Spanishprivate limited liabilitylimited liability

What is “SL”?

SL stands for Sociedad de Responsabilidad Limitada (Spanish), a private limited liability company used primarily in Andorra, Spain. The suffix signals that the business has limited liability and is privately held.

Full meaning & translation

The full form is Sociedad de Responsabilidad Limitada, a Spanish-language term. It translates literally as “Society of Limited Liability.”

Where it's used

SL appears in company names registered in the following 2 jurisdictions:

AD · AndorraES · Spain

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 SL 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
SpainLTDA
FranceSASU
SpainSLNE
GermanyUG
United StatesТОО

Normalizing “SL” in your data

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

Frequently asked questions

What does SL stand for?

SL stands for Sociedad de Responsabilidad Limitada (Spanish), which translates as "Society of Limited Liability".

Is a SL public or private?

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

What is the liability in a SL?

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

Which countries use SL?

SL is used in Andorra, Spain.

Is a SL 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 SL at scale? The Ambect API handles it across 100+ countries in under 5 ms.

Try the live normalizer free →