Find B2B customers in the Nordics: data, signals and rules

To find B2B customers in the Nordics, build your account list from the free official company registries (Bolagsverket, Brønnøysundregistrene, CVR and PRH), time your outreach with open job-ad and tender data, and check each country's email rule before the first message. Cold B2B email to companies is allowed without consent in Sweden and Finland (in Finland, to a named employee only when the offer fits their job); Norway allows it only to generic addresses such as post@, and Denmark requires prior consent from every recipient, companies included.

Checked on 15 October 2026 against the registries, the law texts and each vendor's own pages. Revexa builds Leo, one of the tools below, so read with that in mind. This guide describes the rules; it is not legal advice.

The workflow in four steps

1. List the companies from the national registry: legal form, industry code, location and, where published, headcount.
2. Add timing: companies hiring for the role you sell to, or publishing tenders in your category.
3. Check the country rule before you pick a named person, a sole trader or a LinkedIn message.
4. Write in a language the buyer reads, and keep one opt-out list across every channel.

Free company registries, country by country

Since June 2024, an EU regulation on high-value datasets has required basic company information to be available "free of charge" and via APIs (Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/138). All four registries now give you the raw list for free.

Three details decide whether the list is usable:

• Denmark's advertising protection. A company can register "reklamebeskyttelse", and its CVR data may then not be used for direct marketing by private companies (CVR Act § 19). Check the flag first.
• Norway's contact fields. Enhetsregisteret publishes registered emails, but the Consumer Authority says the consent rule applies even when a person's email is a company's registered contact address (Forbrukertilsynet).
• Finland's gaps. PRH's open data leaves out sole traders, emails and phone numbers, and iXBRL statements are "about 5 per cent" of all financial statements (PRH).

Hiring signals from open job-ad data

A job ad shows that a company is investing in a function now, not that it needs your product (our judgement).

On 15 October 2026 at 10:21 CEST, JobSearch returned 42,197 current ads for 70,098 positions. The ads include the employer's organisation number, which joins them to Bolagsverket's data; NAV's "orgnr" field does the same for Enhetsregisteret. Our daily list of Swedish companies hiring salespeople is built on the same Platsbanken data.

Public tenders

Doffin forwards notices above the EEA thresholds to TED (§ 21-1), so TED is the one place to watch all four countries' larger contracts.

Commercial data vendors

For filters, contacts and CRM sync without building on the APIs, these vendors cover the Nordics (alphabetical; prices excluding VAT where stated). All 16 tools we checked are compared in Nordic B2B data tools 2026, and the two most common choices in Apollo vs Vainu.

Cold email and LinkedIn rules by country

The EU's ePrivacy Directive (2002/58/EC, art. 13) requires consent for marketing email to natural persons and leaves the protection of companies to each country, which is why the answers differ. Norway has its own rule in its Marketing Control Act.

What each rule rests on:

• Sweden. 19 § requires consent for marketing "till en fysisk person", and 20 § requires an opt-out address "även vid marknadsföring till en juridisk person". The preparatory work protects "fysiska personer som är näringsidkare", meaning sole traders (prop. 2003/04:43). For named employees, the industry association SWEDMA's ethical rules (March 2021) count a person contacted "i sin yrkesroll" as B2B when the message is relevant to that role (SWEDMA).
• Norway. Forbrukertilsynet's guidance (updated 8 May 2026) says the ban covers an individual work address such as ola.nordmann@firmaX.no "uansett om e-posten inneholder tilbud til virksomheten", while post@firmaX.no is allowed.
• Denmark. § 10 says "nogen", meaning anyone. The Consumer Ombudsman's guidance (updated 25 June 2021) applies it to companies, authorities, info@ addresses and named employees alike, and states that "Privatbeskeder er elektronisk post" (Forbrugerombudsmanden).
• Finland. The act was earlier called the Information Society Code (tietoyhteiskuntakaari). The government bill behind § 202 treats firstname.lastname@company.fi as a natural person's address unless the person's role makes the offer substantially relevant, and the Deputy Data Protection Ombudsman held in 2020 that you must check the person's position before sending (decision 23.7.2020).
• All four let you email existing customers about your own similar products without new consent, if they can opt out every time.

