---
title: "Solar panel price per watt, country by country | ComparePV"
description: "What a rooftop solar module costs per watt before tax in each market, from live shop offers, with the spread inside each country and what it means for a buyer."
source: "https://comparepv.com/articles/solar-panel-price-per-watt-by-market"
image: "https://comparepv.com/static/images/og/articles/solar-panel-price-per-watt-by-market.jpg"
updated: 2026-10-09
---

# Solar panel price per watt by market

What a rooftop solar module costs per watt before tax in each market, from live shop offers, with the spread inside each country and what it means for a buyer.

By [Bart Szablowski](https://comparepv.com/authors/bart-szablowski) · Updated 9 October 2026 · 8 min read


## The analysis

On this page

1. What price per watt measures
2. Where the prices come from
3. Price per watt across all markets
4. Price per watt by country
5. Two real modules and their prices
6. What this means when you buy
7. What these figures cannot tell you

Figures and denominatorsRelated readingReferences

**In short:** Before tax, the median single rooftop module in our live shop offers costs 0.168 EUR/W across all markets. By country the medians are Poland 0.146, Germany 0.177, Italy 0.190 and the United States 0.383 EUR/W. The market table also gives the band holding the middle half of each country's offers, so you can see whether the gap between two countries is bigger than the spread between shops inside one.

Shops print a price per module, and modules differ in power, so comparing two listings means dividing one number by the other in your head. Price per watt does that division for every listing at once. It also answers something no single shop can: what a watt of module costs in different countries right now.

### What price per watt measures

Price per watt is the module price divided by its rated power. A 450 W module at 90 EUR costs 0.20 EUR/W; a 500 W module at 95 EUR costs 0.19 EUR/W, so the dearer listing is the cheaper watt. The watt is the rating at standard test conditions, the number in the product name.

The question here is narrow. Among single rooftop modules for sale today, what is the typical price per watt before tax in each market, and how wide is the range inside each one? It isn't the price of a finished installation, which adds the balance of system (mounting, inverter, cabling) and labour. And it isn't a forecast.

Module prices have fallen a long way over the decades, as the long-run world average below shows. That chart stops in 2021 and averages the whole world, so treat it as background.

![Line chart of global average solar module price in US dollars per watt falling steeply from 1975 to 2021](https://comparepv.com/static/images/articles/pv-module-price-per-watt-history.webp)

*Global average solar module price in 2021 US dollars per watt, 1975 to 2021; it is a world average, not a country comparison. Image: Our World in Data, [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0).*

### Where the prices come from

Our crawler reads the product pages of shops in several countries for the [live offers list](https://comparepv.com/offers). So these are the shops' own asking prices, read one listing at a time.

From the 6,576 offers filed as solar panels, I dropped pallets and multipacks (687 offers), because their price covers many modules at once; [pallet or single module](https://comparepv.com/articles/pallet-or-single-module) covers what they save. I kept single modules of 400 to 800 W with a price (2,714 offers), the size class sold for roofs. Then I dropped prices that can't be real. That leaves 2,685 offers from 117 shops in 18 markets. The exact rules are under "Figures and denominators" below the article.

Each price is the shop's own figure with tax taken off, converted to euro at the European Central Bank's reference rate for the day the offer was read. Taking tax off is what makes markets comparable, because VAT rates differ between countries and sometimes between buyers in one country.

### Price per watt across all markets

Across every market, the median rooftop module costs 0.168 EUR/W before tax. Half of all offers fall between 0.145 and 0.220 EUR/W. The chart shows the whole distribution.

