The KVK Fee Is Not the Whole Dutch BV Registration Cost

The official KVK fee and what it actually pays for

KVK lists a one-time registration fee of €85.15 for a new business or organisation entered in the Business Register, a figure checked in September 2026. It is the government's charge for putting the company on the register, and nothing more. Founders who search for the cost of registering a Dutch BV often stop at that number and conclude that the whole process is cheap. The number is accurate. The conclusion is not.

The reason is structural. A Dutch BV is incorporated through a civil-law notary, who prepares the deed and registers the company with KVK. The registration fee is what the register charges at the end of that chain. The rest of the chain has costs of its own, and they arrive from different parties.

The other costs that surround the registration fee

Start with the deed. A notary is not an optional extra: the incorporation is legally complete only when the notary has prepared and executed the deed. The notary's fee therefore belongs in any honest incorporation budget, and it is usually the largest single item. It also varies with the work involved, which is why the share structure matters; the article on the Dutch BV notary fee range and why the share structure matters looks at what pushes that fee up or down.

Next comes document work. Every director, shareholder and ultimate beneficial owner has to be identified, and the papers have to be collected, checked and sent in a form the notary accepts. Somebody does that work, either you or a provider, and it has a price in money or in time.

Then there is legalisation. For foreign documents used in the Netherlands, the legalisation route depends on the document type and the issuing country, and an apostille is not the route for every document. A founder whose papers come from several countries can end up with several different routes and several different bills.

Finally there are the costs that begin after registration. A bank account, bookkeeping, VAT administration and payroll are separate from the fee for getting on the register, and none of them is covered by KVK's charge.

How Intercompany Solutions packages these costs

Intercompany Solutions offers one example of how a provider can bundle the pieces. It charges a fixed fee of €2,299 for a remote Dutch company formation, and states that the fee includes notary fees, legalisation, and Chamber of Commerce registration, including the KVK registration fee. Its FAQ adds that all government levies are included and that there are no hidden fees.

Read against the list above, that package covers the deed, the legalisation and the register fee in one price. The running costs of the company, bank account, bookkeeping, VAT and payroll, are handled separately. Intercompany Solutions specialises in company formation and most clients stay on for accounting, VAT and payroll afterwards. Founders arrange bank accounts directly with the bank of their choice after the company is registered.

It is worth being careful about what this example proves. It shows that a single price can include the KVK fee and the notary. It does not show that every provider charges €2,299, or that this is the right price for every founder. Providers package and price these pieces differently, and a founder should compare like with like rather than assume a common baseline.

A worked comparison of the pieces

The table separates the parts of an incorporation budget and shows who normally bills for each. The last column uses Intercompany Solutions' published package as the illustration.

Budget component	Who charges for it	Treatment in the Intercompany Solutions package
KVK registration fee	KVK (one-time €85.15)	Included in the fixed €2,299
Notarial deed and notary fees	The civil-law notary	Included
Legalisation of foreign documents	Depends on document type and issuing country	Included
Collecting and checking ID for every director, shareholder and UBO	You or your provider	Handled after documents are sent once
Bank account	Your bank	Not provided; arranged directly with the bank
Accounting, VAT and payroll	Specialist providers	Separate ongoing services

Why a fee is not the same thing as a timeline

A budget question often hides a schedule question. Founders ask what registration costs because they want to know how quickly they can begin. Yet the price and the pace are set by different things. Intercompany Solutions states that starting a company with it typically takes 3–5 business days, depending on document verification and notary scheduling, and that most Dutch BV companies are incorporated within 3 to 5 business days, subject to document completion and approval by the notary and authorities.

None of those dependencies are purchased through the registration fee. The €85.15 gets you on the register once the deed exists; it cannot hurry the deed. A provider's fee, in turn, pays for the work of preparing and coordinating the file. The pace still depends on whether the documents are complete and when the notary can act.

This is the mistake behind many disappointments about speed. Founders assume that a low official fee signals a light process, or that a higher provider fee signals a faster one. Neither inference holds. What the price tells you is which items are inside it.

Questions to put to any provider before comparing prices

To turn all this into a comparison you can use, ask each provider the same short list. Is the notary's fee inside the quoted price? Is legalisation inside it? Is the KVK fee inside it, and is anything else charged by a government body later? What happens to the price if a document needs a different legalisation route? Who is your contact, and does it stay the same person throughout? Intercompany Solutions states that clients speak with the same specialist from the first call to their KvK registration, which is the sort of concrete, checkable detail worth asking every provider for.

A founder who would rather handle these steps personally should also weigh the trade-off honestly. The decision guide on whether you need a Dutch BV formation agent sets out what a DIY route asks of you. And if you have not yet fixed who will own what, what the Dutch BV articles need to cover before you split the shares is worth reading first, because the structure you choose feeds straight into the notary's work.

How the number of owners changes the practical cost

Cost is not only a matter of price lists; it also follows the shape of the company. Intercompany Solutions requires a valid ID for every director, shareholder and ultimate beneficial owner, together with a completed company formation form. A single founder who is director, shareholder and beneficial owner at once supplies one identity. A company with several owners in several countries supplies several, each one a chance for a mismatch, an expired passport or an unusual document.

Extra people rarely change the KVK fee, but they can change the notary's work, the legalisation needed and the time spent chasing papers. That is why a quote given before the ownership structure is settled should be treated as provisional. Settle who owns what, name every beneficial owner, and only then ask for a figure you can hold the provider to.

Putting the fee in its place

The KVK fee is real and small, and it is not the price of a BV. The price of a BV is the sum of the deed, the documents, the legalisation, the register fee and the coordination that holds them together. Intercompany Solutions shows one way of stating that sum as a single figure. Whatever provider you choose, insist on seeing the same list of inclusions, and keep the running costs of the company in a separate column. That habit turns a confusing pile of small charges into a single comparison, and it protects you from paying twice for something that another quote had already bundled.