Eldris and Pack Declare both exist to help companies file EU packaging declarations. But they're fundamentally different products: Eldris is a service where humans handle compliance on your behalf; Pack Declare is software you operate yourself.
This isn't a "features comparison" — comparing a managed service to SaaS on a feature matrix is apples-to-oranges. This is about which delivery model fits your team, your budget, and your tolerance for being on the hook when things break.
The 30-second answer
- Eldris registers you with the schemes and acts as your representative in the markets that require one. Its pricing is not "quoted on demand": it is published per country and charged annually — £150 for the UK, £185 for Germany, £190 for the Netherlands, £295 for France, rising to £745 for Slovenia, with government and scheme fees included (grid checked 9 September 2026).
- Pack Declare is a self-serve platform. You connect Shopify / WooCommerce / Amazon, define your BOM, and the platform computes country-specific declaration packs — the exact figures each PRO's form asks for, with guided submission. Pricing is public (free Passport, then €120–590/year) per tenant, independent of country count.
Rule of thumb: these are less substitutable than the category suggests. Eldris sells the one-off-per-year part — being registered, and being represented where the law demands a local presence. Pack Declare sells the part that repeats — working out, every period, which quantities go in which box of which portal, from your real orders. A brand selling across several markets usually needs both, and the honest question is not which to buy but which one you are currently missing.
Head-to-head on the delivery model
| Eldris | Pack Declare | |
|---|---|---|
| What you are buying | Registration and representation, per country | The quantities you declare each period, every market |
| Who operates it | Eldris staff | Your team (self-serve) |
| Pricing | Published per country, annual — £150 UK, £185 DE, £190 NL, £295 FR, up to £745 SI, government and scheme fees included | Free Passport, then €120–590/year per account — every market included |
| Onboarding | Handled by account manager | Self-serve, nothing to book |
| Data exchange | Email, spreadsheets, periodic calls | Native connectors (Shopify/Woo/Amazon) + CSV import |
| Transparency on numbers | Summary report at submission time | Ledger of every row, every recomputation |
| Time to first submission | Set by the registration queue | As soon as your sales and packaging data are in |
| Liability on errors | Stays with producer; service provides guidance | Stays with producer; full audit trail in-app |
| Ongoing work per period | Registration is annual; the period figures are still yours | Auto-compute runs; you click "Generate" |
| Scales with SKU count | No — flat per country, whatever you sell | Flat pricing; scales computationally |
Where Eldris wins
Managed services are a legitimate choice. Use Eldris or a similar service if:
- You have zero internal capacity for registration. Registering is a bounded job with a published price — £150 to £745 a year depending on the market, scheme and government fees included. Set against the hours it takes to learn five registration portals in five languages, that is easy arithmetic.
- You operate in 1–2 countries and declarations are annual. At this scale the annual fee is predictable and small, and the service touches your calendar only a few times per year.
- Your packaging is simple and rarely changes. If you ship the same cardboard box with the same filler for every order, Eldris doesn't need a sophisticated data model on their side — a spreadsheet and a few emails works fine.
- You prefer predictable human support. When the PRO portal throws an error, a managed service can resolve it without you touching the portal. A SaaS product can't do that (legally or logistically).
Where Pack Declare wins
Pack Declare is the right choice when:
- You want control and audit transparency. Every compute run is stored; every number is traceable back to the exact sales orders and BOM versions that produced it. When the PRO asks "where did this come from", you have the ledger.
- Your volume changes month-to-month. A managed service that updates your declaration once per year will be wrong by the end of Q2 if you run a promotion. Pack Declare recomputes automatically from your live sales data.
- You sell in 3+ countries. Registrations stay per-country whoever buys them; the work that repeats every period does not have to. Pack Declare's plans cover every market for one price, so opening a market adds a registration, not a subscription.
- You want the option to outsource later. Using Pack Declare doesn't lock you out of hiring a consultant or compliance service later. The data stays yours, exports are in standard formats. Managed-service contracts often bundle the tool and the service, so switching away is harder.
