O 84
Municipal, town and district administrations, collective municipalities and administrative offices, federal and state authorities and social insurance institutions – for providers of municipal software, planning offices, specialist publishers and manufacturers of municipal equipment.
10,753 municipalities in Germany according to Destatis, municipality directory (as of 31 December 2025). Municipalities including towns; in addition there are 294 rural districts as well as authorities and other public bodies. The business register does not cover public administration (section O). We quote the size, contact coverage and price of your export on request.
This industry is a special case: it contains no businesses. Section O “Public administration and defence; compulsory social security” covers public bodies and authorities. They are not in any commercial register, have no legal form in the sense of company law and no register number.
Schools (section P), hospitals (Q) and municipal companies such as utilities or housing companies do not count as public administration in the statistical sense – they are classified by their activity and can be found in the respective industries.
| WZ 2008 | Official title | For your selection |
|---|---|---|
| 84.11 | General public administration activities | municipalities, towns, districts, ministries |
| 84.12 | Regulation of the activities of providing health care, education, cultural services and other social services | specialist authorities such as school and health offices, where independent |
| 84.13 | Regulation of and contribution to more efficient operation of businesses | supervisory and economic development authorities |
| 84.2 | Provision of services to the community as a whole (foreign affairs, defence, justice, public order and safety) | courts, police, fire brigades |
| 84.3 | Compulsory social security activities | statutory health, pension and accident insurance institutions |
Before you request a list of municipalities, you should know what the Federal Statistical Office already publishes.
These 15 columns are included.
In several states, small municipalities do not run their own administration but use a collective municipality (Verbandsgemeinde, Amt, Samtgemeinde or Verwaltungsgemeinschaft). The municipality exists politically but has no town hall of its own with administrative staff. If you write to every municipality individually, in these cases you send several letters to the same administrative building.
For sales, the level at which procurement takes place is therefore decisive. Software and vehicles are bought by the administrative unit, not by the member municipality. A list by administrative seat is shorter than the municipality directory and better suited to this purpose.
Above certain contract values, public contracting authorities procure through formal tendering procedures. An address list is suitable for market research, specialist information and invitations – it does not replace winning the contract.
We develop a specialist application for cemetery administration and are looking for municipal and town administrations in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg with a central phone number and website, listing each administrative seat only once. Please do not list member municipalities of administrative associations individually. Is that feasible?
Use cases
Specialist information and invitations to user days for administrations in a federal state.
Administrations in the surrounding area as potential clients for land-use and specialist planning.
Municipal depots and administrations for demonstrations in the field sales territory.
Sending programmes to finance, building and public order departments.
Questions
If name, official code, postcode and population are enough for you, you do not need another list. A request makes sense if you need the administration’s contact details – town hall address, phone, website – and a list cleaned up to administrative seats.
No. Statistically they belong to education and to health care respectively. Clinics and care facilities can be found under Healthcare.
§ 7 UWG protects “market participants”. Under § 2(1) no. 3 UWG, these include, besides competitors and consumers, any other person active as a supplier or buyer of goods or services. Whether an authority falls under this in an individual case should be checked by a lawyer. For marketing emails, § 7(2) no. 2 UWG requires the recipient’s prior express consent without distinguishing by type of recipient. Postal mail is the less problematic route.
10,753 municipalities in Germany according to Destatis, municipality directory (as of 31 December 2025). Municipalities including towns; in addition there are 294 rural districts as well as authorities and other public bodies. The business register does not cover public administration (section O). This is a figure from official statistics, not the size of our dataset.
Format, sources, price and marketing law (§ 7 UWG): questions about all industries.
