An FDES or EPD (environmental product declaration) generally costs between €3,000 and €15,000 excl. VAT for the life cycle assessment (LCA) study, depending on the product and your data. The FDES (fiche de déclaration environnementale et sanitaire) is the French environmental and health declaration for construction products. On top of the study come third-party verification and publication, invoiced directly by the verifier and by the programme, which adds about €2,200 to €2,700 excl. VAT per declaration in France.
Few consultancies publish their prices. We do because the question comes up at every first meeting, and because a badly framed budget costs months. The amounts below come from our 2026 commercial proposals, not from a market average.
What you actually pay for
An environmental declaration breaks down into three separate invoices. Mixing them up is the most common source of nasty surprises.
| Item | Who invoices | Approximate cost excl. VAT | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| LCA study and drafting of the declaration | The consultancy | €3,000 to €15,000 per declaration | Releaf proposals 2026 |
| Additional product in the same range | The consultancy | €2,000 to €3,500 per product | Releaf proposals 2026 |
| Conversion to a second programme | The consultancy | about €3,000 | Releaf proposals 2026 |
| Third-party FDES verification (France) | The approved verifier | about €2,000 to €2,500 per declaration | Verifier quotes received by Releaf |
| EPD verification (international) | The verifier | €2,000 to €6,000 depending on the number of EPDs | Verifier quotes received by Releaf |
| Publication on INIES | The INIES association | token at €220 per declaration, €190 from 20 tokens | INIES pricing terms |
At Releaf, verification and publication are never included in our price. You pay them at cost, with no intermediary margin. That also makes two quotes easier to compare.
INIES is the French national database of environmental declarations. Its price list mentions no membership or subscription fee for this option. An FDES and an LCI module on the same product require two tokens. For large volumes, a €1,100 excl. VAT token covers a parent FDES and its configured FDES, and a €3,200 excl. VAT annual subscription covers an unlimited number of declarations.
Why such a gap between €3,000 and €15,000?
The price follows the time spent on data collection and modelling, not the name of the declaration. Four factors weigh more than the others.
Factory data. If your energy use, scrap and material purchases are tracked by production line, the LCA moves quickly. If everything has to be rebuilt from annual invoices, the number of days doubles.
The number of sites. A product made in one factory is modelled once. The same product made on three sites needs three inventories, then a justified weighted average.
How new the product is. A product already on the market has a production history. A product being launched means working from design data, then updating the declaration after the first months of production.
Category rules. Some product families have precise, stable rules. Others require you to choose and justify assumptions about service life or end of life, which takes time and gets discussed with the verifier.
How much does an FDES for a whole range cost?
This is where the unit price falls the most. The first product carries all the groundwork: data collection, LCA model, methodological choices. The others reuse it.
An example from one of our proposals to a joinery manufacturer: first product at €5,000 excl. VAT, following products at €3,500 excl. VAT, so €12,000 excl. VAT for three declarations. For another client, six declarations were priced at €3,000 each, so €18,000 excl. VAT.
If you have several similar product references, always ask for a range quote. Grouping products in one campaign costs less than three projects started six months apart.
What about an international EPD?
The LCA work is the same: an FDES and an EPD both rest on the EN 15804+A2 standard. The difference lies in the programme that publishes the declaration and in its rules.
If you already have an FDES, converting it for another programme (EPD International, IBU, EPD Hub) costs about €3,000 excl. VAT with us, verification not included. The reverse also holds: an existing EPD can become an FDES, provided the French national supplement is added.
Verification costs more than in France: €2,000 to €6,000 depending on the programme and the number of EPDs verified together. The EPD International programme also charges its own registration fees. We set out the differences between programmes in our article FDES, EPD, PEP: which one to choose?.
The case of PEP ecopassport
For electrical, electronic and HVAC equipment, the declaration is called a PEP. The pricing structure is similar: about €8,000 excl. VAT for the first PEP, which carries the model and the reading of the product rules, then about €3,500 excl. VAT per additional product.
