ZeroNorth
ZeroNorth is a Danish maritime intelligence platform whose proprietary machine-learning models turn live operational, environmental and market data into voyage, vessel-performance, bunker and emissions decisions for shipowners, commercial operators, charterers and bunker buyers across a claimed 5,500+ vessels.
What is ZeroNorth?
ZeroNorth is a maritime software platform published by the Danish company ZeroNorth A/S, headquartered in Copenhagen with offices in Athens, Chennai, Mumbai, Tokyo and Singapore. It sits on what the footer calls the industry's largest data ecosystem and organises its products into four families. Vessel covers SMARTShip, for onboard data acquisition and performance analytics, and Charter Select, for pre-fixture screening. Voyage covers Voyage Optimisation, Vessel Reporting, Emission Analytics and Scope 3 reporting. Fuel covers Bunker Procurement, Bunker Pricer and electronic bunker delivery notes. A fourth family adds ShipPalm, a maritime ERP for fleet and operations management. The AI is functional rather than decorative. ZeroNorth says the platform was built on machine learning and artificial intelligence from day one, with proprietary models continuously processing operational, environmental and market data. In a release dated 4 August 2026 it introduced Propel, an agentic partner in early access whose agents take on the routine work of operations. Propel today covers voyage planning, working overnight at a fixed and supervised level of autonomy and returning a prioritised list in the morning; it also handles communication with the master and replans when the weather changes, while the operator keeps the decision to send. The company claims three layers of validation, engineered, operationally tested on real voyages by its professional services team, and partner validated, plus automated data validation at scale behind a Data Health Score it presents as an industry first. The claimed scale is large but inconsistent from page to page: 5,500+ vessels and 200+ companies on the home page, 5,000+ vessels and 600 staff on the about page, 2.7M+ optimised voyages and 5.2M+ tonnes of CO2 saved since 2022. The stated mission is to make global trade green, on the premise that shipping carries 90% of world trade and produces 3% of global emissions, and the company describes itself as profitable and growing fast. Access is through the web, with a REST API at least for Bunker Pricer and an onboard web application. Two limits deserve stating plainly: nothing is sold self-service, and no price is published anywhere.
What it does
- Plan and continuously re-optimise route and speed with Voyage Optimisation
- Track fleet CO2 and CII performance with Emission Analytics, and produce charterer Scope 3 emissions reporting
- Compare and buy bunker fuel through Bunker Procurement and Bunker Pricer
- Automate noon and arrival reports with Vessel Reporting
- Capture and transmit onboard data with SMARTShip
- Screen candidate vessels before fixing by forecasting costs and emissions with Charter Select
- Delegate routine operations work to the supervised AI agents of Propel
When to use ZeroNorth / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if ZeroNorth is the right fit.
When to use ZeroNorth
- Shipowners and fleet managers operating bulk carriers, tankers or container ships at multi-vessel scale, including those industrialising onboard data capture with SMARTShip
- Commercial operators looking to protect voyage margins through optimised routing and speed
- Charterers who need cost and emissions forecasts for a candidate vessel before fixing, through Charter Select
- Bunker buyers and fuel traders benchmarking spot and forward prices across more than 200 ports
- Compliance and sustainability teams reporting under CII, EU ETS and FuelEU Maritime
When not to use ZeroNorth
- Buyers who want a self-service purchase: there is no online sign-up, and the pricing page is a quote configurator handled by a specialist
- Teams that need a published price before they engage, since charges are set in USD in each Order and are commonly billed per active vessel
- Anyone looking for a permanent free tier: only Bunker Pricer comes with a 14-day trial, and there is no mobile app either
- Road, rail or air logistics operations, since the whole platform is built for commercial shipping
- Companies developing a competing maritime solution, which clause 5.5 of the general terms forbids for the duration of the contract
How to use ZeroNorth
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Start from Book a demo or Get started: there is no online registration, so the first step is always a form
- For the fastest self-service route, open the 14-day free trial of Bunker Pricer instead
- Use the pricing page as a Build a custom package configurator: choose the products you want, leave your details, and a specialist calls back
- Take the 30-minute walkthrough offered on the home page to see the modules against your own fleet profile
- Download the Bunker Pricer brochure or the Propel white paper if you need material to circulate internally
- Request early access to Propel through the dedicated get-access page
- Sign an Order, which fixes the products, the subscription unit and the charges
- If SMARTShip is in scope, plan the onboard data acquisition: hardware and installation fall under separate Equipment and Installation Terms
- Set up user access through Auth0, with Google single sign-on available for the web applications
- Put the onboard reporting routine in place, with the chief engineer or the master entering more than 300 data points
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Broad functional coverage on a single platform: voyage, vessel performance, bunkers, emissions and maritime ERP
- Contract documentation is public, dated and versioned, covering general terms, product terms, DPA, equipment terms and eBDN terms, with the version history kept online
- The DPA is built on the standard contractual clauses and names its sub-processors, AWS and Microsoft Ireland for the Bunker Dashboard
- An explicit contractual commitment to the GDPR and the UK Data Protection Act 2018 in clause 8.1
- A REST API allows bunker prices to be fed into procurement, risk and trading systems
- Bunker Pricer can be trialled free for 14 days without going through a salesperson
- European publisher, Danish law and arbitration in Copenhagen, with named customers including CMB.TECH, ONE, Maersk Tankers, Costamare Bulkers and TMA Bulk
Cons
