How to form a company in Portugal — costs, timeline, tax implications, and the fastest legal path to a registered business.
Forming a company in Portugal is cheap and fast by European standards. The state fee is 220 to 360 euros, the minimum share capital for a private limited company is one euro, and if you already hold a Portuguese tax number you can walk out of a registry office with a registered company in under an hour.
The catch is everything around the incorporation itself. Non-resident founders need a Portuguese NIF before anything else. Every company needs a certified accountant from day one. And the tax treatment of your company depends on choices you make at formation, some of which are hard to reverse.
This guide covers the legal forms, the three registration routes, what you need before you start, realistic costs and timelines, and the 2026 tax picture.
Most foreign founders use one of three forms:
If you are a solo founder, the Unipessoal Lda is almost always the answer. It converts to a regular Lda later if you bring in partners.
The "company in an hour" service runs at registry desks in major cities. You pick a pre-approved company name from a list or bring a name approval certificate, choose a standard set of articles of association, and the registrar incorporates the company on the spot. Cost: 360 euros. You leave with the company card, the corporate NIF, and the social security registration already triggered.
The constraint is that all shareholders must be present in person with valid ID and Portuguese NIFs. For non-residents that usually means a trip to Portugal or a power of attorney.
The online route through the government portal costs 220 euros if you use a pre-approved template for the articles, or 360 euros if you submit custom articles. Registration typically completes within one to two business days.
The friction point for foreigners: the portal requires authentication with a Portuguese citizen card, digital mobile key (Chave Móvel Digital), or a professional certificate held by a lawyer, notary, or solicitador. Most non-resident founders therefore complete this route through a local professional acting on their behalf.
A notarial deed with custom articles of association. Slower and more expensive, but necessary for complex structures: contributions in kind, unusual share classes, detailed shareholder agreements baked into the articles. Expect several weeks and notary plus registration fees well above the simplified routes. [VERIFY: current typical notary route total fees]
For a standard company, use Empresa Online or Empresa na Hora. The notary route is for cases that genuinely need bespoke drafting.
A Portuguese NIF for every shareholder and director. This is the real bottleneck for non-residents. EU/EEA residents can obtain a NIF directly. Residents outside the EU/EEA generally need a fiscal representative in Portugal. Opting into electronic notifications can waive that requirement, but only while you have no Portuguese tax obligations, and holding shares in a Portuguese company creates them, so founders should assume a fiscal representative is needed. Through a professional, a NIF usually takes a few days to two weeks.
Share capital. Minimum one euro per quota for an Lda or Unipessoal Lda. In practice, a token capital of one euro looks odd to banks, suppliers, and immigration authorities. Most founders set capital between 1,000 and 5,000 euros. The capital does not have to be deposited before incorporation; the law allows shareholders to deliver it by the end of the first financial year.
A registered office. Every company needs a Portuguese address. This can be your home, a rented office, or a virtual office/domiciliation service. The address determines which municipality's surtax applies to your profits, which matters more than most founders realize (see tax below).
A certified accountant (contabilista certificado). Every Portuguese company with organized accounts, which means every Lda, must have a certified accountant registered with the professional order (OCC). The accountant files the declaration of start of activity with the tax authority, which must happen within 15 days of incorporation. You cannot run the company's tax compliance yourself. Budget for this as a permanent monthly cost, typically 100 to 300 euros per month depending on volume. [VERIFY: current typical monthly accounting fee range]
For a founder who already has a Portuguese NIF and is in Portugal: one day via Empresa na Hora, one to two business days via Empresa Online.
For a non-resident founder starting from zero, the honest sequence is:
End to end, plan for two to six weeks. Anyone promising a non-resident a running company with a bank account in a week is skipping steps.
Government and setup costs for a standard Lda or Unipessoal Lda:
A realistic all-in first-year budget for a non-resident founder, including professional fees, sits in the low thousands of euros, not the hundreds. The state fees are small; the recurring compliance is the real cost.
Portugal is in the middle of a scheduled corporate tax reduction. For 2026:
So a mainland SME with 50,000 euros of profit pays 7,500 euros of IRC plus any municipal surtax. Dividends you pull out are then taxed personally, typically at 28% withholding for residents, subject to treaty rates for non-residents.
There is no separate VAT number in Portugal; the corporate NIF doubles as the VAT number once activity starts. What you choose at the start-of-activity declaration is the regime.
The small-business exemption under Article 53 of the VAT Code applies if turnover stays at or below 15,000 euros per year. Exceed the threshold by more than 25% (18,750 euros) and you must start charging VAT immediately. In practice, most companies register for the normal VAT regime from day one: the exemption blocks input VAT recovery, and any company doing intra-EU trade or expecting real revenue outgrows it fast. The standard VAT rate on the mainland is 23%, with quarterly returns for smaller companies.
Article 6 of the Corporate Income Tax Code (CIRC) imposes a fiscal transparency regime on "sociedades de profissionais". It is mandatory, not optional. A company falls into it if it is formed to carry out a professional activity on the Article 151 IRS list (consultants, doctors, lawyers, engineers, designers, and similar) and all individual shareholders practice that activity, or if more than 75% of income comes from listed professional activities and the company has five or fewer shareholders with at least 75% of capital held by the practicing professionals.
A single-member consulting company owned by the consultant is the textbook case. The consequence: the company's taxable profit is not taxed at the 15%/19% IRC rates. It is imputed directly to you as personal income and taxed at progressive IRS rates, whether or not you distribute it. The low corporate rate you incorporated for never applies.
This does not make the company useless, but it changes the math completely. If your plan is "bill through a company, pay 15%, leave profits inside", check Article 6 first. Structuring around it, for example through genuinely mixed activities or additional shareholders, needs proper advice, not a template.
OnCorporate is a Lisbon tax and accounting firm that incorporates Portuguese companies for foreign founders and then runs the accounting, tax filings, and compliance end to end: NIF, incorporation, certified accountant, VAT, payroll, and annual accounts under one roof. If you want the company set up right the first time, talk to us at oncorporate.com/contact.
