Per‑EPD fees vs subscriptions, explained

What you are actually buying

Per‑EPD is a ticket to publish one declaration at a time. Subscription is a season pass that turns EPD creation into an always‑on service. Think DVDs on a shelf versus a streaming plan. One optimizes for a known, finite list. The other optimizes for volume, updates, and surprises.

Where per‑EPD can make sense

Per‑EPD fees are useful when the catalog is small, plants are few, and product formulas rarely change. They fit pilots, one‑off bids, or a single flagship product that needs to get on the board. If the sales funnel is narrow and projects seldom ask for facility‑specific numbers, the unit approach keeps spend contained.

Where subscriptions clearly win

Subscriptions shine when there are many plants, many custom mixes, or frequent tweaks to inputs. The bottleneck is not the unit price. It is the hours required to collect utility bills, reconcile volumes, and chase missing data across sites. Providers that include white‑glove data collection, model updates, and republishing remove that bottleneck so product teams can focus on engineering and sales instead of spreadsheets.

The hidden costs of rationing

Rationing EPDs forces sales to avoid prospects that require product‑ and plant‑specific declarations. Those projects do not argue, they simply exclude. In public work, several owners and agencies now expect EPD submittals as standard procedure. Caltrans, for example, requires EPDs for selected materials on projects with bid dates from February 1, 2025 (Caltrans, 2025) (Caltrans, 2025). If your coverage is patchy, opportunities quietly slip away.

What renewals really mean for workload

Most program operators set EPD validity to five years, and they require earlier updates if reported results worsen beyond defined thresholds during that window (EPD International, 2025) (EPD International, 2025). Under GPI 5.0.1, owners must also perform an internal follow‑up at least annually to keep information current, which can trigger re‑verification when changes are material (EPD International, 2025) (EPD International, 2025). In short, even a small portfolio has an annual maintenance rhythm. Subscriptions package that maintenance into the service so you do not scramble every spring.

A simple crossover test you can run

Treat EPD capacity like production planning.

1. Count marketed products that could be requested by project teams in the next 12 months. Call this N.
2. Count facilities that materially change results for those products. Call this F.
3. Estimate refresh cadence based on how often inputs change for you. Call this R per year.
4. Your annual EPD workload is roughly N × F × R. Compare that to the hours your internal team can realistically support without overtime or delays. If N × F × R exceeds that capacity, a subscription that bundles data collection and updates usually pays for itself in avoided opportunity cost. Reliable cost averages are hard to pin down because scopes differ, so do this with conservative assumptions.

What to ask any provider before you pick a model

• Will they handle plant‑level data collection and cleaning, including back‑and‑forth with site managers, or will they hand you templates and wait for uploads?
• How do they schedule and track the annual internal follow‑up required by GPI 5.0.1, and who owns the action items if changes are found (EPD International, 2025)?
• Can they publish with the program operator your market prefers, and will they prepare you for PCR transitions without gaps in validity?
• How do they manage version control for mixes and variants so sales does not send the wrong PDF?
• What is the expected lead time from data handoff to publication for first issues and for renewals, and how is priority handled near key bids?

LEED v5 and buyer expectations

LEED v5 moved through two public comments in 2024 and was ratified by members on March 28, 2025, signaling stronger embodied‑carbon expectations for building projects that many owners already mirror in their procurement playbooks (USGBC, 2025) (USGBC, 2025). When specifiers default to products with credible EPDs, the absence of one becomes a penalty. Teams that subscribe to ongoing EPD capacity avoid last‑minute scrambles and stay present in more bids.

Decision guide in one paragraph

Choose per‑EPD if you have a tight catalog, low change frequency, and a clear, limited bid target. Choose a subscription if your mix of plants and products creates a matrix of requests, if inputs change often, or if internal teams are already stretched. The price of a single EPD can look lower, yet the price of missing a mid‑sized project because coverage lagged will rarely feel lower. Pick the model that reduces friction where you actually feel it day to day. We dont recomend overbuying, but we do recommend buying enough capacity to never ration.