Drug prices by country: what each European country actually publishes

Europe has no single drug price. Each country publishes its own list, and those lists do not describe the same thing. Some publish the ex-factory price, some the wholesale or pharmacy purchase price, some only the retail price including VAT. Three of the 30 countries reviewed publish no usable price list at all. Before you compare drug prices by country, you need to know which price level you are holding, how often it changes, and whether you are allowed to reuse it. This article answers all three, country by country, based on 30 national sources checked on 5 September 2026.

Which price level does each European country publish?

The short answer: no country publishes the wholesale purchase price that is actually paid. What is published sits either at the top of the chain (ex-factory, set or approved by the regulator) or at the bottom (retail price including VAT). Central and Eastern Europe and the Benelux countries regulate the manufacturer price. Scandinavia regulates the pharmacy purchase price. France, Spain, Portugal and Estonia publish the consumer price, from which the manufacturer level has to be calculated backwards.

Sources, all retrieved on 5 September 2026: INAMI, BDPM, TLV, Kanta, Nomenclátor.

Why do average drug prices by country rarely compare like with like?

Because the four most common comparison errors are all invisible in the file itself.

The price level does not match. A Swedish AIP and a Polish cena zbytu netto are two different stages of the same chain. Comparing them directly overstates the Swedish price by the wholesale margin.

The currency unit is not what it looks like. Denmark publishes every price in øre, a factor of 100 against kroner. Romania publishes in RON, although at least one national methodology document states EUR. Bulgaria switched to the euro on 1 January 2026, and older rates appear in euro without any marker.

VAT differs and changes. Finland raised VAT on medicines to 13.5 percent on 1 January 2026, while the consolidated version of the law still shows the older schedule.

Coverage is partial. The French public database carries a price for 13,648 of 20,900 packs; the rest are not reimbursed. Spain's Nomenclátor covers roughly 20,500 of about 67,000 presentations and carries no manufacturer price at all.

Where are European drug prices free to use, and where do you need a licence?

Of the 30 countries reviewed, nine are legally clear for commercial reuse, ten have an undescribed licence position where a written enquiry decides the matter, four require a licence contract, and two have no usable source. The licence countries are the ones a German or Austrian buyer usually needs first: Germany, Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands.

Two details matter commercially. Denmark charges 2,894.40 DKK per year, roughly 380 euro, and that fee is a cost recovery charge under a legal instrument, not a licence fee, yet the subscription carries no terms of use at all. The Netherlands is the opposite case: the terms are precise, and they allow the licensor to instruct you in writing to cut off an individual paying customer of yours.

Italy shows that free does not mean easy. The AIFA Classe H list carries the ex-factory price per pack under CC BY 4.0, but on 5 September 2026 the two main lists still showed the status of 30 April 2026. For a product that sells price currency, the monthly transparency lists have to be the primary source instead.

How current is each national list?

Update frequency ranges from continuous to twice a year, and the gap decides what you can promise a customer.

• Daily: Belgium, Portugal, Sweden
• Continuous: Finland, Norway
• Every two weeks: Germany, Denmark
• Monthly: most of the remaining countries, Czechia on the 27th
• Quarterly: Poland
• Two to three times a year: Romania

Germany adds a detail that price monitoring products have to respect: wholesalers receive the data on the tenth working day before the effective date, other recipients on the fifth. The same price change is therefore known to different market participants at different times.

What do you need before you can compare prices across countries?

You need the pack, not the product. Prices sit on the pack, and the pack is identified by a national code: PZN in Germany, CNK in Belgium, CIP13 in France, AIC in Italy, Vnr in the Nordics. The national code is the load bearing key. Pack size is a check value, not a key.

Three identifier traps are worth knowing before you plan a mapping:

• In France, CIP13 is a valid GTIN-13, proven across all 20,900 packs.
• In Norway, the assumption that a GTIN can be derived from the article number holds for only 16.5 percent of 9,508 packs.
• In Czechia the GTIN field is empty in all 69,759 records, and in Hungary it is filled in 0.6 percent of cases.

The United Kingdom splits the problem differently again: in dm+d the price sits on the actual pack while the quantity sits on the virtual one.

A workable routine for a cross-country price comparison

1. Fix the price level first. Decide whether you compare at ex-factory or at pharmacy purchase level, then convert everything else to it. Never mix.
2. Check the currency and the unit before any arithmetic. Øre, RON and the Bulgarian euro conversion are the three that break silently.
3. Match on the national pack code, and use pack size only to verify the match.
4. Record coverage. State how many packs of the national universe your file actually carries, as in the French 13,648 of 20,900.
5. Date every figure. A list that is four months old is not a current price, whatever its file name says.
6. Keep the licence status per country in the same table as the data. It decides what you may show a customer, not what you may download.

Where pharmazie.com fits

pharmazie.com is the consolidated pharmaceutical data platform by DACON Datenbank Consulting GmbH that bundles 25+ specialist databases into a single search, exclusively for healthcare professionals. For prices, the platform covers the DACH region and a number of further EU countries, with more countries following in the coming months. The reason this article names sources rather than promising full European coverage is the same reason the country table above exists: the honest answer to a European price question begins with the price level, not with a number.

Conclusion

There is no European drug price, only 30 national answers with different price levels, different update rhythms and different licence rules. If you take one rule from this article, take the first one: establish the price level before you compare anything. The country table above tells you which level you are looking at, and the licence column tells you what you may do with it.

Related reading: European Drug Pricing Database: how cross-border prices work, Pharma pricing Germany: how the system works, and Drug pricing database Germany: data and licensing.