6 best EcoVadis alternatives for supplier emissions data in 2026, compared

Teams look past EcoVadis for one reason more than any other: they need a number in tonnes and a rating is not one. EcoVadis is a sustainability ratings provider. It is not a carbon calculation engine, and its own methodology documentation is clear about that. This page ranks six alternatives on three questions: what each returns for a supplier that has published nothing, whether the supplier is charged to take part, and whether the calculation is independently verified. DitchCarbon provides verified emissions data for over 2 million organisations, built on primary emissions data wherever it exists, so procurement, sustainability and finance teams can measure and act on supply chain and portfolio emissions from one source.

It is usually not a choice between the two. A ratings programme and an emissions dataset answer different questions, and plenty of teams run both. That is worth settling before the shortlist, because it changes what you are shopping for.

Vendor list updated 23 September 2026. Verification status as at August 2026.

Do you have to choose between EcoVadis and DitchCarbon?

No. They do different jobs. EcoVadis rates how well a supplier manages its greenhouse gas emissions and gives your procurement team a maturity signal to act on. DitchCarbon calculates what that supplier emits and gives your inventory a figure with a source behind it. Keep the ratings programme, and let the emissions layer sit underneath it.

EcoVadis takes the same view of where the calculation belongs. Its Carbon Data Network exists to move supplier data into carbon accounting platforms, and its own material names Sweep, Normative, Watershed and carbmee as the places that work gets done. DitchCarbon fits the procurement and sustainability tools you already run, so the data lands where the decisions are made.

Run on its own, DitchCarbon is the platform. Measure the organisations you buy from or invest in, engage them for better information, forecast and plan scenarios, then track performance against targets.

Why do teams look for an EcoVadis alternative?

Rarely because the ratings are poor. The triggers we hear most often on calls:

• The auditor asked for the Category 1 number and a scorecard came back. A medal and a 0 to 100 score cannot be summed into an inventory.
• Coverage stops at the suppliers who replied. The assessment is opt in, so the rest of the spend stays empty no matter how long you wait.
• Small suppliers are out of scope. EcoVadis rates companies with 25 or more employees, and a long tail sits below that line.
• Two platforms, two answers. The rating says Advanced, the inventory still runs on a sector average, and nobody can explain the gap to finance.
• The supplier is paying to answer you. An EcoVadis scorecard is a subscription the supplier buys, and the smaller the supplier the more that bill decides whether you get an answer at all.
• Finance needs portfolio coverage, not a supplier programme. Financed emissions and PCAF data quality scoring are a different job.

Can an EcoVadis carbon rating be used as your Scope 3 Category 1 number?

No, and EcoVadis documents why in three separate places. The Carbon Rating assesses the adequacy and comprehensiveness of a company's greenhouse gas management system. Results classify a company into five performance levels, from Insufficient at 0 through Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced to Leader at 76 to 100. That scale measures maturity. There is no tCO2e in it, and no arithmetic converts a maturity score into a tonnage.

The tonnage is deliberately kept out of the score. Among the Carbon Rating's management indicators, the GHG Reporting indicator is the one that captures disclosed emissions data, primary data under the GHG Protocol, and EcoVadis documents it as not scored. The consequence is worth stating plainly: a high emitting supplier with strong documentation rates well, and a low emitting supplier with no documentation rates as Insufficient. That is a sensible design for a management rating and a poor basis for an inventory.

EcoVadis routes the calculation onward rather than performing it. Its Scope 3 material positions the Carbon Action Manager as a way to refine emissions calculations and aggregate data for Scope 3, and the Carbon Data Network moves that data into carbon accounting platforms. The inventory is built there.

One step is easy to miss even when a supplier does report a figure. What you receive is that supplier's company-wide footprint. Category 1 needs the share attributable to what you bought, so an allocation by spend, volume or product still has to happen somewhere. EcoVadis does not do it, and neither does the supplier.

The 6 best EcoVadis alternatives for supplier emissions data in 2026

Ranked by what each returns for the supplier who never responds, which is most of any list. EcoVadis itself is the reference point, and the run-alongside answer above applies to it. For tools beyond supplier emissions data, including carbon accounting and LCA platforms, see the best Scope 3 software in 2026.

1. DitchCarbon

Verified emissions data for over 2 million organisations, built on primary emissions data wherever it exists: corporate GHG inventories as reported by each organisation, supplier-specific emissions at spend, activity and product level, and a generic emission factor library drawn on ecoinvent, CEDA, EPA, DEFRA and EXIOBASE, reached only where the first two could not be found. Records match your list by entity resolution against DUNS, LEI and ISIN identifiers, so coverage exists before anyone is asked, and every figure carries its source and change history. Where a figure needs improving the request goes out prepopulated with what the organisation has published, and a four-step maturity ladder decides who is worth asking. Suppliers pay nothing: claiming a profile and answering is free, and an answer given once is reused for every customer that asks. If you hold EcoVadis scorecards already, DitchCarbon turns them into structured emissions data. The Portal calculator is verified to ISO 14064-3, limited assurance, by UL Solutions, renewed annually.

