Introduction to ESA costing software
To do business with companies, the European Space Agency (ESA) has developed a procedure and an associated costing software tool called ECOS for aggregating and calculating the price elements of financial proposals through the entire contractual chain.
When ESA contractors and their supply chain calculate the costs for a space project, they use ECOS to divide the financial proposal into manageable parts based on the project's hierarchy. These individual cost elements are then automatically gathered and summarised.
Specifically, it breaks down into three steps:
- Partitioning through the industrial structure: The software allows the prime contractor (as well as subcontractors), to break the project down into work packages and assign specific tasks to subcontractors at various levels of the supply chain.
- Generating proposals: Each company or team inputs their own specific financial data (labour rates, material costs, etc.) into the ECOS tool based on their assigned portion.
- Integrating electronically: ECOS digitally aggregates all these individual cost elements and feeds them up the contractual chain into one unified, error-free financial proposal.
This electronic integration ensures that the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and pricing calculations are completely standardised and easily verified by ESA.
Through ECOS, the information presented conforms to the ESA standard costing and pricing requirements introduced in the ESA Conditions to Tender, and represented by the ESA Price Breakdown Forms (PBF) which replace Procedures, Standards and Specifications (PSS).
About ECOS
ECOS version 6 is a web-browser application which is free of charge. It requires no download or installation and is part of a suite of esa-star applications used by companies that do business with ESA.
The use of ECOS 6 is mandatory for all tender actions issued by ESA. To access ECOS 6, log in at the Doing Business with ESA portal or click the direct link here.
Video tutorials and user guides
View the full set of ECOS 6 training videos and log in on esa-star to view the ECOS 6 training guides written for contract and bid managers to learn how to build an ECOS 6 project and use the basic features.
If you are part of the ECOS Community on Teams then you can access recordings of ECOS 6 demonstrations at the following link: ECOS Community - Documents - ECOS 6 Demo Sessions for Full Release - All Documents. On-site training sessions at ESA-ESTEC in the Netherlands are also regularly announced on the ECOS Community and in the ESA Learning Hub.
If you are using ECOS 5 for past tender actions, here are some useful legacy documents: ECOS 5 Video Training and the ECOS 5 Training Manual together with the training support files. Although technical support for ECOS version 5 ends on 30 June 2026, light support is available through the ECOS Community from the 1 July 2026.
Find the latest details on the 'Conformal use of ECOS for the preparation of Financial Proposals' here for ECOS 5 and here for ECOS 6.
ECOS Community on Teams
Become a member of the ECOS Community site on Microsoft Teams where you can ask questions or interact with other ECOS users. You can also find information about future updates and training.
ECOS is under the responsibility of the ESA Cost Engineering Section (TEC-SFC) and ESA Industrial Audit Services Section (CIC-IA).
Contact the ECOS Help desk
– For ECOS 5 (until 1 July 2026)
ECOS Help Desk
E-mail: ecos@radventure.com
Telephone: +31 (0)88 77 647 86
– For ECOS 6
Esait Service Desk
E-Mail: esait.service.desk@esa.int
Telephone: +39 (0)69 41 807 00
