Articles · 2026-09-18
What packaging compliance software costs, and why
Flat, metered or per country — the three ways this software is priced, what €{price} a month buys, and why the software is the smallest number on the invoice.
How much does packaging compliance software cost?
It depends less on the tool than on how the tool counts you. Three models are in the market: a flat monthly price, a price metered by orders and products, and a price per country or per waste stream. The same company can pay €29 or several hundred a month depending only on which model it walked into.
What does metered pricing mean in practice?
Repax publishes its numbers, so they serve as the example: free up to 50 orders a year, €29 a month up to 500 orders and 1,500 products, €59 up to 2,000 orders, and €12 a month for each further 2,500 orders. That is honest, and cheap for a small shop. A manufacturer shipping ten pallets a working day passes 2,000 orders before the year is out, and from there the price climbs with the business.
What does per-country pricing mean?
Some tools charge for each country or each waste stream you switch on. One country is cheap. The eleventh costs the same as the first, and a manufacturer selling into eleven member states pays eleven times. Published per-country figures move often enough that the only reliable source is the vendor's own price page on the day you read it.
What is in €{price} a month?
All 27 member states, with no charge per country. No limit on shipments, SKUs or destinations. The packaging data sheet, one row per component. The kilograms per country and material, with reusable packaging held apart from single-use. The declaration of conformity with the eight points of Annex VIII. The in-app assistant, answering in all 24 official languages. Your own data back out in ordinary files, at any moment, at no cost. Fourteen days' trial of the whole tool, no card.
What is not in it?
We do not register you in any country. We are not your authorised representative. We do not pay a scheme on your behalf and we do not certify anything. What packaging software does and does not do sets out the five jobs and which two no tool can take from you.
Is the software the biggest number on the invoice?
No, and this is what most comparisons miss. The scheme fee is set per kilogram and per material, and for a manufacturer on pallets it is usually the larger figure by some distance. €{price} a month is fixed; what a scheme charges depends on what you put on the market. Software that gets the kilograms wrong costs you in the fee, not in the subscription.
Why not simply keep it in a spreadsheet?
Because a spreadsheet holds the number, and the number is not the evidence. It does not hold who told you, on what date, and for which component — and that is exactly what an authority asks for. It never will: that is not a missing feature, it is what a spreadsheet is.
When does the price pay for itself?
On the first customer questionnaire answered from data you already have instead of assembling it again, and on the first year where the kilograms come from shipments rather than an estimate. Both of those are hours, and both of them repeat.
Will the price change?
It is €{price} a month, VAT excluded, and it does not rise with the number of countries, shipments or products. If that ever changes, it will be said here with a date.
Where the country data comes from
The register, threshold and deadline for each of the 27 are in our EPR table by country, each row with its source and the date it was checked, and published as data under CC BY 4.0.
Why does €{price} sit beside €29?
Because the meters differ, and the cheap plan is cheap only in a small market. Both prices below were re-read at the vendors' own pages on 25 September 2026. Repax counts orders and products: free under 50 orders a year and 250 products, €29 up to 500 orders and 1,500 products, €59 up to 2,000 orders, one user on free and two on the paid plans. smbf.me counts countries: €0 for one to three active countries, €50 for four to seven, €100 for eight to fifteen, €150 for sixteen or more, with users, orders and SKUs unlimited. Tarafex counts neither: €{price} a month, all 27 member states.
So compare at the number of countries you actually sell into, not at the headline price. In three countries a free or €29 plan is the cheaper answer, and we will say so. At sixteen countries or more the country-metered price is €150, above ours, and a manufacturer on pallets passed 2,000 orders long before that.
One more thing worth checking on any price page: whether the part you need is on sale yet. Repax lists Comply, the product that registers you and files for you, as coming in 2026, with no price.
Sources: Repax pricing, read 25 September 2026; Tarafex software for our own price and what it includes. Other vendors' prices are not repeated here — they change, and we only publish what we have read at the source. Checked 25 September 2026. This is information, not legal advice.