GDPR applies on top, in Norway through the EEA. Recital 47 says direct marketing "may be regarded as carried out for a legitimate interest" under article 6(1)(f), if your balancing test holds; article 21 makes any objection final, and article 14 requires you to say where you got the data, at the latest in your first message (GDPR). Legitimate interest covers the data processing; it does not replace the consent rules above. More in GDPR and B2B email under legitimate interest, and if your list reaches Germany, read cold email in Germany (UWG §7) first.

This is not legal advice. Rules and their interpretation change; check with a lawyer in the country you target.

Language and buying culture

• Foreign languages are common. In 2022, 95.8% of 25 to 64 year olds in Sweden, 92.1% in Finland and 90.3% in Denmark said they knew at least one foreign language (Eurostat). The survey does not single out English, and Eurostat flags Norway's figure as low reliability.
• Finland is bilingual. At the end of 2025, 83.5% of residents had Finnish as their registered language, 5.0% Swedish and 11.4% a foreign language (our calculation from Statistics Finland's population structure 2025, table 11rm).
• LinkedIn reach. For the first half of 2026, LinkedIn reported 2.2 million average monthly active recipients in Sweden, 1.5 million in Denmark and 0.9 million in Finland (DSA transparency report, published 31 August 2026). Norway is outside the EU report.
• Norwegian notices above the EEA thresholds must be written in Norwegian and one official EU language (§ 21-1).

Our judgement, not a measured fact: English works for a first message to most Nordic tech buyers, but the buyer's own language reads as more relevant. Use Swedish for Swedish buyers and Swedish-speaking Finnish companies, and avoid machine-translated copy nobody on your team can check.

Where Leo fits

Leo by Revexa is a buying-signal agent. It builds your ideal customer profile from your website, finds buying signals such as hiring, funding, new executives and Platsbanken job ads, finds the right person and drafts LinkedIn and email messages in your voice: in Swedish to Swedish buyers, in English internationally. Review mode is the default, so you approve each message before it is sent unless you switch on autonomous mode for a channel, and a stop in one channel blocks the person in all channels. It costs €89 a month in Europe, $99 in the US and rest of world and 999 SEK in Sweden, excluding VAT, with 7 days free (pricing).

It is the wrong choice if you need a database to export lists from. It sends no cold messages to leads in Germany (UWG §7), but you remain the sender, so the country rules above apply to your campaigns.

Common questions

Is cold B2B email legal in Sweden?

Yes, to companies. Marknadsföringslagen 19 § requires prior consent only for marketing to natural persons, so email to a limited company needs none, but every message must include a valid opt-out address (20 §). Sole traders count as natural persons and need consent, and GDPR applies to the named contact.

Is cold B2B email legal in Norway, Denmark and Finland?

Norway: only to generic addresses such as post@; named work addresses need prior consent (markedsføringsloven § 15, per Forbrukertilsynet). Denmark: no, § 10 requires prior consent from every recipient, companies included. Finland: yes to companies, with an opt-out in every message (§ 202), and to a named employee only when the offer substantially relates to their duties.

Can I send LinkedIn sales messages to Nordic prospects?

In Denmark, the Consumer Ombudsman treats private messages on social media as electronic mail, so marketing messages need prior consent. Norway's Forbrukertilsynet says social media raises the same concerns as email. We found no ruling for Sweden or Finland, so treat LinkedIn messages like email there. This is not legal advice.

What free data can I use to find B2B customers in the Nordics?

The four registries: Bolagsverket (API and weekly bulk file), Enhetsregisteret in Norway (open API), CVR (free search and system access) and PRH's YTJ data. For timing, add Sweden's JobSearch API (CC0), Norway's NAV feed and tenders on TED, Doffin, udbud.dk and Hilma.

Do I need to write in Norwegian, Danish or Finnish?

The outreach rules above say nothing about language. Over 90% of 25 to 64 year olds in Sweden, Finland and Denmark report knowing a foreign language (Eurostat, 2022), so English is workable, but in our judgement the buyer's own language reads as more relevant.