Researched and fact-checked on 30 June 2026. Figures are from official Belgian sources (FPS Finance, einvoice.belgium.be) and provider pages; see Sources at the bottom.
- You cannot plug into Peppol "directly." Belgian law requires you to send through an approved Peppol service provider (an Access Point). Becoming your own certified Access Point isn't realistic for a single business.
- The Peppol network itself is free. The only thing that costs money (or not) is the Access Point you send through.
- There is a genuinely free route: Let's Peppol, a non-profit Access Point, €0, with no published volume limits. Several commercial tools also have free tiers.
- Cheapest paid: e-invoice.be at ~€0.18/invoice (pay-per-use), or flat subscriptions from ~€1.50 to €5/month.
- Bonus: for self-employed and small companies, e-invoicing software subscriptions qualify for a 120% cost deduction (income years 2024 to 2027).
Since 1 January 2026, structured B2B e-invoicing over Peppol (Peppol BIS 3.0 / EN 16931) is mandatory for all Belgian VAT-registered businesses invoicing each other. PDF-by-email no longer counts. A three-month grace period on penalties ran until 31 March 2026; since 1 April 2026 the mandate is fully enforced. Fines for not being able to issue or receive structured e-invoices are graduated: €1,500 (first offence), €3,000 (second), €5,000 (third and beyond), and can recur up to €5,000 per quarter.
Note: the old government relay Hermes (a receiving fail-safe for businesses not yet connected) was decommissioned on 31 December 2025. It was never a B2B sending tool, and it's gone now. Mercurius is the platform for invoicing the government (B2G), not B2B. There is no free state-run portal for sending B2B invoices.
Belgium's official e-invoicing FAQ is explicit:
"You cannot register directly on Peppol. This is only possible via an approved Peppol service provider."
To connect "directly" you'd have to become a certified Peppol Access Point yourself: OpenPeppol accreditation, agreements, infrastructure, ongoing compliance. Nobody does that just to send their own invoices. So the real question isn't "directly vs. provider," it's "which provider, and how much does it cost?" And the answer can be €0.
- Let's Peppol (letspeppol.org) is the standout. Completely free, no fees, no published volume limits, open-source, run by Belgian non-profit BARGE vzw, modelled on Let's Encrypt and funded by donors. Send and receive through a web dashboard that works like a small invoicing tool (inbox + invoice composer + UBL upload). Built for single proprietors, freelancers, and micro-SMEs. Caveats: it's donation-funded and community-run (not a commercial SLA); first-time registration needs a one-time Belgian eID verification with a card reader; and day-to-day sending is manual entry or UBL upload, great for low volume and tedious at high volume. See the How Let's Peppol actually works section below for the mechanics.
- Free tiers of commercial tools, e.g. Accountable (free plan includes Peppol invoicing) and B2Brouter (free entry plan, capped number of transactions). Worth it if you also want bookkeeping features attached.
For a low-volume owner who just needs to be compliant, Let's Peppol is the cheapest answer: €0.
Because Let's Peppol is open-source, the mechanics can be confirmed from the code. Here is what it actually offers.
It's primarily a web app, not an email gateway. After onboarding you log into the dashboard at be.letspeppol.org and it behaves like a small invoicing tool:
- An inbox of received invoices and credit notes (the "feels like email" part).
- A "new invoice" composer: pick a saved customer, add line items from a product catalog, set dates and payment details, validate against Peppol, then send.
- An "upload UBL" option, so if your accounting software already produces a UBL/XML file you upload that instead of typing it by hand.
One-time eID onboarding (the practical catch). To grant free access while still proving you represent the company, registration uses your Belgian eID card plus a card reader (the open-source web-eid software and a browser plugin) to produce a legally binding signature. So you need an eID card reader once to register; after that, sending is just the web UI.
No email-to-Peppol. There is no address you can email an invoice to. The only email in the system is outbound notifications telling you a document arrived, not a sending channel.
API: present in the code, but not a turnkey public developer API (yet). Under the hood it's a Spring Boot backend exposing a REST API (the send endpoint is POST /sapi/document, JWT-authenticated, plus an inbound webhook at /api/e-invoice). The whole stack is open-source and self-hostable, and it sits in front of Scrada as the actual certified Access Point. A developer can integrate against it or run their own instance, but it does not currently advertise self-service API keys the way commercial providers do, and the project still describes itself as "in the launching phase."
So which should you use?
- Free, manual, low volume: Let's Peppol's web app is a strong fit.
- Programmatic sending from your own software or ERP via a documented API: pick a provider built for that, such as e-invoice.be (send flat JSON, they generate the UBL; SDKs for Python, PHP, TypeScript, Java, Ruby), Storecove, or Billit. These charge (e-invoice.be is ~€0.18/invoice) but give you a real API contract and support.
| Option | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| e-invoice.be | ~€0.18/invoice, pay-per-use, no monthly fee, first invoices free | Low / irregular volume |
| Accountable | from ~€1.50/month (starter) | Freelancers wanting bookkeeping too |
| Peppol Box | from €5/month (under 100 invoices/year) | Predictable small volume |
Rule of thumb: pay-per-document is cheapest at very low volume; a flat subscription wins once you send regularly.
For self-employed and small SMEs, the extra cost of e-invoicing software (subscriptions, Peppol access, implementation consulting) qualifies for a 120% increased cost deduction, applicable to income years 2024 to 2027 (assessment years 2025 to 2028), provided the e-invoicing cost is itemised separately on the invoice. There's also a separate, permanent 20% increased investment deduction for digital investments (including invoicing software) from 2025. Net effect: even a paid tool is partly subsidised through your taxes.
No, you can't connect "directly" to Peppol for free, but you can send compliant Peppol invoices at zero cost through a free Access Point. Let's Peppol is the cleanest free route. If you'd rather have it inside accounting software, start on a free tier (Accountable / B2Brouter), or go pay-per-invoice with e-invoice.be (~€0.18), and deduct it at 120%.
- Let's Peppol, free Peppol e-invoicing for SMEs (BARGE vzw)
- Let's Peppol source code, how it works: web app, REST API, eID onboarding (GitHub)
- Belgium e-invoice FAQ, general questions about Peppol (official)
- Mandatory structured e-invoices from 2026, FPS Finance (official)
- End of the grace period / full enforcement from 1 April 2026, Deloitte Belgium
- Penalties for non-compliance (€1,500 / €3,000 / €5,000), Vertex
- Is Peppol free? Full cost breakdown, Combell
- Best Peppol Access Points 2026 compared, e-invoice.be
- e-invoice.be Peppol API (JSON in, UBL out, SDKs)
- 7 best e-invoicing tools for Peppol in Belgium, Accountable
- E-invoicing from €5/month, Peppol Box
- 120% cost deduction + 20% investment deduction, Vandelanotte
- Hermes platform retirement, Banqup
This is general information, not tax or legal advice. Prices and free-tier limits change, so verify the current terms on each provider's site before signing up.