On this page
- 01What Belgian law asks of a company site
- 02Linked pages double the count
- 03Legal form and court: rarely shown
- 04Privacy policies: half link one
- 05Trackers before consent on a third of sites
- 06By sector: business services lead, hospitality trails
- 07Brussels and Wallonia show the number less often
- 08Platforms matter for cookies, not for the number
- 09Healthcare: professional titles are rare
- 10What this means for your business
In November 2026, 34.0% of the 21,973 Belgian small business homepages we could read showed the company's enterprise number. In a sample of 3,000 sites we also read the linked contact, privacy and legal pages, and the number then turned up on 56.6%. On 43.4% of the sample it was on none of those pages.
Cookies tell a similar story. Of 594 homepages opened in a browser without a single click, 33.7% loaded a tracker before the visitor had made any choice, and 21.4% showed a cookie banner with a reject button on its first layer. Belgium's economy ministry checked 2,158 websites and web pages in 2025 and found the number missing on 45.7%. We counted every SME site in the frame of our October study, so the gaps show up by sector, province and platform.
Contact details almost always, the enterprise number on one in three
A way to get in touchemail, phone, form or contact link
94.2%Phone number
81.2%Street address
75.2%Email address
68.4%Link to a privacy policy
49.6%Enterprise numberKBO or VAT number
34.0%Link to terms and conditions
29.4%Link to a cookie policy
23.5%Legal formBV, NV, SRL, non-profit
14.8%RPR with the courtregister of legal entities
1.9%
Percent of the homepages that can be read without JavaScript. Measured in November 2026.
What Belgian law asks of a company site
If you run a business in Belgium, or sell to Belgian customers from a Belgian entity, three laws shape your footer. Article III.25 of the Code of Economic Law requires every business registered in the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises (KBO/BCE) to show its enterprise number on all its documents, its website included. Article XII.6 of the same code applies to anyone offering goods or services online: name, geographic address, contact details including an email address, the enterprise number and the VAT number, plus the professional body and title for a regulated profession. Article 2:20 of the Code of Companies and Associations adds, for legal entities, the legal form, the registered office and the words 'register of legal entities' (RPR in Dutch, RPM in French) followed by the court of that office.
Cookies fall under article 10/2 of the Belgian data protection act of 30 July 2018: anything not strictly necessary needs prior consent. The Belgian Data Protection Authority asks for an 'accept all' and a 'reject all' button on the same layer and grants no exemption for analytics cookies. Under the GDPR you inform people at the moment you collect their data, a contact form included, which is why most sites carry a privacy policy.
Foreign readers often know this set as an impressum; our guide to the impressum shows how the German and Belgian versions compare, and the company number on your website covers the number itself.
| Item | Belgian basis | Who it applies to | Share of homepages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enterprise number | CEL III.25, XII.6, CCA 2:20 | every business in the KBO/BCE | 34.0% |
| Street address | CEL XII.6, III.74 | anyone selling online | 75.2% |
| Email address | CEL XII.6, III.74 | anyone selling online | 68.4% |
| Legal form | CCA 2:20, CEL III.74 | legal entities | 14.8% |
| Register with court | CCA 2:20 | legal entities | 1.9% |
| Link to a privacy policy | GDPR | anyone collecting personal data | 49.6% |
| Professional body or title | CEL XII.6, III.74 | regulated professions | 9.1% of healthcare sites |
CEL is the Code of Economic Law, CCA the Code of Companies and Associations. All shares cover the 21,973 homepages, sole traders included. Legal form and register do not apply to sole traders, so those two rows understate the gap among companies.
Linked pages double the count
Many Belgian businesses keep their details off the homepage and put them on a contact page, in the privacy policy or on a legal notice page. In a sample of 3,000 sites we read those pages too. The enterprise number then climbs from 32.5% to 56.6%, and the full set of number, address and email from 25.2% to 51.3%.
| Item | Homepage, all 21,973 sites | Sample of 3,000: homepage | Sample of 3,000: homepage plus linked pages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enterprise number | 34.0% | 32.5% | 56.6% |
| Legal form | 14.8% | 14.8% | 33.7% |
| Register with court | 1.9% | 1.6% | 5.0% |
| Street address | 75.2% | 75.3% | 90.5% |
| Email address | 68.4% | 68.7% | 86.5% |
| Number, address and email together | 26.4% | 25.2% | 51.3% |
On the homepage the sample tracks the full count closely, so the last column is a fair estimate for all sites. Of the 721 sites where the number only appeared on a linked page, 233 had it on a legal notice page, 218 on the contact page, 209 in the privacy policy and 59 in the terms. To look up a Belgian number, or any EU VAT number, use our EU VAT number check.
