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Greenly
Greenly is a Paris-based carbon management platform founded in 2019, rated #1 Sustainability Management Software on G2, and trusted by 2,500+ clients across Europe and North America. Built for organizations without specialist sustainability teams, its EcoPilot AI copilot guides users through carbon accounting, CSRD reporting, Life Cycle Assessments, and supplier engagement — producing results in weeks rather than months. It occupies the underserved gap between spreadsheets and enterprise platforms that SMEs fall into when their first carbon obligation arrives.
Normative
Normative is the world's first carbon accounting engine — founded in Stockholm in 2014, independently verified by TÜV SÜD, and built around a named GHG Protocol-certified Climate Strategy Advisor assigned to every customer account. It is the platform for organizations where scientific defensibility of the calculation, not platform breadth, is the primary purchase criterion.
Greenly
Normative
Sustainability Impact
15/20
16/20
🏆
Features & Capabilities
16/20
16/20
Value for Money
18/20
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15/20
Ease of Use
19/20
🏆
16/20
Trust & Maturity
14/20
17/20
🏆
Pricing
paid
enterprise
Year founded
2019
2014
Best for
European SMEs and mid-market companies (10–2,000 employees) taking their first or second step in carbon accounting — particularly those responding to customer CSRD supply chain requests, EcoVadis assessments, or preparing for Wave 2 CSRD obligations with limited internal expertise.
Mid-market to large enterprises with complex Scope 3 inventories that need independently verified carbon data and a named climate expert included in the engagement — particularly organizations approaching their first third-party assurance or SBTi submission.
Categories
Carbon & ClimateCarbon Accounting
Carbon & ClimateCarbon Accounting
Carbon Scopes
Scope 1 (Direct emissions)Scope 2 (Indirect energy)Scope 3 (Value chain)
Scope 1 (Direct emissions)Scope 2 (Indirect energy)Scope 3 (Value chain)
Key features
- EcoPilot AI — Guided Carbon Accounting for Non-Expert Teams EcoPilot is Greenly's embedded AI copilot designed specifically for sustainability managers who are not carbon accounting specialists. It guides users through data collection (100+ enterprise integrations covering accounting software, expense management, fleet telematics, and utility data), prompts for missing information, explains methodology choices in plain language, and generates the carbon footprint calculation aligned with the GHG Protocol. Automated API connections handle both spend-based and activity-based data collection, reducing manual entry. The AI detects anomalies in submitted data before they propagate into the final footprint — a quality control layer that matters when the team completing the assessment has no prior GHG accounting experience. EcoPilot also guides users through CSRD-specific requirements: XBRL tagging, double materiality assessment tooling, and ESRS E1 data point completion, with expert guidance from Greenly's network of 100+ implementation partners for organizations requiring hands-on support.
- Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) — Product Carbon Footprint at SME Scale Greenly includes Life Cycle Assessment capability within the base platform — a feature that most carbon accounting platforms reserve for enterprise tiers or exclude entirely. LCA enables organizations to calculate the environmental impact of a specific product across its full lifecycle (raw materials, manufacturing, transportation, use, and end-of-life), producing a Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) that can be shared with customers and used for product-level environmental claims. For European manufacturers, this capability is increasingly material: the EU Battery Regulation requires PCFs for batteries from 2024; the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation will extend similar requirements across additional product categories. CBAM (Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism) compliance tools are included for organizations importing goods subject to carbon pricing. For SMEs facing customer PCF data requests they cannot currently answer, Greenly's LCA provides the most accessible path to a defensible product footprint.
- CSRD and EcoVadis Integration — Compliance at SME Price Point Greenly provides CSRD-specific tooling at a price point accessible to Wave 2 CSRD-obligated organizations: ESRS data collection workflow, automated double materiality assessment, XBRL tagging and xHTML export for ESAP submission, and expert guidance from implementation partners. CSRD reporting time reduction from 1,000+ hours to under 100 hours is cited in platform documentation. The EcoVadis integration deserves specific attention: Greenly facilitates EcoVadis assessment completion by organizing sustainability data collection and providing a structured output that maps to EcoVadis questionnaire requirements. For SMEs receiving EcoVadis assessment requests from their largest customers — increasingly common as CSDDD and CSRD drive supply chain ESG data requests — this integration reduces the EcoVadis assessment burden from weeks of manual data gathering to an automated, pre-structured export. SBTi target-setting tooling and supplier engagement workflows for Scope 3 Category 1 primary data collection round out the compliance feature set.
