Equity crowdfunding in Italy: how it works and what it costs

Picture 600 people you’ve never met. Each holds a tiny slice of your company, and each expects to hear from you now and then. For some founders that’s a dream: customers who also own a bit of the brand. For others it’s a part-time job in shareholder relations. Both views are fair, and which one you get depends mostly on how you prepare.

Search for equity crowdfunding Italy and you’ll find platform ads and very few straight answers. This guide, part of our guide to raising capital for a startup in Italy, gives the straight ones: who regulates it, what a campaign costs, how big the market really is, and how to prepare. New to fundraising? Our beginner’s map from zero to a first round comes first.

What is equity crowdfunding and how does it work in Italy?

In equity crowdfunding a company sells part of itself to the public online. The buyers are ordinary people putting in a few hundred euros each, not a fund writing one big cheque. At the low end, one Italian guide updated in 2025 puts the usual entry ticket at €250.

First a platform looks over your company, then it lists the offer. Each campaign sets a minimum target, and people subscribe online until it closes. Reach the target and you issue new shares (or quotas, if you’re an SRL), so the investors join your cap table, the list of who owns what. Miss it and the campaign fails.

Who regulates equity crowdfunding in Italy?

Two texts do the heavy lifting. Regulation (EU) 2020/1503 has applied to crowdfunding service providers across the EU since 10 November 2021. Legislative Decree 30/2023 is the Italian one, and under it Consob authorises the platforms once it has heard the Bank of Italy. The Bank of Italy authorises the banks, payment institutions and e-money institutions that want to offer the service. According to MIMIT, the Regulation has applied in full since 2024.

Remember one number: €5 million. An offer above €5 million over 12 months by the same project owner falls outside the Regulation (article 1(2)(c)). Below that line you’re in the crowdfunding regime. Above it, other rules apply and you need different advice. The average campaign sits far below it, as the next section shows.

At the end of 2024 Italy had 27 authorised platforms. By July 2026 the Politecnico di Milano report counted 37, with about 30 of them active. A smart website isn’t a licence, so check on Consob’s site that the platform is authorised before you hand over a single document. The same Regulation applies in every other EU country, so what you learn here carries over to a campaign elsewhere in Europe, even if the market is different.

How big is equity crowdfunding in Italy? The numbers

Period	Campaigns	Raised	Notes
2024, full year (MIMIT)	161, with 86.1% successful	€112.38 million	27 authorised platforms at year end; €742.88 million raised since 2014
First half of 2026 (Politecnico di Milano)	53 successful	€37.96 million	About 29% less than a year earlier; €29.39 million real estate and €8.56 million other sectors; €877.22 million since 2014

Read that table twice. The market is real, it’s small, and in 2026 it’s shrinking. Real estate took €29.39 million of the €37.96 million raised in the first half of 2026. That leaves €8.56 million for every other sector put together, in six months.

Divide the totals by the campaigns and you get about €700,000 per campaign in both periods (our own division, so a rough guide only). A food brand and a block of flats are very different campaigns, and one average hides that.

Careful with that 86.1%. Platforms pick which projects go live, so the rate only covers projects that already made it onto a platform, and says little about your odds if you walk in with an idea and a logo.

What does equity crowdfunding cost, in euros and in equity?

Some platforms charge a success fee, a percentage of what you raise. One Italian guide, updated in August 2025, puts it at 5 to 8% and adds that extra costs can apply. We couldn’t find a neutral, current comparison of platform fees, so take the range as an order of magnitude and ask each platform for its full price list in writing.

Amount raised	Fee at 5%	Fee at 8%
€100,000	€5,000	€8,000
€300,000	€15,000	€24,000
€700,000	€35,000	€56,000

Then add what the platform doesn’t charge: legal and accounting work to prepare the documents, maybe a valuation, a video, advertising. Ask the awkward question too. What do you owe if the campaign fails? The biggest cost is probably your own time, because a campaign looks more like a second job than a form to fill in.

Now the cost in equity. Say your company is worth €2 million before the campaign (the pre-money valuation) and you raise €300,000. Afterwards it’s worth €2.3 million, the post-money valuation, and the crowd owns 300,000 divided by 2,300,000, which is 13.04%. Our guide to pre-money vs post-money valuation explains the difference.

Here’s the part that surprises people. If the average investor puts in €500, that’s 600 shareholders with about 0.02% each. Every one goes into your cap table (see how a cap table works), and every one can write to you. Whether 13% is the right slice for €300,000 is a separate question, covered in how much equity to give away at seed. Many founders protect control with shares that carry no vote: in the 2026 report, 56.1% of campaigns offered them, up from 48.2% in 2025.

Crowd or business angels? The pros and cons

The upside is concrete. Backers like your product, and people who own a piece of a company have a reason to talk about it, so the campaign works as a launch as well as a round. No single investor sets the terms, which suits a consumer brand with loyal fans.

Downsides arrive later, and they’re quieter. Your numbers and your valuation sit on a public page for the whole campaign. You’ll answer questions from hundreds of small shareholders for years. Some professional investors prefer a tidy cap table, so ask a future lead investor how a crowd round would look to them before you launch. And don’t count on the platform’s audience to fill your round: bring your own.

If you’d rather have one experienced person than six hundred strangers, read about business angels in Italy. For a company with a long sales cycle, a lead investor is often the better fit, and how to find investors for a startup shows where to start looking.

Two Italian details. If your company is a startup innovativa, MIMIT names equity crowdfunding among the investor types in one of the criteria for keeping the status beyond year three: a capital increase above €50,000, combined with an R&D spending requirement. Our guide to Italy’s innovative startup status explains the rest.

Then there’s tax. Individuals investing in a startup innovativa can claim a 65% IRPEF deduction under the de minimis scheme, up to €100,000 per tax year, with a three-year holding period, and the company can receive no more than €300,000 over three years under it (MIMIT). How that applies to a crowdfunding round is a question for your platform and your accountant. Our guide on investor tax breaks in Italy and the US gives the outline.

How do you prepare an equity crowdfunding campaign?

Start long before launch day. Seven steps, in this order:

1. Decide how much you need and what it buys: a hire, stock, a product release. Work out the next stretch of the business first, then the amount. Our guide to your first €50,000 from friends, family and angels covers the rounds before this one.
2. Settle the valuation and the percentage you’ll sell, and be ready to defend the number in public.
3. Clean your cap table. A co-founder who left years ago and still holds shares? Find that out before launch, not halfway through the campaign.
4. Choose the platform. How do the fees compare? Which campaigns has it run in your sector, how big is its audience and how hard does it check projects? Phone two founders who ran a campaign there, then confirm the authorisation with Consob.
5. Build the material, starting with a short video and a one-page summary. Then test your projections until you could defend every number to a stranger, and write up the risks without softening them.
6. Who invests on day one? Friends, customers, newsletter readers: ask them before launch. A campaign that starts at zero looks abandoned.
7. Plan the day after. Hundreds of small shareholders need updates and someone who answers their emails. Our investor update template is a good starting point.

Your checklist before you pick a platform

• Is the platform authorised by Consob? Check on Consob’s site, not on the platform’s.
• Have you read the full price list, including what you pay if the campaign fails?
• Your raise stays well below €5 million over 12 months.
• You know the percentage you’ll sell and who ends up on the cap table.
• A first wave of backers is ready for day one.
• You’ve asked your accountant what the campaign means for tax, yours and your investors’.

This article is general information, not legal or tax advice. Rules change: check Consob’s rules and the platform’s terms, or ask a professional before you launch a campaign.