How to choose a GPSR compliance service

We sell one of the options below, so read this with that in mind. What follows is still the comparison I would give a seller who asked me over coffee, including the two cases where the honest answer is "not us".

There are four routes. They are genuinely different products, not four prices for the same thing, and most of the confusion in this market comes from comparing across them as though they were interchangeable.

Route 1: do it yourself

Cost: £0 plus 40 to 60 hours for a first pass at ten products, plus EUR 150 to 500 a year for a representative you still have to appoint separately.

Entirely legitimate and, for some people, correct. The regulation is public, the structure of a technical file is four sections, and nothing about it requires a professional. We have published the full structure with a worked example and a filled-in jewellery risk assessment precisely because a seller who wants to do this themselves should be able to.

Suits you if: you have one to three product lines, materials you understand, time you are willing to spend, and some tolerance for reading regulation.

Does not suit you if: you have a dozen product lines with different materials, or you are the sort of person who will start this and not finish it. An unfinished technical file is worth the same as no technical file.

Still true either way: you need an EU Responsible Person. Doing the documents yourself does not remove that.

Route 2: buy a template

Cost: around £40 per category, plus your time filling it in, plus the representative separately.

Several compliance providers sell category-specific risk assessment templates and technical file checklists at around this price, covering jewellery, toys, consumer electronics, home decor, clothing and a dozen or so others.

What you get is the structure and the applicable standards list for your category. What you do not get is the hazard analysis. The template gives you the rows and an example; deciding whether nickel migration applies to your particular clasp, and what you did about it, is still yours.

Suits you if: you are capable of the judgement but do not want to research which standards apply to your category from scratch.

Does not suit you if: the part you are stuck on is the judgement itself, which for most first-time sellers it is. A blank row with an example in it does not help you decide whether your product is a toy.

Route 3: appoint a representative only

Cost: EUR 150 to 500 a year. Documents are yours to produce.

A compliance provider acts as your EU authorised representative under Article 16, puts their EU address on your listings and labels, holds your documents, and deals with market surveillance authorities. They do not write your technical file.

Be careful what you are buying here. Under Article 16(2) a responsible person must verify that technical documentation exists, check the product still matches it, and produce evidence of those checks. A provider who never asks to see your documents is not doing the job, and that is worth testing before you pay.

Suits you if: you already have documents you are confident in, or you are doing route 1 and just need the EU address.

Does not suit you if: you have no documents. You will have paid for representation of a compliance position that does not exist yet.

Route 4: hand the whole thing over

Cost: £349 to £690 a year depending on provider and what is included.

One provider does the documents and the representation together. This is the category we are in, and the players in it work differently enough that a price comparison is misleading on its own.

The honest comparison

Prices checked August 2026, ours against the closest comparable service. Check current rates yourself before deciding; this market moves.

	Us	The established alternative
Documents plus EU rep	£349/yr (founding), £497 standard	from £490/yr
Platform subscription	not separate	£39 to £169/mo by product count
Product categories	3 (jewellery, clothing, home decor)	around 80
Per-product fees	none	product count sets the tier
Document approach	generated from category rules	guided templates you complete
10-year storage	yes	yes

Where they are genuinely better than us. Around eighty product categories against our three, so if you sell pet products, consumer electronics, toys or sports equipment they cover you and we do not. And they are an established business with published customer references, which we are not yet.

Where we think we are better. Their documents are guided templates, described in their own marketing as helping you create the file and guiding you through evaluating hazards. You still supply the hazard analysis. Ours are generated from category rules and your product's characteristics, so the risk rows arrive written. For a seller who cannot confidently judge which hazards apply, that is the whole difference. We are also cheaper for the documents-plus-representation combination, and we do not meter on product count.

Suits you if: the judgement is the part you are stuck on, you sell in one of our three categories, and you would rather spend an hour than a month.

Does not suit you if: you sell outside jewellery, clothing and home decor. Email us first and we will tell you straight, because a refund later helps neither of us.

How to actually choose

Four questions, in this order:

Do you ship to the EU or Northern Ireland in the course of a business? If no, none of this applies to you.
Do you have documents already? If yes, you need route 3 and nothing more.
Is your blocker time, or judgement? Time points at templates. Judgement points at done-for-you. People routinely misdiagnose this and buy a template they then cannot fill in.
How many product lines, and in what categories? This is what actually decides which providers can serve you, and it is the question to lead with when you email any of them.

Questions to ask any provider before you pay

Will you act as Responsible Person under Article 16, and does your written mandate name the Article 16(2) tasks?
What is your notice period? If they can leave on thirty days, every product you have onboarded is non-compliant that day.
What happens above your included product count?
Which categories do you refuse? Every honest provider has a restricted list. Cosmetics, which includes handmade soap and bath products under EU law, is the one that catches Etsy sellers.
Do you want to see my documents? If they never ask, they are selling an address, not representation.

Start with what you need, not who you buy from

Most sellers shop for a provider before they know which documents their products actually require, which is how people end up paying for representation of a compliance position that does not exist.

The compliance checker is ten questions, about two minutes, and it names the documents your specific products need. It is free, and the answer is useful whichever of the four routes you take, including the ones that are not us.

Quick FAQ

What is the cheapest way to become GPSR compliant? Doing the documents yourself and appointing a representative separately. Roughly EUR 150 to 500 a year in cash, plus 40 to 60 hours of your time on a first pass at ten products.

Does my EU representative cover Northern Ireland? Yes. Northern Ireland continues to follow EU product safety rules, so NI sales sit under your EU Responsible Person rather than needing a separate arrangement.

Can I switch providers later? Yes, but check the notice period before you need it, and make sure you hold copies of your own documents rather than only the provider holding them.

Is a template enough? Legally, a completed technical file is a completed technical file, however you produced it. The question is whether you can complete it correctly.

What if my category is not covered? Ask before paying. Most providers have a restricted list, and cosmetics, supplements, medical devices and anything with its own regime are commonly excluded.

Sources

Regulation (EU) 2023/988 (GPSR), Articles 9, 16 and 19
Competitor rates are taken from providers' own published pricing pages, checked August 2026.