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Product Compliance Check: Find Out What Actually Applies to Your Product
Answer a few questions about your product and how you sell it, and get an instant, mapped first-pass list of the EU regulations that are genuinely likely to apply — not a generic checklist every product gets, and not a synthetic "compliance score" with nothing behind it. Every result links straight to the full guide that explains exactly why it appeared.
What You Get
- A mapped list: which regulations are likely to apply, worth checking, or unlikely to apply
- Plain-language why: the specific answer that triggered each result
- No account needed: results appear instantly in your browser, nothing is stored
- A clear next step: which specific guide on this site to read first for your actual situation
Quick answer: The Product Compliance Check is a free, deterministic first-pass mapping tool — you answer questions about your product's category, function and sales channel, and it applies the same fixed logic every time to show which EU regulations are likely to apply, worth checking further, or unlikely to apply. It is not a legal determination, not a certificate, and not an AI-generated guess — it is a starting map, and the full Product Compliance Assessment is the paid step for a genuine gap analysis once you know what likely applies.
The Check
Answer 7 Questions About Your Product
This runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter is sent anywhere or stored. Answer honestly rather than optimistically — a result based on an answer that does not match your actual product is worse than no check at all, since it can give you false confidence in exactly the place a real gap is hiding.
How It Works
What Happens Behind the 5 Questions
You answer 7 fixed questions
Product category, wireless functionality, battery, existing EU establishment, sales channel, destination market, and untested-component/hazardous-mixture status — the same seven inputs every time, run through the same fixed logic every time.
The tool applies deterministic rules, not AI guesswork
Each result is triggered by an explicit, documented rule (for example: "wireless functionality → Radio Equipment Directive likely applies") — not a language model improvising an answer, and not a black-box score.
You get a mapped list with plain-language reasoning
Every result shows exactly which answer triggered it, so you can sanity-check the logic yourself rather than trust a number with no explanation behind it.
You take the result to the right guide, or the paid Assessment
For most people the free check is enough to know where to start reading. If you need the gaps in your actual documentation identified, the paid Product Compliance Assessment is the next step.
Possible Results Explained
Every Outcome the Check Can Show You, in Plain Language
The check can surface up to twelve distinct results depending on your answers, and every one of them maps to a specific rule you can verify for yourself. Here is what each one actually means, ahead of time, so a result is never a surprise and never has to be taken purely on trust.
General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR)
Shows as "Likely applies" for nearly every answer combination, because GPSR is the EU's default consumer-product safety baseline. The rare exception is when a fully dedicated sector regime (cosmetics) takes over as the primary framework instead.
GPSR Responsible Person
Triggered whenever you indicate no existing EU-established manufacturer, importer or authorised representative. This is the single most common gap non-EU sellers have, and the one most worth resolving first.
CE Marking
Triggered by an electronics, toy or machinery category answer, or by wireless functionality. A "Not likely" result here is common and correct for plain textiles, most kitchenware and general household goods with no harmonised-directive trigger.
Radio Equipment Directive (RED)
Triggered specifically by wireless connectivity — Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cellular or any radio transmission — layered on top of whatever other CE-relevant directive already applies to the product.
RoHS
Triggered by electronics, wireless functionality or a battery, since all three commonly involve the restricted substances RoHS governs, independent of whether CE marking itself applies.
Toy Safety Directive
Triggered specifically by the toy/childcare-adjacent category answer — when it appears, it generally takes priority over the general CE marking result as the primary applicable regime for that category.
Cosmetics Regulation
Triggered by the cosmetic-adjacent category answer, flagged as "Worth checking" rather than a firm result, because whether an item is legally a cosmetic under EU law is itself a fact-specific threshold question.
Marketplace Listing Requirements (Article 22)
Triggered when you sell through a marketplace — a reminder that the platform itself now has to verify your Responsible Person and safety information under GPSR before your listing can go live.
PPWR / Packaging Obligations
Always shown as "Worth checking," because packaging obligations depend on the actual packaging materials and format used, which the check's seven questions do not capture — this is intentionally never given a false "likely" or "unlikely" verdict.
REACH — SVHC / SCIP Notification
Triggered when a component is unconfirmed against the SVHC list or the product is a hazardous mixture — flagged "Worth checking" since only a real per-article check can confirm the 0.1% threshold either way.
CLP — Classification, Labelling & Poison Centre Notification
Triggered for hazardous-mixture household or cosmetic-adjacent products — a separate hazard-labelling and Poison Centre Notification duty that neither GPSR nor a cosmetics notification satisfies.
Cosmetics Responsible Person & CPNP
Shown alongside the classification result whenever you flag a cosmetic-adjacent product — the cosmetics-specific Responsible Person and CPNP filing, distinct from GPSR's Responsible Person.
