Maps of the small business market in Hesse: where firms open and close, which industries are growing, what role foreigners play, where the risk is higher and how much tax you will pay in each city. Official statistics only, explained in plain words.
The bigger the tile, the more business registrations there.
You pick a question above the map. Green – “yes, better”, red – “no, worse”, grey – about average.
Every tile opens a card with figures and a takeaway in plain words.
Like a population, businesses are born and die. The monitor shows the heartbeat of the whole state, and the carpet below it shows where it beats stronger and where it is weakening.
The rhythm is real, just sped up 500 times: in 2025, a new business was founded in Hesse on average every 9.8 minutes and one closed every 12 minutes. That is why the upper line beats faster. “Today” is an estimate based on this pace, not a live counter.
HSL publishes the number of corporate insolvencies only per year, so the tape shows years, not quarters. The higher the amplitude, the more firms filed for insolvency. In 2025, Hesse saw 2,077 corporate insolvencies, 25.5% more than in 2024.
HSL does not publish insolvency rates per 10,000 firms by industry, so this shows the number of filings: large industries have more simply because they have more firms. Construction is also red on map 01: more firms close there than open. Two independent signals agree.
In 2025, more than a quarter of new sole proprietorships in Hesse were founded by people without German citizenship – 29.8%. If you are starting a business in Germany as a foreigner, you are in good company.
The HSL report lists only selected nationalities, so the list is incomplete: Ukraine and Syria, for example, are not in it.
Dashed line – Germany overall, 25.2%. The states publish the share differently: some relative to all sole-proprietorship registrations, some only to new start-ups. Several states have not published the share for 2025.
Which taxes on profit you will pay – as a freelancer, a sole proprietor (Gewerbe) or a UG/GmbH – and how much of that is trade tax (Gewerbesteuer) in each city. Choose a legal form, enter your profit, and the receipt recalculates.
The credit cannot exceed your income tax: with a small income it is smaller. A UG or GmbH gets neither the 24,500 € allowance nor the credit. This is a demo calculation, not tax advice: it does not take into account your tax class and family status, other income, expenses, church tax, additions to the base (Hinzurechnungen), prepayments and much more that depends on the specific business.
Ecologists call this carrying capacity: how many members of one species a territory can feed. Here the species is a café, a barbershop or a bakery, and the territory is a city.
The atlas figures come from the statistical offices of Germany and its states, the chambers of commerce and the Federal Employment Agency. Before each update we check the totals: if the city figures do not add up to the state total, the map is not updated.
The tables are downloaded on a schedule, right after the office has published them.
The sum of the cities and districts must equal the state total, and so must the sum of the industries. Any discrepancy stops the update.
The maps are updated after the offices publish new data. The date of the last update is shown at the top of the page.
Love Act Grow asks about your activity and address in your language, works out whether you need to register a trade (Gewerbe) or only notify the tax office, and prepares the documents in German. You register where you actually run your business – the service takes your city into account.
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