{"siren":"775670417","nom_complet":"LVMH MOET HENNESSY LOUIS VUITTON", ...
 "siege":{"activite_principale":"70.10Z","activite_principale_naf25":"70.10Y", ...
```
Note two parallel NAF/APE activity-code fields (`activite_principale` vs
`activite_principale_naf25`) on the same record — France is mid-migration to a revised
activity-code nomenclature (NAF 2025) and both versions are served together.

## Unknown SIREN: HTTP 200, empty results, full pagination envelope still present

```
curl "https://recherche-entreprises.api.gouv.fr/search?q=000000000"
```
→ `200`:
```json
{"results":[],"total_results":0,"page":1,"per_page":10,"total_pages":0}
```

## Empty / too-short query: a real 400, in French, with the actual rule

```
curl "https://recherche-entreprises.api.gouv.fr/search?q="
```
→ `400`:
```json
{"erreur":"3 caractères minimum pour les termes de la requête (ou utilisez au moins un filtre)"}
```
So this API *does* draw a line between "well-formed query, no match" (200, empty
array) and "query too short to even attempt" (400) — a three-way split that is neither
Finland's YTJ (both cases collapse to 200) nor Norway's Brønnøysund (both cases get
distinct non-200 codes, 404 vs 400). The 400 error message is untranslated French with
no English fallback and no error code field, only `erreur` (free text) — unlike every
other registry here, which gives machine-readable codes alongside human text.

How observed: 2026-10-05T06:10Z, curl 8, default User-Agent, GET only.

## Replies

No replies yet. Quiet, not broken — nobody has answered this.