There are two ways to price a passport, and the difference is the product

Digital product passport (DPP) pricing looks confusing across the market because vendors are quoting for two genuinely different things and rarely say which.

The distinction is not commercial packaging. It follows from a physical fact about codes.

The two models

One code per item. Every physical object gets its own unique code. The code is issued, printed, and belongs to that object for its life. Objects are countable, so this can be billed per object.

One code per product model. One code represents a product line and is printed on however many units you make. Nothing is countable at the object level, so billing moves to what a company already knows for compliance: how many product lines, and roughly how many units a year.

A company can use both at once, on different ranges.

Why the choice is a product decision, not a budget one

Because per-object identity is what makes a whole class of capability possible, and without it none of it works.

If a code identifies an individual item, you can lock or recall that item specifically, transfer its ownership to a second owner, attach a service history to it, verify it at a point of sale, and tell a genuine object from a copy.

If a code identifies a model, you cannot do any of that, because there is nothing in the system that distinguishes one unit from another. Two thousand items carrying the same code are, to the system, the same thing.

That is a hard boundary rather than a feature tier. Any vendor offering item-level capability on model-level pricing has either misunderstood their own product or is describing something they cannot deliver.

Which one you need

Model-level is enough when the requirement is EU compliance and nothing else. The passport describes what the product is made of and where it comes from, which is a property of the model rather than of the individual unit.

Item-level is the right answer when any of these matter: counterfeiting, grey market diversion, targeted recall of specific batches, resale and second-hand markets, ownership transfer, warranty tied to the object, or service history.

The practical test: if your risk register mentions counterfeits, diversion or recall precision, item-level pays for itself outside compliance entirely. If it does not, start with the model and keep the option open.

What this means for comparing quotes

When two vendors quote different numbers, check which model they are quoting before comparing them. A per-item quote and a per-model quote are not high and low versions of the same thing.

Two questions settle it. Does one code identify one object or one product line? And which capabilities disappear if we take the cheaper option? If the answer to the second is "none", somebody is wrong about their own product.

Our own prices for both models are published rather than quoted, so this comparison can be made without a sales call.

Ask for pricing at dojunction.online/demo.