*Based on 2,685 offers with a stated value; the line marks the median, 0.168 EUR/W.*

The numbers behind the chart

| Price per watt before tax (EUR/W) | Offers |
| --- | --- |
| \<0.10 | 15 |
| 0.10-0.15 | 804 |
| 0.15-0.20 | 1,046 |
| 0.20-0.25 | 274 |
| 0.25-0.30 | 130 |
| 0.30-0.35 | 133 |
| 0.35-0.40 | 98 |
| 0.40-0.45 | 51 |
| 0.45-0.50 | 37 |
| 0.50-0.55 | 16 |
| 0.55-0.60 | 16 |
| 0.60+ | 65 |

### Price per watt by country

The table splits the same pool by market, and lists only countries with at least five shops in it. The other markets count in the overall figures, but with a handful of shops a market's figure is just those shops' price list. Read the median first, then the middle-half band, which runs from the 25th to the 75th percentile. The last two columns say how much each row rests on.

| Market | Median (EUR/W) | Middle half (EUR/W) | Offers | Shops |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Poland | 0.146 | 0.135 to 0.163 | 1,171 | 38 |
| Germany | 0.177 | 0.159 to 0.217 | 233 | 9 |
| Italy | 0.190 | 0.164 to 0.313 | 269 | 15 |
| Netherlands | 0.173 | 0.144 to 0.184 | 68 | 8 |
| Slovakia | 0.169 | 0.159 to 0.191 | 105 | 7 |
| United States | 0.383 | 0.339 to 0.512 | 229 | 11 |
| India | 0.223 | 0.170 to 0.297 | 51 | 6 |

#### How to read the bands

Put two markets' bands side by side. Where one market's band contains the other market's median, the gap between the two medians is smaller than the spread between shops inside that band, and the shop you pick matters more than the country. Where the bands don't touch, the country itself is part of the price.

Then look at each band on its own. If the 75th percentile sits much further above the median than the 25th sits below it, the market has a tail of dear listings above a tighter core of cheaper ones.

![Rows of dark blue solar modules mounted on a terracotta tile roof beside apartment buildings in Italy](https://comparepv.com/static/images/articles/rooftop-array-italy-tile-roof.webp)

*A residential rooftop array on a tile roof in Italy, one of the markets whose module prices are compared per watt. Image: [CERP](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Impianto_fotovoltaico.jpg), [CC BY-SA 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0).*

Where one market sits apart, this data shows the gap but can't explain it. A listing prints one price, and nothing in it says how much is the module, the import duty, the freight or the shop's margin.

### Two real modules and their prices

A median is easier to picture with a product behind it. I picked these two by a rule: among modules we could match to our catalogue, the ones quoted in the most markets when I wrote this, with ties going to the module with more offers. Nobody paid for a place here.

The module that was quoted in the most markets:

Scorecard for this module: [open its page on ComparePV](https://comparepv.com/panel/ja-solar-jam54d40-470-lr).

The runner-up under the same rule:

Scorecard for this module: [open its page on ComparePV](https://comparepv.com/panel/longi-lr7-54hvh-480m).

The cheapest current offers for the first one, each in the shop's own currency and on the side of VAT the shop printed. Its module page has the full list.

Cheapest current offers for [JA Solar JAM54D40-470/LR](https://comparepv.com/panel/ja-solar-jam54d40-470-lr), prices read 9 Oct 2026.

| Shop | Market | Price | Availability |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| [PV Zenit](https://comparepv.com/go/65264) | Poland | 335 zł incl. VAT | In stock |
| [Eco System Projekt](https://comparepv.com/go/181) | Poland | 339 zł incl. VAT | In stock |
| [Solar-EM](https://comparepv.com/go/1383) | Poland | 341 zł incl. VAT | In stock |

*Each price is the figure the shop printed, on its own side of VAT.*

For the same pool split by module power instead of by market, see [which power class is cheapest per watt](https://comparepv.com/articles/which-power-class-is-cheapest-per-watt).

### What this means when you buy

#### Tax decides what you pay

Every figure above is before tax, and you'll usually pay tax. In Germany, the VAT Act sets a zero rate for modules supplied to the operator of a system on or near a home, and treats any system up to 30 kWp as meeting that condition. In our German pool, 193 of 233 offers were listed at a zero VAT rate.

