Can I cold email a company in that country?
The answer changes at every border. Germany, Spain and Italy want consent first. France, Sweden and the US do not. Here are the rules for 34 countries, each linked to the law or the regulator.
Advertising by email without the addressee's prior express consent is an unacceptable nuisance under UWG section 7(2). For email the law does not distinguish consumers from businesses.
What you have to do
- Get express consent before the first email
- Existing customers only: you may email about your own similar products if you got the address from a sale, they have not objected, and every message offers an opt-out (section 7(3))
Check a lead list
Paste email addresses or a CSV export. Each address gets a verdict based on the recipient's country and the kind of address: a named person, a generic mailbox like info@, or a personal mailbox.
Your list never leaves this page. The check runs in your browser and no address is uploaded.
Using an export from a lead tool (Apify, Apollo, Hunter, Clay)?
- Open the CSV as it is. The country column is found under most common names:
country,countryCode,country_code,company_country,location.country. Two-letter codes and country names both work. - Use the column for where the person is, not where the company is headquartered. The rules follow the recipient, so a German employee of a US company is a German recipient.
- Optional: add a
sourcecolumn.publishedmeans the company put the address on its own site or in a register,vendormeans a tool found or guessed it. Tool names such as apollo or hunter count as vendor. In Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the Netherlands, Slovakia and Slovenia this changes the verdict. - The downloaded CSV keeps every row with its verdict, so you can filter it in a spreadsheet before the send.
Download an example export and open it here to see how it works.
Already working in Apify? The same check runs as an Actor on the output of any lead scraper: Cold Email Law Checker on Apify Store.
Campaign report
For teams that send to several countries at once and need something to show a client or a manager.
Upload the lead list for one campaign and get a report back:
- The list split into three files: send, send only with conditions, do not send
- For every country in the list: what the law allows, with the source
- What each email must contain in that country: sender identity, address, opt-out wording
- A one-page summary you can forward as it is
Not built yet. The button only tells me someone is interested. Nothing is charged and nothing is collected.
All 34 countries
The verdict is for the first marketing email to someone who is not your customer and has not asked to hear from you.
| Country | Named person | Generic address |
|---|---|---|
| Australia | Only in specific cases | Only in specific cases |
| Austria | ||
| Belgium | No consent needed | |
| Bulgaria | Only in specific cases | Only in specific cases |
| Canada | Only in specific cases | Only in specific cases |
| Croatia | Not verified | No consent needed |
| Cyprus | Not verified | Not verified |
| Czech Republic | ||
| Denmark | ||
| Estonia | Not verified | No consent needed |
| Finland | Not verified | No consent needed |
| France | No consent needed | No consent needed |
| Germany | ||
| Greece | ||
| Ireland | Only in specific cases | No consent needed |
| Italy | ||
| Japan | Only in specific cases | Only in specific cases |
| Latvia | Not verified | No consent needed |
| Liechtenstein | ||
| Luxembourg | Not verified | No consent needed |
| Malta | ||
| Netherlands | Only in specific cases | Only in specific cases |
| New Zealand | Only in specific cases | Only in specific cases |
| Norway | No consent needed | |
| Poland | ||
| Portugal | Not verified | No consent needed |
| Singapore | No consent needed | No consent needed |
| Slovakia | Only in specific cases | Only in specific cases |
| Slovenia | Only in specific cases | No consent needed |
| Spain | ||
| Sweden | No consent needed | No consent needed |
| Switzerland | ||
| United Kingdom | No consent needed | No consent needed |
| United States | No consent needed | No consent needed |
Method and limits
- Each country was checked between 10 and 14 October 2026 against the text of the law or the regulator's own guidance where it could be opened. All 34 countries are checked that way.
- "No consent needed" never means no rules. Every country still requires a real sender identity and a working way to opt out.
- The country is taken from your list. If there is no country column, it is guessed from the domain ending (.de, .fr) and labelled as a guess.
- Optional: a
sourcecolumn saying where each address came from (publishedif the company put it on its own website or in a register,vendorif a tool found or guessed it). In Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the Netherlands, Slovakia and Slovenia the verdict depends on this, and the checker uses it. - An address is treated as generic when the part before @ is a role word such as info, contact or sales, and as personal when the domain is a consumer mail provider such as gmail.com.
- Not covered: existing customers, newsletters people signed up for, phone, SMS, LinkedIn, and the sender's own national rules.