Talk to a person, not a form

No, and this is the one thing we will never do. Certread reads marks. It does not rate, rank or score companies, and it does not recommend products or tell you what to buy.

The reason is not modesty. A mark has a published document behind it that says what it covers, so reporting that scope is checkable. A brand does not: any ranking would be our judgement about a company, presented as if it were a finding. We would rather be useful about the label in your hand than authoritative about something we cannot show you the source for.

What we can do is give you the boundary of every mark on the tag, so you can decide for yourself what it is worth to you.

No. We do not verify certificates, we do not judge whether a label is authentic, and we do not detect forgeries. If a reading ever appears to confirm a specific certificate, it is being read wrongly.

What every reading includes instead is a verify-it-yourself line: which body issues the certificate, what kind of number to look for, and where that body publishes its register. Certificate numbers are checked with the body that issued them, and only they can tell you whether a document is current.

One thing worth knowing when you do check: most registers show a scope on the certificate. The scope is the part that says which products and which sites the certificate actually covers, and it is where a claim most often turns out to be narrower than the tag suggests.

No. Words like eco, conscious, natural, sustainable and responsibly sourced have no published criteria, no scope, no version and no certifying body. Nothing was checked against them because there is nothing to check against.

That is a fact about the word, and it is as far as we go. It is not a claim that anyone using the word is misleading you — a company may well be doing everything the word suggests. It simply means the word is not evidence of it.

Since 27 September 2026, EU rules restrict generic environmental claims of this kind in commercial practice, which is a good reason to expect them to be replaced by named standards over time.

They are used to produce your reading and nothing else. Your uploads are not used to train models — not ours, not anyone's — and they are not sold, licensed or shared for any purpose other than delivering the service you asked for.

Photographs are kept for 30 days so you can reopen a reading, then deleted automatically. You can delete any reading immediately from your account, and deleting your account removes the uploads with it. The full detail, including the legal bases, is in the Datenschutzerklärung.

Please do not upload photographs in which people are recognisable. A tag is what we need.

The recognition step reads a photograph, and photographs of small woven labels in shop lighting are genuinely hard. It can misread a mark, miss one, or fail on a worn label. Every reading shows you what it thinks it recognised so you can correct it before the card is made.

The scope text is the published scope of the named standard, at the version stated on the reading. Standards are revised. A reading is not a live check of the certificate on the garment in front of you, and it never becomes one.

So treat a reading as a starting point for your own check, not as a compliance record. It must not be used as evidence of compliance, to endorse a commercial claim, or to make a public accusation against a company. Those limits are set out in the Nutzungsbedingungen.

You cancel in your account, in the same number of steps it took to subscribe, with no reason required and without writing to anyone. The plan then runs to the end of the period you have already paid for and stops.

As a consumer you also have a 14-day right of withdrawal. For a digital service it can end early, but only if you gave both express declarations at checkout and we confirmed them to you on a durable medium. If you did not, you keep the full 14 days. Details and the model withdrawal form are on the Widerrufsrecht page.

We do not operate a blanket refusal of refunds. If we billed you in error or the service did not work, write to support and we will put it right.

The allowance is permission to use the service during the billing period it belongs to. It is not money, not a balance and not redeemable: it cannot be bought separately, topped up, cashed out or transferred.

There are no credit packs. Unused allowance expires at the end of the period rather than carrying over. If you keep running out, move to a larger plan — the change takes effect immediately.

A follow-up question costs 1, recognising a tag costs 2, and generating or re-laying-out an interpretation card costs 5.

Yes. Certread is for people aged 18 and over. Accounts are not offered to minors, and we do not knowingly process the data of children.

If you believe a minor has created an account, write to support and we will close it and delete the data.

Because those symbols are the trade marks of the bodies that own them, and reproducing them without a licence would be an infringement. It would also imply an endorsement that does not exist.

So marks appear here as their names, set in our own typeface, alongside neutral geometry we drew. Nothing on this site is a certification body's artwork, and nothing on this site should be read as coming from one.

No to both. Certread is an information tool. It does not manufacture textiles, so it neither holds nor needs a textile certification, and it is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting for any certification body or standard owner.

Standard names are used here descriptively, to identify the document whose published scope is being reported.