Elsewhere the rate depends on the country, and the gross price sits above the net figure in the table by that rate. [Gross or net](https://comparepv.com/articles/gross-or-net-shop-prices) shows which shops print prices with VAT and which without, market by market. [The same module, different shop](https://comparepv.com/articles/same-module-different-shop-price-spread) measures how far apart shops are on one and the same module.

#### Modules are a minority of a rooftop system's cost

Take a 6 kWp array and two example prices, 0.15 and 0.38 EUR/W:

| Module price | Modules for 6 kWp |
| --- | --- |
| 0.15 EUR/W | 900 EUR |
| 0.38 EUR/W | 2,280 EUR |

Fraunhofer ISE puts the total investment for a small rooftop system in Germany (up to 30 kWp) at 1,000 to 2,000 EUR per kWp, so 6,000 to 12,000 EUR for this array. Against the lowest total, the modules are 900 / 6,000 = 15 % at the lower price and 2,280 / 6,000 = 38 % at the higher one. Each cent per watt is 0.01 × 6,000 = 60 EUR on this array, between 0.5 % and 1 % of the total.

The same study put the lowest net wholesale price for crystalline modules in Germany in the fourth quarter of 2023 at 270 EUR per kWp, which is 0.27 EUR/W. You can hold it against the German row above, as long as you remember the table holds today's retail asking prices and the study a 2023 wholesale one. The levelized cost of electricity of a home system follows the whole investment, so it moves less than the module price does.

#### Compare within one market, per watt, on the same tax basis

A cheap listing with a lower power rating can cost more per watt than a dearer one with a higher rating. Divide the net price by the rated watts, and check whether the shop printed the price with or without VAT; our offers list marks that next to every price. If you know your roof, the [roof-fit selector](https://comparepv.com/tools/roof-fit-selector) finds the module sizes that fit it and prints the cheapest offer we hold for each.

Type in the offers you're weighing and the figure below ranks them that way, against the market median before tax.

**Rank offers by what a watt costs**

Type the price and the rated power of the offers you are weighing and watch them re-rank by price per watt, with each one's gap to the cheapest.

Divide each offer's price by its rated power in watts and rank the results, lowest first. A 400 W module at 72 EUR costs 0.180 EUR/W, a 450 W module at 78 EUR costs 0.173 EUR/W, and a 600 W module at 112 EUR costs 0.187 EUR/W. The 450 W module is the cheapest per watt, although the 400 W module has the lowest price: it buys fewer watts. The 400 W module costs 3.8 % more for every watt, and the 600 W module 7.7 % more.

Interactive on the web page.

#### A higher price per watt can still pay back

What a watt earns depends on where it sits. A sunny site has a higher specific yield than a cloudy northern one, so the same price per watt buys a different return in different places.

![Large solar modules in rows on a flat commercial roof in Helsinki, Finland, with city buildings and a tower behind](https://comparepv.com/static/images/articles/flat-roof-array-finland.webp)

*Solar modules on the flat roof of a large commercial building in Finland, a northern European market. Image: [Messut1](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Messukeskuksen_aurinkopaneelit_.jpg), [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0).*

To see what a given price means for your own payback period, put it into the [solar payback calculator](https://comparepv.com/tools/solar-payback-calculator). I would do that before chasing the last cent per watt.

### What these figures cannot tell you

These are asking prices. A shop may sell below its listed price to installers or for larger orders, and we only see what the product page shows. Shipping isn't included.

Prices move every day, and so does the pool. New shops get added, so a market's figure next month may rest on a different set of shops. A currency swing also shifts a non-euro market's figures without any shop changing a price.

Every offer counts once, so a shop with a long catalogue weighs more in its market's median than a shop with five listings. In a small market one shop can hold much of the pool, which is why the table prints offer and shop counts next to every median.

Power comes from the listing, not from our catalogue: the rated power is the figure the shop printed. The 400 to 800 W window and the price sanity range catch the worst parsing errors, not every one.