One click further shows more, but far from all
Homepage plus linked pagesHomepage only
- Street address90.5%75.3%
- Email address86.5%68.7%
- Enterprise number56.6%32.5%
- Legal form33.7%14.8%
- RPR with the court5.0%1.6%
Percent of a random sample of 3,000 sites. Linked: the contact, privacy, legal notice and terms page the homepage links to itself.
Legal form and court: rarely shown
In November 2026, 14.8% of 21,973 Belgian SME homepages named a legal form such as BV, NV or SRL. The register of legal entities with its court, which article 2:20 asks of every legal entity, appeared on 1.9%. With linked pages, the sample reaches 33.7% for the legal form and 5.0% for the register.
Without KBO Open Data we could not set sole traders apart, so the true gap among companies is smaller than these shares. Still, the register stays rare: even sites that name their legal form almost never add the court. Where the legal form is on the homepage, the enterprise number is there too in 63.4% of cases, usually in one footer line. Our impressum generator builds that line for you.
Privacy policies: half link one
Half of Belgian SME sites link from the homepage to a privacy policy: 49.6% of 21,973 in November 2026. Counting a legal notice page as well, the share is 53.3%. A link to a cookie policy appeared on 23.5%, to terms and conditions on 29.4%.
Sectors differ a lot. Business services link a privacy policy on 70.8% of their sites, restaurants and cafés on 38.6%, even though a booking form collects personal data just the same. Whether you need one is answered in do I need a privacy policy; what goes in it is in our guide to a GDPR compliant website and the GDPR website checklist. A disclaimer is a separate matter, covered in do I need a website disclaimer.
Trackers before consent on a third of sites
The HTML of 48.7% of the 21,973 homepages holds tracker code, most often Google Analytics (29.9%) or Google Tag Manager (22.3%). Consent tool code shows up on 27.0%, and 27.9% carry tracker code with no consent tool or banner code at all. Code alone does not show what happens when someone lands on the page, so we opened 594 homepages in a browser and clicked nothing.
In November 2026, 33.7% of those 594 Belgian SME sites loaded a tracker before the visitor chose anything. A Google Analytics cookie was already set on 26.8%; on 8.6% a request went to the Meta pixel. A cookie banner appeared on 39.2%, and a banner with a reject-all button on its first layer on 21.4%. So just over half of all banners (54.5%) offer that button; 22.3% only offer 'accept', and another 22.3% pair 'accept' with a settings link.
| What a visitor gets without clicking | Sites | Of 594 |
|---|---|---|
| No banner and no tracker | 245 | 41.2% |
| A tracker before any choice | 200 | 33.7% |
| A tracker and no banner | 116 | 19.5% |
| A banner with a first-layer reject button | 127 | 21.4% |
| A banner with a reject button and no tracker | 85 | 14.3% |
Of the 200 sites that fire a tracker early, 58.0% show no banner at all. The other 42.0% do show one, but the tracker has already run by the time it appears.
In October the same method gave 35.6% of 427 working sites. At 33.7% now, the two are about equal; the gap is within what two samples of this size produce. Our cookie scanner shows what your own site sets before anyone chooses. For the analytics side, see Google Analytics 4 setup and our note on the consent mode change. Server-side tracking moves collection off the browser, but consent is still needed for anything not strictly necessary. If you also serve French visitors, the CNIL cookie rules are close to the Belgian ones.
How many sites let you refuse straight away
Opened in a browserat phone size, without a click
594Shows a cookie banner
39.2%With a reject button on the first layerbeside accept, without opening settings first
21.4%
First bar in sites, the rest as a share of all opened sites. Measured in November 2026.