- No public pricing at all: the cost cannot be estimated without going through a specialist
- The licence over Customer Data in clause 5.3 is very broad, being perpetual, irrevocable and sublicensable
- Model training is claimed, yet no opt-out from it is documented anywhere on the site
- Clause 5.5 prevents the customer from developing a competing solution for the duration of the contract
- Charges rise annually by at least 5%, indexed to the Danish net price index (clause 10.4), with annual renegotiation possible, and clause 7.6 adds a 25% contract-value penalty for breaching the sanctions and export clauses
- The Vanta Trust Center returns nothing without authentication, so no certification can be verified from outside
- Leftover pages from an unedited Webflow template, including a contact page with a fictitious address and phone number and a ghost shop with template prices, plus scale figures that disagree from page to page
Pricing & Plans
ZeroNorth publishes no price. There is no permanent free plan, and the only free entry point is a 14-day trial of Bunker Pricer; the pricing page is a quote configurator whose FAQ states that every deployment is different, so a specialist will walk you through the right package for your fleet before discussing cost. The general terms describe the regime rather than the amounts: charges are stated in USD unless otherwise agreed and fixed in each Order (clause 10.1); pricing is per subscription unit, defined product by product in the Product Terms and billed by period or against a minimum quantity (clause 10.3); invoicing is either one invoice per period with a line per solution, or one invoice per active vessel (clause 10.7). Charges increase annually by reference to the Danish net price index with a 5% floor (clause 10.4), and a further increase is possible on 90 days' notice if regulatory costs rise (clause 10.5). Payment falls due 30 days end of month, with 1.5% monthly interest thereafter (clauses 11.1 and 11.2). No entry-level amount is quoted here because none is published.
- the offer is assembled product by product through the quote configurator
- across the Vessel
- Voyage
- Fuel and ERP families
- 14-day free trial
- followed by pricing that is not published
- early access granted on request
- The contractual subscription unit is frequently the active vessel
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how ZeroNorth handles your data.
GDPR overview
The commitment is contractual rather than promotional. Clause 8.1 of the general terms binds the supplier to all applicable privacy laws, naming the EU GDPR and the UK Data Protection Act 2018. A Data Processing Agreement is published and versioned, the latest dated 4 October 2024, built on the Article 28(3) and (4) standard contractual clauses; its clause 7.7 places sub-processors under a general authorisation with an agreed list and 30 days' notice of any change. The privacy notice offers access, rectification, erasure, restriction, withdrawal of consent, portability and objection, exercised by email to security@zeronorth.com, and names Datatilsynet, the Danish Data Protection Agency, as supervisory authority. US residents also get a CCPA/CPRA opt-out of sale and sharing, with the Global Privacy Control signal honoured. Being EU-established, ZeroNorth needs no Article 27 representative and names none.
Who owns the data?
ZeroNorth's general terms are assertive on ownership. Clause 5.1 reserves to the supplier all intellectual property in the solutions, the services and all data generated by their use. Clause 5.3 then has the customer grant ZeroNorth A/S and its affiliates, meaning the Danish parent and its direct and indirect subsidiaries, a non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, transferable, sublicensable, royalty-free and worldwide licence over all Customer Data and any data derived from the solution, to use and exploit in any manner it sees fit, with the customer irrevocably waiving related claims. Disclosure to third parties is limited to data that is anonymised or lawfully public. Clause 5.4 makes the customer responsible for obtaining rights to data it does not own.
Reuse rights
ZeroNorth A/S acts as controller for its own customer and website processing, and declares five purposes: customer management and service delivery, usage monitoring to improve the services, and support and training, all on legitimate interest under Article 6(1)(f); email marketing on consent under Article 6(1)(a); and site analytics and advertising through Google Analytics, Google Ads and LinkedIn Insight, also on consent, with a hashed email used for conversion measurement. Transfers outside the EEA are announced to the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom and Japan, under standard contractual clauses or adequacy decisions. On the AI side, the Propel pages are explicit that the outcome loop, meaning what was decided, what happened and whether the result improved, feeds model building and training: ZeroNorth uses this loop to build and train models. Without it, a model can only advise. With it, a model can decide, and it improves with every voyage it sees. Because the clause 5.3 licence is non-exclusive, the customer keeps the right to use its own data freely, but nothing published on the site lets it restrict ZeroNorth's use.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
The Data Processing Agreement names hosting counterparties rather than locations. Amazon Web Services EMEA SARL provides the cloud hosting and stores the personal data processed on the controller's behalf, while Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited is a sub-processor for the Bunker Dashboard, hosted on Microsoft Azure; AWS's own list of sub-processors is referenced rather than reproduced. An onboard web application is served at vessel.noonreport.app. No hosting country and no hosting region is declared anywhere: the entities named are contracting parties, and reading Ireland out of the Microsoft entity name would be an inference the site never makes. The privacy notice does announce transfers outside the EEA, to the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom and Japan, but that is a transfer clause covering ZeroNorth's own processing rather than a statement of where the platform runs. Data held in the AWS cloud is deleted within one year of the end of the agreement. The governing law is Danish, with arbitration in Copenhagen.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting ZeroNorth.
