How to verify ISO 17025 accreditation and a laboratory's scope, and spot a false claim

What exactly are you verifying?

"Is this laboratory accredited?" can be answered yes while the answer you need is no, because ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation is granted by an accreditation body for a defined list of tests or calibrations, with their methods, ranges and sites, published on a schedule. A food laboratory accredited for moisture and fat may run your pesticide screen in the same building, unaccredited.

So the real question has three parts. Is the body that granted the accreditation itself recognised? Is the accreditation current today, not merely on the date printed on a PDF someone e-mailed you? And does the schedule cover the specific result you are about to rely on, at the range, site and method version the laboratory actually used?

The accreditation body works to ISO/IEC 17011, sends a lead assessor and technical assessors into the laboratory and watches the work being done before it decides. A document that skipped that process is worth little, however official it looks. If you are unsure how the schedule itself is built, our guide to the ISO/IEC 17025 scope of accreditation explains the lines it contains.

Where to verify ISO 17025 accreditation

Use independent sources, in this order, never only documents the laboratory supplies.

1. Global ACI's list of recognised accreditation bodies

Since 1 January 2026, international recognition of accreditation runs through Global ACI (Global Accreditation Cooperation Incorporated), which brought together ILAC and IAF. Its Multilateral Recognition Arrangement replaced the ILAC MRA, and accreditations issued under the ILAC MRA continue to be recognised while arrangements move across. Global ACI publishes the accreditation bodies it recognises, filterable by economy and scope. Confirm that the body named on the laboratory's documents appears there for testing or calibration, whichever you need.

2. The accreditation body's own register

A recognised body publishes the organisations it accredits, with each one's certificate and schedule. Search for the laboratory by name, check the entry is for the same legal entity and address, and open the schedule from the body's site rather than from an attachment. National bodies such as UKAS in the United Kingdom, NABL in India, the Philippine Accreditation Bureau, EIAC in Dubai or NATA in Australia are typical places to look, depending on where the laboratory operates.

3. The laboratory's certificate and schedule, cross-checked

Ask the laboratory for its accreditation certificate and the current issue of its schedule. Compare both with what the body publishes: name, site, the laboratory's reference number with the body, the standard (ISO/IEC 17025:2017) and the issue date of the schedule.

4. The report in your hands

Finally, check the report or calibration certificate you received against the schedule. Accreditation bodies set rules on how their symbol may appear and how results outside the scope are to be identified, so ask the laboratory which results on the report are covered, and read the answer against the schedule yourself.

ISO 17025 accreditation verification checklist

Work through these checks for every laboratory, calibration provider or reference material supplier whose results feed decisions you have to defend.

Keep a dated record of each check; if your organisation is accredited or certified, it is also evidence of how you control external providers.

Signs of a fake or misleading ISO 17025 claim

Forgeries exist, but most problems are claims that are technically true and practically misleading.

• "Certified to ISO 17025". Laboratories are accredited, not certified. A certificate issued by a management system certification body, which works to ISO/IEC 17021-1, or by a consultant, is not accreditation and will not appear on any accreditation body's register.
• "ISO 17025 compliant". A self-declaration: nobody independent has watched the work.
• An ISO 9001 certificate offered instead. It shows a quality management system, not technical competence for a named test.
• An accreditation body you cannot find. An official-sounding name missing from Global ACI's list deserves a hard look.
• A schedule that is old, partial or not the body's. A PDF with an early issue date may no longer match what the body publishes; scopes are extended, reduced and reissued.
• The right laboratory, the wrong scope. The most common case in practice: a genuinely accredited laboratory issues a report on work that is not on its schedule.
• The ISO logo used as proof. ISO writes the standard; it does not certify anyone or issue certificates, and it does not permit its logo to be used in connection with certification.
• A promise measured in days. If a provider offered the laboratory "accreditation" in ten days, it was not ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation. Validation, uncertainty and proficiency testing alone take longer.

What to do when an accreditation does not check out

Start with a question, not an accusation. Write to the laboratory, name the discrepancy you found and ask for its explanation and the current schedule. Many gaps turn out to be a recent scope extension or a report that should have marked a result as unaccredited.

If the answer does not settle it, contact the accreditation body. It can confirm whether an accreditation exists, whether it is current and what it covers; only the body can do that. If a document appears forged, tell the body.

Then deal with the consequences on your side:

• Identify the results already used from that provider and what depended on them.
• Decide, with a recorded rationale, whether to repeat the work elsewhere.
• Update your approved provider records and selection criteria.

For an accredited laboratory this matters twice: ISO/IEC 17025 expects metrological traceability of results and control of externally provided products and services, so a calibration certificate from a provider whose scope does not cover the instrument or range can undermine your own traceability chain. Our guide to equipment, calibration and metrological traceability covers how that chain is built.

Your own laboratory: make your accreditation easy to verify

The checks above are the ones your customers, regulators and tender panels will run on you. Laboratories that pass them easily link their website to the body's copy of the schedule, say in quotations which tests are inside the accredited scope, mark unaccredited results plainly and never describe themselves as "certified". Keeping the scope current matters as much as winning it; see ISO/IEC 17025 surveillance and reassessment.

Verifying ISO 17025 accreditation: questions buyers ask