Free Check vs Paid Assessment
What Changes When You Move to the Paid Step
| Free Product Compliance Check | Product Compliance Assessment | |
|---|---|---|
| What it does | Maps which regulations likely apply, from 7 fixed questions | Reviews your actual documentation against what genuinely applies |
| Input required | 7 multiple-choice answers, no account | Your existing risk assessment, technical file, labelling and evidence |
| Output | A mapped list with plain-language reasoning | A specific gap list — what is missing, not just what applies |
| Cost | Free | Paid — scoped to your product once the free check narrows down what to review |
| Best used | First, to know where to start reading | Once you know what applies and need the actual gap closed |
Scope, Honestly Stated
What This Check Does Not Do
It is not a legal determination
Five questions cannot capture every fact-specific detail of your actual product — the precise materials used, the exact intended user group, or a borderline case between two categories. Treat the results as a starting map for further research, not a final legal answer you can rely on without checking the underlying regulation yourself.
It does not issue a certificate or score
There is no numeric "compliance score" and no certificate at the end — both would imply a level of certainty five multiple-choice answers cannot honestly provide, and both are exactly the kind of synthetic-authority signal this site's editorial policy explicitly avoids.
It does not check your actual documentation
The check maps which regulations are likely relevant — it does not review whether your existing risk assessment, technical file or labelling actually satisfies them, and it cannot tell you whether a document you already have is good enough. That gap analysis is specifically what the paid Product Compliance Assessment does.
It does not replace legal or notified-body advice
For binding legal conclusions, or for a product in a high-liability category (medical devices, pharmaceuticals, high-risk food claims), qualified legal counsel or the relevant notified body is the appropriate next step, not a five-question tool — and the check will not pretend otherwise by producing a falsely confident result for categories it was never built to cover.
Where This Fits
Part of a Larger Data & Tools Library, Not a One-Off Widget
This check is the first of several original, structured data assets this site is building — alongside a fuller EU Product Regulation Database, a Compliance Deadline Tracker for phased obligations like PPWR and the Digital Product Passport, and an Economic Operator Finder for the manufacturer/importer/distributor/Responsible Person question specifically. The check's rule set and these other assets are meant to stay consistent with each other — a regulation flagged here as "likely applies" should match what the corresponding regulation-database entry says, not drift into a separate, inconsistent answer over time.
That consistency is also why the check links out to full guides rather than trying to explain each regulation inline — GPSR and CE Marking already have dedicated pages with the full obligations, evidence requirements, enforcement detail and sources; duplicating that content inside the tool's result cards would only create two versions of the same fact that could quietly drift apart over time as either page gets updated. As new sector and regulation pages go live, the check's result set grows to reference them the same way, rather than the site ending up with orphaned tool output that points nowhere.
Who This Is For
Built for the First Five Minutes, Not the Whole Journey
First-time non-EU sellers
If you have never sold into the EU before and do not yet know which of the dozens of EU product regimes could apply to you, this is the fastest honest way to get oriented before you read a single full regulation page.
Marketplace sellers reacting to a listing warning
If Amazon, Etsy or eBay has already flagged your listing over missing GPSR or Responsible Person information, this check tells you in two minutes exactly what that warning is actually about.
Teams evaluating a new product before launch
Run the check per product before committing to EU launch — a quick way to catch an unexpected CE marking or Responsible Person requirement while the product is still in planning, not after it has shipped.
Anyone who has been given conflicting advice
If three different sources have given you three different answers about whether your product needs CE marking or a Responsible Person, this check gives you one fixed, explainable answer to start from.
Why Deterministic, Not AI
Why We Did Not Build This as an AI Chatbot
It would have been easy to wrap a language model around a product description field and call it a compliance checker. We deliberately did not, for the same reason the rest of this site avoids synthetic compliance scores: a language model asked "does GPSR apply to my product" will produce a fluent, confident-sounding answer whether or not it is actually correct, and there is no way for you to verify which parts of that answer trace back to a real rule versus a plausible-sounding guess.
A fixed rule set has the opposite property. Every result the check shows you is traceable to one specific answer and one specific, documented trigger — "wireless functionality selected → Radio Equipment Directive likely applies" is a rule you can check against the actual directive yourself, not a claim you have to take on faith. The tradeoff is that the check covers a smaller, well-established set of triggers rather than attempting to handle every possible product description in natural language — we think that tradeoff is the honest one for a compliance context, where a wrong confident answer is worse than a narrower but verifiable one.
Quick Definitions
Terms the Results Use, Defined in One Line Each
"Likely applies"
The answer you gave matches a well-established, documented trigger for this regulation — worth treating as your working assumption until you read the full guide.
"Worth checking"
The regulation is plausible given your answers, but the seven questions alone cannot confidently confirm it either way — read the linked guide to resolve it rather than assume either outcome.
"Not likely"
Nothing in your answers points to a known trigger for this regulation — still worth a sanity check against the full guide if your product has an unusual feature the seven questions did not ask about.
Deterministic
The same input always produces the same output, because the logic is a fixed set of documented if/then rules rather than a probabilistic model generating a new answer each time.
