Thailand's Companies: 41% Formed in the Last 5 Years (2026)
In short
40.58 percent of the 1,561,866 Thai companies with a founding year from 2007 to 2025 were formed in just the last five years. That is 633,863 companies incorporated between 2021 and 2025 alone. The 2016 to 2020 cohort holds 500,866 companies, 32.07 percent of the total. The oldest band on record, 2007 to 2015, spans nine years yet holds only 27.35 percent. Recent formation ran 2.67 times faster than the earliest years in the data.
What share of Thailand's companies are still in their first five years?
Four in ten of Thailand's companies with a known founding year are still under five years old (DBD, 2026). Among the 1,561,866 companies the registry can date to a founding year between 2007 and 2025, 633,863 were incorporated from 2021 through 2025, a share of 40.58 percent. The 2016 to 2020 cohort adds another 500,866 companies, 32.07 percent of the total. The oldest band tracked here, 2007 to 2015, spans nine calendar years and still holds only 427,137 companies, just 27.35 percent, despite covering nearly double the span of the newest band. Formation has not simply grown over this period. It has sped up. The newest five years averaged 126,773 new companies a year, 2.67 times the 47,460 a year pace of the earliest nine years on record.
Share of dated companies by founding year band
- 2021 to 202541
- 2016 to 202032
- 2007 to 201527
Figures in percent of the 1,561,866 companies with a founding year 2007 to 2025.
The newest band, only five years wide, already outweighs the oldest band, which spans nine years.
Founding year bands, company counts and pace
| Founding year band | Years covered | Companies | Share of total | Average per year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 to 2025 | 5 | 633,863 | 40.58% | 126,773 |
| 2016 to 2020 | 5 | 500,866 | 32.07% | 100,173 |
| 2007 to 2015 | 9 | 427,137 | 27.35% | 47,460 |
| Total, 2007 to 2025 | 19 | 1,561,866 | 100.00% | 82,203 |
Companies by founding year band, drawn from market_new_companies_insight, as of 17 Jul 2026.
Why a younger register matters
A register this young says as much about churn as it does about growth. Registration got markedly easier over this window, as the DBD moved more of the filing process online and cut the paperwork a new company needed to submit. Single years swing hard even so. Formations jumped 23.51 percent in 2021 versus 2020, then fell 20.69 percent in 2022 as the post pandemic filing rush cooled. By 2025 the annual count had climbed back to 128,617, still 14.94 percent below the 2021 peak. This age structure looks unusual next to older business registers abroad. In the United States, firms five years old or younger made up under 35 percent of all firms even before the pandemic, down from close to half in the early 1980s (Haltiwanger et al., 2012). Thailand's register skews noticeably younger than that. Some of the gap is real, a sign of how fast new firms are forming here. Some of it is a limit of the data itself. This table only tracks founding years back to 2007, so a company formed in 1995 and still trading today never enters the 1,561,866 count. A younger looking register is partly a younger looking dataset.
Definitions
- Founding year
- The calendar year the DBD registry records as a company's incorporation date.
- Age band
- A grouping of consecutive founding years, used here to compare a recent five year cohort against an older nine year cohort.
- Known founding year
- A company with a usable incorporation date in the DBD founding year field. This page limits the population to founding years 2007 through 2025.
- Average per year
- A band's total company count divided by the number of calendar years in that band, used to compare bands of different lengths on equal footing.
Assumptions
- Founding year reflects the DBD's recorded incorporation date, not the date a company began actual operations.
- The founding year field used here starts at 2007, so companies incorporated before 2007 are excluded from the 1,561,866 total even if they remain active today.
- 2026 is excluded because the filing year is still incomplete at the time of this query.
- A company appears in this count only if it remains in today's registry. Companies from any band that have since been dissolved or struck off are not part of the 1,561,866 total, so the true number originally formed in each band was likely higher.
Methodology
Counts come from the DBD registry's founding year field, aggregated to one row per calendar year in market_new_companies_insight, as of 17 Jul 2026. A company is counted in the year its incorporation date falls in. The population analyzed here starts at 2007, the earliest year this field reliably covers in the registry, and stops at 2025, since 2026 is still an incomplete filing year and is excluded. Each band's share is that band's company count divided by the sum of all three bands, 1,561,866 companies.
How we verified this
- Summed the yearly founding_year counts in market_new_companies_insight for 2021 through 2025: 151205 + 119923 + 112461 + 121657 + 128617 = 633863.
- Summed the yearly counts for 2016 through 2020: 73163 + 89719 + 104273 + 111284 + 122427 = 500866.
- Summed the yearly counts for 2007 through 2015: 30227 + 33093 + 35371 + 41404 + 45389 + 49466 + 60270 + 63417 + 68500 = 427137.
- Confirmed the three bands sum to the stated total: 633863 + 500866 + 427137 = 1561866.
- Recomputed each share from raw counts: 633863 / 1561866 = 40.58 percent, 500866 / 1561866 = 32.07 percent, 427137 / 1561866 = 27.35 percent, and the three shares sum to 100.00 percent.
- Recomputed average annual pace: 633863 / 5 = 126773 a year for 2021 to 2025, 500866 / 5 = 100173 a year for 2016 to 2020, and 427137 / 9 = 47460 a year for 2007 to 2015, giving a pace ratio of 126773 / 47460 = 2.67.
- Recomputed the year over year changes: 119923 minus 151205, divided by 151205, equals negative 20.69 percent for 2022 versus 2021. 151205 minus 122427, divided by 122427, equals positive 23.51 percent for 2021 versus 2020.
- Recomputed 2025 against the 2021 peak: 128617 minus 151205, divided by 151205, equals negative 14.94 percent.
References
- Department of Business Development. (2026). Registered juristic persons by founding year. Ministry of Commerce, Thailand. https://www.dbd.go.th/
- Haltiwanger, J., Jarmin, R., & Miranda, J. (2012). Business dynamics statistics briefing: Where have all the young firms gone? Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. https://www.kauffman.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/bds_2012.pdf
Frequently asked questions
What share of Thai companies are less than five years old?
40.58 percent, or about 4 in 10, of the 1,561,866 companies with a founding year from 2007 to 2025 were formed between 2021 and 2025.
How does the recent pace of company formation compare with the earliest years in the data?
The 2021 to 2025 cohort averaged 126,773 new companies a year, versus 47,460 a year for 2007 to 2015, a pace 2.67 times faster.
Which single year had the most new company formations?
2021, with 151,205 new companies, the highest of any year between 2007 and 2025. The count fell 20.69 percent the following year.
Does this mean Thailand's economy is unusually young?
It means the dated part of the registry is young. The founding year field only reliably covers 2007 onward, so companies formed earlier and still active today are outside this count entirely.
Cite this page
Chatpong L. (2026). Thailand's Companies: 41% Formed in the Last 5 Years (2026). Max Data Insights. https://maxdatathailand.com/insights/thailands-company-age-structure-2026
Data & corrections
Download the data (CSV)Spot something off, or want to ask about the data? Email insights@maxsolutions.co.th. We publish corrections.
Written by
Chatpong L.Founder, Max Data, Max Solutions Co., Ltd.
Chatpong L. leads Max Data, a company-intelligence platform built on Thailand's official business registry. He writes about the structure of the Thai economy using primary registry data. His work covers company formation, industry concentration, and regional business activity.
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This page reports company-level and aggregate statistics only. It names no individuals and makes no claims about any person. Figures are provided for information and may be revised as source data updates.