Croatia’s new price-list rules from 1 October: what they mean for hosts and small businesses

Official Gazette 101/2026, published on 11 September, carried two government decisions: one on displaying an additional so-called reference price, one on publishing price lists for products and services. Both apply from 1 October 2026. The legal basis is the law on exceptional price-control measures and the consumer protection law, which means fines come from the inspectorate, not the tax office.

Who it affects

The obligation applies to anyone who meets all three conditions at once: a registered retail or service activity, sales to consumers rather than only to businesses, and a website on which a price list is already published. If any one of the three does not hold, there is no obligation.

• A host with per-period rates on their own site: yes, it applies
• A rent-a-car company with per-vehicle, per-day rates on the site: yes
• A workshop or trade with a published list of service prices: yes
• A host who is only on Booking, with no site of their own: no, that is the platform’s obligation
• A company that works purely by quotation, with no published prices: no
• Anyone selling only to other businesses: no

What exactly is required

Two things. First, the price list must also exist in machine-readable form: a file a program can read, not only text on a page or an image. Second, next to every current price the reference price must be shown: the one that applied to the same item on 10 September 2026. A customer can then see at a glance whether something got more expensive.

Every published version of the price list has to stay available for 30 days, so it is possible to check what something cost before a change. That is not an expiry date for the list but an archive.

How often to update

Daily updating by eight in the morning applies to shops. For services, which covers accommodation, rentals and workshops, the list is updated only when a price changes, by eight in the morning on the day the new price takes effect. A host who changes rates twice a year has two updates a year.

Fines

For a sole trader, 1,000 to 20,000 euros; for a legal entity, 3,000 to 30,000 euros; for a natural person, 1,000 to 6,000 euros. The inspectorate looks first at whether the list exists and whether the reference price is shown next to the prices, because that is the easiest thing to check.

The simplest way to keep the price list and the prices on the site consistent is to generate both from the same source. Then they cannot drift apart.

How to handle it without extra work

If the prices on the site are part of its structure rather than an image or hand-typed text, the machine-readable list can be generated automatically from the same data. The reference price is recorded once, at setup. Every later price change refreshes both the page and the file, and the previous version is archived on its own. Nothing changes in how you work: you change a price as before, in one place.

If the prices on the site are an image or a PDF, they first have to be turned into data. That is a one-off job and also a chance to present the prices more clearly than before.

What if you do not publish prices

Then the rule does not apply to you, and that is a legitimate choice. But weigh the other side: a guest who cannot see a price often does not send an enquiry but moves to the next result. If you removed prices from the site only to avoid the obligation, you have probably lost more enquiries than the obligation would have cost.