- You're price-sensitive. The Passport tier is free permanently: your obligations mapped per market, your registration numbers held with format validation, and renewal alerts before a number lapses. It costs nothing and it covers the part small sellers most often get wrong.
The hidden cost of "someone else handles it"
The attractive thing about a managed service is that it moves work off your plate. The less-visible thing is what happens when there's a disagreement about the numbers.
If Eldris submits your declaration and the PRO later audits the number, they ask you. You're the legal producer, not Eldris. At that point you need to reconstruct: which sales, which BOM version, which conversion from grams to kg per material, which eco-modulation multiplier was applied, and why.
Pack Declare gives you that reconstruction by default — every computation is versioned. Managed services typically give you a summary PDF and email thread. That's fine until it isn't.
A hybrid model that actually works
A pattern we see working well: run Pack Declare as the system of record for the figures, and let Eldris (or a consultant) handle registration and representation in the markets that require them. At their published per-country fees that is a few hundred pounds a year rather than a retainer, and your data stays in one place.
We maintain a short list of independent compliance consultants we trust for this use case. If you ask, we'll point you to one — we don't take a referral fee.
The honest bottom line
There is nothing wrong with paying humans to do compliance for you if that's the right trade for your stage. Eldris publishes its prices, which is more than most of this market does, and at those prices registration is cheap.
This article used to end by claiming software beats service economics several times over. With the actual grid in front of us that is not the comparison. Registration is bounded and priced; the expensive, repeating part is turning a year of orders into the numbers each portal asks for, and a registration fee does not buy that. Decide the two separately.
Start with Pack Declare for the figures. Where a market wants a registration or a representative, buy it — from Eldris or someone like them — because that is exactly what their price covers, and your data stays yours either way.
Run the free PPWR Compliance Check →
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Related reading: Pack Declare vs. Coolset · Pack Declare vs. PPWR Copilot · Pack Declare vs. Excel
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Eldris and Pack Declare?
Eldris is a managed service: its staff register you with schemes and act as your representative where a market requires one, at a price published per country. Pack Declare is self-serve software: you connect your sales channels, define your packaging bills of materials, and it computes the figures you declare each period. Different halves of the same obligation.
How does Eldris pricing compare with Pack Declare?
Both publish their prices, but for different things. Eldris charges per country per year for registration and representation — £150 for the UK, £185 for Germany, £190 for the Netherlands, £295 for France, up to £745 for Slovenia, government and scheme fees included (grid checked 9 September 2026). Pack Declare charges per account for the recurring figures — a free Passport, then €120 to €590 a year, or Enterprise — independent of how many countries you file in. The two costs add up rather than replace each other.
When is a managed EPR service the better choice?
When your internal team has essentially no capacity for compliance and each country costs you more than ten hours of scrambling a year. At that point the service pays for itself, because the constraint you are buying your way out of is attention, not software.
When is self-serve software the better choice?
When you have even one part-time owner of the compliance process and want control over the numbers. Self-serve is cheaper, faster to start and more transparent, because you can see how each figure was derived rather than receiving a finished declaration.
How does data get to a managed EPR provider?
Often by email or spreadsheet exchange. That is worth pricing in: the work of assembling and sending the data each period stays with you, so a managed service removes the filing burden more completely than it removes the data burden.
How long does onboarding take with each?
Eldris onboarding is handled by an account manager. Pack Declare is self-serve — connect a sales channel, define packaging, compute — and how long that takes depends on how much packaging data you already have. The trade is between someone doing it for you and starting immediately without waiting on a calendar.
Can you use a managed service and software together?
Yes, and it is often the sensible arrangement. Software builds and maintains the numbers from real sales data; the service handles registration and submission where a local presence or scheme relationship is genuinely required. The two are complementary rather than mutually exclusive.
Does country count change the cost?
It does with a per-country managed service, where each additional market adds a fee. It does not with Pack Declare, where all covered countries are included. Multi-country sellers therefore see the gap widen with each market they add.