By sector: business services lead, hospitality trails
Accountants, lawyers and consultants publish the most of the required details, restaurants and cafés the least. On the homepage, 39.1% of business services show the enterprise number against 29.0% in hospitality. The legal form gap is wider still: 29.1% against 8.6%. Sole traders, who need no legal form, may explain part of that; without KBO data we could not check.
| Sector | Sites | Enterprise number | Legal form | Privacy policy link | Tracker code in HTML | Number, address and email |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hospitality | 7,443 | 29.0% | 8.6% | 38.6% | 41.9% | 21.6% |
| Retail | 6,418 | 38.1% | 14.9% | 54.3% | 53.8% | 30.0% |
| Business services | 2,645 | 39.1% | 29.1% | 70.8% | 64.3% | 32.6% |
| Healthcare | 2,325 | 30.0% | 14.9% | 48.4% | 39.2% | 22.1% |
| Beauty and leisure | 1,326 | 32.3% | 13.1% | 47.5% | 42.1% | 24.6% |
| Construction and trades | 1,231 | 37.2% | 20.3% | 48.7% | 52.3% | 30.0% |
| Automotive | 585 | 41.5% | 19.8% | 53.2% | 53.0% | 34.4% |
| All sites | 21,973 | 34.0% | 14.8% | 49.6% | 48.7% | 26.4% |
With linked pages the spread grows. In the sample, the enterprise number reaches 72.7% in business services (366 sites), 66.5% in retail (860) and 47.8% in hospitality (1,042).
The browser sample shows the cookie side per sector. Groups under 100 sites are indicative only.
| Sector | Sites in the browser | Cookie banner | First-layer reject button | Tracker before choice |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hospitality | 201 | 31.8% | 16.9% | 28.4% |
| Retail | 162 | 37.7% | 16.0% | 42.6% |
| Business services | 71 | 57.7% | 36.6% | 36.6% |
| Healthcare | 57 | 35.1% | 24.6% | 24.6% |
| Beauty and leisure | 40 | 45.0% | 25.0% | 25.0% |
| Construction and trades | 37 | 45.9% | 29.7% | 43.2% |
| Automotive | 26 | 46.2% | 23.1% | 30.8% |
| All sites | 594 | 39.2% | 21.4% | 33.7% |
Shops fire a tracker before consent more often than restaurants and cafés: 42.6% against 28.4%, both groups above 100 sites.
Brussels and Wallonia show the number less often
In East and West Flanders the enterprise number sits on just over 41% of SME homepages; in Brussels on 22.5%. The Walloon provinces range from 25.0% to 34.3%. Privacy links vary far less, mostly between 42% and 52%.
| Province | Sites | Enterprise number | Privacy policy link | Tracker code in HTML | Number, address and email |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Antwerp | 3,832 | 34.4% | 51.8% | 50.0% | 27.1% |
| East Flanders | 3,583 | 41.4% | 50.5% | 49.1% | 33.3% |
| West Flanders | 3,198 | 41.3% | 50.9% | 50.4% | 33.6% |
| Flemish Brabant | 2,347 | 34.7% | 49.6% | 45.5% | 27.8% |
| Brussels | 2,185 | 22.5% | 49.9% | 52.0% | 16.6% |
| Limburg | 1,789 | 34.9% | 51.6% | 49.2% | 26.8% |
| Liège | 1,495 | 26.2% | 48.8% | 48.8% | 18.6% |
| Hainaut | 1,171 | 25.4% | 44.6% | 44.4% | 18.1% |
| Walloon Brabant | 1,015 | 31.0% | 43.2% | 44.4% | 21.2% |
| Namur | 778 | 34.3% | 46.4% | 46.4% | 24.2% |
| Luxembourg | 580 | 25.0% | 41.9% | 45.0% | 18.8% |
The language of the site follows the same line. Dutch-language sites show the number on 38.2% of 14,306 homepages, French-language sites on 28.6% of 5,609 and English-language sites on 19.7% of 1,775. An English site run by a Belgian business falls under exactly the same rules, which matters for founders who build in English first.
The enterprise number on the homepage, per province
Percent of the homepages per province; the province comes from the address in OpenStreetMap.
