Anchor prices in Croatia: what your website must show

On 10 September 2026 the Croatian government adopted two decisions that apply from 1 October to anyone selling to consumers. Under the first, every price must have an anchor price next to it. Under the second, anyone with a website must publish a price list on it in a form a computer can read. The first one is already being written about, because it affects shelves, menus and the price list on the salon wall. The second gets less attention, and it concerns the website alone. Since building websites is what we do, that's the one we'll spend most of this post on.

What an anchor price is

The anchor price, which the decision officially calls the additional price, is the regular retail price of a product or service that applied on the reference day. Regular means without any special forms of sale. If something happened to be on promotion that day, the anchor price is the one that would have applied without the promotion.

From 1 October it's shown next to the current price, clearly, visibly and legibly, wherever a price appears. That means on the shelf, in the menu, on the price list in the salon, in a leaflet, in an advert and on the website. Once set, it doesn't change. The current price can rise and fall as much as it needs to, because this isn't a price cap but an obligation to let customers compare. At a glance they see what something cost on 10 September and what it costs today.

Say a men's haircut cost 18 euros on 10 September 2026, and from November you charge 20. Your price list then shows 20 euros and, next to it, an anchor price of 18 euros. If you haven't touched the price, two identical numbers sit side by side. It looks a bit pointless, we know, but that's what the rule says.

If you want to read the rules yourself, they're two government decisions published in Narodne novine 101/2026. One covers displaying the additional price, the other publishing price lists of products and services. Both were adopted under the Act on Exceptional Price Control Measures, and they replace the May 2025 decision that introduced the anchor price for six categories of goods only.

The dates to know

For services and most products, the reference day is 10 September 2026. The exceptions are food, drinks, cosmetics, cleaning products, toiletries and household products. For those it stays at 2 May 2025, because the anchor price for these categories has existed since last year and simply carries on.

The obligation starts on 1 October 2026. Oddly enough, the date that has already passed is the bigger problem here, not the one still to come. If you didn't record your price list on 10 September, reconstruct it now, from the till or invoicing system, from the last price list you published or from old receipts. And do it before anything gets programmed. A product or service introduced after the reference day has no price to be compared with, and that's the first edge case worth checking with your accountant.

Who has to comply

Every retailer and every registered service provider selling to consumers. Until now the anchor price was something for supermarket chains and six categories of goods to worry about. From October it's also a job for hairdressers, beauticians, restaurants and cafés, car repair shops, charter agencies, car rentals, apartments selling direct, a joiner with a price list, and every online shop. The legal form makes no difference, so a sole trader, a flat rate craft business, a j.d.o.o. and a d.o.o. are all in.

What decides it is the customer, not the trade. Anyone working exclusively for businesses isn't covered, because the decision protects consumers. We checked this for ourselves too. We work with craft businesses and companies, not with consumers, so our price list still reaches you as a quote. But if you issue even a single receipt to a private individual, assume you're in.

Three numbers that get mixed up

From October some price lists will carry three amounts at once, and each one has its own job. It's worth sorting them out once and for all, because this is where most mistakes happen.

The anchor price

Tied to a date, not to a promotion. This is the regular price of 10 September 2026. It's always shown next to every current price, and it never changes. The rule comes from a government decision under the Act on Exceptional Price Control Measures.

The lowest price in the last 30 days

This one is tied to a reduction. When you announce a sale or a discount, you have to show, next to the reduced price, the lowest price you applied in the 30 days before the reduction. It comes from the Consumer Protection Act, has applied since 2022 and only appears while the reduction lasts. When the sale ends, it goes too.

The crossed-out price

This is a marketing element, not a legal term. On its own it meets neither of the two obligations. If the crossed-out amount really is the lowest price of the last 30 days, it can double as the way you show it. But it never replaces the anchor price, because the anchor price doesn't depend on whether you're running a promotion.

Back to our hairdresser. A haircut cost 18 euros on 10 September, from November it costs 20, and in December you drop it to 15 for two weeks. In December the item carries three numbers: the current price of 15 euros, the lowest price of the last 30 days at 20 euros and the anchor price of 18 euros. Once the promotion is over, 20 and 18 remain. Each of the three follows its own rule, and none of them replaces another.

