Small and mid-size businesses are not exempt from the Digital Product Passport by default. The obligation follows the product, not the size of the company that makes it. If you place an in-scope product on the EU market, you carry the same passport duty as a large firm — usually with far fewer people to meet it.
No — not as a rule. The Digital Product Passport attaches to the product, so a five-person brand and a multinational face the same obligation for the same product group. Any relief is decided per delegated act (and may be limited to micro-enterprises or specific cases), not by a general SME carve-out. Plan to comply.
The same five data families as everyone else: identity, compliance, materials, circularity and footprint — each backed by its evidence. For a small team the hard part isn't the platform; it's collecting the data from suppliers and keeping the proof behind each claim. That is where the months go.
A first passport is weeks of work; a catalogue is six to twelve months, with supplier data collection on the critical path. The trap is treating your product group's start date as the start date — it's the finish line. If your group is named in the ESPR working plan or you make batteries, start now.
You do not need a six-figure consulting engagement. Self-serve tooling does the heavy lifting: PassPer builds the passport from the documents you already hold — AI extraction with human review — and handles the carrier, seal, registry filing and 15-year hosting, from €79/month with a free 30-day pilot. Start with the free readiness check to see exactly what applies to you.
Take the 2-minute readiness check, watch the 10-minute interactive walkthrough, or download the full 2026 compliance guide. No account needed.