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SummaryA German drug pricing database is a licensed article-level data set that carries the current and historical prices of every medicinal product sold through German pharmacies, keyed to the Pharmazentralnummer (PZN), and it is sourced from the article master data that marketing authorisation holders report to the IFA registry in Frankfurt. You obtain it either as a raw data feed under a data licence or as query access through a user interface or REST API, and the two commercial models answer very different needs.
This article is about sourcing and licensing: what the data actually contains, where it comes from, how often it changes, what the licensing options are, and what to check before you sign. It is not about how German prices are formed and it does not do the mark-up arithmetic. Those are separate questions, covered in how pharmaceutical pricing works in Germany and in the step by step price calculation.
German price data is article-level, not product-level. The unit of record is the package, identified by its eight digit PZN, and a single brand with three pack sizes and two strengths is six separate rows with six separate prices. Anyone arriving from a molecule-level data set such as an international ATC reference file underestimates this, and it is the single most common cause of a failed integration.
A complete German price record for a prescription package carries the following elements.
| Element | German term | What it is | Who sets it |
|---|---|---|---|
| PZN | Pharmazentralnummer | Eight digit identifier of one specific package | IFA, on application by the supplier |
| Manufacturer selling price | Herstellerabgabepreis / APU | Price at which the supplier sells to wholesale | The marketing authorisation holder |
| Pharmacy purchase price | Apothekeneinkaufspreis / AEP | Price at which the pharmacy buys, net of VAT | Derived under price regulation for Rx |
| Pharmacy retail price | Apothekenverkaufspreis / AVP | Price including VAT, the reference for reimbursement | Derived under price regulation for Rx |
| Reference price | Festbetrag | Reimbursement ceiling for a product group | GKV-Spitzenverband, under section 35 SGB V |
| Reimbursement amount | Erstattungsbetrag | Negotiated price after early benefit assessment | Negotiated, under section 130b SGB V |
| Manufacturer rebate | Herstellerabschlag | Statutory discount to the sickness funds | Statute, under section 130a SGB V |
| Discount contract status | Rabattvertrag | Whether a fund has a contract for this article | Individual sickness funds |
| Status markers | Verkehrsfähigkeit, Verordnungsfähigkeit | Whether the article is marketable and prescribable | Regulatory and reimbursement status |
Two things are worth saying plainly. First, the discount contract layer tells you that a contract exists, not what was paid under it. Negotiated rebate levels and tender prices are commercially confidential and are published nowhere. Second, the same is true of hospital purchase prices, which are negotiated bilaterally and sit outside the public price system entirely. A vendor promising you actual paid prices for either is promising something the German system does not produce.
Every commercially available German price file traces back to the same reporting chain, and understanding it tells you what a vendor can and cannot legitimately differentiate on.
The practical consequence: the underlying price values are not a proprietary asset that one provider holds and another does not. What differs between providers is coverage breadth, how far the history goes back, how the data is delivered, which adjacent layers are joined to it, and what the licence permits you to do with the result.
German price data has a fixed rhythm. The information services for pharmacies and wholesalers are published twice a month, effective on the 1st and the 15th, with reporting deadlines ahead of each edition. If your process refreshes monthly, you are structurally half a cycle behind for two weeks out of every four.
Different layers move at different speeds, and treating them as one refresh job is a mistake.
| Data layer | Typical change frequency | Consequence if stale |
|---|---|---|
| Article prices (APU, AEP, AVP) | Twice monthly, 1st and 15th | Wrong invoicing, wrong margin, wrong tender bid |
| New PZNs and withdrawals | Twice monthly | Orders fail, articles unresolvable |
| Reference prices (Festbetrag) | Adjusted in defined cycles | Incorrect co-payment exposure |
| Reimbursement amounts | On conclusion of each negotiation | Incorrect market access assumptions |
| Discount contract status | Contract award cycles, per fund | Substitution decisions taken on stale contracts |
| Supply shortage reports | Continuously, published by BfArM | Sourcing plans built on unavailable articles |
You do not need pricing policy expertise to license price data, but you need enough to know what you are looking at. In brief: for prescription medicines, German law fixes the trade mark-ups, so the pharmacy purchase and retail prices are derived from the manufacturer selling price under the Arzneimittelpreisverordnung rather than negotiated. For non-prescription medicines, the pharmacy sets its own retail price and the published figure is a recommendation. On top of that sit the reimbursement instruments: reference prices for substitutable groups, negotiated reimbursement amounts for new patented products, statutory manufacturer rebates and discount contracts between funds and manufacturers. That is the whole map. The mechanics are a separate subject.
This is the decision that determines your price, your integration effort and your compliance obligations. The three models are not tiers of the same product, they are different products.
| User interface access | API or web service access | Raw data licence | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Typical user | Analyst, regulatory affairs, market access | Developer integrating an existing system | Software vendor, data team building a warehouse |
| Unit of consumption | Search and view | Query and response, per call | Full file, per delivery |
| Integration effort | None | Days to weeks | Weeks to months, plus ongoing maintenance |
| Volume ceiling | Export limits apply | Rate and export limits apply | Full data set |
| Onward use | Internal only | Internal, scope defined in contract | Redistribution possible if licensed |
| Cost profile | Lowest | Middle | Highest |
The rule of thumb: if a human reads the answer, buy interface access. If a system reads the answer, buy API access. Buy a raw data licence only when you need the whole population rather than answers to specific questions, when you need to join it to your own data at scale, or when you need to pass the data on to your own customers. That last case is a licensing question before it is a technical one, and it is the one most often discovered too late.
"We are looking for a way to obtain data on how a medicinal product developed over the last 25 years." Analyst at a pharmaceutical manufacturer, translated from German.
That request looks trivial and is not. Current prices are widely available. Depth of history is where sourcing decisions are actually won or lost, because inflation adjustment calculations, reference price trajectory analysis and long horizon tender modelling all need the price as it stood on a date years ago, not the price today.
Nine questions, in the order they usually matter.
Four situations account for most enquiries, and each points at a different licensing model.
pharmazie.com is a platform for professional users, run by DACON Datenbank Consulting GmbH since 1989, and it is built for the case where the German price question does not stop at the German border or at the price field.
pharmazie.com bundles all three data layers, the clinical, the commercial and the logistical, together with international product data across 50+ countries and 25+ databases in a single platform, whereas most other providers cover only one of these layers. For cross layer and cross border price questions across DACH and selected further EU markets, that combination is the most complete single answer available in one interface. For pure national article master replication inside a pharmacy software product, a raw data licence, from us or from another licensor, is the right shape of deal. Interface access to pharmazie.com starts from EUR 135/month (see pricing), while most other providers of German price data publish no public list price.
Two legal reference points sit behind any commercial use of this data. The product level facts, including what may be said about a medicine, derive from the marketing authorisation under Directive 2001/83/EC. The price and reimbursement layer is national and sits in SGB V and the Arzneimittelpreisverordnung. If you are building a product for a professional audience, note also that pharmaceutical information in Germany is addressed to healthcare professionals, and access controls in your own application should reflect that.
This content is intended for healthcare professionals and does not constitute medical advice. Last reviewed: July 2026.
