## The short answer
There is no official test or “test winner” for telemedicine cannabis providers; it makes more sense to measure every provider against the same verifiable criteria. Indicators of a reputable provider are a complete legal notice, named, verifiable doctors, a genuine review with no prescription guarantee, fees shown before submitting, free choice of pharmacy and no advertising with strains, prices per gram or discount codes. Warning signs include “prescription guaranteed”, a team of doctors without names or advertising tracking in the medical questionnaire.
Why there is no “test winner”
Anyone searching for “online cannabis prescription comparison” or “best provider” comes across rankings, seals and reviews. There is no official test for telemedicine providers. Often it is also not clear which criteria a ranking is based on and whether the site itself earns money from referrals.
There is also a legal peculiarity: prescription-only medicines may only be advertised to healthcare professionals, not to patients.¹ A reputable provider therefore cannot court you with “the best strain” or “the cheapest prescription” in the first place. Rather than searching for a winner, it makes more sense to measure every provider against the same verifiable criteria. This article sets out ten such criteria, each with what to look for and typical warning signs. It deliberately names no providers and awards no rankings.
Who is behind it? Company and doctors
1. Legal notice and registered office
Anyone who operates an online service on a commercial basis must, under § 5 of the German Digital Services Act (Digitale-Dienste-Gesetz, DDG), provide their name and address in an easily recognisable and directly accessible form; legal entities must also state their legal form and authorised representatives, together with contact details for rapid electronic contact and the commercial register and registration number, where registered. For regulated professions such as medicine, the professional chamber, professional title and professional regulations must also be stated.²
What to look for: full address, legal form, authorised representative, registration number, a working email address. Also clarify who your contractual partner is: the platform, the treating doctor, or both.
Warning sign: no legal notice (Impressum), only a contact form, missing register details or company names that change from one subpage to another.
2. Named, licensed doctors
The prescription is not issued by the platform but by a doctor. Reputable providers therefore say who reviews the requests. You can check for yourself whether someone is registered as a doctor: the German Medical Association (Bundesärztekammer) links to the doctor search tools of the state medical associations (Landesärztekammern) and the Associations of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (Kassenärztliche Vereinigungen). According to the German Medical Association, only these bodies hold valid information on the qualifications of doctors practising in Germany; not all of them offer an online search, and some provide information by telephone.³ The doctor searches of the Associations of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians only list doctors authorised to treat patients with statutory health insurance. For doctors who work exclusively in private practice, it is better to ask the competent state medical association.
What to look for: names, specialties and chamber membership of the reviewing doctors. Who is allowed to prescribe cannabis is explained in the article Which doctor prescribes cannabis?
Warning sign: just “our team of doctors” without names, interchangeable portrait photos, no information about who reviewed your request.
The medical review: a decision, not a guarantee
3. A genuine review that can also say no
The Model Professional Code for Physicians (Musterberufsordnung, MBO-Ä) puts personal contact first. Under § 7 para. 4 MBO-Ä, exclusive advice or treatment via communication media is “permitted in individual cases if this is medically justifiable and the necessary medical care is maintained, in particular through the manner in which findings are established and advice, treatment and documentation are provided”.⁴ The rule becomes binding through the professional codes of the state medical associations. In its guidance, the German Medical Association also points out that patients must be informed orally about the particularities of exclusive remote treatment, for which telephone or video can also be used; standard text blocks and ticking boxes alone are not sufficient for this.⁵
It follows that whether a prescription is issued is decided by the doctor in each individual case. A careful review inevitably means that some requests are declined. What happens then is explained in Cannabis prescription declined
What to look for: a statement that there is no entitlement to a prescription; the doctor can ask follow-up questions; a conversation by telephone or video is provided for or can be booked.
Warning sign: “prescription guaranteed”, “100% success rate”, “prescription in five minutes” or no way at all of contacting the person reviewing your request.
4. A questionnaire that requires honest answers
Forums often ask what you have to enter “correctly” in the questionnaire. The honest answer: whatever is true. The doctor decides on the basis of your information. Concealed pre-existing conditions, medications or mental illnesses can lead to a treatment being prescribed that is risky for you, for example because of interactions with other medicines.
