--- title: "D-U-N-S number" summary: "The D-U-N-S number is a nine-digit identifier assigned by a commercial data provider to business establishments worldwide, and it is proprietary: it can be matched on and cannot be derived from open data." canonical_url: https://entitybind.com/glossary/duns last_updated: 2026-10-15 copy: full --- # D-U-N-S number > The D-U-N-S number is a nine-digit identifier assigned by a commercial data provider to business establishments worldwide, and it is proprietary: it can be matched on and cannot be derived from open data. Canonical page: https://entitybind.com/glossary/duns Last updated: 2026-10-15 Glossary · Identifiers ## How to read this The definition as the field writes it comes first, weaknesses and all. What Entity Bind does about it comes last, in its own paragraph, so you can take one without the other. [Filed under identifiers](https://entitybind.com/glossary#identifiers). By [James Rooney](https://entitybind.com/about), founder of Entity Bind · Last revised 15 October 2026 ## What D-U-N-S number means A D-U-N-S number is a nine-digit code a commercial data provider assigns to a business location. It is the most embedded company identifier in procurement and credit workflows: it predates the open alternatives, and large buyers require it. Because the unit is a location rather than a company, a business with several sites has several numbers, related by the issuer's own linkage hierarchy. Its defining property for anyone building a pipeline is that it is assigned rather than derived. There is no open source of truth to reconstruct it from, and it does not appear in national registers. Whatever the coverage of an open-data pipeline, it cannot produce a D-U-N-S number, and a vendor claiming to supply one is either licensing it or guessing. That makes it an input rather than an output. If a D-U-N-S is the key your stack speaks, it has to come from the party that issues it. Entity Bind accepts a D-U-N-S on input, matches on it, and carries it through the crosswalk on your own record. It cannot supply one, because no open-data pipeline can. If you already buy the feed, keep it and run Entity Bind alongside it: the decision layer tests the matches that database proposes, tells you which ones it would not have made, and cites a register page you can open for each verdict. ## Where this shows up in Entity Bind Three pages where this term stops being vocabulary and starts changing an answer, a payload or a price. - [Data Universal Numbering System number (D-U-N-S)](https://entitybind.com/identifiers/duns): One business location in its issuer's own hierarchy. That unit is the issuer's editorial judgement rather than a legal fact. - [Reference data](https://entitybind.com/use-cases/reference-data): Identifier crosswalks, where each fact came from, and what a cited fact has to carry to be usable downstream. - [Supplier master and AP](https://entitybind.com/use-cases/supplier-master-and-ap): Vendor codes, payment routing and the identifiers a finance system actually holds. The fastest way past a definition is a file: which of your rows are the same company, which of your existing matches we would not have made, and what we could not decide. [Start free →](https://app.entitybind.com/app?signup=1) ## The terms next to this one Each with its own sentence, because the next question is usually about the word beside this one. - [Crosswalk](https://entitybind.com/glossary/crosswalk): A crosswalk is a mapping between the identifier schemes that name the same company in different systems — LEI to company number to CIK to ticker — so that data joined on one key can be joined to data keyed on another. - [LEI (Legal Entity Identifier)](https://entitybind.com/glossary/lei): The LEI is a 20-character ISO 17442 code identifying a legal entity that participates in financial transactions, issued through the Global LEI Foundation and published as open reference data. - [Company number](https://entitybind.com/glossary/company-number): A company number is the identifier a register assigns to a company at incorporation, and it is unique only within the register that issued it — never within a country and never globally. - [Reference data](https://entitybind.com/glossary/reference-data): Reference data is the slow-changing, externally defined data used to classify and identify things — registers, code lists, identifier schemes — as opposed to the transactional data that refers to it. ## The other 8 terms on this shelf The keys company data is joined on, who issues each one, and where each stops being unique. - [Crosswalk](https://entitybind.com/glossary/crosswalk) - [LEI (Legal Entity Identifier)](https://entitybind.com/glossary/lei) - [Company number](https://entitybind.com/glossary/company-number) - [CIK (Central Index Key)](https://entitybind.com/glossary/cik) - [Ticker symbol](https://entitybind.com/glossary/ticker) - [SIREN and SIRET](https://entitybind.com/glossary/siren) - [EUID (European Unique Identifier)](https://entitybind.com/glossary/euid) - [VAT number](https://entitybind.com/glossary/vat-number) Previous, alphabetically: [Crosswalk](https://entitybind.com/glossary/crosswalk) · Next, alphabetically: [Decision receipt](https://entitybind.com/glossary/decision-receipt) ## Evidence basis Internal fixtures only. The historical 2026-08-29 per-tier recording covers 317 GB companies with identifier-rich arrivals seeding the catalogue first; the context tier includes country and registered-town prose. Its legacy replay has no full-prompt-verified calls and cannot certify current calibration. The September 5 CI reports cover 1,176 labelled pairs and 705 records over 250 companies using offline stubs. These are not independent customer holdouts or live production validation; the 99% minimum-input product target remains unmet. Scope is company and organisation identity only — not people, vessels, bank-account ownership, sanctions or emissions. Results may not be used for eligibility decisions about individuals, including employment, credit and tenancy. ## Start with your own company records. Create your workspace, verify your email and run your first company file. The Free plan needs no card. Create API keys in your workspace when you need an integration. [Start free](https://app.entitybind.com/app?signup=1) · [All 64 terms](https://entitybind.com/glossary) 300 credits. No card. For a guided review of your file, explore [the Merge Safety Sprint](https://entitybind.com/audit-pack). --- Entity Bind resolves companies and organisations only. It does not resolve people, vessels, bank-account ownership, sanctions exposure, emissions or geolocation, and its results may not be used for eligibility decisions about individuals, including employment, credit and tenancy. This is the Markdown copy of https://entitybind.com/glossary/duns, assembled from the same data the page renders and carrying every sentence, table row, figure and question the page's main content carries. The HTML page is canonical; it adds the layout, the navigation and the interactive parts (the ask panel, the forms), which a copy can name but not run. Every page on the site, with a line on each: https://entitybind.com/llms.txt.