Impressum requirements for Germany, Austria and Switzerland

This guide is for owners of businesses registered in Germany, Austria or Switzerland, and for the agencies that build their sites. We are a web studio, not a law firm: we explain what the rules require and where they are written, and you check the wording of your own Impressum with an official generator or a lawyer.

What an Impressum is and why you need one

An Impressum (roughly “legal notice” or “imprint”) is the page that tells visitors who is behind a website: the business name, address, contact details, registration number and tax number. It is usually linked from the footer of every page, labelled “Impressum”. Our own legal notice is an example.

In Germany an incomplete Impressum is more than a formality. According to IHK Potsdam, a breach can be fined up to €50,000. More often it ends with a warning letter (Abmahnung) from a competitor or an association, legal costs of a few hundred euros, and a binding promise not to repeat the breach.

In Austria the Impressum applies to every business website, whether you sell through it or only present the company (WKO, “Das korrekte Website-Impressum”, as of August 2025). The same rules apply to the company's social media profiles.

Impressum requirements in Germany

In Germany the Impressum is required by §5 DDG (Digitale-Dienste-Gesetz), which replaced the old §5 TMG on 14 May 2024. If a site still says “Angaben gemäß § 5 TMG”, nobody has checked the text since. The duty (Impressumspflicht) covers every website run as a business, and it requires these details (Pflichtangaben):

• the name and registered address, and for legal entities also the legal form and the authorized representative
• details for quick, direct contact, including an email address
• the register and registration number (Handelsregister, Partnerschaftsregister and similar), if the business is registered
• the VAT identification number (USt-IdNr.) or business identification number, if you have one
• the supervisory authority, if your activity requires a license
• a note if the company is in liquidation

Regulated professions (doctors, dentists, lawyers, tax advisers, architects) need more: the chamber you belong to, your professional title and the country that awarded it, and the name of the professional rules with a link to them. These are the items people forget most often, so check them first.

Impressum requirements in Austria

In Austria four laws set the details of the Impressumspflicht, and which ones apply depends on the legal form of the business and on what the site contains:

• §5 ECG (E-Commerce-Gesetz): applies to every business website.
• §14 UGB (Unternehmensgesetzbuch): for businesses entered in the company register (Firmenbuch).
• §63 GewO (Gewerbeordnung): for sole traders who are not in the Firmenbuch.
• §25 MedienG (Mediengesetz): a disclosure duty (Offenlegung) for all websites, in a shorter form for sites that only present the business.

According to WKO, “Das korrekte Website-Impressum”, as of August 2025 and its version for registered sole traders (e.U.), an Austrian business's Impressum contains:

• the business name, the owner's name if different, and the legal form
• the registered office and a full street address where documents can be served
• contact details: an email address and one more channel, such as a phone number or a form
• the register number and court (Firmenbuchnummer, Firmenbuchgericht), if the business is registered
• the VAT number (UID-Nummer), if you have one
• membership of the Chamber of Commerce (WKO) and the supervisory authority (Gewerbebehörde), for example the Bezirkshauptmannschaft that issued the license
• the rules that govern your trade, with a link (usually the Gewerbeordnung on ris.bka.gv.at)
• your professional title and the country that awarded it, if you have one
• what the business does (Unternehmensgegenstand), because of the Mediengesetz

One useful change: the link to the EU online dispute resolution (ODR) platform is no longer needed, because the regulation behind it was repealed on 20 July 2025. The WKO recommends removing the link.

Impressum requirements in Switzerland

Switzerland has no dedicated Impressum law like Germany and Austria. Its Impressumspflicht comes from the Unfair Competition Act, UWG, Art. 3(1)(s): anyone who offers goods or services online must state clearly and completely who they are and how to reach them, including an email address. In practice that means the business name, postal address and email address.

On top of that, the Swiss revised Federal Act on Data Protection (nDSG) requires a separate privacy statement (Datenschutzerklärung) whenever the site collects personal data, for example through a contact form.

Side by side: what each country requires

What else a site needs besides the Impressum

A privacy policy (Datenschutzerklärung). As soon as a site has a contact form, analytics or anything else that processes personal data, visitors must be told which data you collect, why and for how long you keep it. The GDPR (DSGVO in German) requires this, and the WKO advises putting it on its own page rather than inside the Impressum (WKO, “Das korrekte Website-Impressum”, as of August 2025).

Cookies and consent. In Germany, under §25 TDDDG, cookies and similar technologies need the visitor's consent unless they are strictly necessary to provide what the visitor asked for. In Austria §165 TKG 2021 sets the same rule. In other words, a site without advertising or tracking cookies does not need a consent banner.

Fonts from your own server. In 2022 a Munich court ruled that a site loading Google Fonts from Google's servers without the visitor's consent violated the visitor's privacy, because the IP address was sent to Google (LG München I, 3 O 17493/20). The fix is simple: serve the fonts from the same server as the site. In Next.js, next/font does this automatically, so the browser sends no requests to Google.

Analytics without cookies. Vercel Web Analytics does not use third-party cookies: it recognizes a visit by a temporary hash of the request, which is discarded after 24 hours. We use this kind of analytics on every site we build, so it needs no banner.

The Impressum on a multilingual site

If your site has a German version and an English one, keep the Impressum and the Datenschutzerklärung in German, once, at one address, and link to them from the footer of every language. The legal text then cannot drift apart between versions, and you update it in one place. hreflang tags tell Google which language version to show to whom.

The same goes for your Google Business Profile: the name and address there must match the Impressum. We explain how to set up the profile and connect it to your site in our Google Business Profile guide.

Check your own site in five minutes

If you already have a site, open it on your phone and go through this list. It does not replace a legal review, but it shows the gaps quickly:

1. Is the “Impressum” link visible in the footer of every page, on mobile too?
2. Do the name, address and registration number match the register and your Google Business Profile?
3. Is there an email address as plain text, not only a contact form?
4. In Germany, does it say §5 DDG rather than the old §5 TMG? In Austria, are the chamber and the supervisory authority listed?
5. Does the site contact third-party servers on first load, for fonts or maps for example, before the visitor accepts anything? You can see this in the browser's developer tools, on the Network tab.

If you answered “no” or “not sure” to any of these, it is time for a check with your accountant, a lawyer or the chamber's generator.

This is not legal advice

Frequently asked questions

What does Impressum mean in English?

Roughly “legal notice” or “imprint”: the page that says who runs a website, where the business is registered and how to reach it.

Does a small business or sole trader need an Impressum?

Yes. In Germany the duty covers every website offered as a business, and in Austria every website run as a business, whatever the size of the company (§5 DDG, WKO, “Das korrekte Website-Impressum”, as of August 2025).

Can the Impressum be in English only?

We don't recommend it. The rules are German, Austrian and Swiss, so the text should be in German. The English version of your site simply links to the German Impressum.

Do Instagram and Facebook business profiles need an Impressum?

In Austria, yes: according to the WKO, the duty covers every kind of electronic content, social media included (WKO, “Das korrekte Website-Impressum”, as of August 2025). The simplest fix is to link the profile to the Impressum on your website.

Can I use an Impressum generator?

Yes, as a starting point. Check the result against the requirements for your country above, and ask a lawyer if your business or profession is regulated.

Do you write the Impressum for us?

No. We don't write legal texts or give legal advice. You create them with a generator or a lawyer, and we build them in as real pages, linked from the footer of every page. Get in touch if you need the site around them.