What you still need afterwards: nothing for the baseline, or for assured emissions calculations. EcoVadis, if you run it, keeps the maturity rating.

2. IntegrityNext

Supplier compliance and sustainability monitoring with a carbon module: suppliers complete assessments, and for those that have not measured, an estimator produces a corporate footprint from sector data. Free for suppliers, which removes the fee barrier EcoVadis puts in front of the long tail. The estimate is a sector average, however it is labelled, and no public verification of the methodology behind it exists.

What you still need afterwards: a company-specific figure for the suppliers who did not fill in the assessment. A labelled estimate is still an average.

3. Assent

Supplier-declared compliance and sustainability data for manufacturers, plus product carbon footprints built from bills of materials, with modelled product structures where the detail is missing. Suppliers respond without charge. The footprint describes the part, not the maker: a modelled bill of materials says what something is made of, and says nothing about what the supplier's own operations emitted. SOC 2 Type II only; no methodology verification published.

What you still need afterwards: the supplier's own emissions. Knowing what the part is made of is not knowing who made it and how.

4. CO2 AI

Calculated corporate and product footprints from the customer's ERP, activity and spend data, with a supplier portal for primary data and exchange through the PACT network. A supplier's figure arrives when that supplier has produced one and uploaded it; until then the line is a spend-based average. PACT conformance covers data exchange and excludes the calculation engine from testing; no verification of the calculation is published.

What you still need afterwards: a company-level figure for every supplier that never logged in to the portal.

5. CDP Supply Chain

Supplier disclosures through the CDP questionnaire, scored A to D. Responding companies pay CDP an administrative fee, so the same fee barrier applies as with EcoVadis, and what comes back for a responder is a company-wide footprint that still has to be apportioned to what you bought. CDP publishes no verification of its own scoring methodology.

What you still need afterwards: the non-disclosers, and the allocation for those who did disclose. A whole-company footprint is not your Category 1 share.

6. Sphera, formerly SupplyShift

Supplier scoring and risk intelligence from catalogue assessments, with a separate product footprint calculator that takes a supplier's bill of materials. The scores are of behaviour and risk, and the calculator works one product at a time, so neither produces a Category 1 figure per supplier. Sphera's supplier-facing fee position is not published. No methodology verification published for supplier engagement.

What you still need afterwards: a Scope 3 inventory. Risk scores and per-product footprints do not sum to one.

Verification status from our benchmark, Who's Really Verified? A Reality Check on Carbon Software Assurance, evidence links last checked 19 August 2026. Supplier fee positions and other columns reflect each vendor's public documentation as at September 2026; check the current position with any vendor before a decision.

Who pays: you or your supplier?

Two of the platforms above are funded, in part, by the supplier. EcoVadis sells the supplier a subscription to be rated and to share the scorecard. CDP charges responding companies an administrative fee. The buyer gets a programme; the supplier gets an invoice for the privilege of answering.

That changes who responds. A large supplier with a sustainability team pays without noticing. A supplier with 40 staff and one person covering ESG weighs the fee against the account and often does not, and that supplier is exactly the one you had no data on to begin with. The fee is not a detail of the commercial model; it is a filter on your coverage, and it filters out the long tail first.

DitchCarbon charges suppliers nothing. Coverage starts from what each organisation has already published, so most suppliers are never asked. Where one is, claiming a profile is free and self-serve, the request arrives prepopulated, and the answer given once is reused for every customer that asks. The supplier's cost is an hour, not a subscription.

What happens to the suppliers who do not respond?

With a ratings platform, nothing happens. The EcoVadis Carbon Rating is solicited and opt in, a company can decline to be assessed, and the methodology states that it uses no estimations and no industry averages to fill an absence of data. Eligibility starts at 25 employees. Your coverage is therefore exactly the set of suppliers who completed an assessment, and the remainder of your Category 1 spend stays empty.

This is the practical difference between a rating and a dataset that also engages. DitchCarbon starts from what organisations have already disclosed publicly, so coverage exists before a single request goes out. For a great many of them no request is ever needed, and that matters more than it sounds. A supplier's sustainability team is usually one or two people, and every buyer that sends its own assessment takes a week off them that could have gone on cutting emissions. Where a figure does need improving, the request arrives prepopulated with what that organisation has already published, which gets a higher response rate than a cold survey because most of the form is already filled in, and a four-step maturity ladder sorted against embodied emissions decides who is worth asking. The best assessment is the one nobody has to fill in. A recent deployment reached about 60% of a large supplier base within 2 weeks, without a survey round. Where an organisation has disclosed nothing, the generic factor layer still closes the inventory, and every figure carries its source and change history so the parts still running on averages are visible rather than buried.

Which of these publish independent verification of their methodology?