Platforms matter for cookies, not for the number
WordPress, Wix and most other builders sit between 33% and 38% for the enterprise number, so the platform says little there. It says a lot about cookies. Consent tool code appears on 42.7% of WordPress sites, 63.1% of Shopify stores and 1.3% of Squarespace sites. Our CMS detector tells you what any site runs on.
| Platform | Sites | Enterprise number | Privacy policy link | Tracker code in HTML | Consent tool in HTML | Tracker without consent tool |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress | 7,742 | 33.5% | 48.9% | 47.6% | 42.7% | 19.4% |
| No platform detected | 6,171 | 34.2% | 51.5% | 55.8% | 14.0% | 37.5% |
| Wix | 1,442 | 33.8% | 36.3% | 6.1% | 4.3% | 4.7% |
| Drupal | 894 | 38.4% | 72.9% | 69.7% | 30.9% | 45.3% |
| Shopify | 626 | 22.5% | 73.0% | 58.5% | 63.1% | 16.5% |
| Squarespace | 474 | 26.2% | 26.2% | 28.1% | 1.3% | 27.2% |
| Odoo | 386 | 35.2% | 44.8% | 46.1% | 6.2% | 39.6% |
Read the Wix row with care: Wix sites show little tracker code in their HTML, and whatever loads later through JavaScript is outside this count. Drupal sites often link a privacy policy, yet 45.3% hold tracker code with no consent tool we recognised. Shopify has the lowest share showing the enterprise number, at 22.5%; if you sell online, our ecommerce legal requirements guide lists the extra rules for shops.
Healthcare: professional titles are rare
For a regulated profession, article XII.6 also asks for the professional body, the professional title and the country that granted it. Of the 2,325 healthcare sites in the count (doctors, dentists, physiotherapists, pharmacies and other practices), 9.1% named a professional body, a protected title or an INAMI/RIZIV number on the homepage in November 2026. In the sample of 311 healthcare sites, linked pages lift that from 8.4% to 14.8%.
The enterprise number is often missing in healthcare too: 30.0% on the homepage, 45.0% with linked pages. A practice that lets patients book online handles health data, so a clear privacy policy is more than a formality there.
What this means for your business
Most missing details take an afternoon to fix, without a new site:
- Put your details in the footer of every page. Name, address, email and enterprise number, and for a company also legal form, registered office and the register with its court. The impressum generator writes the block; the EU VAT number check confirms the number.
- Link your privacy policy from every page. A contact form alone means you collect personal data. Work through the GDPR website checklist.
- Test what loads before anyone chooses. Open your site in a private window and run the cookie scanner. If a Google Analytics cookie is already there, put the tag behind consent. Check whether you need a cookie banner at all.
- Give the banner a reject button next to 'accept'. Same size, same layer, as the Belgian Data Protection Authority asks.
- Rebuilding anyway? Put the details and a banner that asks first into the brief. If you have a website designed, settle it up front rather than patching it later.
Want a second pair of eyes on your site? Book a call.
Questions business owners ask about website compliance in Belgium
What are the legal requirements for a business website in Belgium?
Your name, address, email address and enterprise number, plus your VAT number if you have one. A company adds its legal form, registered office and the register of legal entities with its court. In November 2026, 26.4% of 21,973 Belgian SME homepages showed number, address and email together.
Do I have to show my company number on my website?
Yes. Article III.25 of the Code of Economic Law requires it on every document of a registered business, the website included. 34.0% of Belgian SMEs show it on the homepage, 56.6% on the homepage or a linked page. More in company number on your website.
Is a cookie banner required in Belgium?
Yes, as soon as you use cookies or trackers that are not strictly necessary, such as Google Analytics or the Meta pixel. You need consent first, with a reject button on the same layer. Of 594 Belgian SME homepages, 21.4% showed such a banner.
Does a small business website need a privacy policy?
Yes, if the site collects personal data, and a contact form or an analytics cookie already does. 49.6% of Belgian SME homepages link to a privacy policy.
How many small business sites load trackers without consent?
33.7% of 594 Belgian SME homepages loaded a tracker before the visitor chose anything in November 2026. In October it was 35.6% of 427 sites, about the same. On 26.8% it was a Google Analytics cookie.
Can I use these figures?
Yes, credit VBS and link to this page. All counts are in the CSV at the top, without domain names or company names.