In short and in plain language
Many goods are sold by weight, volume, length or area. Coffee, oil, fabric and tiles are examples.
Then a shop must show two prices. The first is the price of the pack. The second is the unit price. It says what one kilo, one liter or one meter costs.
This lets customers compare packs of different sizes. Both prices must be seen together. A link is not enough. A note that only shows up under the mouse is not enough either.
There are only a few exceptions. One example is very small packs with less than 10 grams.
The shop should store the amount and the unit for each product. Then it works out the unit price by itself. This also applies to ads and to product lists on Google.
Anyone who sells coffee, olive oil, pet food, gift ribbon or tiles online shows a second price next to the pack price: the unit price per kilogram, liter, meter or square meter. It lets customers compare the 250-gram bag with the one-kilo bag, and one shop’s offer with another’s. The obligation is set out in Section 4 of the German Price Indication Ordinance (PAngV); the permitted reference units are governed by Section 5. Because a missing unit price can be spotted with one look at the product page, it is an obvious starting point for cease-and-desist letters. The cause is then usually not the law but the product data: the fill quantity only appears in the product title, a variant has no unit, the feed for shopping ads does not pass on a unit price, or a sale price does not recalculate it. This article shows when the obligation applies, which exemptions exist, which reference unit is required, how the unit price appears on the product page, in listings, for variants and in ads, and how it is maintained as a product data field so that the shop calculates it by itself. It places the legal situation in the context of online shop work and does not replace legal advice in an individual case.
Key takeaways
- Anyone offering consumers goods by weight, volume, length or area, or advertising them with prices, states the unit price next to the total price in an unambiguous, clearly recognizable and easily legible way (Section 4(1) PAngV).
- Section 5(1) PAngV sets the reference unit: 1 kilogram, 1 liter, 1 cubic meter, 1 meter or 1 square meter. A 250 g pack of coffee for €7.49 therefore carries a unit price of €29.96 per kilogram, not a price per 100 grams.
- Exemptions are narrow, for example for packs below 10 grams or 10 milliliters, for sets of products of different kinds that are not mixed, for decorative cosmetics and for certain perfumes (Section 4(3) PAngV).
- Total price and unit price must be perceptible at a glance. A unit price that only appears behind a link or on mouse-over is not permitted according to the explanatory memorandum (Bundesrat document 669/21).
- Advertising with a price needs the unit price too. In Google Merchant Center, unit_pricing_measure is required for such products in the EU; for offers in Germany the base measure should be 1 kg, 1 l, 1 m or 1 m² (Section 5(1) PAngV).
- Fill quantity, unit and reference quantity belong in the product data model as fields so the shop calculates the unit price for each variant itself. Breaches can be punished with a fine of up to €25,000 (Section 3(2) WiStrG 1954).
When the unit price obligation applies
The Price Indication Ordinance governs how traders state prices for goods or services to consumers (Section 1(1) PAngV). First, it requires the total price, that is, the price including VAT and other price components (Section 2 no. 3 and Section 3(1) PAngV). The unit price is added when goods in prepackages, open packs or as sales units without wrapping are offered by weight, volume, length or area. Anyone who offers such goods to consumers or, as a supplier, advertises them to consumers with prices must state the unit price next to the total price in an unambiguous, clearly recognizable and easily legible way (Section 4(1) PAngV).
The unit price is the price per unit of quantity of a product, including VAT and other price components (Section 2 no. 4 PAngV). It is therefore calculated from the gross price the customer actually pays. The revised ordinance took effect on May 28, 2022 (PAngV, footnote on entry into force) and restructured the rules: what used to sit together in Section 2 of the old ordinance is now split between the obligation in Section 4 and the reference units in Section 5 (Bundesrat document 669/21). Anyone with texts, templates or checklists from before that date in the shop may still find the old references there.
