We Costed CE Marking Three Ways: Consultant, Lab, DIY

Our general CE marking cost guide explains why nobody can quote you a single number. This one does something more useful: it prices out one specific, realistic product three different ways, so you can see where the money actually goes on each route. Picture a two-person startup shipping a 20W USB-C wall charger, a mains-powered product with no radio, the kind that qualifies for self-certification under both the Low Voltage Directive and the EMC Directive. Same product, three routes to market: a full-service consultant, an accredited test lab paired with DIY paperwork, and a fully self-certified path using free tools. Here's what each one costs, takes and risks.

The product: a 20W USB-C charger, nothing exotic

Keep the product simple on purpose. No wireless charging coil, no Bluetooth, no lithium cell inside the unit itself. That means the applicable EU legislation is the Low Voltage Directive for electrical safety and the EMC Directive for electromagnetic compatibility, both of which allow Module A self-certification for a product like this (see our self-certification explainer for which products qualify and which don't). No notified body is legally required at any point. That single fact is what makes the three-way comparison fair: the differences between the routes below come entirely from who does the work and how much of it gets paid for versus done in-house, not from one route needing a certificate the others skip.

Route one: hand the whole thing to a consultant

In this route, the founders brief a compliance consultant, hand over a sample unit and the bill of materials, and step back. The consultant works out which harmonised standards apply, arranges lab testing on the client's behalf, drafts the risk assessment and technical file, and prepares the Declaration of Conformity for the founders to sign. Trade sources describing this kind of engagement put consultant fees for researching applicable directives and building the compliance file, on top of the lab bill itself, in the hundreds to low thousands of pounds or euros per product, scaling with how many standards apply and how tidy the starting documentation is, according to Compliance Gate's cost breakdown. Turnaround is usually the fastest of the three, because the consultant already has lab relationships and isn't learning the standards from scratch. Control is the trade-off: the founders are trusting someone else's judgement calls on risk assessment wording and standard selection, and reviewing that work properly still takes founder time, just less of it.

Route two: pay a lab, write the paperwork yourself

Here, the founders skip the consultant and go straight to an accredited lab (found via the EU's NANDO database or a lab's own accreditation listing) for the two test reports that matter: an EMC test and a safety test against the relevant LVD-aligned standard. Compliance Gate's per-category figures put EMC testing for consumer electronics in the region of a few hundred to just over a thousand pounds, with safety testing landing in a similar band, though the exact number depends on the lab and the specific standards in play. The founders then write the risk assessment, assemble the technical file, and draft the Declaration of Conformity themselves, using the test reports as the evidence base. This route costs less in cash than route one, because it strips out the consultant's documentation fee, but it demands that someone on the team actually understands what the standards require and can write a defensible risk assessment, not just fill in a template. Turnaround depends on the lab's queue rather than a consultant's schedule, and Compliance Gate notes accredited labs can carry weeks of backlog at busy times of year.

Route three: fully self-certified, using only free tools

The leanest route treats testing itself as something the manufacturer can do informally, in-house, against the same harmonised standards, then documents the result without paying a lab or a consultant for anything beyond the standards documents themselves (which do cost money to buy, typically in the tens to low hundreds of pounds each). This is legally available for a Module A product like a USB-C charger, provided the manufacturer genuinely tests against the standard and can defend the result if asked, rather than skipping the testing and hoping. In practice this usually means borrowing or renting basic safety and EMC pre-compliance equipment, or paying a lab only for a cheap informal pre-scan rather than a full accredited report, then writing the technical file and Declaration of Conformity using a free generator such as our Declaration of Conformity tool. Cash cost is by far the lowest of the three. The cost that doesn't show up on an invoice is time and risk: without an accredited test report, the manufacturer is relying entirely on its own judgement that the product genuinely passes, and if a market surveillance authority or a customer ever asks for evidence, an informal in-house result carries far less weight than an accredited lab's report.

What the three routes actually cost, side by side

The table below compares the three routes for this specific charger example across the three things that actually differ: roughly where the cash cost lands, how long it typically takes end to end, and how much direct control the founders keep over the technical judgement calls.

Compliance Gate's own worked example for a different product category, children's toys, lands on a similar shape: roughly €1,890 for a self-managed approach against roughly €7,290 for a fully outsourced one, a gap of close to four times, which lines up with the general pattern above even though the absolute numbers differ for a charger. EcoComply's 2026 pricing guide similarly places standard AC-powered consumer electronics like a charger in the few-hundred-to-low-thousands range once testing and documentation are both accounted for, again varying by exactly how much is outsourced.

Which route actually fits which team

None of these three routes is objectively "the right one." A team with no in-house electrical engineering background, a tight launch deadline, and enough runway to spend on certainty is usually better served by route one, because the cost of a consultant is small compared with the cost of a delayed launch or a wrongly assessed product. A team with someone technical enough to write a genuine risk assessment, but without deep pockets, often lands well on route two: pay for the parts that need accreditation, do the rest yourself. Route three suits a team that already has real test equipment access, someone confident reading harmonised standards line by line, and a product genuinely low-risk enough that getting it wrong is recoverable rather than catastrophic. Use the free product check to confirm which legislation actually applies before picking a route, since the whole comparison above only holds because this specific charger qualifies for self-certification in the first place; a product that legally requires a notified body removes route three from the table entirely.

Where each route quietly breaks down

The consultant route breaks down when the founders treat the consultant's sign-off as a substitute for understanding their own product, then can't answer a market surveillance authority's questions when the consultant isn't in the room. The lab-plus-DIY route breaks down when the in-house risk assessment is thin or copied from a competitor's product, because the test report only proves the unit passed a specific test, not that the wider technical file is sound. The fully DIY route breaks down most often, and most expensively, when a product that seemed low-risk turns out not to be, or when informal in-house results don't hold up under scrutiny; retesting after a failure costs the accredited fee anyway, plus the schedule slip, plus whatever stock has already shipped. None of these are reasons to avoid any particular route. They're reasons to be honest about which one matches the team's actual expertise, not just its budget.

Whichever route fits, the paperwork at the end looks the same regardless of how you got there: a complete technical file and a properly worded Declaration of Conformity. Our free Declaration of Conformity generator builds that document for you once you know which standards apply, and the product check tool tells you that in a few minutes if you're not sure yet.