DitchCarbon vs Responsibly: risk profile or emissions figure?

DitchCarbon and Responsibly start from the same idea: read what a supplier has already published before asking them anything. So the useful comparison is not which one avoids the survey. It is what the read produces. Responsibly turns it into a risk score. DitchCarbon turns it into an emissions figure with the source document and the calculation behind it. If a risk score for procurement is the whole brief, Responsibly is built for it. If the brief is decarbonisation, you need a specialist Scope 3 emissions tool.

Responsibly describes itself as "AI-native TPRM, Sustainable Procurement and Supplier Management powered by Agents". DitchCarbon provides verified emissions data for over 2 million organisations, so procurement, sustainability and finance teams can measure and act on supply chain and portfolio emissions from one source.

What does reading a supplier's published data produce?

An outside-in read can tell you two different things about the same supplier. It can tell you they have an SBTi target and a 2024 sustainability report. Or it can tell you their Scope 1, Scope 2 and upstream Scope 3 per unit of revenue for each of the last ten years, with the page each figure came from. The first is a risk signal. The second is a number your auditor can sample.

Responsibly produces the signal. What its read returns about a supplier is a score: whether a certification exists, whether a target has been set, whether an initiative has been announced, whether adverse news has appeared. On emissions, it finds high-level emissions data where a supplier has published it, a headline figure or a target, enough to guide a procurement conversation. It does not calculate a figure, allocate one to what you buy, or produce one where the supplier has published nothing.

DitchCarbon produces the figure. Each organisation carries up to fifteen years of reported emissions history, eighteen attributes deep per year, with restatements merged into one series rather than left as competing versions. Every figure is deep-linked to the page of the source document it came from, with the assurance level found for that scope and a change history. The source document library holds the reports themselves, so the auditor's sample starts from the document rather than from a score.

The difference matters most at the point where a procurement team hands the number to a finance team. A risk score tells you which suppliers to look at. It cannot go into a Category 1 total. An emissions figure with its source can.

Where does the Category 1 figure come from when a supplier has published nothing?

Most suppliers on a long tail have never published an emissions figure. What a platform does about that decides whether it can produce an inventory or only describe the suppliers who already disclose.

On Responsibly's decarbonisation page, "Recalculate using actual supplier data" is listed as a use case, and "Emission estimates and granular LCA data" carries a "coming soon" label. No emission factor library appears in its published material. Today, what Responsibly holds on emissions is a high-level guide drawn from what the supplier published, and where the supplier published nothing there is no figure.

DitchCarbon calculates. Every organisation records which of four methods produced its figure, in a fixed order: its own reported data first, product data from a published carbon footprint second, activity data from what was actually consumed third, and industry data fourth of four, used only where the first three could not be found or captured. The default factor set is CEDA 2025, EPA is also available, and the generic library draws on ecoinvent, CEDA, EPA, DEFRA and EXIOBASE. Behind every figure sits a line item breakdown showing which lines used which method.

So the answer to "what do you actually hold" has three layers, and all three are on the same platform: company emissions data for over 2 million organisations, including corporate-level GHG inventories; supplier-specific emissions at spend, activity and product level; and the generic emission factor library that closes the rest of the inventory, with the gap shown rather than hidden.

The share of a baseline still resting on a generic factor is a number rather than a claim. The emission factor method is a filterable column on every organisation, and one toggle switches the headline between organisation-specific and industry factors. Ask any vendor to show that proportion on your own supplier list. A platform that cannot produce the number is telling you something by not having it.

How much of the work needs a supplier to answer anything?

Both platforms read published data before asking. Both send requests prepopulated from what they already hold. Both give suppliers a free account. None of that separates them, so the question is what still has to be asked.

With DitchCarbon, often nothing. A company-specific figure already exists for a great many of the organisations on a typical Category 1 list, so the spend can be ranked by embodied emissions, the baseline calculated and the first conversations started before a single request goes out. A recent deployment reached about 60% of a large supplier base within 2 weeks. A request is a tool for closing the gaps, not the way the data arrives.

Where a figure does need improving, the request goes out from the portfolio view, already filled in from what that organisation has published, addressed to a named sustainability contact rather than a procurement inbox. The maturity ladder decides who gets asked: every organisation sits on one of four steps, from not disclosing through to publishing product carbon footprints, sorted against embodied emissions, so a large supplier on the bottom step is visible immediately and a small supplier that already discloses is left alone.

When a supplier does not answer, Responsibly has no fallback. Nothing is calculated, so that supplier's line stays empty until they respond, and the emissions number is only as complete as the response rate. With DitchCarbon, where nothing has been disclosed and nothing comes back, the generic layer closes the inventory and the coverage measure shows exactly which lines it covers. The inventory is complete on day one. The requests improve it.

What happens after the baseline?

A baseline nobody acts on is an expensive spreadsheet, and it is where the two products diverge most.

Forecasting and targets

Responsibly captures targets data, SBTi and non-SBTi, and describes seeing "how suppliers help you meet reduction targets". Its public pages describe no forecast against those targets.

DitchCarbon runs each organisation's actuals forward to 2050 against the trajectory its own target requires, with a reliability notice where the underlying disclosure is patchy. Forecasting is projection rather than measurement, and the UL Solutions verification described below does not extend to it; the notice says so on the page. The targets register keeps each target's original wording and flags SBTi-validated targets separately from self-declared ones. Climate goals are tracked as behind, at risk or on track, and SBTi progress across a portfolio can be weighted by count, by spend or by embodied emissions, which give three different answers to the same question.