What changes on the website

This is the part we really wrote this post for. For a website, the decisions bring two separate changes, and both are technical.

The anchor price next to every price on the site

Wherever a price appears on the site, the anchor price has to stand next to it. That means the product page, the category list, the menu, a price calculator, a booking form that shows a price per day, and even a Google or Instagram advert that states a price. If your site pulls its prices from one place, you've got off lightly. It's one more field in the database and one more line in the template. But if the prices are typed in by hand in thirty places, now is the time to put a stop to that. Otherwise you'll be making every change sixty times.

A machine-readable price list

The second decision requires anyone with a website to publish a price list on it in a digital form suitable for automatic processing, specifically in .xml or .csv format. For services, the price list contains the name of the service, the retail price, information on any special form of sale and the anchor price. For products it also carries the item code, brand, unit of measure, price per unit, barcode and availability.

Retailers update it once a day, by 8 in the morning at the latest for the current day. Service providers update it whenever a price changes, also by 8 in the morning. Every published version is kept for 30 days from publication or change. So in practice you don't just need the latest file, you need an archive of the old versions too.

The price list has to be available to price collecting programs, in real time. In website terms, that means the file sits at a public address that doesn't change. There's no login, no password and no check whether you're a robot, and the file holds the same figures the customer sees on the site. You don't send it to anyone, not to a ministry and not to any portal. It just sits quietly on your domain, waiting for somebody to fetch it.

Three things won't pass: a PDF of the price list, a photo of the price list and a table on a page. The first two aren't machine-readable, and the third isn't a file. Feel free to keep the PDF for people, but next to it there has to be a .csv or an .xml.

How to solve it without a new website

You don't need a new website for this. It can all be done on the one you have, in three steps. First, prices and anchor prices get one place to live, whether that's the site admin, a spreadsheet or the shop database. Next, the site and the price list both read from that same place, so they can't drift apart. Change a price once and it changes on the page and in the file. And finally, every time the price list changes, the old version is saved with the date in its name and stays available for 30 days. For a service business with a dozen items, that's a day's work. For an online shop, it depends on what it's built on.

If you're only now building an online shop, add this to the list next to fiscalisation and terms of sale, which we covered in what you need for an online shop in Croatia. If you sell tours or accommodation direct, the anchor price goes into the booking form too, next to the price per day. And why a direct booking is worth having in the first place, we worked out in direct bookings and platform commission.

Fines, and why not to wait

The fines are set by the Act on Exceptional Price Control Measures. For a legal entity they run from 3,000 to 30,000 euros, for a sole trader from 1,000 to 20,000 euros, and alongside a company the responsible person is fined separately, from 1,000 to 4,000 euros. The State Inspectorate is in charge of enforcement. These aren't amounts that close a business, but they're more than enough reason not to put the price list off until November.

The second reason is more practical. The anchor price is easiest to reconstruct now, while your September receipts are still to hand. In six months it'll be archaeology.

What to do this week

• Reconstruct your price list as of 10 September 2026, and for food, drinks, cosmetics, cleaning and household products as of 2 May 2025. Save it with the date.
• Go through every place a price is shown, from the site and the menu to the shop window, leaflets and adverts. Each one needs the anchor price too.
• If you have a website, decide where the price list will live, for example at yourdomain.hr/cjenik.csv, and who will update it when a price changes.
• Set up the archive so that every version is saved with its date and stays available for 30 days.
• List the edge cases, such as seasonal prices, packages, prices on request and new items, and send them to your accountant before 1 October.

We can take care of the technical part, on the site you already have. We add the anchor price next to every price, set up an XML or CSV price list that generates itself from the same data as the page, and a 30 day archive that fills itself without anybody having to think about it. You don't need a new website for any of this. And since you're opening up the site for the price list anyway, it's worth going through the visibility basics from SEO for small businesses. A price list that people find easily is usually one a program reads easily too.

Send us your site address at info@strigy.com and tell us what you do. We'll get back to you with what needs to change on your site for it to comply, and roughly how much work that is. And if the site is in a state where it isn't worth doing, we'll tell you that too.