- Independently Verified Carbon Accounting Engine — 349,000+ Emission Factors Normative's calculation engine draws on 349,000+ emission factors sourced from 21 scientific databases, updated every six months, and independently verified by TÜV SÜD against ISO/IEC 25051 and the GHG Protocol. Every calculation is fully traceable from source data — spend file, activity record, or supplier submission — to the final emissions figure, with the methodology, emission factor version, and conversion factors exposed at every step. This is not audit trail as a reporting feature; it is audit trail as the default output format. The FLAG (Forests, Land and Agriculture) emissions solution is built directly into the platform, fully automated and standards-aligned for food and agriculture sector clients whose Scope 3 Category 11 and land use emissions require dedicated methodology.
- Named GHG Protocol-Certified Climate Strategy Advisor on Every Account Every Normative account includes a named, GHGP-certified Climate Strategy Advisor — not a shared helpdesk, not a ticketing system. One person who knows the organization's data, its methodology decisions, its historical footprint, and its regulatory timeline. This advisor reviews uploaded data, flags anomalies, resolves the methodology questions that would otherwise require an external consultancy engagement, and stands behind the calculation when an auditor asks for justification. The model reflects a view of carbon accounting that most platforms avoid stating explicitly: getting the calculation right requires human judgment, and outsourcing that judgment to an FAQ or a chatbot produces defensible-looking data that breaks under scrutiny.
- Carbon Network — Supplier Primary Data Exchange Normative's Carbon Network enables organizations to move beyond spend-based Scope 3 estimation by collecting primary emissions data directly from suppliers. Suppliers create Network Accounts and upload their own footprint data; buyers access that data within their Normative inventory, replacing an EEIO-derived estimate with a supplier-specific figure. The network includes ESG platform partnerships — including Novisto — allowing Normative carbon data to feed directly into broader ESG reporting workflows without manual export and re-entry. Partners include PwC, Nordea, Zurich Insurance Group, and climate investment services providers, positioning the Carbon Network as both a data exchange and a supplier engagement infrastructure.
Pros
- The time-to-first-footprint for organizations without prior carbon accounting experience is Greenly's most distinctive operational advantage. An SME that begins a Greenly engagement in January can have a completed, GHG Protocol- aligned carbon footprint ready for customer submission by March — a timeline that is achievable with Greenly's EcoPilot guidance and standard enterprise integrations, and that would require 6–12 months with a consultant engagement or 3–6 months with a specialist platform requiring more configuration. The #1 G2 ranking reflects this specific value: among organizations doing carbon accounting for the first time, Greenly produces results faster than any alternative approach.
- The combination of organizational carbon footprint, product Life Cycle Assessment, CSRD tooling, EcoVadis integration, and SBTi target-setting in a single platform at SME pricing is genuinely unusual in the market. Most platforms offer two or three of these; Greenly offers all five at a price point (starting ~$539/year for the smallest tier) that makes the full capability set accessible to organizations that would otherwise need multiple vendor relationships. For a manufacturing SME facing simultaneous demands for an organizational carbon footprint (from an investor), a product PCF (from a retail customer), an EcoVadis assessment (from another customer), and CSRD ESRS E1 data (from a CSRD-obligated parent company), Greenly's coverage breadth eliminates the multi-vendor complexity that a specialist approach would require.
- The EcoPilot AI assistance specifically addresses the knowledge barrier that prevents many SMEs from attempting carbon accounting at all — not the tool cost, but the expertise gap. A sustainability manager hired 6 months ago with a background in communications, tasked with completing the company's first GHG inventory, faces a methodology learning curve that a Normative advisor solves with expert engagement and Greenly solves with AI guidance. Both approaches produce results. Greenly produces them faster and at lower cost. For organizations where the first footprint is the milestone — not the first assurance-grade footprint — Greenly's guided approach is the right calibration.
- The TÜV SÜD independent verification of Normative's calculation engine is the most significant trust signal in the carbon accounting software category. Most platforms produce auditable data — meaning a human auditor can reconstruct the calculation from the data the platform exposes. Normative's engine has been independently validated: its methodology is assessed against ISO/IEC 25051 and the GHG Protocol by a third party that has no commercial relationship with the calculation outcome. For organizations entering ISAE 3000 limited or reasonable assurance for the first time, this distinction is operationally material. An assurance provider can rely on an independently validated engine as a starting point; it cannot do the same with a self-described "audit-ready" platform that has never been externally assessed.
