Methodology — Denmark
This page explains how Tarifo's Denmark calculator turns a case description into a fee estimate. Denmark is a state-fee-only jurisdiction: it has no statutory lawyer tariff — advocates' fees (salær) are agreed privately — so the calculator runs a single engine and reports the mandatory court fee (retsafgift) payable under the Retsafgiftsloven. Every figure is in Danish kroner and traces back to a section of the Act.
One engine: the mandatory court fee.
The Denmark calculator encodes the Retsafgiftsloven (Lov om retsafgifter), in the consolidated textA version of a statute that incorporates all amendments to date. Tarifo always encodes from the current consolidated text, never a superseded version.Glossary → LBK nr. 1252 af 27.11.2014, as most recently amended by lov nr. 425 af 16. marts 2021 (in force 1 October 2021). The 2021 reform is the load-bearing one: it abolished the old value-percentage filing fee — the superseded “750 kr + 1.2 % above 50,000 kr, capped at 75,000 kr” that still circulates in older summaries — and replaced it with a fixed-amount structure. The figures were confirmed verbatim against retsinformation.dk on 2026-06-23.
Unlike most Tarifo countries, there is no bar-council lawyer tariff to encode — in Denmark, advocates’ fees (salær) are a matter of private contract, subject only to a general reasonableness standard (Retsplejeloven § 126 + the Advokatsamfundet Code of Conduct). The calculator’s single output is the court fee (retsafgiftDenmark's court fee — the mandatory charge payable to the court to bring or proceed with a case, fixed by the Retsafgiftsloven (Court Fees Act). Since the 2021 reform the filing fee is a fixed amount, not a percentage: 750 kr for a claim up to 100,000 kr (or with no economic value) and 1,500 kr above (§ 1), with an optional fixed main-hearing fee (§ 2). It is a court cost, not a lawyer fee — Denmark has no statutory lawyer tariff — and it carries no moms (VAT).Glossary →) a litigant must pay to bring or progress a case. Because these are exact, government-set amounts, the lawyer-tariff “reference valuesA tariff figure that is advisory, not mandatory — a guide to what a fee customarily is, which the lawyer and client remain free to depart from. Every number Tarifo shows is a reference value.Glossary →, not floors / CJEU C-438/22” framing used elsewhere on Tarifo is not applicable here.
Court fees fall into four shapes.
- Two-band filing fee (§ 1)
The headline fee for a money claim (
civil_claim_money). A claim of at most 100,000 kr (or with no economic value) pays a flat 750 kr (§ 1 stk. 2); a claim above 100,000 kr pays a flat 1,500 kr (§ 1 stk. 1). There are only two bands — the fee does not otherwise scale with value.- Main-hearing add-on (§ 2)
If a case above 100,000 kr is set down for a main hearing (hovedforhandling), a further fixed fee applies on top of the § 1 fee: a nine-band table running 3,000 → 160,000 kr (§ 2 stk. 4), or a flat 3,000 kr for administrative-review cases (§ 2 stk. 3). The calculator’s headline is the § 1 filing fee; the hearing fee is an opt-in add-on.
- Flat statutory amounts
Interim relief / injunction (forbud/påbud, § 10), payment order (betalingspåkravDenmark's payment-order procedure (betalingspåkrav, Retsplejeloven chapter 44 a) — a simplified route to an enforceable title for an undisputed money debt up to 100,000 kr, filed at the bailiff's court (fogedret). Its court fee is a flat 750 kr (Retsafgiftsloven § 12); unlike Estonia or Bulgaria there is no special order-proceedings rate. If the debtor objects, the matter converts to ordinary proceedings.Glossary →, § 12) and enforcement at the bailiff’s court (fogedret, § 13 stk. 1) each carry a flat 750 kr, independent of value.
- No fee (§ 8)
Family-law matters heard under chapter 42 of the Administration of Justice Act, and adoption, are afgiftsfri — shown as 0 kr with the exempting section (§ 8) cited rather than hidden.
Appeal fees are flat replacements, not multipliers. Under § 36 stk. 1 an appeal to the High Court (anke til landsret) is a flat 2,000 kr and an appeal to the Supreme Court (anke til Højesteret) is a flat 4,000 kr, both independent of case value — Denmark does not halve the first-instance fee (Bulgaria / Romania) nor charge it again (Estonia / Latvia). Version 1 reports the first-instance fee; appeal-stage selection is deferred.
