CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project) Supply Chain: membership cost, alternatives and supplier emissions data

Published 2 November 2026

How do you get emissions data from your suppliers?

A large organisation has three routes to supplier emissions data. It can run CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project) Supply Chain and ask suppliers to disclose. It can buy supplier-specific emissions data drawn from what suppliers have already published. Or it can run both. The routes differ in how much of the supply base they cover, how soon the data arrives, what they cost the suppliers, and what comes back: a score, or an emissions figure you can calculate with.

Most procurement and sustainability teams reach this decision at renewal time, or when a platform they use stops bundling CDP data. The sections below set out each route in turn, then put them side by side.

Route 1: what does CDP Supply Chain membership give you?

CDP Supply Chain is a membership programme for buyers. A member chooses which suppliers to request, CDP sends the request, and the suppliers who respond answer CDP's questionnaire. The member receives the responses, the suppliers' scores and CDP's member tools, with benchmarking reports and dashboard access on every tier.

What it costs. CDP doesn't publish membership prices; it quotes each member an annual price by tier. The tiers are set by how many suppliers a member can request: Essential covers up to 200 supplier requests, Lead up to 400, and Premium more than 400. CDP's fees have risen year on year, with admin fees up by about 5% for 2026. In June 2026 CDP announced that Permira, a private equity firm, is taking a majority stake in its commercial business, with the deal expected to close by the end of 2026. Suppliers requested only by Supply Chain members don't pay CDP's admin fee, but they carry the cost of answering: the full questionnaire takes significant internal time, and many suppliers pay a consultant to complete it.

What comes back, and when. Responses follow CDP's annual cycle. For 2026 the window opened in the week of 15 June, the scoring deadline fell in the week of 14 September, and scores are released in the week of 30 November. What arrives is each responding supplier's questionnaire answers and its scores: a headline grade from D- to A for each theme it answered, plus category scores and a Supplier Engagement Assessment of how that supplier manages its own suppliers.

Where it works best. CDP gives a supplier a recognised, structured way to disclose, and a score that rewards it for doing so. For suppliers who already respond to CDP for investors, a Supply Chain request adds little extra work. It suits buyers who want a formal disclosure ask and a public benchmark for a defined group of strategic suppliers.

What to plan around. A request reaches the suppliers you name, up to the tier's limit, and data arrives from those who respond, once a year. A score grades the response; it carries no emissions figure, as CDP scores explained sets out. The figures inside a response are self-reported and don't have to be third-party assured, Scope 3 doesn't have to be broken out by category, and working out your share of a supplier's emissions from its total is left to you.

Route 2: what does supplier-specific emissions data give you?

Supplier-specific emissions data starts from what suppliers have already published: their GHG inventories, product carbon footprints and the reports behind them. It covers the supply base before anyone is asked for anything, then applies each supplier's own data to what you buy from it.

DitchCarbon holds verified emissions data for over 2 million organisations, built on primary emissions data wherever it exists. That includes published GHG inventories and product carbon footprints, CDP responses, EcoVadis scorecards, SBTi targets and data suppliers declare on their own profiles. Your purchase data goes in as it is, matched against DUNS, LEI and ISIN identifiers where the list carries them, or from a company name alone where that's all it holds.

What comes back, and when. An emissions figure for every supplier, with the source document behind it and the method that produced it. A hybrid calculation applies the most accurate method available to each line: a product carbon footprint where one exists, then activity data, then the supplier's own reported inventory applied to your spend, and an industry average only when all else fails. The share of the baseline still resting on an industry factor is shown as a number. Teams get numbers they can defend within 2 weeks, and a recent deployment reached 70% coverage of emissions with primary data within 2 weeks. The data refreshes as suppliers publish, so it moves with the reporting year.

What it costs suppliers. Nothing. Every supplier has a free profile it can claim, and where the buyer needs data that hasn't been published, the request goes out prepopulated with what the supplier has already disclosed, so the supplier adds only the detail the buyer needs. A recent deployment gained additional primary data from 30% of over 40,000 recipients.

What else you get. Each supplier carries a DitchCarbon score from 0 to 100, with every criterion shown as earned or not, so the route to a better score is written down. The platform ranks suppliers by how much acting on each would move the footprint, gives each a reduction plan drawn from a named peer that has already made the cut, and forecasts each one against its own target trajectory. It runs in production on supply chains of over 100,000 suppliers.

Where it works best. It suits buyers who need a Scope 3 baseline across the whole supply base now, who report under CSRD, ISSB or CDP and need figures an auditor can trace, and who want to act on the suppliers where action moves the footprint most.

Route 3: when does running both make sense?

Often. The two routes do different jobs. CDP asks suppliers to disclose and gives them a recognised score for it. Supplier-specific data gives you a calculated emissions figure for every supplier, including the ones who never respond, and keeps it current between disclosure cycles.

A CDP response is one of the sources a DitchCarbon profile draws on, so a supplier that responds to your CDP request strengthens its figure in your baseline. Suppliers outside your CDP request list, or past the tier's limit, are covered from what they've published. Where you need more from a supplier, a prepopulated request asks for exactly that, and the supplier support pages show them how to answer.

CDP asks the questions, DitchCarbon gives the answers to drive your decarbonisation agenda.

CDP Supply Chain and supplier-specific emissions data, side by side

What if your platform bundles CDP scores today?

Procurement, supplier management and risk platforms often show a CDP flag or score next to each supplier. If you're weighing a CDP data renewal, the question is what your users would lose and what they would gain. A company climate profile API gives every company a score and a set of commitment flags, with a link to the full profile, and it can be displayed in a commercial product with attribution. Your users keep a yes/no flag, a score and a route to detail, on every supplier they hold.

Which route should you choose?

Start from the question you need answered. If it's "which of my strategic suppliers will disclose through a recognised framework?", CDP Supply Chain answers it. If it's "what are my supply chain emissions, supplier by supplier, and where do I act first?", supplier-specific emissions data answers it, for the whole supply base, within 2 weeks. Most large organisations need the second answer whatever they decide about the first. For how the main providers of that data compare, see supplier emissions data providers compared.