What matters is the basis on which the product is sold. A pack of coffee with 250 grams, a bottle of oil with 750 milliliters, a roll of gift ribbon with 25 meters or a pack of tiles covering 1.8 square meters is measured by quantity. A cooking pot, a T-shirt or a charging cable, on the other hand, is sold by the piece; no unit price is required, even though the product has a weight. Goods sold by quantity also turn up in ranges that people do not immediately associate with it: bird food in a bucket, potting soil in a bag, wall paint in a can, insulation mats in a pack or powder for the workshop. Anyone who sells in a store and online knows the obligation from the shelf label; it applies in the same way in the shop, and websites and shops for retail should provide for it from the start.
Loose goods follow a separate rule. Loose goods are unpackaged goods measured in the presence of consumers, by consumers themselves or at their request (Section 2 no. 5 PAngV), and for them only the unit price has to be stated (Section 4(2) PAngV). In an online shop this mainly comes into question for goods cut to the required length only after the order, such as fabric or chain by the meter. Even then the shop should calculate and display the amount for the chosen quantity before purchase, because that is the amount the customer pays in the end.
Weight
Coffee, flour, pet food, potting soil, washing powder. The reference unit is 1 kilogram; for goods usually sold in quantities from 50 kilograms, the customary unit applies.
Volume
Oil, beverages, wall paint, cleaning agents, cosmetics in bottles and tubes. The reference unit is 1 liter, from customary quantities of 100 liters the usual unit; the ordinance also provides for 1 cubic meter.
Length
Gift ribbon, fabrics, cables, chains, moldings. The reference unit is 1 meter; for goods usually sold in quantities from 100 meters, the customary unit applies.
Area
Tiles, parquet, laminate, films, turf mats. The reference unit is 1 square meter, calculated from the area that one sales unit covers.
Exemptions: when the unit price may be omitted
The ordinance contains one general and several specific exemptions. The general one is in the second sentence of Section 4(1) PAngV: the unit price may be omitted if it is identical to the total price. This covers packs that contain exactly the reference quantity, such as a one-kilo bag of flour or a one-liter bottle of milk. The specific exemptions are listed in Section 4(3) PAngV. For online shops, the following are the most relevant in practice.
| Exemption | Provision | Typical case in the shop |
|---|---|---|
| Nominal weight or nominal volume below 10 grams or 10 milliliters | Section 4(3) no. 1 PAngV | Spice samples, sample sachets, miniatures |
| Goods made up of products of different kinds that are not mixed or blended with each other | Section 4(3) no. 2 PAngV | Gift box with tea, cookies and a mug |
| Chewing and snuff tobacco with a nominal weight of up to 25 grams | Section 4(3) no. 6 PAngV | Chewing and snuff tobacco in small tins |
| Cosmetic products used exclusively for coloring or beautifying the skin, hair or nails | Section 4(3) no. 7 PAngV | Lipstick, nail polish, eye shadow; products that also care for or clean are not covered by the wording |
| Perfumes and perfumed toilet waters with at least 3 percent by volume of perfume oil and at least 70 percent by volume of pure ethyl alcohol | Section 4(3) no. 8 PAngV | Perfume and eau de toilette with a matching formulation according to the manufacturer; scented shower gel or body lotion is not covered |
Numbers 3 to 5 concern small direct marketers and stores where customers are mainly served, goods supplied as part of a service, and vending machines (Section 4(3) PAngV). They usually do not fit an online shop with a cart and shipping. Anyone relying on an exemption should tie it to the individual item and document it instead of exempting entire categories across the board: a gift box with tea and cookies is different from a three-pack of the same tea, and a tinted moisturizer is different from a lipstick.
Multipacks
The reference unit under Section 5 PAngV
Which reference unit applies is governed not by Section 4 but by Section 5 PAngV. The unit of quantity for the unit price is 1 kilogram, 1 liter, 1 cubic meter, 1 meter or 1 square meter of the product (Section 5(1) PAngV). Only for goods usually sold in quantities of 100 liters, 50 kilograms or 100 meters and more must the unit be used that corresponds to general market practice (Section 5(1) PAngV). For heating oil, bagged goods on a pallet or cable on a drum, that can be a larger unit than a liter, a kilogram or a meter.
