Have film developed: Film labs in Germany, Austria and Switzerland

Rough guide per film (35mm, 2026): C41 color negative development approx. 3–7 EUR, S/W approx. 6–10 EUR, E6 slide approx. 9–13 EUR. Scans (depending on resolution) and prints cost extra. Medium format and large format are more expensive. Exact prices are listed on the respective lab’s website.

C41 is the standard process for color negative film (most color films). E6 develops slide film (color reversal, e.g. Provia, Velvia, Ektachrome). S/W means black and white and is often processed by hand. ECN2 is the cinema film process (e.g. Cinestill, respooled motion-picture film). Use the filter above for the process your film needs.

Mail-in service works nationwide: send your film well padded and with sufficient postage; the result comes back as a scan download and/or as prints plus developed negatives. In person is faster and more personal, but limited to your region. Use the »Mail-in only« filter if you don’t have a lab nearby.

You can give each lab card 1–5 stars. The average and number of votes are shown; you can sort the list by rating using »Best rating«. Each person can submit one rating per lab — you can change it at any time (click a new star) or remove it (click the same star again).

Why do I need to log in for this? Ratings are only honest if no one can manipulate them. Without registration, bots or individuals could push a lab up or down with hundreds of fake votes. That’s why every rating is linked to a real customer account in our shop — log in or register for free, rate the lab, and you’re done. We only see your account ID; nothing personal appears on the card.

The green checkmark means: The lab has reviewed and confirmed its listing itself — contact details, processes, and services have been approved by the lab. It is not a quality seal and says nothing about how well a lab works — that’s what the star ratings are for.

We researched the labs without a checkmark ourselves; to the best of our knowledge, their information is accurate, but it has not yet been verified by the lab. Do you run a lab and want the checkmark? Send a short email to info@ausgeknipst.de.

A large-scale lab (e.g. CEWE, dm, Rossmann) processes film industrially in large quantities: affordable and reliable for standard color film (C41, 35mm)—but without individual service. This generally means a fixed scan resolution with no choice, no push/pull or special processing, special formats usually aren’t possible, and your film is sent through the branch’s bulk shipping system (longer turnaround time, no direct contact with the lab).

A specialist lab processes small batches, often by hand: selectable scan quality, push/pull, cross-processing & co. on request, advice for problematic films, and a direct line to the people operating the machine. Usually a little more expensive for that reason. In the list, you can recognize large-scale labs by the gray large-scale lab badge—use the “Without large-scale labs” filter to show only specialist labs.

This business accepts your film but does not process it itself—it forwards it to another lab. That is perfectly legitimate and exactly right for many people: You have a contact person in your city, can stop by in person, and don’t have to ship anything.

You should still know this, because it changes three things: It takes longer because your film travels one extra leg. Special requests such as push/pull, cross-processing, or a specific developer are harder to arrange because the business has to forward them. And if something goes wrong, the person who handled the film is not behind the counter.

Where we know which lab the film is forwarded to, this is shown in the listing. The services the business performs itself—often prints, enlargements, or scans—are indicated by the features on the map; for film processing itself, we do not assign a feature.

Use the “Only with in-house processing” filter to hide these businesses and see only labs that process film themselves.

Simply enter your postal code in the search bar—the list will then show labs within the selected radius, sorted by distance, and the map will zoom in on your area. The distance is the straight-line distance; the lab’s position is its address or the center of the town/postal code. On the map, green dots indicate entries verified by the lab.

Austria and Switzerland: Postal codes have four digits there—just enter the four digits. However, around a thousand of these numbers exist in both countries (for example, 1010 is in Vienna and Lausanne). In that case, we’ll ask you to clarify: enter A-1010 for Austria or CH-1010 for Switzerland.

Data protection: Your postcode is matched locally in your browser against a postcode table and is not sent anywhere.

And remember: mail-in labs accept films from across the country—a lab 300 km away may still be the best choice for your film. Many labs also accept shipments across the border; however, customs duties and import tax apply to shipments to and from Switzerland, so it is best to clarify this with the lab beforehand.

The price is a comparison value: the lab’s lowest price for developing + scanning a 35mm film (35mm, lowest scan resolution, incl. VAT), excluding shipping. This lets you sort the list above by price. Higher scan resolutions, prints, medium and large format, and express service cost more. Prices change—the current status is shown for each lab; the lab’s price list (link »Source«) is binding. »On request« means no public online price was found.

Swiss labs calculate in francs and are therefore marked with CHF; German and Austrian labs use euros. When sorting by price, we compare the figures as shown—francs and euros have been close in value for years, so this is sufficient for a rough order, but it is not an exact exchange-rate comparison.