- The named Climate Strategy Advisor model resolves a structural problem that most carbon accounting platforms quietly ignore. Carbon accounting requires methodology decisions — which emission factor to apply, how to treat a boundary-crossing supplier relationship, how to handle a Scope 3 category where primary data is unavailable — and those decisions determine whether the resulting footprint is defensible. Platforms that deliver a number without the human reasoning behind it produce a footprint that looks complete until someone asks why a specific factor was chosen. Normative's model embeds that reasoning in the account from day one, through a named advisor who knows the data and can answer the question.
- The 100% SBTi submission success rate and 100% audit pass rate across Normative's customer base are outcomes, not marketing positions. For an organization preparing its first SBTi near-term target submission — where the methodology documentation must satisfy the SBTi technical review team — the combination of a validated engine and a certified advisor who has shepherded previous submissions through that review process reduces the probability of rejection in a way that no feature comparison can replicate.
Cons
- The methodology depth and verification rigor that enterprise platforms provide is not matched in Greenly. Several user reviews note that strong internal verification was necessary — that without dedicated review, errors can propagate into the GHG inventory. For organizations whose footprint will be submitted to a Big Four assurance provider under ISAE 3000 limited assurance, or whose SBTi submission will undergo technical review, Greenly's guided AI approach requires more internal quality control than a platform with TÜV-verified methodology (Normative) or a named GHGP-certified advisor (Normative). The platform can produce a defensible footprint — but it requires the internal sustainability team to review outputs critically rather than accepting AI-generated results without validation.
- Greenly's pricing starts at the SME end but scales upward for organizations with larger data volumes, more complex Scope 3 inventories, or enterprise integration requirements. Several user reviews note that the platform can feel expensive for smaller organizations once the full feature set is required — and that pricing transparency is limited (no published tier matrix, pricing requires sales engagement). For organizations scaling from SME to mid-market, the cost trajectory should be modeled before committing to a multi-year Greenly relationship, as the price point advantage narrows as complexity grows.
- The platform's coverage breadth — carbon footprint, LCA, CSRD, EcoVadis, SBTi — means no single capability is as deep as dedicated specialist platforms. For Scope 3 Category 1 at the depth of Watershed's Product Footprints AI-powered decomposition, Greenly does not compete. For CSRD governance and multi-framework ESG data management at the depth of Novisto, Greenly's tooling is more limited. For organizations where one of these specific capabilities is the primary requirement rather than a secondary output, the specialist platform serves them better than Greenly's broad-but-shallower approach. Greenly is optimized for the organization that needs all five capabilities at acceptable quality — not the organization that needs one capability at maximum quality.
- Normative is a carbon-first platform by design and by decision. It does not attempt to be a full CSRD data management system covering ESRS S1 through S4 and ESRS G1. For organizations whose double materiality assessment produces material social and governance topics — workforce data, supply chain human rights, anti-corruption disclosures — Normative must be complemented by a broader ESG platform. The Carbon Network partnership with Novisto addresses part of this gap by allowing Normative carbon data to flow into Novisto's ESG framework, but this integration requires a second platform investment and a data governance model that spans two systems.
- The platform's scenario modeling and decarbonization planning capabilities are functional but less developed than the calculation and assurance infrastructure. Organizations at Stage 4 maturity — where the primary need is to connect emissions data to operational reduction decisions, model supplier switch scenarios against an SBTi pathway, or procure clean power through a marketplace — will find Watershed more purpose-built for that workflow. Normative excels at building the foundation that makes those decisions credible. It is less strong at helping an organization navigate what to decide next.
- Pricing is not publicly tiered, though Normative offers Essential and Premium packages with consultancy add-ons available separately. The advisor model — the feature most clearly differentiated from software-only platforms — is included in the base license rather than sold as a premium service, which narrows the gap between Normative's all-in cost and a software-plus-consultancy approach. However, organizations with limited sustainability budgets and simpler reporting requirements may find that the included advisory capability is more than they currently need, making Greenly or Plan A a more cost-proportionate starting point until the assurance requirement materializes.