Verification of a vendor's own calculation is not the same as an auditor assuring your inventory, and it is not the same as a security certification. Both of the others are common, and neither tells you whether the numbers are built correctly. Status as published by each vendor:

PlatformCalculation or methodology verifiedStandardVerifierEvidence dateDitchCarbonYes, the Portal calculatorISO 14064-3, limited assuranceUL SolutionsOpinion Declaration, June 2025, renewed annuallyEcoVadisNoISO 9001 quality management and ISO/IEC 27001 information security onlyNot published for the methodologyNot publishedCO2 AINo verification of the calculationConformant to the PACT Technical Specifications, which test data exchange rather than the calculationPACT conformance processVersion 3 listing, undatedIntegrityNextNo public methodology verificationNot publishedNot publishedNot publishedAssentNo public methodology verificationSOC 2 Type II onlyNot publishedNot publishedSpheraNot published for supplier engagementPre-verified life cycle content is claimed, with no verifier or standard namedNot publishedNot publishedCDP Supply ChainNo verification of its own scoring methodologyNot publishedNot publishedNot published

EcoVadis describes its methodology governance as internal: a methodology team separate from commercial functions, an internal steering committee, an annual internal review and a public consultation period for material changes. It also convenes an external expert committee that reviews the assessment process. Neither is independent verification, and EcoVadis publishes none.

DitchCarbon is the only specialist Scope 3 tool with third-party assurance of its calculation methodology, and was the first company to earn UL Solutions' Sustainability Information Calculator Verification, in June 2025. The full working, including every vendor checked and the evidence for each, is in our benchmark, Who's really verified? A reality check on carbon software assurance. The underlying documents are downloadable from the DitchCarbon trust centre.

Ask any vendor on your shortlist for the declaration itself, not a page that says audit-ready. Audit-ready without a named verifier and a named standard is marketing.

Which alternative fits procurement, sustainability and finance?

Procurement

Procurement needs a number per supplier inside the systems the team already runs, and a way to tell two suppliers in the same category apart. EcoVadis ranks behaviour and maturity. Assent and Sphera work at product level for manufacturers building from bills of materials. IntegrityNext fills the gap with a sector estimate, and CDP with whoever paid to disclose. DitchCarbon starts with coverage on organisations that have never answered a survey, then scores each one from 0 to 100 against its industry benchmark, broken down criterion by criterion with the source consulted for each. Filtering to the unearned criteria turns that scorecard into the engagement list, and the same layer carries reduction recommendations ranked by the share of your footprint acting on them would move.

Sustainability

Sustainability teams are judged on whether the inventory survives review, which means the question is whether each figure is auditable. Ask which vendor publishes a verification declaration you can read, whether every figure carries its source and change history, and how the platform shows what it does not know. A rating cannot answer any of the three for the emissions figure itself, because it is not measuring the figure.

Finance and investment

Ratings platforms are built around supplier programmes rather than portfolios, so for financed emissions the shortlist is different; our financed emissions software comparison ranks nine tools on what each returns for a private holding. DitchCarbon contributes company-level data on private and unlisted holdings, which is where PCAF data quality scores usually sit at DQ 4 and DQ 5 and where a company-specific figure moves the score. Portfolio, group, account and counterparty level tracking runs off the same layer.

What if you are the one being asked to complete an assessment?

Most companies reading a page like this are on both sides of the request. You are measuring your own suppliers, and your customers or investors are asking you for the same thing. If that is you, claiming your DitchCarbon profile lets you answer once and reuse it, including work you have already done for CDP or an EcoVadis assessment. It is free and self-serve. Claim your profile.

How many suppliers does EcoVadis actually hold carbon data on?

Harder to answer than it should be, because the figures EcoVadis publishes do not reconcile with each other and none of them carries a date. As published in August 2026, the Carbon Action Manager page describes a network of 48,000+ GHG reporters alongside a counter of 135,000+ carbon assessments. The Scope 3 solution page presents the same programme as 69,000+ assessed suppliers and 100,000+ carbon scorecards. A June 2026 announcement puts roughly 60,000 reporting organisations in the Carbon Data Network, and 175,000+ businesses using EcoVadis overall.

Some of that spread is definitional, and it is only fair to say so. An assessment is not a scorecard, a scorecard is not a supplier, and a company using EcoVadis is not a company reporting carbon. The difficulty is that the definitions are not published next to the numbers, so a buyer cannot tell which population any figure describes, or when it was counted. This is the same problem the verification question exposes from the other direction: a claim you cannot check is a claim you cannot rely on in front of an auditor.

Network size is the wrong question in any case. What decides whether a platform works for you is how many of the organisations on your own list it holds a figure for today, and no vendor can put that number on a marketing page.

How do you check coverage before you commit?

Run the test on your own list. Send a sample of the organisations you buy from or invest in and ask each shortlisted vendor the same three things: how many they hold a company-specific emissions figure for today, where each figure came from, and what happens to the rest. On a ratings platform the honest answer to the first is the number of your suppliers who have completed an assessment, which is usually a good deal smaller than the network.

DitchCarbon will show you what it already holds on your list, with the source and change history behind every figure. Numbers you can defend within 2 weeks.

Vendor list updated 23 September 2026. Last full review August 2026.