Can a representative office in Lithuania sell anything?

No. A representative office may represent the foreign company, promote its products, gather market information and maintain relationships. It may not carry on commercial activity, which means it cannot sell or invoice in its own right. A branch of a foreign legal person can.

What is the difference between a branch and a representative office in Lithuania?

Neither has separate legal personality and the parent is liable for both. The difference is what they may do: a branch may carry on commercial activity, sell, invoice, employ and contract; a representative office may only represent, promote and gather information. Both cost €41.75 to register electronically in 2026.

Does appointing a commercial agent create a permanent establishment?

It can. An agent who habitually concludes contracts on the principal's behalf, or who habitually plays the principal role leading to contracts the principal signs without material modification, may create a permanent establishment. The contract should not grant authority to conclude, the practice must match the contract, and the principal should take its own tax advice before signing.

Why would a company register an office that cannot trade?

Usually to avoid creating a permanent establishment and the corporate tax that follows, or to test the market before committing, or because a local customer required a registered presence, or because the local people do service and support rather than sales. Some offices are simply left over from a finished project.

745 foreign companies have a permanent office in Lithuania that cannot legally sell

Q: How many foreign representative offices are there in Lithuania?

745 active representative offices of foreign legal persons, and 700 active branches, counted from the Register of Legal Entities open data file on 20 September 2026. The register held 234,415 entities in total on that date. The file is free, public and refreshed daily, so the number moves.

On 20 September 2026 the Lithuanian Register of Legal Entities held 234,415 entities. Among them were 745 active representative offices of foreign legal persons and 700 active branches. A representative office may represent its parent, promote it and gather information. It may not trade.

That is a strange and useful fact. Seven hundred and forty five foreign companies have already decided Lithuania is worth a permanent registered presence, went to the trouble of creating one, and chose the single legal form that cannot issue an invoice to a Lithuanian customer.

Where the number comes from

The Centre of Registers publishes the register of legal entities as open data. The file is free, refreshed daily, and about 40 MB. It carries every registered entity with its legal form, its status and its registration date. Counting the entities whose legal form is a representative office of a foreign legal person, and whose status is active, gives 745. The same count for branches gives 700.

Nothing here is an estimate or a survey. It is a count of rows in a public file, taken on a stated date, and anybody can repeat it. If you repeat it next month the number will have moved, which is the point of a daily file.

Counted from the Register of Legal Entities open data file on 20 September 2026. The script that does it is part of this project, and the file is linked at the foot of this page.

What a representative office actually is

Lithuanian law recognises two ways for a foreign company to have a registered presence without incorporating a Lithuanian subsidiary.

A branch (filialas) is a subdivision of the foreign company with its own registered address in Lithuania. It has no separate legal personality, so the parent is liable for everything it does, but it may carry on commercial activity. It can sell, invoice, employ and contract.

A representative office (atstovybė) is narrower on purpose. It may represent the foreign company's interests, promote its products, gather market information, maintain relationships and prepare the ground. It may not carry on commercial activity. It cannot sell in its own right, and the revenue never touches it.

Both are registered at the Centre of Registers, both appear in the open data file, and both cost a state fee of €41.75 to register electronically in 2026.

Why a company chooses the one that cannot sell

Usually for one of five reasons, and each one says something different about how to approach them.

Tax. A representative office that genuinely only represents does not create a permanent establishment, so the parent avoids Lithuanian corporate income tax on a presence that does not yet earn anything. This is the commonest reason and the most deliberate one.
Testing the market. The parent wanted a local presence and a local person before committing to a trading entity. In many cases the test never concluded.
A local requirement. Some public sector, utility or regulated customers want a registered local presence before they will engage at all, and a representative office is the cheapest way to satisfy that.
Support rather than sales. The parent sells from abroad and needs people here for service, installation, training or liaison.
Inheritance. The office was created for a project years ago, the project ended, and nobody deregistered it.

The first four are live businesses with a decision behind them. The fifth is administrative residue. Distinguishing them is straightforward: an office with a recent filing, a current address and a named representative is alive. One registered in 2011 with no activity since is probably not.

What this means if you are the foreign company

If your company is one of the 745, you already accepted the premise. You decided the market was worth a presence. What you have is a presence that cannot convert anything it finds.

There are three honest ways forward and they cost very different amounts.

The three routes from a representative office to revenue.
Route	What it takes	When it is right
Convert to a branch or incorporate a UAB	A registration fee of €41.75 or €14.02, accounting, corporate tax, and a permanent establishment you now have to run	When you already have customers and the only thing missing is the ability to invoice them
Appoint a distributor	Finding one, and then living with the fact that they own the customer relationship and set the end price	When the product needs stock held locally and credit extended to buyers
Appoint a commercial agent	A written agency contract. The agent sells in your name, you remain the contracting party, and commission is paid on what closes	When you want revenue and control before you want an entity, and the deal sizes justify a percentage rather than a margin

An agent is the route that matches what a representative office was already trying to be. The office represents, promotes and gathers information. An agent does the same and can also negotiate and close, in your name, without creating the entity you deliberately avoided.

One caution, and it is the objection that stops most of these conversations. An agent who habitually concludes contracts on your behalf, or who habitually plays the principal role leading to contracts that you sign without material modification, can create a permanent establishment for you in Lithuania. That is precisely the outcome a representative office exists to avoid. The answer is not to pretend the risk does not exist. It is to write the contract so that authority to conclude is not granted, to make sure the practice matches the contract, and to take your own tax advice on it before signing. Any agent who waves this away is not worth appointing.

The full comparison of hiring, appointing and incorporating · What each legal form actually costs in 2026

What it means if you sell into this market

Most lists of prospects are lists of companies that might want what you sell. This one is different. Every entity on it has already spent money to be here. They do not need persuading that the market exists, that a local presence is worth having, or that a foreign company can operate in Lithuania. Those arguments are already won.

The list is free, it is public, and it is refreshed daily. It is also, in our experience, almost never used, because it takes a 40 MB file and a few lines of code to turn into something you can work with, and most people looking for prospects buy a database instead.

The same register carries the 700 branches, which is a different and equally interesting list: foreign companies that can trade here and have a registered presence to prove they meant it.

Sources

Centre of Registers, open data on registered legal entities, the file the 745 and 700 counts were taken from, read 20 September 2026
Centre of Registers, registration fees, read in a browser on 20 and again on 22 September 2026: €41.75 for a branch or representative office, €14.02 for a UAB filed electronically
Register of Legal Entities, the searchable register itself
State Tax Inspectorate, on permanent establishment and the taxation of foreign entities
Directive 86/653/EEC on self-employed commercial agents, the framework behind the agency route

The file is 40 MB and the delimiter is a pipe character, not a semicolon, which is the detail that wastes an afternoon if nobody tells you.

Last reviewed 2026-09-22. Written by Arūnas Roličius, get2market, Vilnius. Figures are dated where they are quoted.