Verification of a PEP is around €2,000 per declaration at cost, based on the quotes we receive. Registration with the PEP ecopassport programme comes on top.
How long does it take?
Timing often matters more than price in the decision. It depends first on how fast you supply the data.
A project always follows the same stages: scoping and data list, data collection by the manufacturer, LCA modelling and drafting, third-party verification with its back and forth, then publication. Published market timelines run from four to eight months in total according to One Click LCA, and observed differences run from a few weeks to nearly a year.
Data collection and verification are the two stages that move the schedule. Booking a verifier at the scoping stage avoids waiting for a slot once the study is finished. We explain the process in FDES verification and validity.
Grants that reduce the bill
Two schemes cover part of the LCA study. They do not cover verification or publication.
| Scheme | Rate | Main conditions | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Diag Éco-conception (Bpifrance) | 70% | fewer than 50 employees and under €10 million in turnover | Bpifrance |
| Diag Éco-conception (Bpifrance) | 60% | fewer than 250 employees and under €50 million in turnover | Bpifrance |
| Booster Rev3 (Hauts-de-France) | 50% of the cost excl. VAT | regional SME, ceiling of €10,000, two assignments a year at most | Hauts-de-France Region |
For an SME eligible for the 70% rate, a study invoiced at €18,000 excl. VAT leaves only €5,400 excl. VAT to pay on the LCA part. This is the arrangement we proposed this year to a timber joinery manufacturer for a campaign of about nine declarations. All the grants are set out on our grants page.
What having no FDES costs
The real calculation compares the price of an FDES with the cost of not having one. Without a declaration, the consultancy calculating the building's LCA applies default environmental data, deliberately inflated.
A real example from the INIES database: an aluminium window declared at 88 kg CO2e in its FDES weighs 187 kg CO2e with the default data. The product looks more than twice as heavy as it is. On a tight RE2020 project (RE2020 being the French environmental regulation for new buildings), a gap like that is what makes the specifier choose the competitor.
We put figures on this mechanism family by family in Default data or FDES: the gap in figures.
The cost that quotes do not show
An FDES quote prices the consultancy's work. It does not price the time your own people spend gathering data, and that is often where the project slows down.
You need someone at the factory who can find the line's energy consumption, the quantities of materials purchased, the scrap rates and the transport modes. In an SME, this is often the quality manager or the production director, who already has a full diary.
Two things reduce this time: a clear data list from the scoping stage, and a single point of contact at the manufacturer. We send this list before the first working meeting, so data collection can start straight away.
How to compare two quotes
Three questions are enough to make two quotes comparable.
- Are verification and publication included, and for how much? A quote that includes them looks more expensive but may hide a margin on these items.
- How many products are covered, and at what unit price for the following ones?
- Who collects the data? A low price that leaves all the collection to the manufacturer is paid for in internal time.
For the general framework of environmental declarations, read our guide EPD: definition, framework and the FDES in France.
Get a quote for your products
We price an FDES, EPD or PEP in a 30-minute call, based on your list of products and sites. The quote includes the grant arrangement when you are eligible. See our environmental declarations offer or write to us.
Frequently asked questions
At Releaf Carbon, the LCA study for an FDES costs between €3,000 and €15,000 excl. VAT, depending on how complex the product is and the quality of the data. You then add third-party verification, about €2,000 to €2,500 per declaration in France, and publication on INIES, €220 excl. VAT per declaration. Both are invoiced directly.
The price depends mainly on the number of products, the number of production sites and how much factory data is available. A simple product whose consumption is already tracked stays at the low end of the range. A new product, a multi-site product or one with no history needs far more data collection.
Yes. Bpifrance's Diag Éco-conception funds the LCA at 70% for companies with fewer than 50 employees and under €10 million in turnover, and at 60% up to 250 employees and €50 million. In Hauts-de-France, Booster Rev3 covers 50% of the cost excl. VAT, up to a ceiling of €10,000.
The first product carries the common groundwork: LCA model, data collection, category rules. The following products cost much less, €2,000 to €3,500 excl. VAT each at Releaf, because they reuse that groundwork.