The minute
- Nature-based credits trade roughly between EUR 7 and EUR 24 per tonne; Amazon REDD+ starts around EUR 12
- Engineered removals sit at the other end: direct air capture can pass EUR 1,000 per tonne
- A typical corporate portfolio averages EUR 25 to EUR 80 per tonne, depending on how much durable removal it holds
Why it matters: there is no single carbon price. What a buyer pays depends on the project type, the rating and the vintage, and confusing those three is the fastest way to overpay or to buy a credit nobody respects.
The three questions that set the price
1. What does the credit do? Avoidance credits (a forest that is not cut, a landfill that captures methane) are cheaper because the carbon was never in the atmosphere. Removal credits (reforestation, biochar, direct air capture) physically take carbon out, cost more and are what most net zero frameworks now push for.
2. How good is the project? Independent ratings from agencies such as BeZero, Sylvera and Calyx Global have become the real currency of the market. In REDD+, buyers pay roughly two dollars more per rating band. Highly rated projects hold their price while legacy projects struggle to find any buyer at all.
3. When was the reduction made? That is the vintage. A 2018 credit can sell for half the price of a recent one, even though the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market does not treat vintage as a quality criterion. The market prices the perception, not the rule.
What that means in practice
A company offsetting 1,000 tonnes can pay anywhere from EUR 7,000 to EUR 1 million for the same headline claim. The honest way to budget is to decide the portfolio mix first (how much avoidance, how much removal, which minimum rating) and only then ask for prices.
For Brazilian projects the equation is shifting: the regulated market created by Law 15,042/2024 will pull domestic demand into a supply that today is sold almost entirely abroad, and that tends to push prices up rather than down.
Sources: Sylvera and Senken 2026 price analyses; ICVCM Core Carbon Principles.