Buying a carbon credit is not like paying an invoice: you usually can't see what you're getting. That is why the buyer's job is to verify the seller's claims — and not all credits are created equal.
The first filter is the standard. VCS (Verra) and Gold Standard are the two most widely used independent registries; a credit listed there has at least passed through a methodology and a verifier. Avoid credits with no registry.
For a credit that has passed the standard filter, five signals to check are: additionality, permanence, leakage risk, measurement methodology, and vintage year. Together, these five tell you whether the credit represents a real climate impact.
And the inevitable question: "why is it so cheap?" Most of the time the answer is that the credit is old, produced under a weak methodology, or represents an impact that would have happened anyway. A cheap credit buys cheap credibility.
What you pay for in a carbon credit is not a tonne — it is the credibility of a claim. Verification is the purchase of that trust.— Voluntary Market Buyer's Guide
— Mert, April 2026