Insolvency administrator directories compared: what the free lists leave out

Taking the freely available lists as represented by dataroomX's administrator directory (dataroomx.de/insolvenzverwalter-finden/), checked live on 10 September 2026. The page advertises "über 400" suitable administrators and offers a search by city dropdown covering roughly forty German cities from Aachen to Zwickau.

Pick a city and you get a list of firm names — MÖNNING FESER PARTNER, Flöther & Wissing, PLUTA, GÖRG and so on. That is useful orientation and it costs nothing. This is explicitly not a criticism: there the directory is a free adjunct to a data-room product and it does exactly what it says.

What such an entry does not tell a buyer: which proceedings that firm actually runs, at which court, how current that is, and how to reach the administrator appointed to one specific case.

An administrator profile without cases is a phone-book entry. For an acquisition decision the opposite is what counts: administrator A mostly runs trades and construction files at AG Hagen, administrator B mostly commercial files at AG Charlottenburg. Someone hunting an e-commerce brand writes to B, not A — and writes a different first email knowing what kind of file crosses that desk daily.

That mapping is not an extra on our side; it falls out of the source. Our administrator profiles are built from the § 9 InsO notices themselves. Every notice names the court, the file number and the appointed administrator. Read the notices daily and the case history is a by-product; maintain a list of firms and you never have it.

The practical consequence: a profile links back to the proceedings it was built from, so every attribution can be checked against the official case instead of taken on trust.

Firm name and city — both. Free directories cover this, and for orientation it is enough.

Case history (which proceedings, which court, how current) — absent from the free lists; the basis of the profile here.

Contact details for a specific case — the free directory pages show none; part of the free plan here (magic-link sign-in, no card).

Analysis across many administrators — not something the free lists set out to do; part of the paid tiers here (export and analytics, see /preise).

Currency — a maintained firm list is as current as its last maintenance; a profile derived from notices is as current as the last notice.

If all you need is which firms in your city practise insolvency administration at all — a debtor looking for someone to call, say — a free list is entirely sufficient and there is no reason to pay for it.

The difference only starts to matter when you move from searching for an administrator to searching for a proceeding: not "who administers in Cologne", but "who is currently administering a case that fits my acquisition thesis, and how do I reach them before the bidding process". That is a different question and it needs a different data basis.

The two are not mutually exclusive. The free directories are independent offerings from other providers; use both if you like.