- Same name, different company: a US ZeroNorth worked in application security and DevSecOps, with no connection to shipping. The domain has been registered since 16 October 2014 and its first Wayback capture, on 27 November 2003, predates the incorporation of ZeroNorth A/S by seventeen years, so older search results may describe the wrong company
- The contact page shows a fictitious address, email and phone number inherited from the Indage Webflow template: 12273 Dream Avenue, London, 123456 United Kingdom, hello@indage.com and 123 456 8888. The real details are the Copenhagen address and hello@zeronorth.com
- A ghost shop survives in the sitemap, with product plan pages, a checkout and a PayPal checkout carrying template prices between 19.99 and 959.99 USD. These are not ZeroNorth prices and must never be used to estimate the cost of the platform
- The site contradicts itself on scale: 5,500+ vessels on the home page, 5,000+ on the about page and 6,000 in that page's meta description, plus 5.2M+ tonnes of CO2 saved against 2M+ in the same meta description. Treat every figure as a claim
- The partners page announces ten technology partners but names no product, the logos carrying only generic alt text, and Sebastian Ledgaard's profile card links to a LinkedIn account under the name Jonas S. Frederiksen
- The Vanta Trust Center returns no content without authentication, so no certification such as ISO 27001 or SOC 2 can be verified from outside, and none is attributed here
- On governance and data, the clause 5.3 licence over Customer Data is perpetual, irrevocable and sublicensable, model training is claimed with no opt-out, and the Danish register lists three corporate owners, Cargill International SA, Zeban Holdco S.a r.l. and Alpha Ori Investments LLC: do not credit ZeroNorth with their certifications or funding, and note that ShipPalm comes from the Alpha Ori ecosystem
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Effort varies sharply by module. The lightest path is the online Bunker Pricer trial, usable within its 14 days without help. Everything else starts commercially, with a demo then a signed Order and no self-registration. Clause 2.5 requires the customer to supply the data and meet the technical prerequisites set out in the Product Terms, failing which the supplier's liability falls away. SMARTShip is the heaviest option, with onboard hardware and installation under dedicated Equipment and Installation Terms, plus a routine in which the chief engineer or master enters more than 300 data points. Integration with existing systems and a REST API are available.
Deployment
Integrations
Behind ZeroNorth
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
How much does ZeroNorth cost?
Is there a free trial?
Is there an API?
Who publishes the platform?
Is my data used to train the models?
Can I opt out of that training?
Where is the data hosted?
Is there a Data Processing Agreement?
Is there a mobile app?
Which law applies?
Should you pick ZeroNorth?
ZeroNorth is a niche but mature tool for commercial shipping, backed by a 600-person Danish company that describes itself as profitable and growing fast. Its scope is unusually wide for one platform: voyage optimisation, vessel performance, bunker purchasing and pricing, emissions and CII reporting, and a maritime ERP, all drawing on the same data ecosystem. The AI here is functional, not merely enabling. Proprietary machine-learning models process operational, environmental and market data continuously, and the Propel agents released in early access in August 2026 plan voyages overnight, talk to the master and replan when the weather shifts, under supervision and with the operator keeping the decision. The trade-off is contractual rather than technical, and it deserves a careful read. Clause 5.3 of the general terms grants ZeroNorth and its affiliates a perpetual, irrevocable and sublicensable licence over Customer Data and everything derived from it, model training is openly claimed, and no opt-out is offered. Charges also rise by at least 5% a year, indexed to the Danish net price index. Pricing opacity is the second friction: nothing is published, and every package goes through a specialist. Only Bunker Pricer offers a light way in, with its 14-day free trial. Finally, the site itself asks to be read critically. Unedited Webflow template pages still carry a fictitious contact address and a ghost shop with template prices, the vessel and emissions figures disagree from one page to the next, and the Trust Center returns nothing without authentication, so no certification can be checked. None of that contradicts the product, but it does mean claims are better confirmed with the vendor than taken from the site. For a fleet operating at scale, ZeroNorth is worth a demo, and the Order is worth a lawyer's read.
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