Carbon Offset Cost Calculator
What offsetting actually costs, and why the answer spans two orders of magnitude
Read the range, not the midpoint. There is no single public spot price for carbon credits. Prices vary by vintage, registry, project, volume and buyer, and they move quickly. The figures here are indicative bands meant to convey orders of magnitude and the gaps between project types — not quotes. If you are actually buying, get current pricing from a broker or registry and enter it in the custom price field.
What to offset
What to buy
Overrides everything. Use a real quote if you have one.
Share of your offsets going to each class
100%Cheapest. Counterfactual risk.
Mid-priced. Reversal risk.
Most expensive. Permanent.
Your allocations do not add to 100%. They will be scaled proportionally.
What it would cost
Every project type, at your volume
Amber is avoidance, light green nature-based removal, dark green durable removal. Drawn on a log scale, because a linear one would render every avoidance credit as an invisible sliver.
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Why the spread is a hundred to one
A tonne of CO2 is a tonne of CO2, so it is reasonable to wonder why one credit costs three dollars and another five hundred. The answer is that they are not the same product.
A cheap avoidance credit pays someone not to emit. Whether that emission would truly have happened is a counterfactual, and counterfactuals cannot be measured — only argued. If the forest was never going to be logged, the credit bought nothing. If it burns down in ten years, the carbon comes back.
An expensive durable removal takes CO2 out of the air and puts it somewhere it will stay for thousands of years. You can weigh it. There is no counterfactual to argue about. That certainty is what the extra money buys, and it is why serious buyers are shifting their mix toward removals over time even though the headline tonnage they can afford goes down.
Offsetting comes last, not first
Nothing on this page is a substitute for not emitting. Offsets address a residual, after measurement and after reduction; they do not count toward a science-based target, and buying them instead of reducing is the thing every credible framework is designed to prevent. If you have not measured yet, start with the corporate emissions calculator.
About these prices
- They are indicative bands from published market commentary, not live quotes, and they are the least certain figures on this site.
- There is no single public spot price for carbon credits. Pricing depends on vintage, registry, project, volume and buyer.
- The relative gaps between classes are far more durable than the absolute numbers. That is what the tool is really for.
- Tree and forest equivalents use EPA Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies — 0.060 t CO2 per urban tree seedling per year, 1.0 t per acre of US forest per year.
How to Use This Calculator
- Enter what you want to offset. Type an amount in tonnes, short tons, kilograms or pounds, or start from one of the presets - a transatlantic flight, a year of driving, a year of a household's electricity.
- Choose single project or portfolio. Single prices one project type. Portfolio blends avoidance, nature-based removal and durable removal, which is closer to how a credible corporate programme is actually built.
- Set the allocation. The three sliders are the share going to each class. Shifting weight toward durable removal raises the price sharply and buys permanence - that trade-off is the whole point of the tool.
- Read the range, not the midpoint. The headline figure is a central estimate with a low-to-high band beneath it. Offset prices vary by vintage, registry, project and volume, so the band is the honest answer and the midpoint is a convenience.
- Get a live quote before you transact. These are indicative market ranges, not offers. Anyone actually buying should get current pricing from a broker or registry - the market moves faster than any published table.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does it cost to offset a tonne of CO2?
Anywhere from a few dollars to over five hundred, depending entirely on what you buy. Avoidance credits - paying for an emission not to happen, such as protecting a forest or replacing a cookstove - are the cheap end, typically single digits to low tens per tonne. Durable removals that physically take CO2 back out of the air cost far more: biochar in the low hundreds, direct air capture several hundred and up. That hundred-fold spread is not a market inefficiency; it is the market pricing permanence and measurability.
What is the difference between avoidance and removal credits?
An avoidance credit pays for an emission that would otherwise have happened - protecting a forest from logging, capturing landfill methane, replacing a wood stove. A removal credit pays to take CO2 out of the atmosphere and store it. Avoidance is cheap but depends on a counterfactual nobody can verify directly, and on the emission staying avoided. Removal is expensive but physically reverses the emission. A credible portfolio uses both and increases the removal share over time.
Why is direct air capture so much more expensive than forest credits?
Because it is measured, permanent and additional by construction - you can weigh the CO2 going into storage and it stays there for millennia. Forest credits depend on a projection of what would have happened otherwise, and the carbon can return to the atmosphere in a fire, a drought, or a change of land ownership. The price gap is the market pricing durability and measurement certainty, not a discount waiting to be arbitraged.
How reliable are the prices in this calculator?
They are indicative ranges, and they are the least certain part of this tool. There is no single public spot price for carbon credits the way there is for oil or electricity - prices vary by vintage, registry, project, volume and buyer, and they move quickly. The bands here are drawn from published market surveys and are intended to convey orders of magnitude and the relative gaps between project types. If you are actually buying, get a current quote. If you have one, put it in the custom price field.
Should a business offset or reduce first?
Reduce first. Every serious framework, including the Science Based Targets initiative, requires it, and offsets do not count toward a science-based reduction target - they address the residual you cannot yet eliminate. A defensible approach is to measure your Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, set a reduction pathway against them, and offset what remains with a portfolio that shifts progressively toward durable removals as they become affordable.