Trade sector · August 2026
Dense market, but still growing — use the timing window. Density, 16-month trend and market movement for every federal state and 23 Vienna districts — recomputed monthly.
Active locations in Vienna
Shortest path to a decision: the three districts with the lowest number of IT-Dienstleistungen businesses per 10,000 inhabitants — on paper the largest market gaps in Vienna (for population ≥ 20,000).
Note: low density is a signal, not a guarantee. Combine it with the market movement above and the OSM visibility below before you commit.
The stock is growing noticeably since May 2025 (+9.4 % post method change). For founders the direction is a signal, but not the whole picture — low per-capita density can still spell opportunity if the remaining businesses are overloaded.
Method change May 2025. Before May 2025 the figures come from the annual report (reference-date based), from May 2025 on from the monthly OgdAufrechteGewerbeberechtigung snapshots. The two sources count slightly differently — hence the visible break between April and May 2025. For the churn indicator we use only the clean May-2025-plus window, so the calculation is not distorted by the method jump.
Seasonal fluctuations. Smaller month-to-month movements are normal — trade licences are issued in bursts (month turns, quarter ends) and deregistered (often at year ends). A single month at +5 or −3 is not a trend break.
What a line does not show. The stock is a stock, not a flow. 500 active trade licences at a steady monthly stock can mean: (a) 500 dormant businesses with no movement, or (b) 480 stable plus 20 deregistering this month and 20 newly registering. The churn indicator measures exactly that difference — the curve does not show it.
Why we don't go back further. The GISA dataset only exists in structured form from 2018, before that only as non-anonymised internal data. Annual reports from 2019 could theoretically be integrated — that is a planned expansion. Currently: monthly snapshots since March 2025.
Context
IT services are a free trade — no certificate of competence, no master craftsman certificate, no mandatory examination. Anyone with a laptop and a business idea can register tomorrow. That is precisely why the market has grown so strongly: Wien alone counts over 16,000 active IT trade licences, and across Austria there are more than 43,000. This is the third most common trade in the country.
The low barrier to entry cuts both ways: anyone with a clear specialisation (cloud migration, embedded firmware, data engineering) finds it easy to get started — anyone starting out as a generalist competes with tens of thousands. In the GISA data we also see an above-average share of legal entities (GmbHs) — IT services are more often run as a company than the classic skilled trades.
The industry is largely insensitive to seasonality — someone always needs software. The classic peak periods for new registrations are the start of the year (tax optimisation) and September (after the holiday period). For B2B IT service providers it often pays to start in Q4, so the business year begins with a full order book.
As a New Self-Employed person, SVA/SVS contributions are due immediately (mandatory GSVG insurance). In 2026, the contribution assessment starts at around 220 € per month and rises progressively with income. Anyone starting on the side should check the small-business exemption — the combination of ASVG + GSVG can get expensive.
Anyone who works for a single client only, follows instructions and sits on that client's premises is deemed bogus self-employed — with retroactive ASVG back-billing and payroll-tax liability. A trade licence does not protect you from this. The number of clients is the decisive test criterion (tax advisers recommend at least two parallel clients).
Without a written clause on rights of use, the code you write yourself remains legally with the developer. This surprises clients and blows up negotiations later on. Sample terms and conditions for developers are available from the WKO-Fachgruppe UBIT.
Free trade under § 5 GewO. Gewerbeschlüssel 500105. SVS contribution rates: see svs.at.
Insider analysis · Vienna
The typical active business in Vienna is 8 years old (median). 28 % are younger than 3 years, 23 % older than 20 years. Dominant legal form: 65.5 % sole proprietors.
Distribution of age in years across all 16,613 active locations. Median 8 years · P10–P90 0–26 years.
Bars = number of businesses per age-year bucket. Highlighted bar = median age. Small buckets under 5 businesses are suppressed as "·" (GDPR minimum cell size against re-identification).
When were the currently active businesses founded?
Solo (natural person) vs. registered company (GmbH, OG, KG, AG).
The higher the Gini index, the more the sector concentrates in a few postal-code areas. 0 = evenly distributed, 1 = everything in a single postal-code area. Vienna has 23 districts, which split into several postal-code areas.
Complementary signal
Our data shows how many businesses exist. Google Trends adds how often people search for “IT-Dienstleister” — the demand side. Together you see whether a market is constrained by supply or by demand.
Google Trends is a free third-party tool. We store nothing and pass no data on — the link opens directly on trends.google.com in a new tab.
Each dot is a trade sector. Left = lower density per 10,000 residents, top = more movement (registrations and deregistrations over the last 15 months).