Court fees are outside the scope of moms.
Court fees in Denmark are not subject to moms (VAT). The calculator shows them at face value with no VAT line and no VAT toggle. Because there is no lawyer tariff, there is no lawyer-fee VAT setting either. Figures are shown in DKK and are not converted to euros in the engine — the cross-country Comparisons section normalises to EUR separately at build time. A litigant granted free legal aid (fri procesFree legal aid in Denmark (fri proces) — a grant that exempts a party from the court fee (retsafgift) and covers certain litigation costs, available on means and merits criteria (Retsafgiftsloven § 9 + Retsplejeloven). Legal-expenses insurance (retshjælpsforsikring) plays a similar exempting role.Glossary →) or covered by legal-expenses insurance (retshjælpsforsikring) may be exempt from the fee under § 9.
A money claim set down for a main hearing.
Take a money claim with a claim value of 250,000 kr (civil_claim_money) that is set down for a main hearing:
| Step | Source | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Claim value | input | 250,000 kr |
| Filing fee, value over 100,000 kr (§ 1 stk. 1) | fixed | 1,500 kr |
| Main-hearing fee, band 100,001–250,000 kr (§ 2 stk. 4) | fixed | 3,000 kr |
| Total court fee | 1,500 + 3,000 | 4,500 kr |
The calculator’s headline for this case is the 1,500 kr filing fee; the 3,000 kr hearing fee applies only if the case proceeds to a main hearing. The band edge is load-bearing: at exactly 100,000 kr the filing fee is 750 kr — the “højst 100.000 kr.” low band is inclusive — and the first value above it, 100,001 kr, pays 1,500 kr. At appeal the fee is the flat 2,000 kr (landsret) or 4,000 kr (Højesteret), regardless of claim value. These boundaries are pinned in the engine’s unit tests.
Four places the numbers surprise you.
civil_claim_moneyAt exactly 100,000 kr the fee is 750 kr, not 1,500 kr. The § 1 low band (“højst 100.000 kr.”) is an inclusive upper bound, so the high band engages only strictly above 100,000 kr. This is the load-bearing regression in the DK suite.
execution_patrimonialFogedret enforcement is inside the Retsafgiftsloven (§ 13 stk. 1, a flat 750 kr). Estonia and Latvia classify enforcement as out-of-scope because bailiff remuneration sits in a separate statute there; that classification was deliberately not carried across — in Denmark the court fee for enforcement is in this Act.
labour_*The Retsafgiftsloven has no labour-plaintiff exemption — §§ 8–9 do not list employment cases — so a labour claim brought as an ordinary civil suit pays the § 1 grundafgift like any money claim (750 / 1,500 kr by value). Estonia, Latvia and the UK treat the equivalent cases as fee-free; that exemption does not exist in Danish law. Many Danish labour disputes are instead resolved through collective-bargaining arbitration (faglig voldgift) or the Equal Treatment Board, where no court fee applies — a route outside the calculator’s scope.
appealBulgaria and Romania halve the first-instance fee on appeal; Estonia and Latvia charge the same fee again. Denmark instead replaces it with a flat route amount under § 36 stk. 1 (2,000 / 4,000 kr). The engine therefore never applies a 0.5 multiplier nor reuses the first-instance number — the single most likely cross-country copy-paste bug, named as a regression test.
A separate, categorical divergence: all seven family cases (family_*) return 0 kr under § 8, and insolvency_petition is handled as out-of-scope — §§ 18 / 23 / 24 / 27 are multi-tier and depend on inputs outside the shared taxonomy. The calculator returns no figure for insolvency and points to the governing sections.
- Statute
- Retsafgiftsloven (Lov om retsafgifter), jf. LBK nr. 1252 af 27.11.2014 (last amended by lov nr. 425 af 16.03.2021 (i kraft 01.10.2021))
- Currency
- DKK
- VAT treatment
- Court fees are outside the scope of moms (VAT) — no VAT line. There is no statutory lawyer tariff in Denmark.
- Last verified