EPR Insights vs ecosistant is a choice between two shapes of help. One is software you install in your Shopify store that turns order data into country-specific EPR reports. The other is a consultancy that works out what each country requires, and will do the registrations and filings for a fee.
Both are built for European online sellers and both publish a price. This page compares what they cover, what they cost, and who ends up doing the work.
Where each product sits in your business
The clearest way to tell these two apart is to ask where the product physically lives once you have paid for it.
EPR Insights lives inside your shop. It is delivered as a Shopify app, their own line being "Install the app on Shopify in minutes, no developer needed." Order volumes then sync as transactions happen, and you supply the packaging, electronics and battery weights.
ecosistant lives beside your business. There is no ecommerce integration named anywhere on their site.
Instead you answer a compliance questionnaire, and they return a country-by-country reading of what extended producer responsibility means for you, as a to-do list on one dashboard.
Three practical things follow from that difference:
- Your data reaches each one by a different road. EPR Insights pulls the order side automatically and asks you for weights. ecosistant asks you for everything, because nothing is connected to your shop.
- They answer different first questions. EPR Insights answers "what do I report for what I sold". ecosistant answers "what am I legally on the hook for in this country".
- They fail in different places. A wrong weight in your product catalogue quietly corrupts an EPR Insights report. A wrongly answered questionnaire quietly leaves an obligation off your ecosistant to-do list.
Side by side across a compliance year
The table below walks through a normal compliance year in order, from working out what you owe to paying the bill, and names what each tool actually does at that point.
| Where you meet it | EPR Insights | ecosistant |
|---|---|---|
| Working out what you owe | Startup support to help you "understand your EPR obligations", plus written guides for individual markets such as Denmark and Germany | A compliance questionnaire per country, with law analysis for packaging, WEEE and batteries, textiles, and furniture and mattresses, plus cost estimates |
| Getting set up | Install the Shopify app, then map SKUs and packaging once | Answer the questionnaire, then work through a personalised to-do list, or hand the list to their Premium service |
| Getting your data in | Order volumes sync from Shopify as transactions occur; you supply packaging, WEEE and battery weights | No integration named, so you enter what the analysis asks for |
| Registering with a scheme | Their FAQ points you to the national scheme or producer responsibility organisation in each country | You do it on self-service; on Premium "the ecosistant team handles the entire registration process" |
| Producing the report | Country-specific reports generated from your data, with a searchable archive and version history | Self-service gives you the steps and the scheme contacts; Premium prepares the quantity reports |
| Filing the report | You export the file and submit it yourself | You on self-service, ecosistant on Premium |
| Adding a country | No per-country charge on the published plans | From €24.90 for that country, or €399 for all 30 at once |
| Adding a waste stream | Packaging, WEEE and batteries already run through one workflow | From €5 per country, or from €100 for the Europe bundle |
| Meeting the PPWR declaration | Not listed on their site | A three-tier service, templates, full support, or expert review |
| What you pay | $15, $29 or $59 a month by order volume, plus $0.05 per order above the allowance | €0 for Germany, from €24.90 per country, €399 for all 30; Premium is quote only |
| How far they reach | 39 countries listed, of which 14 or more are described as active markets | 30 countries, the EU27 plus the UK, Norway and Switzerland |
Neither price column includes the fees you owe the schemes themselves. Those are billed separately by each national system, whichever tool you use to get there.
EPR Insights starts from your order feed
Their homepage sells one idea, that packaging, WEEE and batteries should "report everything through a single workflow, not three separate systems".
They are based in Aarhus, Denmark, and describe themselves as building "comprehensive Extended Producer Responsibility solutions for ecommerce businesses". Three design decisions shape what you get.
- They built it as a Shopify app. That is why setup is measured in minutes rather than weeks, and why order data arrives without anyone rekeying it. It also means the published route in is a Shopify store. A non-Shopify or manual-upload route is not listed anywhere on their site, so if you sell on WooCommerce or your own platform, ask them before you plan around it.
- They built the meter on orders, not countries. A seller shipping into twelve markets pays the same monthly plan as a seller shipping into one, as long as the order counts match. Your compliance software bill becomes a function of how busy your shop is.
- They built a tool that produces a file, not a tool that files it. Their own wording for report generation is "export when you're ready", and their FAQ sends registration back to "national EPR schemes or producer responsibility organizations in each country". The last step across the line stays with you.
