New Zealand business statistics 2026: the full breakdown
How many businesses are there in New Zealand? Where are they, and what do they actually do? These are simple questions with surprisingly scattered answers. So we did the count ourselves.
List-It maintains a structured page for every entity on the New Zealand Business Number (NZBN) register, the official identifier system run by the Companies Office. That gives us a complete, current view of the registered business landscape. This report maps all 753,070 of those entities by region and by industry, and surfaces one finding that should worry anyone who cares about how Kiwi businesses get found: the overwhelming majority have no website on record.
You are free to cite these figures. A short note on method sits at the bottom.
The headline numbers
- 753,070 entities are on the NZBN register as of June 2026.
- Auckland alone accounts for 41% of them, more than the next four regions combined.
- Trades and services is the single largest industry, with over 155,000 businesses.
- Only 14.7% have a website recorded on the register. Roughly six in seven NZ businesses have no website on file.
That last number is the one worth sitting with. In 2026, the front door to most customers, and increasingly to AI assistants that recommend businesses, is a findable, readable web presence. Most of the country does not have one on record.
Registered businesses by region
Auckland's dominance is the story of the map. With 308,501 registered entities, it holds a larger share of New Zealand business than its share of population. Canterbury, Wellington and Waikato form a clear second tier, and the long tail of regional New Zealand fills in from there.
| Region | Registered businesses | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Auckland | 308,501 | 41.0% |
| Canterbury | 87,087 | 11.6% |
| Wellington | 65,102 | 8.6% |
| Waikato | 61,911 | 8.2% |
| Bay of Plenty | 42,488 | 5.6% |
| Otago | 30,697 | 4.1% |
| Manawatū-Whanganui | 20,253 | 2.7% |
| Hawke's Bay | 18,888 | 2.5% |
| Northland | 15,096 | 2.0% |
| Taranaki | 14,770 | 2.0% |
| Nelson | 9,316 | 1.2% |
| Southland | 9,284 | 1.2% |
| Marlborough | 5,400 | 0.7% |
| Gisborne | 3,589 | 0.5% |
| West Coast | 2,497 | 0.3% |
| Tasman | 1,873 | 0.2% |
Shares are of the 696,752 entities with a region recorded. A further 56,318 have no region on file.
You can browse any region's businesses on List-It, for example Auckland, Canterbury, Wellington or Waikato.
The biggest cities
Drilling into towns and cities, the central Auckland area carries the bulk of the country's business activity, followed by the main provincial centres.
| City | Registered businesses |
|---|---|
| Auckland (central) | 154,077 |
| Hamilton | 27,262 |
| Christchurch | 20,282 |
| Tauranga | 14,801 |
| Wellington (central) | 13,362 |
| Dunedin | 12,642 |
| Whangārei | 10,190 |
| Palmerston North | 9,821 |
| New Plymouth | 9,479 |
| Napier | 7,732 |
City figures use the primary town record for each centre and will understate metros that span several suburbs.
Registered businesses by industry
Classifying the register by what businesses actually do, trades and services lead by a wide margin, with professional services a clear second. Together those two categories make up well over half of all classified businesses.
| Industry | Businesses | Share of classified |
|---|---|---|
| Trades and services | 155,145 | 34.7% |
| Professional services | 87,326 | 19.5% |
| Retail | 39,595 | 8.8% |
| Food producers | 30,026 | 6.7% |
| Health and beauty | 27,701 | 6.2% |
| Web, SEO and marketing | 26,717 | 6.0% |
| Cafés and eating | 22,982 | 5.1% |
| Makers and studios | 15,849 | 3.5% |
| Automotive | 15,282 | 3.4% |
| Activities and tourism | 11,000 | 2.5% |
| Accommodation | 9,117 | 2.0% |
| Education and training | 5,522 | 1.2% |
| Vets and pet care | 1,204 | 0.3% |
Shares are of the 447,466 entities classified to a trading industry. A further 305,604 entities are holding companies, trusts, investment vehicles and other non-trading structures that the register lists but that do not sell to the public.
You can explore any industry nationally, for example trades and services, cafés and eating, health and beauty or accommodation.
The website gap
Here is the finding with the most practical weight. Of the 753,070 registered entities, just 110,403 have a website recorded on the register. That is 14.7%.
Some businesses have a website that simply is not filed against their NZBN record, so the true rate of having any web presence is higher. But the gap is still enormous, and it matters more every year. When a customer asks Google or ChatGPT "who is a good electrician in Tauranga?", the businesses that get named are the ones with a clear, structured, machine-readable presence. A business with nothing on record is invisible to that question.
This is the gap List-It exists to close: every registered business already has a structured, AI-readable page, ready to be claimed and filled in for free.
Why this matters for AI search
Search is splitting into two motions. The old one is a ranked list of links on Google. The new one is a direct recommendation from an AI assistant that has already chosen two or three names before the customer lifts a finger. Both reward the same thing: businesses whose facts are public, consistent and easy for a machine to read.
On the evidence above, most New Zealand businesses are not set up for either. That is a problem for them, and a national opportunity. A more findable business base is good for customers, good for regional economies, and good for the businesses themselves.
Method and citation
Figures are drawn from List-It's structured index of the New Zealand Business Number (NZBN) register, counted in June 2026. "Registered businesses" means entities on the NZBN register, which includes companies, sole traders, partnerships and other registered structures. Regional and industry classifications are List-It's, derived from each entity's registered details. Counts exclude internal seed and test records.
To cite this report, please link to New Zealand business statistics 2026 by List-It at https://list-it.nz/blog/new-zealand-business-statistics-2026. If you are a journalist or researcher and want a specific cut of the data (a particular region, town or industry), get in touch through List-It and we will help.
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