Every year a manufacturer reads a notified body’s published fee schedule, budgets from it, and then gets a number back that bears no resemblance. The Commission refreshed that schedule on 13 July 2026, and the same trap is sitting in it.
The list itself is a single PDF of about 434 KB from DG SANTE, collating what each designated body publishes. It exists because Article 50 of the MDR obliges notified bodies to establish and publish their standard fees, the intention being that a manufacturer can compare before entering a commercial conversation. Collating them in one document is genuinely useful; nobody wants to open every notified body’s website one at a time to build a shortlist.
Where the number moves
Two things account for most of the gap between the published rate and the quotation:
- Scope beats day rate. A body already designated for your class and technology can cost less in total than a cheaper body that has to extend its scope first, and scope extensions are measured in months as well as money.
- The schedule prices the unit, not the quantity. Audit days, the number of technical documentation files sampled, and unannounced audits are what multiply it. None of that is knowable from the list.
Treat it as a shortlisting instrument and it earns its keep, not least as a reference point when a quotation arrives well above a body’s own published rate. Treat it as a budget and it will be wrong, usually in one direction. The list is on the Commission’s site; who is designated for what is in our directory.