How to find an accredited certification body

Your certificate comes from a certification body, which is a separate company you contract with and pay directly. The question that matters when choosing one is not price or reputation. It is whether they are accredited, and for this standard.

Why accreditation is the whole question

Nothing stops a company calling itself a certification body and selling certificates. A non-accredited certificate looks identical, costs roughly 40 to 50% less, and is routinely rejected in enterprise procurement. At that point you pay the full accredited fee again, because an unaccredited certificate generally cannot be transferred.

Accreditation for one standard is not accreditation for another, either. A body accredited for ISO 9001 is not thereby accredited for ISO/IEC 27001, and the register below is where you check the scope rather than take anyone's word for it.

You do not need a certifier in your own country

A certificate from a body accredited by any signatory of the European co-operation for Accreditation multilateral agreement is recognised across all of them. So a German customer asking for a German certificate is asking for something they do not need, and the EA MLA is the citable reason. Outside Europe, the equivalent is the IAF MLA.

The 27 national accreditation bodies

Regulation (EC) 765/2008 requires exactly one per member state. Each publishes a register of the bodies it accredits and what they are accredited for. Alphabetical, checked against the EA directory on 2026-08-11.

Accredited Certification Bodies

A directory of certification bodies accredited by the national bodies above, with direct links to their scope registers. Checked on 2026-08-19.

What to check before you sign

• · The body appears in its national register, and the accreditation is current rather than suspended or withdrawn.
• · The scope of that accreditation names ISO/IEC 27001, not simply "management systems".
• · They have quoted auditor days, and can say which edition of ISO/IEC 27006 they applied. How many days your organisation should expect, worked from the standard's own tables.
• · They are not also offering to prepare you. ISO/IEC 17021-1 forbids the same body doing both, and a vendor selling you preparation and the certificate together is selling something an auditor will not accept.

The same registers say whether a certifier is accredited for ISO 9001, and the same three checks apply to a supplier's quality certificate. How to check an ISO 9001 certificate is real

Sourced from the European co-operation for Accreditation directory of members and MLA signatories, read 2026-08-11. If a register has moved since, the accreditation body's own site is the authority and this page is not.