nonprofitlimited liability

What is “ONLUS”?

ONLUS (non-profit organization of social utility) is a nonprofit organization used primarily in Italy. It signals limited liability and private ownership.

Where it's used

ONLUS appears in company names registered in the following jurisdiction:

IT · Italy

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 CIC in United Kingdom, EV in Germany, FCP in France.

Equivalent forms around the world

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

CountryEquivalent suffix
United KingdomCIC
GermanyEV
FranceFCP
GermanyGAG
United KingdomLG
ItalySCSPA

Normalizing “ONLUS” in your data

When matching or deduplicating company records, the legal suffix is noise — Acme ONLUS” 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 ONLUS", "country": "it"}'
Response
{
  "data": {
    "canonical": "acme onlus",
    "legal_type": null,
    "tokens": [
      "acme",
      "onlus"
    ]
  },
  "meta": {
    "pipeline": [
      "lowercase",
      "legal_suffix"
    ],
    "confidence": 0.99
  }
}

Frequently asked questions

What does ONLUS mean?

ONLUS means "non-profit organization of social utility".

Is a ONLUS public or private?

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

What is the liability in a ONLUS?

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

Which countries use ONLUS?

ONLUS is used in Italy.

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

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