Deciding what to do about it

Responsibly offers "supplier decarb scores for procurement" and automated engagement to improve them. Its public pages describe no recommendations carrying tonnes.

DitchCarbon ranks reduction recommendations per organisation and category by the tonnes acting on each would move, with a named peer already reducing at that rate as the precedent. Top emitters are ordered by embodied emissions rather than by spend, and reduction case studies are pulled from suppliers' own published reports, so the conversation with a supplier opens on what a peer in their sector has already done.

Scoring and coverage

Responsibly scores risk, and a risk score is what a procurement team needs to decide who to look at next. It says nothing about how an emissions figure was produced, because the product does not produce one.

The DitchCarbon score runs 0 to 100 across six criterion groups, with the weight and the source shown for every criterion, so filtering to unearned criteria turns a scorecard into an engagement list. Disclosure coverage bars show, year by year, what each organisation has published and what buyers expect but cannot find, and the thin bars are the engagement list.

DitchCarbon and Responsibly at a glance

The table separates on one line: what the read produces. Everything below that line follows from it. A platform whose output is a score builds scorecards, questionnaires and regulatory mappings on top. A platform whose output is a figure builds calculation, forecasting and ranked reductions on top. DitchCarbon is the second kind.

Which of the two publishes independent verification of its emissions calculation?

DitchCarbon does. The DitchCarbon calculator is verified to ISO 14064-3, limited assurance, by UL Solutions, renewed annually, and DitchCarbon was the first company to earn UL Solutions' Sustainability Information Calculator Verification, in June 2025. The emission factor methodology was independently assessed by Globus Thenken in August 2025, with an independent recalculation of a 10% sample and every deviation inside a 1% tolerance. DitchCarbon data has been used in emissions reports that were subsequently assured by ten different third-party assurance providers, including Big Four firms. The documents are downloadable from the DitchCarbon trust centre.

Responsibly holds ISO 27001 certification for information security, states GDPR compliance and hosts on AWS in Europe. Its "solution verified by legal advisors" line applies to its regulatory mapping. Each covers what it names, and none of them is a verification of how an emissions figure was produced.

The distinction is the one an auditor will draw. Information security says the data was stored safely. Calculator verification says the number was produced correctly. DitchCarbon is the only specialist Scope 3 tool with third-party assurance of its calculation methodology; the working across the market, vendor by vendor, is in Who's really verified? A reality check on carbon software assurance.

The verification covers the calculator and the factor methodology. It does not cover the forecast or the score, and the platform says so where each appears. A page that warns you which numbers are projections is doing more for your audit than one that never does.

Where the two products stop overlapping

Responsibly is built for supplier due diligence across human rights, deforestation, cyber and financial risk, with regulations such as CSDDD, EUDR and LkSG mapped to it. DitchCarbon does none of that, and not by omission. A brief that is CSDDD or LkSG due diligence across a supplier base is a supplier risk platform brief.

The reverse holds too. If a risk score for procurement is the whole brief, Responsibly is built for it. If the brief is decarbonisation, a Category 1 figure in the inventory, a target the board has signed and a plan to move it, then you need a specialist Scope 3 emissions tool, because the number the CFO signs has to be calculated, sourced and defensible to an auditor, and a risk score is none of those.

How to tell which of the two briefs you hold is set out in Supplier ESG risk platform or supplier emissions data: which does your brief need?, and the case for a specialist emissions tool where the risk profiles are already in place is in the alternative for auditable Scope 3 emissions data.

Many procurement teams hold both briefs, and want one supplier record. Where a team already runs a supplier risk platform for human rights and compliance, DitchCarbon emissions data feeds it: through the SAP Ariba Risk, HICX and SpendHQ integrations, through thirteen export datasets, or through the API, without that stack changing. The risk platform keeps the risk record. The emissions figure on it comes from a source that calculated it.

Run on its own, DitchCarbon is the platform: measure the organisations you buy from or invest in, engage them for better information where it will move the number, forecast against their own targets, then track performance at supplier, group, account or portfolio level.

What if you are the supplier being asked?

Many companies reading a page like this are on both sides of the request. You are measuring your own suppliers, and a customer, or an investor, is asking you for the same thing.

If that is you, your DitchCarbon profile is already there and already carries your published reports, listed by year with the assurance status found for each scope. Claiming it lets you correct what we hold, add reports or certifications in whatever format you have, and answer the questions buyers ask most often once, so any logged-in viewer from another organisation reads the same answer rather than emailing you for it. A disclosure to-do list shows, year by year, what buyers expect but cannot find. It is free, and the licence was never the cost anyway: the hours were. Answer once, and it stays yours across every buyer who asks. Claim your profile.

How do you test the difference?

Take a sample of your Category 1 suppliers, weighted the way your spend is weighted so the tail is represented, and ask each vendor the same two questions. How many of these can you give me an emissions figure for today, before any supplier is contacted, and where did each figure come from? And for the suppliers who have published nothing, what number do I get, and how was it produced?

The first answer separates a profile from a figure. The second separates a platform that calculates from one that waits. A procurement team that wants a risk score can stop at the first question. A team serious about decarbonisation cannot, and that is the team a specialist Scope 3 tool is built for.

DitchCarbon publishes its pricing, and does not charge per supplier or per integration, so the test costs nothing to scope. Send a sample of your supplier list to the coverage check and you get back what already exists for each organisation in the sample, the source behind every figure, and the gaps marked rather than filled in quietly. Numbers you can defend within 2 weeks.

Last reviewed September 2026.