Ecuador Companies: 534,467 Entities with RUC from the SRI Nationwide, with ISIC, Status and Shell-Company Alerts (September 2026)

What's included

• 534,467 companies and other legal entities (sociedades) across all of Ecuador, in the 24 provinces and 221 cantons, registered in the RUC of the Internal Revenue Service (SRI), with data as of August 31, 2026. This version replaces the previous one, which covered 91,414 entities in Pichincha, Guayas and Azuay.
• Tax status: active 288,550, passive 162,021 and suspended 83,896. ISO dates: start of activities (all), last update (374,125), definitive suspension (250,192) and restart of activities (26,228).
• Entity type: S.A. 169,121, S.A.S. 99,621, Cía. Ltda. 77,265, associations and non-profits 60,772, consortia 16,738, schools and childcare centers 13,768, civil or de facto partnerships 13,712, foundations 12,369, trusts and investment funds 11,701, condominiums 9,151, cooperatives, savings banks and mutuals 8,393, public entities 7,655 (local governments, ministries, state companies, fire departments, public hospitals), religious organizations 5,151, communes and communities 3,438, foreign branches and companies 1,960, political organizations 354, embassies and international organizations 332 and other entities 22,966. Among active ones there are 200,251 S.A., S.A.S. and Cía. Ltda. companies.
• Economic activity: SRI's official 7-character ISIC code (1,731 distinct activities), ISIC section and description. Main sections: trade (G) 102,422, professional and technical activities (M) 54,368, other services (S) 46,054, construction (F) 42,346, real estate (L) 41,815 and manufacturing (C) 33,294.
• Head-office location: province, canton and parish, plus the RUC jurisdiction. By province: Guayas 180,981, Pichincha 164,715, Azuay 26,408, Manabi 25,980 and El Oro 17,035. Active entities by canton: Quito 84,378, Guayaquil 70,393, Cuenca 12,772, Samborondon 6,373 and Machala 6,092.
• Establishments: total, open and closed per entity, and number of provinces where it operates (760,584 establishments in total; 71,905 entities have more than one and 28,823 operate in more than one province).
• Tax flags: regime (general 488,180, RIMPE 34,973, simplified 11,314), required to keep accounting books (510,156), withholding agent (43,219) and special taxpayer (7,173).
• Shell-company alerts for every row (see next section).
• Trade name of 147,939 entities. For 90,863 entities in Pichincha, Guayas and Azuay (those in our September 2026 RUC-by-RUC lookup, mostly registered since 2012) the head-office street (89,855) and the cancellation reason (30,067: purge 16,879, extinction 13,013, error 166, end of activities 9) are added; in the other rows these two columns are empty because the open registry does not publish them.

Shell-company flags

• contribuyente_fantasma = true: the SRI classified the entity as a non-existent, shell or sham company (648 entities).
• transacciones_inexistentes = true: the SRI classified it as an entity with sham activities or non-existent transactions, without classifying it as a shell company (30 entities).
• Both columns are filled in all 534,467 rows (true or false). They come from the SRI's official Shell Companies Registry, cross-checked with the RUC lookup. calificacion_sri_detalle holds the official wording and calificacion_sri_fecha the date the resolution was notified (2016-09-08 to 2026-08-19).
• Invoices issued by these companies do not support costs, expenses or tax credit, so check them before hiring or paying. Of the 678 flagged, 487 are suspended, 188 passive and 3 active.

Use cases

• Nationwide B2B prospecting: segment active entities by ISIC, province, canton, age, size (establishments) and regime.
• KYB, due diligence and supplier validation: verify RUC, status, regime and shell-company alerts.
• Market and sector studies: business density by canton and sector, new entities per year (28,597 started activities in 2025 and 20,563 between January and August 2026).
• CRM and ERP enrichment from the RUC. For sales, employees and financial ratios, join by RUC with our Ecuador company financial statements 2018-2025; for phones and emails, with the Ecuador business database with phone numbers.

How it was prepared

• Built from the RUC taxpayer registry the SRI publishes as open data (one file per province, one row per establishment, cut-off August 31, 2026). Out of 8,458,107 rows we kept only SOCIEDAD taxpayers (787,920) and dropped the 7,670,187 rows of natural persons.
• Grouped by RUC: head-office data (establishment 001) plus counts of open and closed establishments and provinces.
• Removed 26,371 temporary electoral-campaign RUCs and 508 undivided estates and inheritances (estates of deceased persons named after the person). No natural persons, legal representatives or ID numbers.
• Entity type is inferred from the legal name (legal form first) and the ISIC code.
• Normalized text (spacing, quotes and broken characters fixed), ISO dates, true/false flags and numeric counts.
• Sorted with active entities first, then by number of establishments.

What changed from the previous version

• From 91,414 entities in 3 provinces to 534,467 nationwide. 90,863 of the previous 91,414 are still in the file (99.4%). The other 551 are 135 entities registered in September 2026 (after the SRI cut-off), 87 RUCs in "catastrado" status that never started activities, 107 foreign entities without establishments that the open registry does not include and 222 old electoral-campaign RUCs and undivided estates now removed.
• New columns: ISIC code and section, jurisdiction, provinces with establishments and SRI classification detail and date. Shell-company flags now cover the whole country.
• The category column (always "emprendedor" for entities) is replaced by regime = RIMPE.

Columns (35)

id, ruc, razon_social, marca_comercial, tipo_entidad, estado_contribuyente, regimen, obligado_contabilidad, agente_retencion, contribuyente_especial, codigo_ciiu, seccion_ciiu, actividad_economica, fecha_inicio_actividades, anio_inicio, fecha_actualizacion, fecha_suspension_definitiva, fecha_reinicio_actividades, motivo_cancelacion, jurisdiccion, provincia_matriz, canton_matriz, parroquia_matriz, establecimientos_total, establecimientos_abiertos, establecimientos_cerrados, provincias_con_establecimientos, calle_matriz, contribuyente_fantasma, transacciones_inexistentes, calificacion_sri_detalle, calificacion_sri_fecha, datos_de_matriz, pais, fuente. Values are in Spanish as published by the SRI.