The amount you will pay to keep a digital product passport up to date depends on three things: how many product types you have, how often the data behind them changes, and whether you handle that maintenance yourself or outsource it. A one-time setup of the passport is therefore not the whole picture; as long as a product is on the market, the information in it must remain accurate.
That difference between "setting up" and "maintaining" is important to understand before you ask a service provider for a quote. A supplier changes, a material changes, a product group receives additional requirements: every modification that is relevant to the passport must be incorporated into it. The costs of doing so vary widely between companies, and that is precisely why no fixed amount can be stated without looking at your own situation.
Where the amount comes from
The regulation itself does not mention a price; it comes from the way you have the passport maintained. If you do that manually, the time of an employee mainly determines the cost: someone must identify changes, adjust the correct fields and verify that the QR data carrier still points to the correct, up-to-date version. If you work with a platform or subscription, the price is usually in a fixed fee per product group or per number of active passports, supplemented by what changes if the regulation for your product group itself changes.
Three factors carry the greatest weight. First, the number of product types: one passport per model or variant means more records to maintain than one passport for an entire product line. Second, the frequency of changes: a product that rarely changes in composition or supplier costs less maintenance than a product whose specifications change regularly. Third, the retention obligation: the passport must remain available for a period that can differ per product group, and that hosting obligation counts towards a subscription price, even in years when nothing changes.
What is often underestimated
Companies introducing a passport for the first time often budget only the startup costs: collecting documents, entering data, creating the QR code. The ongoing side — who checks whether the data is still correct, who adapts the passport when a new supplier comes on board, who keeps track of which legal change will apply to that product group — is sometimes forgotten. That is not illogical, because that obligation only arises after the initial entry, but it remains in place as long as the product is on the market.
It therefore pays to look at not only the startup cost when requesting a quote, but also what happens if something changes: is an adjustment included, or is it billed separately? Is the retention obligation for the remaining term included in the price, or does it expire after a year? Who is responsible if a product group receives an additional requirement that was not yet in the passport? For those who wish to put these questions to their own software supplier or platform, it is useful to know in advance which parts of a passport are standard for an obligation; the explanation per topic in the knowledge base provides an overview of that per situation.
How you get an indication for your own situation
Because the amount depends so heavily on the number of product groups and the degree of change, a general cost overview is never more than a guideline. A more precise picture only emerges once you know which product groups your company is active in and what obligations apply to them. the free product scan that maps out your situation in a few questions provides a first indication for that, without you needing an account.
If you then want to know what a subscription for continuous updating of the product passport will concretely cost, that overview is on the pricing page with subscription forms per product group. There you will also see the distinction between what remains free — the brief answer per topic and the source in the official text — and what comes with a subscription, such as the templates and the notification as soon as something changes for your product group.
Whether a particular approach is sufficient for your company to meet its own obligations is something that only you yourself, possibly with a lawyer or the competent supervisory authority, can assess. If you are uncertain about what exactly you need to comply with for your products, you will find in the frequently asked questions about the product passport answers to a number of questions that often come up together with this cost question.
Do you first want to know whether this topic is relevant for your company before you look at prices? Then do the free quick-scan or browse through the topics in the knowledge bank; both will give you a concrete picture of your situation within half an hour.