Danishprivate limited liabilitylimited liability

What is “ApS”?

ApS stands for Anpartsselskab (Danish), a private limited liability company used primarily in Denmark. The suffix signals that the business has limited liability and is privately held.

Full meaning & translation

The full form is Anpartsselskab, a Danish-language term. It translates literally as “company with limited liability shares.” You may also encounter it abbreviated or written as anpartsselskab.

Where it's used

ApS appears in company names registered in the following jurisdiction:

DK · Denmark

What it tells you about the company

LiabilityOwners' liability is limited to their capital contribution. Personal assets are protected.
OwnershipPrivately held. Shares are not listed or traded on a public exchange.
ComparableBroadly equivalent to LLC in United States, Ltd in United Kingdom, Co in United States.

Equivalent forms around the world

These are the closest structural equivalents to ApS in other jurisdictions — same entity category, different national law.

CountryEquivalent suffix
United StatesLLC
United KingdomLtd
United StatesCo
GermanyGmbH
FranceSrl
FranceSAS
FranceEURL
United StatesGK
United StatesLC
United StatesLLLC
FranceSASU
DenmarkSMBA
GermanyUG
United StatesТОО

Normalizing “ApS” in your data

When matching or deduplicating company records, the legal suffix is noise — Acme ApS” and “Acme” should resolve to the same entity. One API call strips it and returns a stable canonical form:

Request
curl -X POST https://api.ambect.com/v1/normalize/company \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $AMBECT_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name": "Acme ApS", "country": "dk"}'
Response
{
  "data": {
    "canonical": "acme aps",
    "legal_type": null,
    "tokens": [
      "acme",
      "aps"
    ]
  },
  "meta": {
    "pipeline": [
      "lowercase",
      "legal_suffix"
    ],
    "confidence": 0.99
  }
}

Frequently asked questions

What does ApS stand for?

ApS stands for Anpartsselskab (Danish), which translates as "company with limited liability shares".

Is a ApS public or private?

A ApS is a private entity — its shares are not publicly listed or traded on a stock exchange.

What is the liability in a ApS?

Owners of a ApS have limited liability. Their personal assets are protected, and their exposure is capped at the amount they invested.

Which countries use ApS?

ApS is used in Denmark.

Is a ApS the same as a LLC?

Functionally comparable — both are private limited liability company forms — but they operate under different national laws with distinct formation, capital, and governance requirements.

Need to normalize ApS at scale? The Ambect API handles it across 100+ countries in under 5 ms.

Try the live normalizer free →