Recyda and ecosistant both sell packaging EPR compliance in Europe, and they count different things. Recyda counts packaging specifications. ecosistant counts countries.
That one difference sets the price, the deliverable and who ends up filing. This page compares Recyda vs ecosistant on both counts, using only what each company publishes.
What each company counts
Recyda are a German software company, Recyda GmbH of Freiburg, and they sell a single platform in three parts. Their unit of work is a packaging specification, which is a bottle with its cap and its sleeve, and every material and weight that makes it up.
ecosistant are a Berlin compliance firm, ecosistant GmbH, selling six named services, from a free German guide up to a fully outsourced Premium Service. Their unit of work is a country, which is what you owe in Germany, then in France, then in Italy.
Read that as the difference between two questions. Recyda answer "what is in this pack and what does it cost me everywhere". ecosistant answer "what does this market require of me and how do I get signed up".
Here is what one unit of work looks like at each company.
Recyda and ecosistant side by side on both counts
The table splits on the same line the two companies do. The top half is work counted per packaging specification, the bottom half is work counted per country. "Not offered" means the company's own site does not offer that job, checked in August 2026, and is not a judgement about quality.
| Recyda | ecosistant | |
|---|---|---|
| Counted per packaging specification | ||
| Packaging data | Composition builder holding components, materials, weights, colours and separability | No packaging data model, your obligations come from questionnaires about what you sell |
| Getting the data in | API, file upload and mapping from ERP, PLM and SAP | Short questionnaires per country, answered by you |
| Recyclability grading | Green, yellow or red against RecyClass, CEFLEX, KIDV, the ZSVR minimum standard, APR, COTREP, EN 18120 and UK RAM | Not offered, recycling labels and a PPWR gap analysis instead |
| EPR fee calculation | Automatic per country from the spec, with forecasting | Cost estimates written into the country guide |
| EU Declaration of Conformity | Generated from a standard or custom template and tracked through to signed | Prepared by their team, or bought as a template pack, or your own reviewed by them |
| Technical documentation | Summary generated across all components and related files | Prepared alongside the declaration on the Full Support tier |
| Counted per country | ||
| Countries reached | More than 20 for EPR reporting | 30, the EU 27 plus Norway, Switzerland and the UK |
| Waste streams | Packaging only | Packaging, WEEE, batteries, textiles and furniture, plus single-use plastics and French sport goods and toys on Premium |
| Registering with schemes | Not offered | Premium Service runs the whole registration with schemes and authorities |
| Who submits the report | You do, from an export in the scheme's own format | Premium Service submits your quantity reports, Self-Service leaves that to you |
| Authorised representative | Not offered | WEEE and battery representative in Germany |
| What you can buy today | No published price, a demo or a sign in | Germany free, one country from €24.90, 30 countries from €399 |
What you can buy from Recyda
You buy access to one platform and your own team works inside it, which their site describes as "Packaging Sustainability Management Software".
Their own homepage sells it as "One Software for all 3 Key Areas of Packaging Sustainability", so the three parts are worth taking one at a time.
Data management is the foundation. It is a composition builder for your packaging, fed by API, uploads or a mapping from ERP, PLM and SAP, with a gap analysis that chases the fields you are missing.
EPR compliance runs on top of that data in four published steps, consolidate, calculate, visualise and declare. The last step is an export "in the correct format for country-specific EPR declarations".
Recyclability grades the whole portfolio against the guidelines named in the table above. It also flags the packs where the CEN standards want a lab test before you trust the result.
How you actually buy it
There is no price anywhere on their site. The two buttons are "Book a Demo" and "Sign In", so the normal route is a sales conversation.
Their self-serve terms of service, last updated in March 2026, do describe a lighter route. It binds when you "register for a Recyda user account, access the Software, or complete an automated checkout process for a paid subscription plan".
The same document mentions free tiers such as a sandbox or trial account. So a self-serve subscription exists in the contract, but what it costs is not published, and you will not find out without asking.
Their own customer wall names global brands including OBI, Beiersdorf, HiPP, Lavazza and Novartis, and their published case study is Beiersdorf moving off manual recyclability assessments.
That is their claim about their own book rather than ours, and it tells you the size of company the platform is shaped for.