What to look for: questions about diagnosis, previous treatments, current medication, pre-existing conditions and pregnancy; the option to provide medical findings.
Warning sign: a questionnaire that takes just a few clicks, answers that can be changed until the result “fits”, or hints from the provider about which information “leads to a prescription”.
Costs and refunds
5. Transparent fees before submitting
Costs comprise two separate items: the fee for the medical review or the platform, and the price of the medicine at the pharmacy. How both are made up is explained in the article on the costs of a cannabis prescription.
What to look for: the fee is fixed before you enter health data or pay; it is clear what it covers and what happens to the money if the request is declined.
Warning sign: prices only shown after the questionnaire, automatically renewing subscriptions without a clear notice, or a supposedly free medical review with no explanation of who pays for it. Medical work is not free. If it is financed via a pharmacy to which prescriptions are forwarded, that would be precisely what the Pharmacy Act prohibits (see criterion 6).
Pharmacy and advertising
6. Free choice of pharmacy
§ 11 of the Pharmacy Act (Apothekengesetz, ApoG) prohibits pharmacies from making arrangements with doctors or third parties on steering patients to them or allocating prescriptions. Third parties are also prohibited from collecting prescriptions, brokering or forwarding them to pharmacies and accepting a benefit in return.⁶ This protects your freedom of choice.
What to look for: you decide yourself which pharmacy receives your prescription, and you see conditions such as shipping, collection or courier service in advance. What matters when choosing is explained in Choosing a pharmacy: shipping, courier service or collection?.
Warning sign: the prescription goes to a fixed pharmacy without your choice, or choosing a different pharmacy costs extra.
7. No advertising of strains, prices or discounts
On 26 March 2026 (I ZR 74/25), the Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH) ruled that the operator of an internet platform that arranged treatment with medical cannabis from cooperating doctors had violated § 10 para. 1 of the Therapeutic Products Advertising Act (Heilmittelwerbegesetz, HWG). The platform had named medical cannabis and stated areas of application. According to the BGH, the fact that no product names or manufacturers were mentioned was “irrelevant”. The court saw a risk that consumers would press doctors for a prescription.⁷ In addition, cash discounts on medicines are inadmissible under § 7 HWG insofar as they breach pricing regulations.⁸
What to look for: factual information about the process, costs and requirements, without using strains as bait. A neutral data sheet on a preparation, with no price and no request button, is something different from advertising it.
Warning sign: “strain of the week” with a request button, THC levels as a selling point, prices per gram in ads, discount codes or vouchers on flower. How the legal situation could develop is described in the article Will online cannabis prescriptions be banned?.
Data protection and availability
8. Careful handling of health data
Under Art. 9 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR, German: DSGVO), health data belongs to the special categories of personal data. Its processing is prohibited in principle unless an exception applies, such as explicit consent for specified purposes. Transfers to countries outside the EU are only permitted under the additional conditions of Art. 44 et seq. GDPR.⁹
What to look for: an understandable privacy policy stating the controller, purposes, recipients (doctors, pharmacy, payment service provider), storage period and information on where the data is processed.
Warning sign: consent to advertising as a condition for the request, blanket disclosure “to partners”, advertising tracking on the pages of the medical questionnaire.
9. Reachable customer service
What to look for: an email address or telephone number that responds before payment; a visible processing status; a clear route for complaints and for questions to the doctor.
Warning sign: only a chatbot, no answer to questions before purchase, no identifiable complaints procedure. In the event of data protection breaches, you can contact the competent data protection supervisory authority.
Reading reviews on Trustpilot and Reddit correctly
10. Assess reviews critically
Companies that make customer reviews available must state whether and how they ensure that these come from people who have actually used the service.¹⁰ The Hamburg consumer advice centre (Verbraucherzentrale Hamburg) advises caution with conspicuously short or effusive texts, similar wording, many entries in a short time and a complete absence of critical voices.¹¹
What to look for: how does the provider respond to criticism? Are problems with refunds, availability or data protection described? Complaints about declined requests, on the other hand, are not a sign of poor quality: a provider that sometimes says no is doing what it should.
Warning sign: exclusively five-star reviews, rewards for reviews, forum posts with tips on filling in the questionnaire “correctly”. Anonymous posts on Reddit cannot be verified and say nothing about your own medical case.
