SIREN and SIRET numbers, explained
The two French company identifiers that grant forms ask for — and which one you actually need.
SIREN is France's 9-digit identifier for a legal entity — the company as a whole, assigned by INSEE (the national statistics institute) when it registers. SIRET is a 14-digit identifier for one specific establishment of that company — a particular address or site — built by appending a 5-digit NIC (internal classification number) to the company's SIREN. INSEE's own definition states it directly: the SIRET number identifies establishments, and a SIRET is the SIREN plus the NIC.
In practice: a company with one office has one SIREN and one SIRET, and the two numbers share their first nine digits. A company with several sites has one SIREN and a separate SIRET for each site. Most French grant forms and company-lookup tools ask for the SIRET of the site actually carrying out the funded activity, not just the group-level SIREN — supplying the wrong one is a common reason a French application gets bounced back for correction.
Sources
Last reviewed 2026-09-25. Rules and figures change — follow the links above to confirm anything you plan to rely on.