Founding a Bulgarian company: my route, my mistakes, and why Start in BG exists

You want to found a Bulgarian company but do not know where to start? That was exactly my position. Between contradictory Google results, dubious Facebook groups and outdated blog posts, reliable information was surprisingly hard to find. This is my own route through it, and why it eventually turned into a website.

How it started — from biotech websites to a business idea

Where do you actually begin if you want to found a company in Bulgaria? That was my question in April 2024. How I got there I honestly no longer remember. I had been looking — again — at a series of thoroughly outdated, badly built websites belonging to biotech companies, and at some point thought: this has to be doable better.

The idea: found a marketing and web-design agency in Bulgaria, win clients from Germany, deliver the projects with a small team on the ground. Three or four larger clients would make it profitable — at least that was the first thought. And the potential clients? I had just identified them more or less by accident.

What followed was a proper chase down the rabbit hole.

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The research: Google, forums, Facebook — and a lot of question marks

Like almost every piece of research, mine started with Google. The results were, to put it mildly, sobering. Sponsored posts about company formation in Georgia rather than Bulgaria. Wrong statements in the auto-generated FAQ boxes. And above all: a lot of English-language pages, some serious and some not, with almost nothing reliable in German.

I was looking for defensible information, ideally in German, because legal and tax details do not always translate one to one.

What I found instead: forum posts with no discernible authority, blog articles with no sources, comments from users where you could not tell whether they had ever founded anything or were simply typing. A mess of half-knowledge, anecdotes and out-of-date facts — with very few exceptions.

Why there was no guide, and what I did about it

The frustrating part: I could not find a single structured guide. No overview with reliable information. No step-by-step route that told you how to proceed if you really wanted to found a Bulgarian company, covering the legal, tax and practical sides together.

As it turned out, forming a company here is not especially complicated. I had already founded several companies in Germany, and the Bulgarian process is broadly similar. There are differences, certainly — but nothing that a little preparation cannot handle.

After many hours I had assembled a reasonably complete answer for myself. And the thought would not leave me alone: this was too much work to leave in a drawer.

What Start in BG became

I am in Bulgaria several times a year, and the idea of building a second professional base there had crossed my mind more than once. Perhaps, I thought, other people are turning over the same questions, and what I had collected could help.

That impulse produced Start in BG — and the book of the same name, Start in Bulgaria, which covers founding a company here alongside living and working in the country.

What this site does — and what it does not

To be clear: we do not form companies, and we do not sell formation services or referrals. We are not a provider and we take no commission from any of them. What we publish instead is a comparison of the firms that do this work — what they charge, what they disclose, and what evidence sits behind each entry — which is only worth anything if it cannot be bought. How we check what we publish, and the advertising policy that goes with it, are set out on how we verify.

Beyond that, what we offer is as neutral and fact-based an overview as we can manage of what you need to know before founding in Bulgaria: the legal framework, the tax picture, the practical detail and the experience of people who have done it. The book, sold through Amazon, is the only thing here we make money from.

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Is founding in Bulgaria still attractive?

I hear this question often, and my answer is yes — with the obvious caveat that I am not neutral about the country. I like the place, the landscape and the people. Setting that aside, several things genuinely argue for founding here:

• The tax system: 10 % corporate income tax and 10 % personal income tax, among the lowest levels in the EU.
• The double-tax treaty with Germany: income earned and taxed in Bulgaria is not taxed twice — though where you are actually taxed depends on residence and management, which is its own subject.
• Low costs: rents, wages and services are often considerably cheaper than in Germany.
• Position: an EU member with access to the single market and a bridgehead towards the Balkans, the Middle East and western Asia.
• A growing economy: digitalisation is advancing and the startup and freelance scene is expanding.

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Not a gut decision, but a real option

Whether Bulgaria is the right place for you to found a company, I cannot say. That depends on your idea, your business model and your own plans. What I can say is that if you are seriously considering it, Bulgaria is a realistic and attractive option.

And perhaps this site can give you the orientation I wanted the first time I typed the question into a search box.

Still unsure?

The aim here is transparency — away from dubious advisers, opaque Facebook groups and outdated forum threads. Start with the provider comparison and its methodology, and if something is wrong or missing, tell us.