Checklist
- Complete legal notice with address and registration number
- Reviewing doctors named and verifiable
- No prescription guarantee, declining expressly possible
- Follow-up questions and a conversation by telephone or video possible
- Detailed questionnaire that you answer honestly
- Fees and refund rules known before submitting
- Free choice of pharmacy, no surcharge for your choice
- No advertising with strains, prices per gram or discount codes
- Understandable privacy policy for health data
- Reachable customer service, reviews read critically
Transparency notice: these criteria also apply to Medicanova
Medicanova is itself a provider of telemedical requests and is therefore not neutral on this question. Apply the same standards to us. You can find out who is behind Medicanova under About us and in the legal notice, and which doctors review requests under Doctors. How we create articles and select sources is described in our editorial standards.
A written request costs €14.99, a video consultation €49.99. If no prescription is issued, the amount is refunded in full, for the written request and the video consultation alike. You choose the pharmacy yourself. You will find more answers in the frequently asked questions.
Frequently asked questions
Which provider is the best for an online cannabis prescription?
This cannot be answered in general terms. What matters is whether a provider meets the verifiable criteria: legal notice, named doctors, genuine review, transparent costs, free choice of pharmacy and data protection. There is no official test.
Are providers with a “test winner” seal particularly reputable?
Not automatically. Check who awards the seal, according to which criteria and whether the publisher earns money from referrals. Regardless of that, you can check the criteria in this article yourself.
Is there a free online cannabis prescription?
The medical review is a service that has to be paid for. If a provider advertises a free prescription, you should ask how it is financed. The Pharmacy Act prohibits benefits for forwarding prescriptions to pharmacies.⁶
May a provider offer discount codes for cannabis?
Cash discounts on medicines are inadmissible under § 7 HWG insofar as they breach pricing regulations.⁸ Discount codes that advertise strains or quantities should make you sceptical.
How do I check whether a doctor is really a doctor?
Via the doctor search of the competent state medical association or Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians, which the German Medical Association links to in one place. Where there is no online search, the chamber provides information by telephone.³
Is a prescription without a conversation reputable?
Under professional law, exclusive remote treatment is permitted in individual cases if it is medically justifiable and due care is maintained.⁴ Make sure that the doctor can ask follow-up questions and that a conversation by telephone or video is possible.
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This article is for general information only and does not replace medical or legal advice. There is no entitlement to a prescription. As of: September 2026.
Sources
- Heilmittelwerbegesetz (HWG), § 10 para. 1: gesetze-im-internet.de/heilmwerbg/__10.html
- Digitale-Dienste-Gesetz (DDG), § 5 – Allgemeine Informationspflichten [general information obligations]: gesetze-im-internet.de/ddg/__5.html
- Bundesärztekammer: Arztsuche [doctor search]: bundesaerztekammer.de/arztsuche
- Bundesärztekammer: Änderung § 7 Abs. 4 MBO-Ä (Fernbehandlung), synopsis of 21 March 2018: bundesaerztekammer.de
- Bundesärztekammer: Hinweise und Erläuterungen zu § 7 Abs. 4 MBO-Ä – Behandlung im persönlichen Kontakt und Fernbehandlung [notes and explanations on in-person and remote treatment] (as of 10 December 2020): bundesaerztekammer.de
- Apothekengesetz (ApoG), § 11 paras. 1 and 1a: gesetze-im-internet.de/apog/__11.html
- Bundesgerichtshof, press release No. 055/2026 on the judgment of 26 March 2026 – I ZR 74/25: bundesgerichtshof.de
- Heilmittelwerbegesetz (HWG), § 7 para. 1: gesetze-im-internet.de/heilmwerbg/__7.html
- Datenschutz-Grundverordnung (EU) 2016/679 [General Data Protection Regulation], Art. 9 and Art. 44 et seq.: eur-lex.europa.eu
- Gesetz gegen den unlauteren Wettbewerb (UWG) [Act Against Unfair Competition], § 5b para. 3: gesetze-im-internet.de/uwg_2004/__5b.html
- Verbraucherzentrale Hamburg: Kundenbewertungen im Internet – mit Vorsicht genießen [online customer reviews – treat with caution]: vzhh.de