Density per 10,000 inhabitants plus market dynamics over the last 15 months. Sorted by density, descending.
| Federal state | Locations | per 10k | Density | Market dynamics | net 11 mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wien(here) | 16,613 | 81.4 | Very tight | Growing, volatile | +9.4 % |
| Niederösterreich → | 8,051 | 46.5 | Very tight | Growing, volatile | +7.8 % |
| Steiermark → | 5,285 | 41.5 | Getting tight | Growing, volatile | +8.1 % |
| Oberösterreich → | 5,981 | 38.9 | Getting tight | Growing, volatile | +9.7 % |
| Burgenland → | 1,095 | 36.3 | Some room | Growing, volatile | +8.2 % |
| Tirol → | 2,781 | 35.7 | Some room | Growing, volatile | +10.3 % |
| Salzburg → | 1,784 | 31.1 | Room to grow | Growing, volatile | +13.3 % |
| Kärnten → | 1,768 | 31.0 | Room to grow | Growing, volatile | +10.8 % |
| Vorarlberg → | 1,273 | 30.9 | Room to grow | Growing, volatile | +8.8 % |
Sorted by IT-Dienstleistungen density per 10,000 inhabitants, descending. “Licensed” = GISA trade licences, “OSM” = shop addresses visible in OpenStreetMap, “since May 25” = district net delta post method break (clean signal, without the May-2025 jump).
| Postcode | District | Lic. | OSM | Inh. | per 10k | Density | since May 25 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1010 | Innere Stadt | 1032 | 0 | 15,879 | 649.9 | Very tight | rising +16.5 % |
| 1070 | Neubau | 687 | 0 | 31,394 | 218.8 | Very tight | rising +9.4 % |
| 1060 | Mariahilf | 560 | 0 | 31,070 | 180.2 | Very tight | rising +5.1 % |
| 1040 | Wieden | 518 | 0 | 33,450 | 154.9 | Very tight | rising +10.7 % |
| 1080 | Josefstadt | 324 | 0 | 24,232 | 133.7 | Very tight | rising +8.4 % |
| 1030 | Landstraße | 1298 | 0 | 99,954 | 129.9 | Getting tight | rising +10.1 % |
| 1090 | Alsergrund | 535 | 0 | 41,782 | 128.1 | Getting tight | rising +4.7 % |
| 1020 | Leopoldstadt | 1174 | 0 | 114,122 | 102.9 | Getting tight | rising +9.3 % |
| 1190 | Döbling | 750 | 0 | 76,203 | 98.4 | Getting tight | rising +15.2 % |
| 1050 | Margareten | 494 | 0 | 54,060 | 91.4 | Getting tight | rising +9.3 % |
| 1180 | Währing | 456 | 0 | 51,177 | 89.1 | Getting tight | rising +4.8 % |
| 1130 | Hietzing | 502 | 0 | 56,496 | 88.9 | Some room | rising +10.3 % |
| 1140 | Penzing | 787 | 0 | 99,469 | 79.1 | Some room | rising +13.1 % |
| 1230 | Liesing | 867 | 0 | 124,846 | 69.5 | Some room | rising +5.0 % |
| 1150 | Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus | 522 | 0 | 75,384 | 69.3 | Some room | rising +7.0 % |
| 1170 | Hernals | 387 | 0 | 56,652 | 68.3 | Some room | rising +7.5 % |
| 1120 | Meidling | 694 | 0 | 102,344 | 67.8 | Some room | rising +6.3 % |
| 1220 | Donaustadt | 1486 | 0 | 235,361 | 63.1 | Room to grow | rising +11.3 % |
| 1200 | Brigittenau | 518 | 0 | 86,686 | 59.8 | Room to grow | rising +11.6 % |
| 1160 | Ottakring | 550 | 0 | 101,599 | 54.1 | Room to grow | rising +5.6 % |
| 1100 | Favoriten | 1154 | 0 | 225,013 | 51.3 | Room to grow | rising +9.9 % |
| 1210 | Floridsdorf | 893 | 0 | 191,527 | 46.6 | Room to grow | rising +9.7 % |
| 1110 | Simmering | 425 | 0 | 112,214 | 37.9 | Room to grow | rising +2.9 % |
Lic. vs. OSM: GISA also counts mobile or home-based businesses without a shop; OSM shows only those with a visible address. Vienna total: 16,613 licensed vs. ~0 in OSM (0 with postcode, 0 without).
Quick answers to the typical questions about IT-Dienstleistungen in Austria.
Free · no account
Everything on this page — density, trend, market movement, demographics, districts — is calculated from open data and stays freely accessible. No account, no paywall, no tracking. The figures are recomputed every month from the GISA snapshot; the method is written down, and so are its limits.