What you can buy from ecosistant
You buy a level of help rather than a platform, and the ladder starts at nothing.
Their six services stack into four steps you can climb as the obligation grows.
- Germany plan, free. Guides for packaging EPR, WEEE and batteries in one country, "permanently free of charge", which makes it a genuine way to see the method before paying.
- Country plan, from €24.90 per country. Twelve months of compliance analysis, step-by-step guides, named schemes and cost estimates for the markets you pick, renewing from €17.90 per country. Guides for other streams are add-ons from €5 per country.
- Europe plan, from €399. The same thing across all 30 countries, renewing from €299, which they price out as €13.30 per country in year one.
- Premium Service, by quote. They take over, registering you with schemes and authorities, holding your EPR numbers and certificates in a portal, and submitting the quantity reports. They quote after a first consultation and put the lead time at 8 to 12 weeks for a mid-sized seller entering 10 countries.
Three separate services sit alongside that ladder. They act as your WEEE and battery authorised representative in Germany, they design one consistent set of recycling labels for Europe, and they sell PPWR readiness and Declaration of Conformity work.
One limit is worth knowing before you buy. The Self-Service is written for B2C sellers, and their own page routes B2B businesses to a contact form instead, so a wholesaler cannot simply buy the cheap plan.
Recyclability grading is the job only one of them sells
Grading is where the two stop overlapping altogether, so it is worth being precise about what it is. Recyda score a pack against design-for-recycling criteria and return a colour, green, yellow or red, for every specification in your portfolio.
What a grade is actually for
Your bill moves with it. Eco-modulated fees charge more for packaging that is hard to recycle, so the grade is a direct input to what you pay each scheme.
Shelf life depends on it. From 2030, PPWR blocks packaging that misses the recyclability grades. A red pack today is therefore a redesign project with a deadline, not a reporting problem.
The paperwork needs it. The grade, and the packaging data underneath it, is what fills the technical documentation sitting beneath a declaration.
What ecosistant sell instead
ecosistant do not offer grading. Their nearest two services are a labelling service, which designs one compliant set of recycling labels for Europe, and a PPWR Readiness Service.
That readiness service is human work rather than a score. You get an analysis of your packaging families, a report on your compliance gaps and templates for the conversations you need to have with suppliers.
The two answer different questions. A gap report tells you where you are exposed, while a grade tells you how one specific pack scores and what changing it would be worth.
The step that only ecosistant will take off your hands
Somebody has to sign you up in each market before any report matters, and only one of these two companies will do it for you.
ecosistant's Premium Service handles the registration with the schemes and the authorities, then keeps the resulting EPR numbers and certificates in a portal you can show to a marketplace. They also submit your quantity reports.
In Germany they will act as your authorised representative for WEEE and batteries, a role their own page notes is required by law for foreign companies.
Recyda never claim that step. Their fourth stage is called Declare, and what it does is export your data "in the correct format for country-specific EPR declarations". Somebody on your side still logs into the compliance scheme and submits it.
That is not a gap in the product so much as a different sale. Recyda are selling the accuracy of the number, and ecosistant are selling the disappearance of the admin around it.
One of them publishes a price list
ecosistant put their self-service prices on the page, so you can budget before you speak to anyone. Recyda publish no figure at all, which makes the two hard to line up.
What ecosistant charge
All the figures below are theirs, taken from their pricing page in August 2026 and quoted excluding VAT.
Germany costs nothing and stays free. A single country is from €24.90 for twelve months, renewing from €17.90, and guides for other waste streams are add-ons from €5 per country. All 30 countries together are from €399 in year one, renewing from €299, which they work out as €13.30 per country.
The Premium Service is the one part they do not price. You get a non-binding offer after a first consultation, because the cost depends on your countries, volumes and streams.
What the schemes charge on top
Two cautions come from their own pages. Recycling and registration fees charged by the schemes are not included in what you pay them, and their often-quoted "€50 to €150 per country" for packaging is their estimate of those scheme fees rather than their own service price.
What Recyda will tell you
Recyda publish nothing. There is no pricing page, the site sells a demo, and the only hint of a cheaper tier is the checkout language in their terms.
