Is VIES down right now?

Live availability of the European Commission's VIES VAT-validation service, per member state. Auto-refreshes every 2 minutes.

What this page shows

VIES is not one database — it relays your query to the national VAT database of each member state. When a national database is overloaded or in maintenance, validations for that country fail while all others keep working. Germany, Italy, and Spain historically account for most interruptions, and outages cluster around VAT filing deadlines — exactly when finance teams batch-validate numbers.

What to do when VIES is down for your country

Transient errors (MS_MAX_CONCURRENT_REQ, SERVICE_UNAVAILABLE): retry with exponential backoff — most clear within minutes.
Don't block checkout or invoicing on a third-party outage: accept the transaction, flag it, and re-validate when the service returns.
Log the failed attempt. "We tried at 14:02 during scheduled maintenance and re-validated at 16:31 with consultation number X" is a defensible audit story.
Capture the consultation number when you re-validate — that's the point-in-time proof tax authorities actually ask for.

Never lose a validation to a VIES outage again

Vatnode handles retries, captures official consultation numbers, and keeps an exportable audit log — one API call. Free tier available.

Get your free API key Read the docs →

FAQ

How often is this page updated? The status is fetched live from the European Commission's own status interface each time you load the page, and auto-refreshes every 2 minutes while open.

VIES says my valid VAT number is invalid — why? If the member state's database is unavailable, some tools incorrectly report "invalid" instead of "unavailable". Check the country's status above before trusting a negative result.

Is this an official European Commission page? No. Vatnode is an independent service; the data comes from the Commission's public status interface. Not affiliated with the European Commission or VIES.