From 2027 a PDF alone no longer counts as an invoice between German businesses. Austria already requires ebInterface for the public sector. Instead of learning three standards, call one API: send your invoice data, get a valid ZUGFeRD, XRechnung or ebInterface file back. Receive one, get clean JSON with the VAT math checked.
Build and test. Enough for a prototype or a very small shop.
For SaaS products, agencies and bookkeeping tools with real volume.
Your own instance. For regulated customers, large volumes and on-prem.
One document is one extract, validate or convert call. Failed requests are free.
| Developer | Business | Sovereign | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Documents per month | 100 | 3,000 + €0.05 each | Unlimited |
| Extraction: hybrid PDF, XML, text PDF | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Scan OCR (vision model) | No | SafeCloud AI (EU) | SafeCloud AI or on-prem |
| Outputs: ebInterface 6.1, XRechnung UBL + CII, ZUGFeRD / Factur-X PDF/A-3 | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Validation profiles: EN 16931, XRechnung, ebInterface, ZUGFeRD | Yes | Yes | Yes + custom |
| Rate limit | 10 / min | 120 / min | 600 / min |
| Retention | None | None | None |
| Hosting | Shared EU | Shared EU | Dedicated EU or on-prem |
| Support | Community | Priority e-mail | SLA, named contact |
| Contract | None | Monthly, DPA | Annual, DPA, custom terms |
Teams whose software creates or receives invoices: SaaS products (booking, shop, agency and time-tracking tools), bookkeeping platforms, AP automation vendors and agencies that build such apps. Your users get compliant e-invoices without you reading three standards.
In Germany every business must receive e-invoices since 2025 and must send them to business customers from 2027 (2028 for smaller companies). Suppliers to German public bodies already need XRechnung, suppliers to the Austrian federal administration need ebInterface. The EU extends this to cross-border B2B from 2030.
No. Files are processed in memory and released with the response. There is no database and no object storage. Every response carries the X-Ephemeral-Processing header so you can show it in your audit trail.
Generated XML is validated against the official schemas and the EN 16931 business rules plus the German BR-DE rules. The KoSIT and veraPDF validators are not run inside the API; Sovereign customers can have them wired into their pipeline.
Yes. The Sovereign plan includes a Docker image for your own EU infrastructure or an on-prem server. No external calls are made unless you configure a vision endpoint.
Scans are read by SafeCloud AI, open-weight Qwen vision models on our own GPU server in Germany. Nothing goes to OpenAI or a US cloud, and images are dropped after the response. You can also point the engine at your own endpoint. Scanned pages count as five documents.
XRechnung and ZUGFeRD files are accepted by DATEV and the German portals; ebInterface 6.1 by e-Rechnung.gv.at and BMD. Custom export mappings are part of the Sovereign plan.
Your customers' accountants will soon reject plain PDFs. We turn the invoice your software already produces into a valid ZUGFeRD, XRechnung or ebInterface file with one API call, and read incoming ones back into clean JSON. In memory, on EU infrastructure, nothing stored.
Auf Deutsch
Ab 2027 reicht ein PDF zwischen Unternehmen nicht mehr. Ihre Software schickt uns die Rechnungsdaten, wir liefern die gültige ZUGFeRD-, XRechnung- oder ebInterface-Datei zurück, und lesen eingehende Rechnungen als geprüftes JSON ein. Verarbeitung im Arbeitsspeicher, auf EU-Infrastruktur, nichts wird gespeichert.