## 01. Figures and denominators

How the figures above were computed. Every figure is recomputed from the catalogue and the live shop offers when the page is served, and each one counts only the modules or offers that publish the value.

The offers come from our crawler, which reads the public product pages of shops in several countries and keeps one current row per product page. A product page the crawler stops seeing drops out after a week, so the pool is the offers live when the page is served, not a price history.

We start from the 6,576 offers the crawler files as solar panels. Of those, 687 are pallets or multipacks, whose price covers many modules and whose power figure is ambiguous, and they are left out. 2,714 are single modules of 400 to 800 W with a price. Below 400 W the list is mostly camper, balcony and portable panels, a different product with a different price per watt.

Price per watt is the shop's price before VAT (before sales tax in the United States and before GST in India), converted to euro at the ECB reference rate of the day the offer was read, divided by the module's rated power in watts. Offers below 0.05 or above 2 EUR/W are dropped: at that point the price or the power figure on the listing is a unit slip, not an offer. That leaves 2,685 offers from 117 shops in 18 markets.

A market enters the comparison when at least five shops in it quoted rooftop modules at the time of writing. With only a few shops, a market's figure is those shops' price list. The median and the 25th and 75th percentiles are continuous percentiles over the offers in each market. Every offer counts once, so a shop with many listings weighs more than a shop with few.


| Figure | Value | Computed over |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Price per watt before tax, median, all markets | 0.168 EUR/W | 2,685 offers |
| Panel offers held by the crawler | 6,576 | 6,576 offers |
| Panel offers sold as a pallet or pack | 687 | 6,576 offers |
| Single rooftop modules (400 to 800 W) with a price | 2,714 | 6,576 offers |
| Rooftop module offers in the price per watt pool | 2,685 | 2,685 offers |
| Shops in the price per watt pool | 117 | 2,685 offers |
| Markets in the price per watt pool | 18 | 2,685 offers |
| Price per watt before tax, 25th percentile, all markets | 0.145 EUR/W | 2,685 offers |
| Price per watt before tax, 75th percentile, all markets | 0.220 EUR/W | 2,685 offers |
| Germany: offers at a zero VAT rate | 193 | 233 offers |


## 02. Related tools

[Live shop offers](https://comparepv.com/offers) [Roof-fit selector](https://comparepv.com/tools/roof-fit-selector) [Solar payback calculator](https://comparepv.com/tools/solar-payback-calculator)


## 03. Related reading


#### Which power class is cheapest per watt

[Open](https://comparepv.com/articles/which-power-class-is-cheapest-per-watt)

Does a watt cost less on a bigger solar module? Live shop offers split into five power classes, in Poland and across markets, with spreads and shop counts.


#### Pallet or single module: which is cheaper per watt?

[Open](https://comparepv.com/articles/pallet-or-single-module)

How much cheaper per watt is a pallet or multipack of solar panels than a single module? Live shop offers, same shop and same module, with counts.


#### Gross or net: why two shop prices are not comparable

[Open](https://comparepv.com/articles/gross-or-net-shop-prices)

Which solar panel shops print prices with VAT and which without, market by market, and how to turn any shop price into a figure you can compare.


#### The same module, different shop: how much prices differ

[Open](https://comparepv.com/articles/same-module-different-shop-price-spread)

How far apart shop prices sit for the exact same solar module, measured on live offers before VAT, and what stock status and shop habits add to the gap.


## 04. Reference list

1. [German VAT Act (UStG), section 12, paragraph 3, zero rate for solar modules](https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/ustg_1980/__12.html)
2. [European Central Bank, euro foreign exchange reference rates](https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/policy_and_exchange_rates/euro_reference_exchange_rates/html/index.en.html)
3. [Fraunhofer ISE, Levelized Cost of Electricity, Renewable Energy Technologies, July 2024](https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/en/documents/publications/studies/EN2024_ISE_Study_Levelized_Cost_of_Electricity_Renewable_Energy_Technologies.pdf)


---

Source: https://comparepv.com/articles/solar-panel-price-per-watt-by-market