Questions
The date, the legal basis, evidence, and the limits of what we do. If something is missing, write to us and we will add it.
- From when does this apply?
- From 27 September 2026. Directive (EU) 2024/825 was adopted in February 2024; member states had to transpose it by 27 March 2026, and the national rules apply from 27 September 2026. There is no transition period for copy published earlier — what counts is what is in the shop on that day.
- What is the legal basis?
- Directive (EU) 2024/825 of the European Parliament and of the Council on empowering consumers for the green transition. It amends Directive 2005/29/EC on unfair commercial practices and Directive 2011/83/EU on consumer rights. What concerns us most are points 4a, 4b and 4c added to Annex I of Directive 2005/29/EC: practices regarded as unfair in all circumstances, where the effect on the consumer is no longer weighed at all. Every finding in the report names its own basis.
- Are the rules the same in every EU country?
- Yes, within these provisions. The directive is maximum harmonisation, so member states may adopt neither softer nor stricter rules here. What differs is sanctions and national procedure, not which claims need substantiating.
- What does it mean for a claim to be substantiated?
- That you hold evidence matching what the copy says, covering the same scope as the claim. For biodegradability that is a standard and a test report: under what conditions, in what time, to what degree. For recycled content, the share of material and what it refers to: the product or the packaging. For a generic claim such as eco-friendly, a demonstration of recognised excellent environmental performance relevant to the claim. Offsetting emissions does not support a claim that a product is climate neutral.
- Can I check a competitor's shop?
- No, and there never will be. Before we read anything in, we ask you to confirm control over the domain — with a DNS TXT record or a file in the /.well-known directory. That is a product boundary, not a technical limit: a tool for auditing other people's shops is an informer's tool. The same rule protects you, because nobody is building a file on your shop here either.
- What do I get for free?
- A scan of the whole catalogue of one proven shop — no SKU limit and no sample. The numbers are the real ones: how many products were checked, how many findings there are, and how they split by risk. The 25 most serious findings are shown in detail; the rest stay as locked rows under a counter, so you can see how many there are. The PDF report and the full list belong to the one-off audit and to the subscriptions — the results of the preview stay on screen.
- What happens at the end of a subscription period?
- The subscription renews automatically for another month or year, and Stripe charges the card on file. If the payment fails, the plan runs until the end of the paid period and the organization then goes back to the free preview — nothing is deleted. After a cancellation the plan runs until the end of the period and does not renew. The one-off audit is not a subscription and never renews.
- What happens when my catalogue outgrows the plan's SKU limit?
- Nothing is deleted and nothing stops scanning — the catalogue you already have stays under watch in full. The limit bites on growth: the next import or API push that would cross it is refused whole, with a note of which plan would hold it. The free preview has no SKU limit — it has a depth limit.
- I have several shops. Do I need a plan for each one?
- A plan covers one shop, and each further shop is its own plan with its own SKU ceiling and its own scans. A shop you have not bought a plan for stays on Free — it still gets a free scan and sees real findings, it simply has no document, no register and no continuous supervision. You can put one shop on Pro and leave the rest on Free.
- I bought a one-off audit. Is it credited against a subscription?
- No. Today the audit and a subscription are bought separately, and neither lowers the price of the other. If that changes, it will be said here and on the pricing page.
- Where do you keep my data?
- In the European Union. The application, the database and the reports are hosted in European data centres, and PDF reports go to object storage in an EU region. You upload the catalogue yourself and can delete it, with your account, whenever you like. The details are in the privacy policy.
- Is this legal advice?
- No. Substantly is not a law firm, issues no legal opinions, and does not judge whether your shop meets the requirements. The report points at risk in the wording and names the rule, the legal reference and how sure the analysis was, so that a person at your company, or your lawyer, can decide on specifics.
- Do you change the copy in my shop?
- No. The report carries a suggested rewrite for every passage it marks, but whether to use it is a decision a person at your company makes. We have no write access to your catalogue and do not want any.
- What languages does the analysis work in?
- In Polish, German and English. The lexicon recognises inflected forms, and in German compounds as well; the language model weighs the context of the sentence. The rules are the same across the EU, so another language is another dictionary rather than another set of provisions.
- How do I know a finding is right?
- Every finding shows the matched passage in your own text, the rule that fired, and how sure the analysis was — including when it was not sure, or when the hit came from the lexicon alone and the model never weighed it. The lexicon version is stored with every finding, so the same scan can be repeated and compared.
The text of the directive is on EUR-Lex. The terms on which we provide the service are in the terms; what we do with the data is in the privacy policy.