Bluetooth SIG Fees

RE: Bluetooth SIG Fees

NickN — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 06:31:30 GMT

Thank you!

RE: Bluetooth SIG Fees

Asbjørn — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 06:52:25 GMT

[quote user="NickN"]The fee being a one-time payment and not annual is particularly helpful for us. A SIG rep once claimed otherwise. An annual $11k fee for a pre-revenue small company is tough to swallow.[/quote]

This is a good clarification by Emil Lenngren . Thank you.

RE: Bluetooth SIG Fees

Emil Lenngren — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 20:00:21 GMT

At https://www.bluetooth.com/fee-schedule/ it is clearly marked which fees are paid annually. The qualification fee is not one of them.

It also says "A Product Qualification Fee is charged for the first Product submission from a Member Company that includes a specific Design whether that Design is an existing Design (identified by a Design Number) or a new Design (that will be issued a Design Number upon completion of the Qualification process). Subsequent Product submissions from the same Member Company that include the same Design will not be charged a Product Qualification Fee. In addition, any Product submission from a Member Company that includes a subset Design (QPRD, Section 3.2.2.2.1) or a reassessed Design (QPRD, Section 3.2.2.2.2) will not be charged a Product Qualification Fee.".

If you are doing multiple products having the same bluetooth module and same bluetooth stack, you should simply reference the manufacturer's design when you make the declaration. Then add as many products as you like using the same design. See https://www.bluetooth.com/wp-content/uploads/Files/Specification/HTML/QPRD/out/en/index-en.html and table 3.2's column "Use a single existing design".

RE: Bluetooth SIG Fees

NickN — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 19:32:05 GMT

Thanks Emil. That's helpful. It doesn't completely square with what I've been told by either the Bluetooth SIG or Nordic, but at least it makes sense.

The fee being a one-time payment and not annual is particularly helpful for us. A SIG rep once claimed otherwise. An annual $11k fee for a pre-revenue small company is tough to swallow.

Similarly, it's very unclear to me what is considered a different device. We are developing IoT sensors and related products, so the Bluetooth functionality is just one small part of the device. We will be using the exact same Bluetooth module and antenna in multiple products. The Bluetooth stack will be identical, but the rest of the firmware and PCB will be different because the devices have different functionality (Bluetooth functionality is the same, the rest of the device features are different). I've heard "this would be considered the same device" and "this would be considered a new device" with no obvious right or wrong answer.

And it does seem that the SIG will aggressively protect their IP if you try to launch without paying them. That part I can understand and respect, but the lack of clarity and the lack of flexibility for small companies is frustrating.

RE: Bluetooth SIG Fees

Emil Lenngren — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 11:22:37 GMT

I agreee that Bluetooth SIG is definitely not friendly to startups, due to the high costs related to the Bluetooth product listing fees, compared to large corporates that sell millions of units, paying the exact same (static) fee.

According to this link, the Innovation Incentive Program was quietly stopped in February 2020.

For your first product using a particular design, you pay the product listing fee, currently $11,040, which is a fixed fee and not a fee that must be paid every year. If you use the same design in multiple products, you can add those additional products to your listing without paying anything extra. Typically, if you use the same Bluetooth stack (hardware and software), it counts as the same design.

Whether you use a pre-approved module or software is irrelevant regarding the listings fee of your first product submission. Using such a pre-approved design only helps you in the way that you don't have to perform any testing (which might otherwise incur further costs, in addition to the product listing fee). Even if you take an off-the-shelf white label product and you sell it as your own under your own name, you need to pay the fee.

Note that paying the fee to Bluetooth gives you two things:

1. The right to use the Bluetooth brand/trademark, including the name and logotype, for example in your marketing or on the product packaging. Bluetooth SIG claims that customs' authorities sometimes look in the Bluetooth SIG product database to see if such products are listed correctly.

2. A license to use necessary patents for the applicable Bluetooth technology. A member company that owns a patent necessary to implement BLE might sue you in court if you have not paid the fee, if your product makes use of the technology in that patent. Since BLE is pretty old now, the patents should expire pretty soon, in the near upcoming years, at least those covering those features included in the original Bluetooth 4.0 specification.

Thus, only if you don't use the Bluetooth brand, and are 100% sure you are not using any technology covered by any patent, then you do not have to perform the qualification process.

RE: Bluetooth SIG Fees

Asbjørn — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 11:11:26 GMT

Hello Nicholas,

I can understand your frustrations as we would like this to be clear as well and for some of our customers this is an issue and concern just as it is for you right now.

Changes in this conext does also involve implementation of FW running on the device. So you can have qualified HW, qualified stack and using nRF Connect SDK, but unless the module manufacturer has qualified with the profile you are using and you have no access to changing the FW on it, it will come down to you have done a change to the design and most likely the fee will still apply. It's the business model of Bluetooth SIG and their members. It's ok for most, it's frustrating for a few such as yourself.

We can change this from our point of view. What information have you gotten from Bluetooth SIG on this matter?

Best regards

Asbjørn

RE: Bluetooth SIG Fees

NickN — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 21:53:05 GMT

Respectfully, this is the exact opposite of what I was told by the staff member at your booth.

I reviewed the Nordic link you posted, and it says:

"The nRF Connect SDK contains qualified portions of various Bluetooth features (for example, SoftDevice Controller versions). If your product uses a qualified Bluetooth stack provided as part of the nRF Connect SDK, you can inherit this qualification from Nordic Semiconductor, provided that you do not introduce any changes to the stack."

This is precisely our use case. We are using the nRF Connect SDK and the Nordic soft controller. We have not introduced any changes to that stack.

Does this not mean that we can "inherit this qualification from Nordic Semiconductor"?

Also, we are using a pre-approved module that we do not physically alter in any way. We simply attach the complete module to our PCB as is.

I cannot emphasize enough how important this issue is to us. The full qualification fee is a significant investment for a company our size and the Bluetooth SIG has been unhelpful in clarifying the nuances of their position.

RE: Bluetooth SIG Fees

Asbjørn — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 19:43:28 GMT

Hello Nicholas,

https://www.bluetooth.com/fee-schedule/

https://docs.nordicsemi.com/bundle/ncs-latest/page/nrf/protocols/bt/bt_qualification/index.html

You would be an adopter and to qualify a new product the fee for adopters is 11040USD (to be updated 1st of March 2026. That is normally the case.

If you have a module with certificated QDID and not change any of the stack, implementation or SW and HW you could in theory reuse the module manufacturer QDID if they allow it. Although, this is not common as normally there will be a change done to some aspect. So the product qualification fee is the normal route for the case such as yours.

Best regards

Asbjørn