The question is usually asked as one number. It is three, and they are far apart: what it costs to sell here, what it costs to be established here, and what it costs to undo either.
The figures below are for a mid-sized company — roughly €20–250M in revenue, already operating in two or more countries, entering Poland with a handful of people rather than a hundred. Smaller companies do not carry these costs; larger ones stop noticing them.
Most budgets circulated internally cover the first two months and none of the twelve. Below is the shape of the real figure, the items that are fixed regardless of size, and the cost that only appears when a company wants to stop.
The short answer
For a company of that size, the first twelve months cost roughly this much, depending on how much structure you take on:
The spread inside the third figure is almost entirely people. Two employees or four is the difference between the bottom and the top of that range; the registration itself is a rounding error against it.
Mode one
You invoice from head office, employ one or two local people through an employer of record, and hold stock with a third-party logistics operator. There is no Polish company, no local payroll, no statutory accounts.
What it costs over twelve months:
A monthly fee per employee on top of gross salary — typically €300–600 depending on provider and headcount — plus employer social contributions of roughly 19–22% of gross. For one salesperson on a mid-market Polish salary, budget €45,000–65,000 fully loaded for the year.
Handling is charged per unit rather than per commitment, which is what makes this mode reversible. Rates vary by sector, order profile and volume, so a rate card from one operator tells you very little about your own cost. What is worth knowing is the shape.
Cost per order, not cost per line. Ask any operator for a modelled cost per order at your expected volume and order profile, not for a tariff. Two quotes with identical unit rates can differ by half once units per order, packaging and delivery mix are applied.
Returns are not a rounding error. In fashion and consumer goods the return rate can approach half of everything shipped, and returns handling then accounts for a substantial share of total fulfilment cost. In industrial and B2B categories it is negligible. This single variable moves the budget more than any rate negotiation, and it is the line most first-year plans omit entirely.
Below a certain volume the unit economics invert. Space, warehouse systems and setup are fixed. Spread over a few hundred thousand orders they are marginal; spread over twelve thousand they dominate, and the effective cost per order can be several times the tariff. Under roughly 2,000 orders a month, a shared operator at a higher unit rate is usually cheaper than dedicated space at a lower one.
Which changes the question you should be asking an operator. At low volume most price a monthly minimum, and below a few thousand orders a month it is the floor rather than the tariff that determines what you actually pay. Ask for the floor and for a modelled cost at your own volume before comparing anyone's unit rates.
Under €80,000 for the year is realistic with one person and outsourced logistics. The constraint is not cost. It is that you cannot sign certain local contracts in your own name, some customers will not buy from a foreign invoice, and the person you employ through an employer of record has limited authority to commit you to anything.
Mode two
A distributor, an operating partner or a jointly owned vehicle. Someone who already has the warehouse, the licence, the customer relationships or the local team.
The direct cost is small: legal fees for the agreement, commercial and financial due diligence on the partner, and your own time. The real cost sits in the economics you agree to — margin share, exclusivity, minimum volumes — and in what the contract does not say.
What determines whether this mode works is not the partner. It is the agreement. Five things decide it, and all five are settled in the contract rather than in the relationship:
What each side puts in — capital, assets, customers, licence, people — and how it is valued. Unvalued contributions become disputes the moment the venture is worth something.
Board composition, the matters reserved to both parties, and what happens at deadlock. A fifty-fifty split with no deadlock mechanism is not a partnership; it is a delayed argument.
Who owns what, the scope of any licence, and whether it survives termination. This is the clause foreign companies concede fastest and regret longest.
Minimum volumes, service levels, exclusivity — and the consequence of missing them. Exclusivity without a performance floor is the most expensive sentence in most distribution agreements.
Term, notice, valuation method, put and call rights, and what happens to customers and stock. Agreed before signing, while both sides still want the deal to work.
A partnership entered on a handshake and a one-page term sheet costs nothing to start and a great deal to leave.
This is the right mode for a company that does not intend to run a Polish structure itself, and the wrong one for a company that wants to own the customer relationship.
Mode three
A limited company — spółka z ograniczoną odpowiedzialnością, sp. z o.o. — registered in your name, with local payroll, statutory accounts and a Polish tax presence.