One deviation that still lurks in older shop data is the unit price per 100 grams for small packs. The government draft of the new version contained a sentence allowing 100 grams or 100 milliliters as the unit of quantity for goods whose nominal weight or volume usually does not exceed 250 grams or 250 milliliters (Bundesrat document 669/21). The explanatory memorandum describes the paragraph as a verbatim takeover from the old ordinance (Bundesrat document 669/21). The current version of Section 5(1) PAngV no longer contains this sentence. For a 250-gram pack of coffee the unit price must therefore be stated per kilogram, and a shop that still outputs values per 100 grams should switch the reference unit in its product data.
Special rules apply to some product groups. For loose goods sold by weight or volume, 1 kilogram or 100 grams, 1 liter or 100 milliliters is to be used depending on market practice (Section 5(2) PAngV). Where a drained weight has to be stated, for example for canned vegetables or fruit, the unit price refers to that drained weight (Section 5(4) PAngV). For household detergents, a typical application can serve as the unit of quantity; for individually portioned washing and cleaning agents this applies provided the number of portions is stated in addition to the total quantity (Section 5(5) PAngV).
How the shop calculates
| Product | Fill quantity | Total price | Unit price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coffee, whole bean | 250 g | €7.49 | €29.96 / 1 kg |
| Olive oil | 750 ml | €8.99 | €11.99 / 1 l |
| Gift ribbon | 25 m | €4.50 | €0.18 / 1 m |
| Floor tiles, pack | 1.8 m² | €53.10 | €29.50 / 1 m² |
| Canned peas | 400 g, drained weight 240 g | €1.79 | €7.46 / 1 kg drained weight |
Where the unit price has to appear
The old ordinance required the unit price “in the immediate vicinity of the total price” (Bundesrat document 669/21). The new version instead requires it to be stated in an unambiguous, clearly recognizable and easily legible way (Section 4(1) PAngV). With this, the legislator brought the wording into line with the European Price Indication Directive (Bundesrat document 669/21), under which the selling price and the unit price must be unambiguous, easily identifiable and clearly legible (Article 4(1) Directive 98/6/EC). In addition, mandatory information must be clearly attributable to the offer and easily recognizable and clearly legible (Section 1(3) PAngV).
This does not give more leeway than the new wording might suggest. The federal government’s explanatory memorandum states that the clarification is likely to have little practical relevance in the end (Bundesrat document 669/21). It interprets good recognizability to mean that total price and unit price must still be perceptible at a glance, and expressly names as impermissible the case where the unit price in online retail can only be selected via a separate link or is only visible on mouse-over (Bundesrat document 669/21).
The ordinance does not prescribe a fixed font size. The legislator examined this and decided against it (Bundesrat document 669/21). A DIN standardization procedure on how to present total price and unit price ran from November 2013 to September 2017 without the parties reaching consensus on a draft standard (Bundesrat document 669/21). The individual case therefore remains decisive, and the obvious solution is the simple one: the unit price sits directly below or next to the total price, in the same typeface as the rest of the price block, with sufficient contrast and without anything having to be expanded first.
- Product page: right at the total price, also in the mobile view and after switching variants
- Category, search and filter listings, as soon as a price appears there
- Quick view, comparison list and wish list when they show prices
- Homepage teasers, promotional banners and landing pages with product prices
- Newsletters, brochure PDFs and social media posts that advertise with a price
- Product feeds for price comparison sites and shopping ads
For accessibility, the same applies as for any price. The unit price is real text rather than part of an image, and it reaches the same contrast as body text. A light gray tiny line below the price looks discreet in the layout but can fail on both counts: the good legibility required by Section 4(1) PAngV and the requirements for accessible websites.