Related Regulations
Read the Full Guide for Your Result
GPSR & Responsible Person
The baseline safety obligation almost every result includes — start here if GPSR came back as "Likely applies."
CE Marking
If CE marking or RED came back as "Likely applies," this is the full explainer on what that actually requires.
REACH
If the SVHC/SCIP result came back "Worth checking," this explains the 0.1% threshold in full.
CLP
If your product is a hazardous mixture, this covers classification, labelling and Poison Centre Notification.
Cosmetics Compliance
If the Cosmetics result appeared, start here for the full Responsible Person, CPNP and PIF/CPSR picture.
FAQ
Common Questions About the Product Compliance Check
Is the Product Compliance Check really free?
Yes. The 6-question check itself is free, requires no account and no email address, and runs entirely in your browser. The paid step is the separate Product Compliance Assessment, which reviews your actual documentation against what was mapped here — that is optional and only relevant once you know which regulations apply.
How accurate is a 6-question check, really?
It is accurate at the level a first-pass map can honestly be: it correctly applies well-established rules (wireless functionality triggers the Radio Equipment Directive, for example) to the facts you provide. It cannot capture every edge case a full product review would — that is exactly why it is labelled a first-pass map, not a final determination.
Does this tool use AI to guess my product's compliance requirements?
No. Every result comes from a fixed, documented rule tied directly to one of your seven answers, not a language model generating a plausible-sounding answer. You can see exactly why each result appeared.
What happens to the answers I enter?
Nothing is sent to a server or stored — the questions and results are computed entirely in your browser using JavaScript, and the answers disappear when you close or refresh the page.
My result says "Worth checking" — what does that actually mean?
It means the regulation is plausible enough given your answers that we would rather flag it for you to verify than silently omit it, but the seven questions alone were not enough to confidently say "likely applies." Read the relevant guide to resolve it.
Can I use this for more than one product?
Yes — run the check again for each distinct product. A product line with meaningful variations (different power source, different intended age group) can trigger different results, so treat each materially different product as its own check.
What should I do after I get my results?
Read the full guide linked under each "Likely applies" and "Worth checking" result — GPSR and CE Marking are covered in depth today, with more regulation guides being added. If you need your actual documentation reviewed against what applies, that is what the paid Product Compliance Assessment does.
Why does the check ask about wireless connectivity separately from the product category?
Because wireless functionality (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cellular or radio) triggers the Radio Equipment Directive regardless of what category the product otherwise falls into — a textile product with a Bluetooth tracker sewn in still needs RED considered, which a category-only question would miss.
Can two people running the check for the same product get different results?
Only if they answer differently. Because the logic is fixed and deterministic, identical answers always produce identical results — any difference in outcome traces back to a difference in how the product was actually described, which is itself useful information.
Does the check cover every EU product regulation?
No — it currently covers the well-established triggers for GPSR, CE marking, RED, RoHS, the Toy Safety Directive, Cosmetics Regulation (including the cosmetics-specific Responsible Person and CPNP), REACH's SVHC/SCIP threshold, CLP and marketplace obligations, with packaging flagged for separate review. PPWR in full and the Digital Product Passport are being added as their full guides mature, rather than being given a rule the site cannot yet back completely.
I sell multiple variants of the same product — do I need to check each one?
Only where a variant differs on one of the seven questions that actually drives the result — a different power source, added wireless functionality, an untested new component, or a different intended age group, for example. Variants that differ only in color or size with no functional difference will generally return the same result.
Does the check cover REACH and CLP now?
Yes, as of this update — question 7 asks whether any component is chemically untested or whether the product is a hazardous mixture, which triggers a "Worth checking" result for REACH's SVHC/SCIP threshold and, for hazardous household or cosmetic-adjacent mixtures, CLP's classification, labelling and Poison Centre Notification duties.
Methodology
How the Rule Set Behind This Check Was Built
Every rule the check applies traces back to the same primary sources used across the rest of this site — Regulation (EU) 2023/988 for GPSR's near-universal baseline, the harmonised directives covered on the CE Marking page for the electronics, wireless, toy and machinery triggers, and the SVHC/SCIP and CLP thresholds covered on the REACH and CLP guides for question 7. The check intentionally covers a small, well-established set of triggers rather than attempting to model every EU product regulation in seven questions — packaging is flagged as "Worth checking" rather than given a false "Likely applies" or "Not likely" verdict the underlying rule set cannot actually support yet.
As more regulation guides are published on this site, the check's rule set will expand to cover them with the same standard: every result traceable to a specific, documented rule, never an invented or AI-improvised one. When a rule changes — a directive is amended, a new delegated act takes effect, guidance shifts on how a category is treated — the check's logic gets updated alongside the corresponding full guide, not on a separate, unsynchronised schedule. If you ever get a result here that seems to contradict what the linked guide says, treat the full guide as authoritative and let us know — that kind of drift is exactly the correction process our editorial methodology exists to catch.
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