Where to verify every certificate a supplier sends you

A PDF is a photograph of evidence, not the evidence

Certificates circulate as files. A file can be edited, a file can be sent on after it expires, and a file belonging to a fabric mill can be forwarded by a garment factory that has no certification of its own. None of that requires anyone to be dishonest: a supplier who genuinely buys certified fabric will send you the mill's certificate because it is the document they have.

The registers exist precisely because of this. Each scheme keeps a searchable record of who holds what, for which products, until when — and a check takes under a minute. The question to settle before you pay for testing, or print a claim on a hangtag, is not whether the PDF looks right. It is whether the register agrees with it.

Where each certificate is checked

The table below was clicked through on 18 September 2026. Two of the addresses had moved since they were last written down, which is itself the point: bookmark the scheme, not the URL, and re-check the link before you quote it to a supplier.

Only the first three are open registers you can search yourself. Social-audit results work differently and are covered further down.

Four fields that must match before a certificate means anything

A certificate can be genuine, current, findable in the register — and still irrelevant to your order. That is the ordinary case, not the exception, and it is why the number alone is not enough.

Scope certificate versus transaction certificate

In the recycled and organic schemes there are two documents with similar names and completely different jobs. Nearly every buyer who has been burned here was sent the first one and assumed it was the second.

A scope certificate says a facility is entitled to produce certified goods. A transaction certificate says a specific shipment of goods actually contains the certified material, in stated quantities. If you intend to put a recycled or organic claim on your packaging, your website or a marketplace listing, the document that supports the claim is the transaction certificate covering your shipment.

The social-audit exception

amfori BSCI does not work like the product schemes, and treating it as though it did is a common mistake. There is no public database where a buyer can type a number and see an audit result: reports live in the amfori Sustainability Platform and are released by the member company that commissioned them. So the honest request is not “send me your BSCI certificate” but “share the audit report for the production site that will make my goods, through the platform”.

The second half of that sentence matters as much as the first. A social audit belongs to a production site, and a supplier may run several — or subcontract to one that was never audited. An audit for the wrong address proves nothing about where your goods are sewn. Ask which site, ask for the audit date, and note that a social audit says nothing at all about the chemistry, the fibre content or the durability of the product itself.

When the check does not come back clean

A blank result is information, not an accusation. The three ordinary explanations are that the certificate has expired, that it belongs to a different entity in the same group, or that the number was mistyped in the search — label numbers are case-sensitive. Send a screenshot of what you searched and ask the supplier to point at the entry. A supplier who is working in good faith will either find it or explain which link in the chain holds it.

What should change is the order of events. Until the register agrees with the document, the certificate does not go into your specification, onto your label, or into a claim you publish. That is not distrust; it is the same rule a customs officer or a marketplace compliance team will apply to you later, and they will apply it to your company rather than to your supplier's.

The exception worth planning for is timing. Certificates expire mid-programme, and a valid certificate at quotation is not a valid certificate at shipment. Put the re-check at the point where it can still change something: before bulk is cut, and again before the claim is printed.

OEKO-TEX Label Check: what a certificate number lookup shows

The number to look up is the one OEKO-TEX assigns to a certificate when it is first issued. It is printed on the label, which must carry the testing institute together with that number or a QR code [11]; MADE IN GREEN labels carry a product ID instead, unique to the labelled article [11]. Type the number into Label Check exactly as printed, keeping capitals, special characters and spaces, and leave out the institute's name [10].

As checked on 22 September 2026, a search returns a status first: the certificate is valid, has expired, has been withdrawn, or does not exist [1]. A certificate in renewal can show as under review while samples are retested for the next one-year term [10]. For a STANDARD 100 number the result then shows the certificate owner's name and address, the product class, a description of the certified articles, and whether certification was against Annex 4 or the expanded Annex 6 [1][12]. Expired and withdrawn numbers still display those details, so read the status before anything else.

The lookup has three limits. The results we checked showed no validity dates and no testing institute, so ask for the certificate itself to see the dates. The lookup cannot tell you that the garment in front of you is one of the certified articles. And STANDARD 100 is, in OEKO-TEX's own words, not a quality label: it concerns harmful substances in the article as produced, not product safety, drawstrings, burning behaviour or textile labelling [12]. Withdrawn numbers also appear on a separate list, with country, testing institute and standard [13].