Variants, sets and sale prices
With variants, the unit price becomes a data question. A coffee in 250 grams, 500 grams and 1 kilogram has three total prices and three unit prices. If the customer chooses a different size, the unit price changes with it. If the category listing shows the from-price of the smallest variant, the unit price of exactly that variant belongs next to it, not the lower unit price of the large pack. Otherwise two figures appear there that belong to different items, which is hard to reconcile with the principles of price clarity and price accuracy (Section 1(3) PAngV).
Sets and gift boxes made up of products of different kinds that are not mixed are exempt (Section 4(3) no. 2 PAngV). A set of three jars of the same honey is not covered; here the unit price applies to the total quantity. For beverages with a deposit, the deposit amount is shown next to the total price and not included in it, and it is disregarded when calculating the unit price (Section 7 PAngV). A lemonade for €1.19 in a 0.5-liter bottle therefore has a unit price of €2.38 per liter, regardless of the deposit amount.
Price promotions involve two rules that need to be kept apart. Section 9(1) PAngV exempts, among other things, individual price reductions and general price reductions that are limited by calendar days and announced from the obligation to state a new total price or unit price. If the shop displays the reduced price as the item price, however, it is better to calculate the unit price from exactly that amount, because a unit price that still matches the old price makes the price block contradictory. For announcing the reduction itself, the lowest total price of the last 30 days before the reduction has to be stated (Section 11(1) PAngV); how to implement this in the shop is covered in the article on strike-through prices and the 30-day rule.
Ads, feeds and structured data
The obligation does not end at the edge of the shop. Section 4(1) PAngV expressly covers anyone who, as a supplier, advertises to consumers with prices, and the directive requires the unit price in any advertisement that mentions the selling price (Article 3(4) Directive 98/6/EC). A newsletter featuring “coffee 250 g for €7.49” therefore needs the same unit price line as the product page, and the same applies to Google Ads and social media ads that mention a price.
For shopping ads and free product listings, Google has built the requirement into its feed specification. The unit_pricing_measure attribute is required for certain products advertised in the EU, the EFTA countries and the United Kingdom, because stating the price per unit is mandatory there (Google Merchant Center Help). The reference quantity is supplied via unit_pricing_base_measure; there Google supports the numeric values 1, 2, 4, 8, 10 and 100 with a unit as well as the fixed combinations 75 cl, 750 ml, 50 kg and 1,000 kg (Google Merchant Center Help).
Two details matter for shops in Germany. First, Google’s own examples work with reference quantities such as 100 ml, and for better comparability Google may display a different base measure than the one submitted (Google Merchant Center Help). For offers in Germany the base measure should nevertheless be 1 kg, 1 l, 1 m or 1 m², so that feed and shop use the same unit under Section 5(1) PAngV. Second, at most two decimal places are allowed, and longer values are rounded (Google Merchant Center Help). Anyone planning Black Week shopping campaigns should therefore feed the unit price values from the same product data as the shop before the promotion starts.
id COFFEE-250
title Coffee whole bean 250 g
price 7.49 EUR
unit_pricing_measure 250 g
unit_pricing_base_measure 1 kg
Unit price in shop and ad: 29.96 EUR / 1 kgIn the structured data of the product page, the UnitPriceSpecification type represents the unit price. The referenceQuantity property names the reference quantity for which a price applies (Schema.org), and units are given with unitCode as a UN/CEFACT code of 3 characters (Schema.org). Google also mentions unitText and maps unit_pricing_measure to the property Offer.priceSpecification.referenceQuantity (Google Merchant Center Help). Which other markup belongs on a complete product page is covered in the article on structured data and rich results.
The unit price as a product data field
A unit price typed into the description by hand will be wrong after the next price update. It only becomes reliable when the shop calculates it itself from three values: the fill quantity of the sales unit, its unit and the reference quantity. In Shopware these fields are called selling unit, product unit and base unit, and the documentation lists all three as required for calculating the unit price (Shopware documentation). The unit price is shown separately only if the base unit differs from the selling unit (Shopware documentation), which matches the exemption for identical prices in the second sentence of Section 4(1) PAngV.
