Validate EU VAT numbers against the official VIES register and look up EU VAT rates inside your n8n workflows, powered by vatnode.
Useful when a workflow onboards a business customer, issues an invoice, or decides whether to apply the reverse charge — anywhere a VAT number has to be true rather than merely well-formed.
Follow the community nodes installation guide and use the package name n8n-nodes-vatnode.
| Operation | API key | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Validate | Required | Verifies the number against the live VIES register. Returns validity, registered company name and address, registration date, and the VIES consultation number when your account has a requester VAT configured. Spends one request from your monthly quota. |
| Check Format | Not needed | Checks the number against its country pattern. Runs entirely offline: no network call, no quota. A valid format does not mean the VAT exists. |
| Operation | API key | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Get | Not needed | Standard, reduced, super-reduced and parking rates for one country, plus the VAT number format. |
| Get Many | Not needed | The same for every covered country, one n8n item per country. |
Rate data comes from the European Commission's Taxes in Europe Database and is refreshed daily.
Only the Validate operation needs credentials. Create an API key in your vatnode dashboard — the free plan includes a monthly request quota and no card is required — then add a Vatnode API credential in n8n and paste the key.
The credential test sends the reserved XX0000001 test VAT number, which never reaches VIES and never spends quota.
VIES validation covers the 27 EU member states plus XI (Northern Ireland). Rate lookups cover those plus around 17 other European jurisdictions, which are rate-lookup only. Greece is EL, not GR — that is the VIES convention, and vatnode follows it.
A typical onboarding workflow:
- Check Format filters out typos for free.
- Validate confirms the surviving numbers against VIES.
- A downstream IF node routes on
valid, and theconsultationNumberis stored with the customer record as audit evidence.
Tested against n8n 1.x. Requires Node.js 20.15 or newer.