
Connects directly to the European Commission's VIES (VAT Information Exchange System) to validate EU VAT numbers in real time. This is purpose-built for one thing: checking if a VAT number is registered and active across EU member states. Reach for it when you're building invoicing systems, onboarding flows for B2B platforms, or compliance tools that need to verify tax IDs before processing transactions. It's part of the Pipeworx gateway ecosystem, so you can either use it standalone or access it through their unified gateway alongside 673+ other data sources. The ask_pipeworx wrapper lets you query in natural language instead of calling tools directly.
EU VIES VAT-number validation MCP (European Commission).
Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1476+ live data sources.
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
check_vat | Validate an EU VAT number against VIES. Returns whether the number is a valid/registered EU VAT registration, plus the registered name and address when the member state publishes them (many states return "---" or empty even for valid numbers). A false result means not registered/invalid. If the national service is temporarily down, userError is MS_UNAVAILABLE/MS_MAX_CONCURRENT_REQ etc. — treat that as "could not check", not "invalid". |
service_status | List all EU member states and whether each national VAT-checking service is currently Available or Unavailable, plus overall VIES (VoW) availability. Use this before/after a failed check_vat to tell a temporary national outage apart from a genuinely invalid VAT number. |
Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):
{
"mcpServers": {
"vies-eu": {
"url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/vies-eu/mcp"
}
}
}
tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/vies-eu/mcp returns the tools in the table
above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — ask_pipeworx,
discover_tools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the
gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a
single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the
pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and
is the authoritative answer for a given day.
This is deliberate, not multiplexing by accident. The meta-tools are what let a
scoped connection answer a question this pack does not cover — via
ask_pipeworx, which routes across the whole catalog — without you adding a
second MCP server. There is currently no way to mount a pack endpoint without
them; if the extra schemas cost you more context than the routing is worth,
connect to the full gateway once rather than to several pack endpoints.
Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway to get every pack's tools listed directly, instead of just this one's:
{
"mcpServers": {
"pipeworx": {
"url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
}
}
}
Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1476+ data sources. The
only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx
reaches all of them from either one.
Instead of calling tools directly, you can ask questions in plain English — this works on the pack endpoint above as well as on the full gateway:
ask_pipeworx({ question: "your question about Vies Eu data" })
The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.
MIT