Liter and kilogram come predefined there (Shopware documentation). For goods sold by the meter or by area, you create meter and square meter as additional product units, which the settings expressly provide for (Shopware documentation). The fill quantity itself usually comes from the ERP system, a supplier catalog or a product information system, where it is sometimes only part of the item text, such as “Coffee 250g bean”. During import it should move into separate fields as a number and a unit, and the import should reject obvious errors. A one-kilo bag that arrives with fill quantity 1 and unit gram would otherwise show a unit price a thousand times too high. The same principle applies to the mandatory information under GPSR and ProdSG: mandatory information belongs in fields, not in free text.
- List all active items in categories with goods sold by weight, volume, length or area that have no fill quantity.
- Cross-check items that have a fill quantity but no unit price displayed on the product page and in listings.
- Flag unit prices that lie well outside the usual range of their category; a mixed-up unit is often behind them.
- Check variants one by one: each size needs its own fill quantity and its own unit price.
- Compare the product feed with the shop: unit_pricing_measure must match the fill quantity, unit_pricing_base_measure the reference unit.
- Record exemptions per item with a reason, for example “set of products of different kinds”.
Whether a shop addresses business customers only changes the starting point, because the PAngV governs price indications to consumers (Section 1(1) PAngV). Mixed shops show the unit price at least in the view for consumers. How customer groups, net prices and approvals are cleanly separated is described in the article on the B2B online shop with customer groups and net prices.
What a missing unit price can cost
Anyone who, intentionally or negligently and contrary to the first sentence of Section 4(1) PAngV, fails to state the unit price, or states it incorrectly or incompletely, commits an administrative offense (Section 20 PAngV). The offense can be punished with a fine of up to €25,000 (Section 3(2) WiStrG 1954). What matters most for the shop is that fine proceedings can run independently of a dispute under competition law.
Competition law applies alongside. Information that consumers may not be denied under legal provisions implementing European directives on commercial communication also counts as material (Section 5b(4) UWG). Anyone who withholds material information that consumers need to make an informed decision acts unfairly if its absence can influence their transactional decision (Section 5a(1) UWG). Claims for injunctive relief can be asserted by, among others, competitors, registered trade associations and qualified consumer associations (Section 8(3) UWG), and before court proceedings they are to send a warning letter (Section 13(1) UWG).
For competitors, Section 13(4) no. 1 UWG excludes reimbursement of warning letter costs for breaches of statutory information and labeling obligations in electronic commerce. This exclusion covers competitors only, not the associations, and it only concerns the costs: the claim for injunctive relief remains, and a cease-and-desist undertaking with a contractual penalty binds the shop for the future. With large ranges it therefore pays to close the gaps in advance instead of updating every item under time pressure after a warning letter.
Ongoing maintenance
Five steps to a complete unit price
Anyone retrofitting an existing shop can sensibly proceed in this order. Each step delivers a result that can be checked on its own, and none requires the next one to have started.
- Classify the range: which categories sell by weight, volume, length or area, which by the piece, and which items fall under an exemption under Section 4(3) PAngV?
- Create data fields: fill quantity, unit and reference quantity as mandatory fields for the affected categories, plus drained weight and number of portions where needed.
- Fill in the data: take fill quantities from the ERP system or supplier catalog, check outliers and maintain variants one by one.
- Implement the display: show the unit price right at the total price on the product page, in listings, in the quick view and on promotional areas, also on mobile and without a link or mouse-over.
- Align the output: feed the product feed, structured data, newsletter templates and ads from the same fields and spot-check them against the shop.
Anyone reallocating channels and budget for the coming year should plan feed quality at the same time; the article on planning online marketing for 2027 shows how budget and calendar come together. Calculating the unit price permanently from product data is a manageable project for an online shop: fields, templates and feed are connected cleanly once, and from then on the shop does the math. The overview of our services shows which tasks are involved, and for an assessment of your range a short message with your shop address is enough.
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