Anchor prices and machine-readable price lists in Croatia from 1 October 2026 — what it means for your business

What is an anchor price

An anchor price (sidrena cijena), also called an additional price, is a reference price from the past displayed alongside the current price, so customers can see whether something has become more expensive.

For all products and services newly covered by the rule, the anchor price is the one that applied on 10 September 2026 — the regular price, excluding sales, discounts and other special offers.

For categories already covered before — food, beverages, cosmetics, cleaning products, toiletries and household goods — the earlier reference date of 2 May 2025 still applies.

Your first concrete task: pull the prices that were valid on 10 September 2026 from your accounting software or archive and save that document. Everything else builds on it, and the longer you wait, the harder it becomes to reconstruct.

Who this applies to

Both obligations apply to selling goods and providing services to consumers. If you invoice only other businesses, you are outside the scope. If you serve the general public, the obligation applies regardless of your legal form, company size or industry.

That means it now covers hair salons, car repair shops, restaurants, gyms, tradespeople, detailing studios — businesses that have never had anything to do with additional price display before.

Where the anchor price must appear

Clearly, visibly and legibly next to the current price, in every location:

• at the point of sale and in the service premises
• on flyers and posters
• in digital advertising
• on websites

One detail that's easy to miss: if you publish prices on Facebook or Instagram, the anchor price must appear there too — whether or not you have your own website.

The second obligation: a machine-readable price list

This is the part that most affects website owners.

If you have a website, you must publish your price list there in a format suitable for automated processing — XML or CSV. Prices written into the page text or a price list in PDF form are not enough.

What the file must contain:

• the name of the product or service
• the retail price
• the anchor price
• a barcode, for products
• a note on any special forms of sale

Update deadlines differ by activity. Retailers publish an updated price list every working day by 8 a.m. at the latest. Service providers update it after every price change, by 8 a.m. on the day the change takes effect. The published file must remain available for at least 30 days.

If you don't have a website, this obligation doesn't apply to you. Nothing in the decisions requires you to create one. In that case your preparation comes down to displaying anchor prices at your premises and in advertising, and keeping proof of your 10 September prices.

What this means technically

For most small websites, this isn't solved by adding a new price list page. You need a file at a fixed address — for example yourdomain.hr/cjenik.xml — generated from your price source and updated on the required schedule.

How to implement it depends on how your site is built:

• Online shop — prices already live in a database, so the feed can be generated automatically from existing data. This is the easiest case.
• Presentation site with a price list — you need a data source and a script that turns it into XML or CSV.
• Site without prices — if you don't publish prices anywhere yet, the first decision is how you'll maintain them.

Editing the file by hand every time a price changes is technically possible, but with more than a handful of items it quickly becomes unmanageable and error-prone. Automation pays off from a few dozen items onwards.

One thing worth knowing

The price list obligation currently stems from a government decision based on the Act on Exceptional Price Control Measures — a temporary measure. But from 17 November the same obligation enters the Consumer Protection Act and becomes permanent.

In other words, waiting for it to quietly disappear isn't a strategy.

What to do before 1 October

1. Retrieve and save the prices valid on 10 September 2026
2. List every place where you display prices — premises, flyers, website, social media
3. Add the anchor price to each of them
4. If you have a website, prepare the price list in XML or CSV format
5. Decide who maintains that file going forward

This article is informative in nature and does not constitute legal advice. For how the rules apply to your specific business, consult the official text of the decisions in Narodne novine 101/2026 or speak to your accountant.

Need a price list on your website?

We set up automatic XML and CSV price list generation for existing websites and online shops — so the file updates itself, without anyone editing it every morning.

Call 091 556 4037 or send us an enquiry, and we'll look at how your site is built and what the simplest solution is.