The 2026 Certification Fee Index gathers the certification fees that competing programs publish — and flags, plainly, where a certifier publishes none — into one dated, open table. It exists because clean-label certification pricing is often opaque: buyers cannot compare what they cannot see. Every figure is attributed to its source with the date it was checked, and the whole table is free to cite.
Certification pricing is one of the hardest things for a manufacturer to research. Some programs publish a fee; many publish nothing and quote privately. We built the Certification Fee Index to put the published numbers in one place, each attributed and dated, so a buyer can see the landscape rather than piece it together from scattered pages.
What the index shows
The table lists the fees competing programs have published, with the source and the date we checked it. A few examples currently in the index:
- The Non-GMO Project's base product verification fee is $115, set August 2025, with the final cost determined by one of its Technical Administrators (nongmoproject.org, checked 2026).
- Leaping Bunny charges no application fee and a one-time logo license reported at $500–$4,500 by company sales (leapingbunny.org, checked 2026).
- PETA's cruelty-free logo carries a one-time license fee of $350 on a signed statement of assurance (peta.org, checked 2026).
- GFCO publishes an itemized component fee schedule as a PDF and certifies gluten-free products at 10 ppm — stricter than the FDA's 20 ppm limit; the first-year total is scoped by size and product risk, with independent estimates around $500–$5,000 (gfco.org, checked 2026).
V-Cert itself publishes no price list; a quote is scoped to the products you list, and it carries no obligation. For how those inputs are calculated, see how V-Cert pricing works and the guide How much vegan certification costs.
Frequently asked questions
Is the fee index free to use?
Yes. It is published under an open license as a table and a downloadable CSV. When you reuse it, cite v-cert.org and the original certifier named on each row.
Why do some rows say a certifier publishes no fee?
Because many programs quote privately rather than publishing a rate. Where that is the case the index states it as a fact, so the gap in the market is visible rather than hidden.