Where that leaves gaps is worth naming plainly. Their coverage claim is 39 countries, but the live figure they publish is "14+ active markets", so check that your market is one of them.
Textiles and furniture are not among their streams. And nothing on their homepage, services page or FAQ mentions PPWR or a Declaration of Conformity.
ecosistant starts from the country rulebook
Their pitch is legal rather than technical, describing themselves as "your digital consultant for sustainable e-commerce, CSR and recycling-compliance across all European markets".
They have been running since 2020 and call themselves "the node point between recycling schemes and e-commerce sellers". Their three shaping decisions run the other way.
- They built the product around a country-by-country legal analysis. Before you touch a spreadsheet you get a reading of which obligations apply, which scheme to talk to, what it is likely to cost, and which recycling symbols you are required to print. That is the right starting point when you genuinely do not yet know what applies to you.
- They built the meter on countries, not orders. Germany is permanently free at €0. One country starts at €24.90 for the first year and renews from €17.90. All 30 countries cost from €399 in year one and from €299 after that. How many parcels you ship does not move any of those numbers.
- They built a managed tier as well as a self-serve one. On EPR Premium Service, ecosistant "handles the entire registration process with the relevant take-back systems and authorities in each country" and handles "the timely submission of quantity reports", with a named contact coordinating it.
The gaps here are the mirror image. Nothing syncs from your shop, so somebody on your side is still assembling the numbers, and the self-service tier gives you a to-do list rather than a finished filing.
Premium carries no published price at all, only "a non-binding offer ... after a short initial consultation", so you cannot budget for it from the website.
Two meters and two different bills
Both companies publish prices, which is rarer in this market than it should be. What is easy to miss is that the two price lists are indexed to completely different numbers.
Because the meters differ, the same two sellers can get opposite answers. Here is what the published figures come to in a first year.
| Seller | EPR Insights | ecosistant self-service |
|---|---|---|
| 1,200 orders a month, Germany only | Advanced at $29 a month, so about $348 | Germany plan, €0 |
| 300 orders a month, twelve EU countries | Basic at $15 a month, so about $180 | €399 for the Europe bundle, or about €298.80 buying twelve countries singly |
Read those numbers for what they are. The first row is cheap on ecosistant because Germany is free, not because the German rules are simple.
The second is cheap on EPR Insights because countries are not on its meter at all. And the two prices are not buying the same thing, which is what the next section is about.
Who registers you and who files the report
This is the question that separates a reporting tool from a compliance service, and it is worth being exact about.
With EPR Insights, you register and you file. Their services page lists six things, all of them software, and none of them is registration or submission.
Their FAQ is explicit that "registration is done through national EPR schemes or producer responsibility organizations in each country where you sell". What they hand you is an export-ready file, plus an archive of the ones you sent before.
With ecosistant it depends which tier you buy. On self-service you also do it yourself, but with a to-do list, the scheme contacts and English-speaking guidance in front of you. On Premium they do it, end to end.
The authorised representative question
There is a third job that only one of them lists, and it catches sellers out.
If you sell into a country where your company has no legal establishment, several waste streams require you to appoint an authorised representative there, a local entity that carries your producer obligations on paper.
ecosistant sells this as its own separate service, covering WEEE and batteries. It is not bundled into Premium, so treat it as a line item rather than an assumption.
EPR Insights does not list an authorised representative service anywhere on its site.
Your PPWR declaration from August 2026
From 12 August 2026 the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation applies across the EU. Packaging placed on the market then has to be backed by an EU Declaration of Conformity and a technical documentation file behind it.
That is separate from EPR reporting. It is a signed legal statement about the packaging itself, not a data return about what you sold.
How each one covers it
ecosistant sells a Declaration of Conformity service in three tiers, and which one you buy decides how much writing you do.
- Guided Template Pack. Templates and guidance, so your own team prepares the files.
- Full Support. You "provide your tests and evidence, and we prepare one or more Declarations of Conformity".
- Expert Review. They read what you wrote and flag the risks before you sign it.
No price is published for any of the three. EPR Insights lists nothing at all on PPWR or declarations of conformity, which is not a criticism of their reporting product. It just means the declaration is a job you would be solving somewhere else.
A third route is to generate the declaration yourself in software. Repax Declare does that for packaging, on published plans starting at €0 a month. Repax is our own product, which is why we are naming it here rather than pretending the option does not exist.