The whole of the above is a small number. Companies that budget for market entry by pricing registration are budgeting for the wrong thing.
€150,000–400,000 for the first twelve months is the working range. Where you land inside it depends on headcount and whether you hold inventory.
Where the money goes
Take a mid-sized company that registers an entity and puts three people on the ground, one of whom runs it. Around €250,000 for twelve months — the middle of the range above. This is how it divides:
Four fifths of the first year is people. The entity — the item that dominates the planning conversation, the one every provider quotes for and every internal deck opens with — is two percent of it.
And more than half of the total sits in one line: whoever is accountable on the ground. That is the decision the budget is really about. Everything else is arithmetic once it is made.
Proportions, not a quote. Headcount and whether you hold inventory move the absolute numbers; they do not move the shape.
The number nobody quotes
Every entry budget answers what it costs to start. Almost none answers what it costs to stop — and that is the number that determines how much risk you are actually taking.
Closing a Polish limited company takes at least six months, and usually longer. Liquidation requires a mandatory creditor protection period before the company can be struck from the register. During it the company still files, still pays its accountant, and still exists.
Most foreign companies discover this after registration rather than before. It is the single most under-communicated fact in Polish market entry.
Around it sit the other exit costs: notice and severance on employment contracts, the remaining term on a lease, and the tail on supplier agreements signed for longer than the decision they support.
Which is why the order matters. Sell cross-border first, register when demand is confirmed, and commit to premises and permanent employment last. Each step is cheap to reverse until the one before it has produced evidence.
No commitment should have a horizon longer than your own decision cycle. A five-year lease at thirty percent below market is not a saving if your board reviews the market annually.
The second question
Cost is the first question a board asks. Time is the second, and the two do not move together.
Four to eight weeks selling cross-border. Three to five months with your own entity. The gap is not registration — it is VAT-EU, the bank account, and the first person on the ground being able to sign anything.
Six to ten weeks. Polish notice periods run one to three months depending on tenure, so the offer date and the start date sit further apart than most head-office plans assume.
Rarely before month twelve, commonly month eighteen to twenty-four. A first-year plan showing break-even in month nine is usually a plan that has not costed the commercial budget.
The practical consequence: the twelve-month budget above buys a functioning operation, not a profitable one. Boards that expect otherwise tend to cut the commercial budget in month seven — which is precisely when it stops working.
The comparison to make
The number most companies weigh entry against is the cost of the advice. The number that matters is the cost of the alternative, and the alternative is almost always a person.
A permanent country manager in Poland costs €120,000–160,000 in the first year once base salary, bonus, employer contributions, benefits and recruitment fees are counted. Lower figures exist and buy a more junior hire than an entry needs. The role also takes three to five months to fill — and it has to be defined before anyone in the company knows the market well enough to define it.
That is the real trade-off in the first year: not what the entry costs, but whether the person running it is in place before or after you learn what the market requires.
Three patterns
The entity is registered before demand is confirmed. The cost of the company is small; the cost of the six months it takes to close it, and of the people hired into it, is not.
The commercial budget is the residual. Entity, accounting and salaries are quoted and approved; demand generation gets whatever is left. The operation is then measured on revenue it was never funded to produce.
Five capable suppliers, no one accountable. A law firm, a tax advisor, an accountant, a recruiter and a logistics provider — all competent, none responsible for the entry as a whole. Head office receives five reports and no decisions, and the cost of that shows up as time rather than as an invoice.
Who wrote this
Operating Partner based in Warsaw. I run market entry and CEE hub operations for international mid-market companies on fixed-term mandates — the entry mode and the cost of reversing it, the local supplier layer, the first team, the first commercial channel, then handover to a permanent manager. I also structure joint ventures and rebuild commercial models that have stopped scaling.
For 13 years I ran a foreign principal's Polish operation as the person accountable on the ground: 16 people to 400, 11 markets, and three separate operations in Moscow, Istanbul and Hamburg consolidated into the Warsaw base.
How the mandate works, what it costs, and who it is for →
Figures reviewed against Polish law as of August 2026, and written for companies of roughly €20–250M in revenue. Thresholds and timelines change; check anything you intend to rely on.
