CarbonPass vs Seedling: a Seedling alternative for a fast PPN 006 CRP

The clearest difference is how you pay. CarbonPass publishes fixed annual prices — Free, then £199, £499 or £1,499 a year — and while your plan is active you can generate and re-generate CRPs as often as you need, plus an optional £100 human Completion Check. You know the cost before you start and can budget it in a single line.

Seedling's pricing is quote-based and not publicly listed as figures: there is a free Seedling Starter tier, with its Core and Advanced plans priced via a personalised quote or a booked demo. We won't guess a number here — check seedling.earth for current pricing. Which suits you depends on what you are buying: if you need a known, fixed cost for a compliance deliverable — and PPN 006 expects an annual refresh — a published annual price is easy to plan around, and unlimited re-generation covers updates within the year. If you want a bespoke engagement scoped to a broader sustainability programme with adviser time built in, a quote lets Seedling price to your specific needs. See our guide to what a CRP costs in the UK, or how it sits alongside other tools in our scored best-CRP-software comparison.

Both get you to a compliant plan, but by different routes. CarbonPass is fully self-serve: you upload your electricity, gas and fuel bills, AI extraction reads the figures, and you have a first CRP in about 20 minutes. Seedling pairs its software with a dedicated human adviser who helps validate your data and supports sign-off — its framing is that it writes your plan and you check and sign it off. It markets being “compliant within a week” if your data is ready and “10x faster than spreadsheets”; a third-party review estimates a fuller two-to-four-week implementation.

The practical trade-off is speed versus hand-holding. If you have your bills to hand and a near-term tender deadline, self-serve upload is the quickest path and keeps you in control. If you would rather a person validated the numbers with you and walked you through sign-off, Seedling's adviser-led, week-plus process builds that human review into the workflow. Both calculate Scope 1, 2 and the relevant Scope 3 categories and give you a plan you can publish on your website.

CarbonPass is purpose-built for one job: a PPN 006-compliant Carbon Reduction Plan (all sections, DEFRA 2026 factors) delivered as PDF and DOCX, plus a public Carbon Passport page you can link from bids and NHS Evergreen guidance. If your immediate need is a compliant CRP for a tender, that focus keeps the product simple and fast.

Seedling is a broader carbon-accounting and Net Zero platform. Alongside a dedicated PPN 06/21 reporting tool (and a free downloadable PPN 006 CRP template), it covers frameworks well beyond a single plan — SECR, B Corp, EcoVadis, science-based targets (SBTi) and ISO 14064 — for UK SMEs and mid-market organisations up to around 2,000 employees, with 500+ businesses on the platform. If your carbon work extends past one CRP into a wider reporting and target-setting programme, that breadth is a genuine advantage; if you only need the CRP today, it is scope you may not use.

Both offer a human check, but structured differently. With CarbonPass the software is self-serve and the human review is an optional add-on: a £100 Completion Check where a person reviews your plan before you submit it. You only pay for it if you want it, on top of the annual plan.

With Seedling the human is central to the model, not an add-on: a dedicated 1:1 sustainability adviser is included, validating your data and supporting sign-off throughout. For a business that wants ongoing expert guidance across its sustainability programme, an embedded adviser is a meaningful part of the value. For a business that mainly needs the deliverable and is comfortable self-serving, paying once for an optional check keeps the cost down. It comes down to how much hand-holding you want, and whether that support should be included by default or bought only when you need it.

Seedling is a fair choice — and likely the better one — in several cases. If you want a hands-on human adviser embedded in the process to validate your data and walk you through sign-off, that 1:1 support is core to Seedling's model rather than an optional extra. If your needs go beyond a single CRP — SECR, B Corp, EcoVadis, science-based targets or ISO 14064 — Seedling's breadth across many frameworks covers ground a focused CRP tool does not. And if you are a larger SME comfortable with a consultative, quote-based onboarding over a couple of weeks, its adviser-led approach fits that pace well. CarbonPass is the better fit when your immediate need is a fast, fixed-price, self-serve PPN 006 CRP: a published annual price, bill-upload in about 20 minutes, unlimited re-generation while active, a public Carbon Passport, and NHS Evergreen guidance built around the compliance path.

Is CarbonPass a good alternative to Seedling?

Yes, if you want a fast, fixed-price self-serve route rather than an adviser-led platform. Both are UK tools that produce a PPN 006-compliant Carbon Reduction Plan for SMEs bidding for public-sector work. CarbonPass is annual self-serve software — Free, then £199, £499 or £1,499 a year, with unlimited CRPs while active — reads your uploaded utility bills in about 20 minutes, and adds a public Carbon Passport page and an optional £100 human Completion Check. Seedling pairs GHG-Protocol software with a dedicated 1:1 human adviser and covers many frameworks beyond a single CRP.

What is the price difference between CarbonPass and Seedling?

CarbonPass publishes fixed annual prices: Free, then £199, £499 or £1,499 a year (unlimited CRPs while active), plus an optional £100 Completion Check. Seedling does not publicly list its prices as figures — there is a free Seedling Starter tier, with its Core and Advanced plans quote-based via a personalised quote or a booked demo. We won't guess a number; check seedling.earth for current pricing. If you want a known, fixed cost you can budget upfront, CarbonPass's published pricing is straightforward; if you want a bespoke, adviser-supported engagement, Seedling quotes to your specific needs.

Which is faster to a first CRP?

CarbonPass targets about 20 minutes by reading your uploaded electricity, gas and fuel bills with AI extraction. Seedling markets being "compliant within a week" with its dedicated adviser if your data is ready, and "10x faster than spreadsheets"; a third-party review estimates a fuller two-to-four-week implementation. If you have a near-term tender deadline and your bills to hand, self-serve upload is the quickest path; if you would rather an adviser validated the numbers with you and supported sign-off, Seedling's week-plus process builds that human check into the workflow.

Do both work for NHS bids?

Yes. Both produce a PPN 006-compliant CRP that suppliers can publish and submit. Since April 2024 the NHS applies a carbon requirement to all new procurements proportionately — a full CRP for contracts of £5m/year or more and for all new frameworks, and a lighter Net Zero Commitment for lower-value procurements (many buyers ask for a full CRP regardless). CarbonPass publishes guidance on the NHS Evergreen Sustainable Supplier Assessment; Seedling targets government and NHS bids, and a Seedling blog references the NHS Evergreen assessment.