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. The first: next to every price there has to be an anchor price. The second: anyone with a website has to publish a price list on it in a form a computer can read. The first one is being written about already, because it concerns shelves, menus and the price list on the salon wall. The second one gets less attention, and it concerns the website alone. We build those sites, so that is the one we will spend most of this post on.

What an anchor price is

The anchor price, which the decision calls the additional price, is the regular retail price of a product or service that applied on the reference day. Regular means without special forms of sale: if something was on promotion that day, the anchor price is the one that would have applied had there been no promotion.

From 1 October it is shown next to the current price, clearly, visibly and legibly, wherever a price is shown: 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 does not change. The current price may rise and fall as much as it needs to, because this is not a price cap but an obligation to compare. The customer sees at a glance what something cost on 10 September and what it costs today.

In concrete terms: if a men's haircut cost 18 euros on 10 September 2026 and from November you charge 20, the price list shows 20 euros and, next to it, an anchor price of 18 euros. If you have not touched the price, two identical numbers stand there. It looks redundant, but it is what the rule says.

The legal framework, for those who want to look it up: two government decisions published in Narodne novine 101/2026, one on displaying the additional price and one on publishing price lists of products and services, both adopted under the Act on Exceptional Price Control Measures. They replace the May 2025 decision that introduced the anchor price for six categories of goods only.

The dates to know

The reference day for services and most products 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 those categories has existed since last year and simply carries on.

The obligation starts on 1 October 2026. The date that has already passed is the bigger problem here, not the one still to come: if you did not 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 is 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 a matter for supermarket chains and six categories of goods. From October it is a matter 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 does not matter: a sole trader, a flat rate craft business, a j.d.o.o. and a d.o.o. are all in.

The dividing line is the customer, not the trade. Anyone working exclusively for businesses is not covered, because the decision protects consumers. We checked for ourselves, for instance: we work with craft businesses and companies, not with consumers, so our price list still arrives in the form of a quote. If you issue a single receipt to a private individual, assume you are in.

Three numbers that get mixed up

From October a price list will sometimes carry three amounts at once, and each has a different job. It is worth separating them once and for all, because this is where most of the mistakes get made.

The anchor price

Tied to a date, not to a promotion. The regular price of 10 September 2026, shown always, next to every current price, and never changed. It is prescribed by a government decision under the Act on Exceptional Price Control Measures.

The lowest price in the last 30 days

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

The crossed-out price

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 serve as the way of showing it. It never replaces the anchor price, because the anchor price does not depend on whether you are running a promotion.

On the hairdresser example it looks like this. 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. When the promotion is over, 20 and 18 remain. Three numbers, three different rules, and none of them replaces another.

What changes on the website

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

The anchor price next to every price on the site

Wherever a price is shown on the site, the anchor price has to stand next to it: on the product page, in the category list, in the menu, in a price calculator, in a booking form that shows a price per day, in a Google or Instagram advert that states a price. If the site pulls its prices from one place, that is one more field in the database and one more line in the template. If the prices are typed by hand in thirty places, now is the moment for that to stop, because otherwise you will 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, 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 on every price change, also by 8 in the morning. Every published version is kept for 30 days from publication or change, so in practice you need an archive of old versions, not just the latest file.

The price list has to be available to price collecting programs, in real time. Translated into website terms: the file sits at a public address that does not change, with no login, no password, no check whether you are a robot, and it returns the same figures the customer sees on the site. It is not sent to anyone, not to a ministry and not to a portal. It simply sits on your domain and waits for somebody to fetch it.

Three things that do not pass: a PDF of the price list, a photo of the price list and a table on a page. The first two are not machine-readable, the third is not a file. You can 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

This is not a reason for a new website. On the existing one it is solved in three steps. First, prices and anchor prices get one place to live, whether that is the site admin, a spreadsheet or the shop database. Second, the site and the price list both read from that same place, so they cannot drift apart: change a price once and it changes on the page and in the file. Third, 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 is a day's work. For an online shop it depends on what it is built on.

If you are only now building an online shop, this goes on the list next to fiscalisation and terms of sale, which we set out 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 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. Enforcement is by the State Inspectorate. It is not an amount that closes a business, but it is an amount that stops the price list being put off until November.

The second reason is more practical. The anchor price gets reconstructed now, while the September receipts are still to hand. In six months it is 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, and save it with the date.
• Go through every place a price is shown: the site, the menu, the shop window, leaflets, adverts. Each one gets the anchor price too.
• If you have a website, decide where the price list will live, for example yourdomain.hr/cjenik.csv, and who changes it when a price changes.
• Agree the archive: every version dated, available for 30 days.
• List the edge cases, seasonal prices, packages, prices on request and new items, and send them to your accountant before 1 October.

The technical part of this is what we do, on the site you already have: the anchor price shown next to every price, an XML or CSV price list generated on its own from the same data as the page, and a 30 day archive that fills itself without anybody having to think about it. A new website is not needed for this. And since you are opening up the site for the price list anyway, it is worth going through the visibility basics from SEO for small businesses, because the price list people find easily is usually the one a program reads easily too.

Send us your site address at info@strigy.com and tell us what you do. We come back with a list of what needs to change on your site for it to comply, and an estimate of how much work that is. If the site is in a state where that is not worth doing, we will say that too.