Count your orders then count your countries
Two numbers settle most of this. Work out roughly how many orders you ship in a month, and how many countries you sell into, then read the line that matches.
- Germany only, any order volume. ecosistant's German plan is free, so it costs nothing to start there, though it is worth reading up on EPR in Germany first.
- One or two countries, high order volume. ecosistant stays cheap because the meter never moves. EPR Insights climbs into its higher tiers and starts adding $0.05 per order over the allowance.
- Many countries, low order volume. EPR Insights stays on its $15 plan whatever your map looks like, which is the cheapest way to buy reporting software across a wide footprint.
- You are on Shopify and you want the data to arrive by itself. Only EPR Insights offers that, and it is the single hardest thing to replicate by hand.
- You do not yet know what you owe. ecosistant is built for exactly that state, and the free German plan lets you see the questionnaire before you commit.
- You want somebody else to register and file. Only ecosistant Premium does that, and you will need to ask them for a price.
- You sell textiles or furniture. ecosistant covers both, and textile waste is a fast-moving stream right now. EPR Insights covers packaging, WEEE and batteries only.
- You need a PPWR declaration of conformity. ecosistant sells the service. EPR Insights does not list one.
If two lines apply and they point in opposite directions, the next section is for you. And if neither shape fits, the wider field is covered in our EPR Insights alternatives and ecosistant alternatives roundups.
The split a lot of sellers land on
These two products are not really competing for the same slot in a compliance stack, which is why some sellers end up paying for both.
EPR Insights is a data pipe. Its job is to keep an accurate, always-current picture of what you sold and what it was wrapped in, and to shape that into whatever file a given country wants this quarter. That job never ends and it does not respond well to being done manually.
ecosistant is a compliance desk. Its job is the set of things that happen a handful of times per country, working out the obligation, registering, appointing a representative, signing a declaration. Those are legal events, not data events.
The honest caveat is that running both means paying two bills, and for a small seller in one or two markets that is hard to justify.
The pairing starts to make sense when your order volume is high enough that assembling the data by hand hurts, and your country count is high enough that tracking registrations does too.
Frequently asked questions about EPR Insights and ecosistant
Short answers to the questions that come up most when sellers compare these two.
Is EPR Insights or ecosistant better for EPR compliance?
Neither is better across the board, because they solve different halves of the problem. EPR Insights is stronger at turning live shop data into country-specific reports, and is priced by order volume.
ecosistant is stronger at telling you what you owe in each country and, on its Premium tier, doing the registrations and filings for you. It is priced by country count.
How much do EPR Insights and ecosistant cost?
EPR Insights publishes three Shopify app plans, Basic at $15 a month for 400 orders, Advanced at $29 for 1,500, and Pro at $59 for 4,500, with $0.05 per order above the allowance.
ecosistant publishes self-service pricing of €0 for Germany, from €24.90 per country in the first year, and from €399 for all 30 countries, excluding VAT. Their Premium service is quote only. Neither price includes the fees the national schemes charge you.
Does either one file your EPR reports for you?
ecosistant does, on its Premium service, where the team "handles the timely submission of quantity reports" and the registrations behind them.
EPR Insights does not list a filing or registration service. It generates the report for you to export and submit, and its FAQ points registration back at the national schemes.
Which one covers more countries?
EPR Insights lists 39 countries but publishes a live figure of "14+ active markets". ecosistant covers 30 countries, specifically the 27 EU member states plus the UK, Norway and Switzerland. If your market matters, check it by name with EPR Insights rather than reading the larger number.
Can you use EPR Insights without Shopify?
Their published product is a Shopify app and their published pricing is that app's tiers. No alternative route in is listed on their site, so if you sell somewhere else, ask them directly before assuming it works.
Which one handles the PPWR Declaration of Conformity?
ecosistant, through a separate three-tier Declaration of Conformity service that runs from templates to fully prepared declarations. EPR Insights does not mention PPWR or declarations of conformity on its homepage, services page or FAQ. The obligation itself starts on 12 August 2026.
Do either of them cover textiles?
ecosistant does, alongside furniture and mattresses, and its Premium tier also names single-use plastics, sports articles and toys. EPR Insights covers packaging, WEEE and batteries only. If textile EPR is on your list this year, that narrows the choice quickly.