For a buyer that means the two are not really comparable on price. One is a number you can read on a Tuesday afternoon, the other is a conversation you have to start.
Read it off your own product range
The cleanest way to choose is to look at what your business actually has a lot of, packaging specifications or markets. Below are the situations these two companies split on most sharply.
- Hundreds of specs that change every year. Grading, fee forecasting and a real data model are the point, and that is Recyda's half of the table.
- A dozen specs that never change, sold in twenty countries. The work is registrations and deadlines, which is ecosistant's half.
- You do not design your packaging at all. A reseller or distributor has nothing to grade, so paying for grading is paying for a report you cannot act on.
- Retail customers demand evidence per pack. A private-label producer being asked for recyclability data needs the score and the file behind it.
- Packaging plus electronics, batteries or textiles. Recyda is packaging only, so a multi-stream obligation points at ecosistant or a multi-stream platform.
- One market, Germany, and you are just starting. The free Germany plan costs nothing to try before any of this becomes a budget line.
- B2B only. The cheap self-service tier is written for B2C sellers, so budget for Premium or look elsewhere.
- Your packaging data lives in SAP or a PLM system. Recyda name those systems as sources, which is a short path from data you already keep to a declaration.
The one duty they both now sell
For most of this page the two barely compete. The exception arrived in 2026, and it is the EU Declaration of Conformity that packaging placed on the EU market needs from 12 August 2026.
The technical documentation that has to sit behind that declaration comes with it. Both companies now sell a product for the job, and each one sells it in the shape the company already had.
Recyda turn it into a workflow
Recyda generate the declaration inside the software, auto-filled from a standard or custom template. Each pack then moves through their published statuses, from Pending Review to Technical Documentation Approved to DoC Issued to DoC Signed, with an audit log of every change.
ecosistant turn it into a deliverable
ecosistant sell the same duty as work done by people, in three tiers. You can buy a template pack with guidance, a full preparation of the declaration and technical documentation for each of your packaging units, or an expert review of what you have already drafted.
So one duty produces two quite different purchases. One is a repeatable machine for a portfolio, the other is a finished document for a set of packs.
Volume decides which is which. With thousands of specifications the machine wins easily, and with twelve packs and a deadline in a fortnight the finished document is quicker.
Running both jobs from one product record
There is a third shape, which is holding your product data once and using it for both the reporting and the declaration. That is what we build, so this is the one section on the page where we are not neutral.
Repax Core keeps the product and packaging record and produces the packaging EPR reporting from it. Repax Declare builds the EU Declaration of Conformity from that same record.
Both are priced publicly, with a free tier and paid plans from €29 a month as of July 2026.
The limits matter as much as the pitch. Repax does not act as your authorised representative, does not register you with schemes, does not submit on your behalf and does not grade recyclability, so it replaces neither company on those specific jobs.
If you want the direct head-to-head rather than this neutral one, we have written Repax vs Recyda and Repax vs ecosistant separately.
Frequently asked questions about Recyda and ecosistant
Short answers to the questions that come up when these two land on the same shortlist.
Is Recyda or ecosistant better for EPR compliance
Neither is better in general, because they sell different work. Recyda price and document packaging you can still change, while ecosistant get you registered and reported in up to 30 markets.
How much do Recyda and ecosistant cost
ecosistant publish self-service prices from €24.90 per country, €399 for 30 countries and a free Germany plan, excluding VAT in August 2026. Recyda publish no price and sell through a demo.
Which one covers more waste streams
ecosistant, comfortably. They cover packaging, WEEE, batteries, textiles and furniture, with single-use plastics and French sport goods and toys on Premium. Recyda name packaging only.
Do Recyda or ecosistant file my EPR report
Only ecosistant, and only on the Premium Service, where they submit quantity reports and handle registrations. Recyda export a submission-ready file and leave the submitting to your team.
Which one handles the PPWR Declaration of Conformity
Both do, differently. Recyda generate and track declarations inside the software through to signed. ecosistant prepare them as a service, or sell templates, or review the ones you have drafted.
Can you use both
Yes, and for a large brand it is a sensible split. Recyda grades and prices the packaging, ecosistant covers registrations and the streams Recyda does not touch, though you pay two vendors.
