Trade sector · July 2026
Dense market, but still growing — use the timing window. Density, 13-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 Unternehmensberatung 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 (+4.5 % 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
Until 2002, management consulting was a regulated trade requiring a proof of competence. Since the amendment to the GewO it is unregulated — anyone can register without an examination. The market is correspondingly large: over 33,000 active trade licences across Austria, more than 10,500 in Vienna alone. Only IT services and the retail trade have more registrations.
The result is heavy fragmentation. Experience shows that one-person firms (sole proprietors or single-owner GmbHs) dominate the market — former managers, freelance experts, coaches, and classic strategy consultants all operate under the same Gewerbeschlüssel. You can read the exact legal-form breakdown from the demographic analysis below. For founders this means the wording 'management consulting' on its own no longer positions you — specialising in an industry, a discipline, or a methodology is where the real market strategy lies.
Experience shows that consulting projects tend to begin around annual or half-year planning: January to March and September to November are the peak acquisition phases. If you register in summer, use the quieter period for positioning and network-building — the autumn is then decisive for landing your first engagements.
Although not required by law, large clients (SMEs and up) routinely demand professional indemnity insurance with a coverage sum of at least 500,000 €. The annual premium is around 500-1,500 €. Anyone who advises without insurance and causes a loss is personally liable with their entire private assets.
Management consulting may not include tax or legal advice (WTBG, RAO). Even a sentence like 'I'd convert that sole proprietorship into a GmbH' is, strictly speaking, not permitted advice. The boundary to unauthorised legal advice is actively enforced by the chambers.
Austrian clients often expect several free preliminary analyses before awarding a contract. Anyone who starts without clearly specifying a paid scoping phase quickly works 20-40 unpaid hours. As a rule of thumb: the first conversation is free, everything after that is billed — with a token amount if need be.
Unregulated trade under § 5 GewO. Gewerbeschlüssel 7401. Trade association: WKO UBIT.
Insider analysis · Vienna
The typical active business in Vienna is 8 years old (median). 21 % are younger than 3 years, 16 % older than 20 years. Dominant legal form: 63.7 % sole proprietors.
Distribution of age in years across all 10,685 active locations. Median 8 years · P10–P90 1–22 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 “Unternehmensberatung” — 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 11 months).
Density per 10,000 inhabitants plus market dynamics over the last 11 months. Sorted by density, descending.
| Federal state | Locations | per 10k | Density | Market dynamics | net 11 mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wien(here) | 10,686 | 52.3 | Very high | Growing, volatile | +4.5 % |
| Salzburg → | 2,167 | 37.8 | Very high | Growing, volatile | +5.6 % |
| Niederösterreich → | 6,059 | 35.0 | High | Growing, volatile | +4.2 % |
| Tirol → | 2,500 | 32.1 | High | Growing, volatile | +5.0 % |
| Steiermark → | 3,956 | 31.1 | Medium | Active market | +1.5 % |
| Kärnten → | 1,672 | 29.3 | Medium | Growing, volatile | +3.6 % |
| Oberösterreich → | 4,465 | 29.0 | Low | Growing, volatile | +6.2 % |
| Burgenland → | 801 | 26.6 | Low | Growing, volatile | +2.4 % |
| Vorarlberg → | 1,055 | 25.6 | Low | Growing, volatile | +2.7 % |
Sorted by Unternehmensberatung 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 | 1277 | 0 | 16,281 | 784.4 | Very high | rising +1.5 % |
| 1070 | Neubau | 462 | 0 | 31,330 | 147.5 | Very high | rising +4.1 % |
| 1040 | Wieden | 451 | 0 | 33,444 | 134.8 | Very high | rising +5.1 % |
| 1080 | Josefstadt | 291 | 0 | 24,242 | 120.0 | Very high | rising +1.7 % |
| 1090 | Alsergrund | 497 | 0 | 41,664 | 119.3 | Very high | rising +1.2 % |
| 1060 | Mariahilf | 342 | 0 | 31,083 | 110.0 | High | rising +0.3 % |
| 1130 | Hietzing | 598 | 0 | 56,108 | 106.6 | High | rising +4.9 % |
| 1180 | Währing | 517 | 0 | 51,376 | 100.6 | High | rising +6.8 % |
| 1190 | Döbling | 738 | 0 | 76,074 | 97.0 | High | rising +4.1 % |
| 1030 | Landstraße | 863 | 0 | 98,881 | 87.3 | High | rising +4.4 % |
| 1020 | Leopoldstadt | 678 | 0 | 112,675 | 60.2 | High | rising +5.8 % |
| 1170 | Hernals | 294 | 0 | 56,767 | 51.8 | Medium | rising +5.8 % |
| 1140 | Penzing | 470 | 0 | 99,049 | 47.5 | Medium | rising +8.3 % |
| 1050 | Margareten | 240 | 0 | 54,581 | 44.0 | Medium | rising +3.9 % |
| 1230 | Liesing | 509 | 0 | 123,714 | 41.1 | Medium | rising +1.8 % |
| 1160 | Ottakring | 301 | 0 | 102,727 | 29.3 | Medium | rising +6.4 % |
| 1120 | Meidling | 286 | 0 | 102,393 | 27.9 | Medium | rising +7.5 % |
| 1150 | Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus | 209 | 0 | 75,902 | 27.5 | Low | rising +6.6 % |
| 1220 | Donaustadt | 585 | 0 | 228,158 | 25.6 | Low | rising +9.8 % |
| 1200 | Brigittenau | 194 | 0 | 86,950 | 22.3 | Low | rising +3.7 % |
| 1210 | Floridsdorf | 334 | 0 | 189,551 | 17.6 | Low | rising +4.7 % |
| 1100 | Favoriten | 393 | 0 | 223,190 | 17.6 | Low | rising +7.4 % |
| 1110 | Simmering | 157 | 0 | 112,149 | 14.0 | Low | rising +4.0 % |
Lic. vs. OSM: GISA also counts mobile or home-based businesses without a shop; OSM shows only those with a visible address. Vienna total: 10,686 licensed vs. ~0 in OSM (0 with postcode, 0 without).
Quick answers to the typical questions about Unternehmensberatung in Austria.
Optional · if you need more
Everything you see here stays freely accessible — always current, always verifiable. But if you need these figures for your business plan, the bank or your own bookkeeping, there is the Pro Report: a complete PDF report to save, an Excel export of the raw data, 12 months of automatic updates.