How many companies are in Italy? By industry, size and region

Which number should a foreign company actually use?

The 4.3 million figure you see in most articles includes sole traders, partnerships and family shops. About 95% of them have fewer than ten employees, and most never buy from a foreign supplier. If you sell B2B, the useful universe is the set of corporations (società di capitali: Srl and SpA) actively registered with the Registro Imprese. That number is 1,498,035. It is the population that files accounts, has a legal representative on record and can be filtered by activity code, revenue, headcount and province.

Sources: ISTAT data via partitaiva.it for the total business count and the micro share;Atlante delle filiere italiane, Clientium, edition 2026 for the corporate universe.

The Atlas takes that universe and maps 1,067,441 corporations into 28 supply chains, built from two digit activity divisions. For 770,883 of them the latest declared revenue is known; for 777,411 a decision maker is mapped by name and role; 324,164 publish a website. Everything on this page comes from the July 2026 snapshot (data as of 24 July 2026) and can be downloaded as CSV below.

One more number sets the scene for a foreign entrant. ISTAT counts 18,825 foreign controlled companies in Italy: just 0.4% of enterprises, yet they generate 21.0% of turnover in industry and services. The companies that came before you are few and large. The market they sell into is the one in the table below.

Source: ISTAT, multinational enterprises, reference year 2023.

How many companies are in Italy by industry?

Construction is the largest supply chain by headcount of companies, B2B wholesale the largest by revenue, mechanical engineering the largest manufacturing block. Median revenue is the column to read if you want to know the typical buyer size: it ranges from 134,167 euro for a management consultancy to 2,010,140 euro for a chemicals producer and 11.9 million for a pharmaceutical company. Italian names are in brackets because that is how you will find them in Italian registers and directories.

Source: Atlante delle filiere italiane, Clientium, edition 2026, file 01-filiere-sintesi.csv. Share of corporations is computed on the 1,498,035 active corporations; aggregate revenue sums the latest declared figures; median revenue is computed only on companies that declare it.

Three readings matter for a market entry plan. First, the big counts hide small buyers: construction has 249,644 companies but a median revenue of 338,327 euro, so most of them are two or three person firms. Second, industrial supply chains are small in number and large in ticket: rubber and plastics, electrical equipment, chemicals and automotive together hold fewer than 23,000 companies, yet each has a median revenue above 950,000 euro. Third, the service chains (software, consulting, business services) are where new entrants face the most crowded field, with more than 177,000 companies and median revenues under 215,000 euro.

How big are Italian companies, really?

Small. Of the 1,067,441 mapped corporations, only 6,995 declare more than 50 million euro of revenue and 27,270 sit between 10 and 50 million. The two bands together are 34,265 companies, 3.2% of the mapped population. Below them, 101,123 companies declare between 2 and 10 million, which in most sectors is the owner led firm that buys machinery, software and services directly and decides fast once convinced.

Source: Atlante delle filiere italiane, Clientium, edition 2026, file 02-distribuzione-dimensionale.csv, totals across the 28 supply chains.

Note the last row of each table. 296,558 corporations, 28% of the mapped population, show no declared revenue, and 270,249 show no headcount. Together with the companies below 500 thousand euro they make up more than two thirds of the register. A list built only on balance sheet filters therefore misses a large part of the market, including recently founded companies and foreign subsidiaries that file abroad. This is why the Atlas also maps a named decision maker for 777,411 companies: the person, not the filing, is the reliable key to a company.

Where are Italian companies located?

In the North, with Lombardia far ahead. The Atlas lists the top regions of each supply chain, so the regional figures are partial counts and not a full national census, but the ranking is unambiguous: Lombardia 209,947 corporations, Lazio 137,328, Campania 106,785, Veneto 81,877, Emilia-Romagna 70,480, Sicilia 69,177, Toscana 62,386, Puglia 58,763. Lazio and Campania owe their position to services, construction and wholesale around Rome and Naples. The manufacturing core sits in four regions: Lombardia, Veneto, Emilia-Romagna and Piemonte, the historic industrial districts of mechanical engineering, packaging, automotive components and electrical equipment.

Source: Atlante delle filiere italiane, Clientium, edition 2026, file 03-distribuzione-territoriale.csv, regional rows.

For a foreign supplier of industrial goods this has a practical consequence: a first campaign that covers Lombardia, Veneto, Emilia-Romagna and Piemonte reaches most of the buyers that matter, within a two hour drive of Milan or Bologna. For services sold to professional firms and public bodies, Rome weighs much more than its industrial base suggests.

What does this mean for a foreign company entering Italy?

Four things, and they shape the whole go to market plan, not just the list.

1. Your market is a few thousand companies, not millions.Cross your sector with the 10 to 50 million revenue band and most foreign B2B offers land on a target of a few hundred to a few thousand Italian corporations. That is a market you can cover one decision maker at a time, which is what Italian buyers expect anyway.
2. Median revenue tells you who signs. Where the median is under 300,000 euro, you are selling to the owner, in Italian, with a short decision chain. Where it is above one million, a technical or purchasing manager enters the picture and the cycle lengthens.
3. Go North for manufacturing, to Rome for institutions and services. The regional split is not a detail: it decides where your first hire, distributor or trade show should be.
4. Filter by people, not only by filings. More than a quarter of the register has no declared revenue. The Italian business registertells you whether a company exists and who represents it; theATECO code tells you what it does; only a named decision maker tells you who to write to.

If you want to see how these counts turn into a pipeline, the page on how to enter the Italian marketexplains the business development model, and theItalian cold email statisticsshow what reply rates Italian decision makers actually give.

How do you count the companies in your own target?

The TAM calculator runs the same Atlas data by activity code, revenue band, headcount and region and returns the number of Italian corporations that match, in a minute, in Italian. If you prefer to have it done for you, a mapping session does the same work with a Clientium strategist, in English, and adds a conservative projection of appointments on top: that is the first step of the business development service for foreign companies, and it is free. The largest companies in Italyguide covers the opposite end of the market, the few thousand groups above 50 million euro, and when they are worth the longer cycle.

How to cite and download the Atlas

The Atlas is released under a Creative Commons BY 4.0 licence. Quote it, republish the tables, build on the CSVs, including for commercial use, as long as you name the source and link it:

Atlante delle filiere italiane, Clientium, edition 2026. https://clientium.it/atlante/

The full dataset (four CSV files: supply chain summary, size distribution, regional and provincial distribution, ATECO sub sectors, plus the codebook) is atclientium.it/dati/atlante-filiere-italiane-2026.zip. The Italian edition, with one page per supply chain and provincial detail, is at clientium.it/atlante/. Data as of 24 July 2026; the next refresh follows the next full Registro Imprese snapshot.