EarthScore
EarthScore is a German B2B platform that turns industrial waste streams into revenue: AI agents audit a site's energy and material flows, rank the biggest levers by return, then match and broker by-products on its Circular Marketplace.
What is EarthScore?
EarthScore calls itself the operating system for the circular economy, and the phrase is meant literally: it positions itself as the operational layer between a company's existing assets and the circular economy, and insists it is “not reporting, but execution”. The product is built by WhatsGreen Research & Science GmbH, a company registered in Pulheim near Cologne, and is aimed squarely at the European industrial mid-market.
Everything starts with a Value Audit covering several hundred data points on energy, materials, finance and operations. From it the platform produces a prioritised hotspot ranking: compressed-air leaks, waste-heat recovery, material matches, peak-load shifting, each weighted by economics rather than by ease. The Circular Blueprint then simulates the before-and-after of a chosen measure, in five increasing depths, with capital cost, payback and CO₂ effect attached.
The second half of the product is a marketplace. On the Circular Marketplace, companies post offers and requests for by-products and raw materials in buy and sell modes. A Research Agent scans external sources continuously for suitable counterparties, and when nothing matches, the request stays open and alerts the user as soon as the material appears. A Search & Match agent scores candidates across six dimensions: material category, volume compatibility, price competitiveness, location and logistics, availability window and material quality. A communication agent then drafts the enquiries, negotiations and status updates, which the user confirms before anything is sent.
The design principle is stated openly: the machine works, the human decides. Analysis, pattern recognition, matching and documentation are delegated to specialised agents, while a person stays in control at every decision-critical point, which the vendor presents as the only workable path for critical business processes under the EU AI Act. A second theme is sovereignty: data processing, inference, matching and transactions all run on European infrastructure, with hosting in Germany.
Underneath the AI layer sits an ordinary operational base included in every subscription and consuming no credits: trading flow, messaging and trade threads, invoices, a CO₂ report and user management.
What it does
- Audit a site's energy, material and by-product flows from several hundred data points
- Rank improvement levers by return, risk and speed of implementation
- Simulate before-and-after transformation scenarios with Circular Blueprints, across five depths
- Search external sources for buyers and suppliers of a given material
- Score candidate matches on category, volume, price, location, availability window and quality
- Draft enquiries, negotiations and status updates through an AI communication agent, sent only once confirmed
- Document realised savings in euros and avoided CO₂ in an audit-ready form
When to use EarthScore / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if EarthScore is the right fit.
When to use EarthScore
- Mid-sized industrial manufacturers sitting on unvalorised energy, material and by-product streams
- Plant and site managers who need efficiency measures ranked by payback rather than by intuition
- Sustainability and ESG leads who want operational impact in euros and tonnes, not another reporting dashboard
- Procurement and sourcing teams buying or selling secondary raw materials
- Operations and finance executives at companies with a strong industrial base but no in-house AI department
When not to use EarthScore
- Consumers and private individuals: the terms restrict the platform to entrepreneurs under section 14 of the German Civil Code
- Companies whose only need is CSRD or ESRS reporting, which the vendor explicitly says it does not provide
- Teams that require a mobile app, a public API or an on-premise deployment, none of which exists
- Buyers who need a contractual uptime commitment without negotiating an individual Enterprise agreement
- Organisations that must keep their identity confidential, since company name, city and postcode are visible to other users from the first listing
How to use EarthScore
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Create an account at mp.earthscore.com/register, or request a 20-minute walkthrough through the form on the homepage
- Submit your company details for verification: legal name, address, country, VAT ID, industry classification and bank details for billing
- Wait for the vendor to review them before the full scope of functions is unlocked; activation is discretionary and may be refused
- Complete the Value Audit, which draws on several hundred data points covering energy, materials, finance and operations
- Review the prioritised hotspot ranking the platform produces from that audit
- Run a Circular Blueprint at the depth you need to simulate the before-and-after of a given measure
- Optionally connect existing ERP, energy-management or procurement systems; this is not a prerequisite for starting
- Post offers or requests on the Circular Marketplace, or let the Research Agent scan external sources for counterparties
- Review and confirm the AI-drafted enquiries and negotiation messages before they are sent
- Monitor credit consumption, buy additional credits or change plan at any time from inside the tool
Pros & Cons
Pros
- All AI features are available from the entry plan onwards: the tiers meter capacity, not capability
- Included and purchased credits never expire and roll over to the following periods
- Hosting, database, files and backups run with Hetzner in Germany without third-country transfer, which an independent lookup of the site's IP address confirms
- The six processors are published by name, each with its purpose and location
- A contractual no-training commitment on the model side, and no cross-customer benchmarking of customer content
- No analytics, tracking or marketing services at all inside the logged-in area
- Public self-service pricing on all five tiers, Enterprise included, with no minimum term beyond the chosen billing period
Cons
- Every figure shown on the homepage is demonstration data, not a customer result
- No security certification of its own: neither ISO 27001, nor SOC 2, nor TISAX, nor C5
- No availability commitment on standard plans, which are provided on a best-effort basis; service levels require an individual Enterprise agreement
- No customer-facing data processing agreement is published or announced as available on request
- No named third-party integration: ERP, energy-management and procurement systems are said to be connectable, but not one connector is named
- Web only, with no mobile app, no public API and no browser extension
- Thin public evidence: no customer reference, no testimonial, no social profile, and an explainer video still announced as coming soon
Pricing & Plans
There is no permanent free plan. EarthScore offers a 14-day free trial including 10,000 credits and one seat, requiring no credit card, available to new sign-ups until 30 September; after that date, entry is directly through a paid plan. The lowest paid entry point is the Starter plan at EUR 129 per month excluding VAT, which includes 25,000 monthly credits and three seats. Annual billing lowers the effective rate by 15 per cent. All five tiers, Enterprise included, are self-service, and both additional credits and additional seats can be purchased separately at any time.
- EUR 0 for 14 days
- 10
- 000 credits
- 1 seat
- no credit card
- reserved for new sign-ups until 30 September
- EUR 129 per month or EUR 1
- 316 per year
- 25
- 000 credits per month
- 3 seats
- EUR 499 per month or EUR 5
- 090 per year
- 150
- 000 credits per month
- 10 seats
- marked as the popular tier
- EUR 1
- 490 per month or EUR 15
- 198 per year
- 500
- 000 credits per month
- 25 seats
- marked as best value
- EUR 3
- 000 per month or EUR 30
- 600 per year
- 1
- 500
- 000 credits per month
- 50 seats
- with SLA and dedicated support
- Circular Blueprints
- Research
- Search & Match and Communication Agent. All prices exclude VAT.
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how EarthScore handles your data.
GDPR overview
Implementation is concrete rather than declarative. The privacy policy, dated June 2026, names WhatsGreen Research & Science GmbH as controller for both the website and the logged-in platform, cites the GDPR and the German Federal Data Protection Act, and gives a legal basis for each operation. A data protection officer is reachable by post at the registered office and at contact@earthscore.com. Every right is listed by article, from access to portability, and the competent supervisory authority is named in full: the State Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information of North Rhine-Westphalia. Six processors are published with purpose and location, consent runs through a cookie banner under section 25 TDDDG, and non-EU transfers rely on the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework or standard contractual clauses. The site claims GDPR compliance in plain words.
Who owns the data?
Section 10.2 of the terms is explicit: rights in the content and data a customer posts remain with the customer. EarthScore receives only the simple licence it needs to run the service, covering storage, processing and display for matching, and undertakes that customer content is not used for cross-customer benchmarking or analytics. The privacy policy repeats the point for the ESG and CO₂ analysis data. The reverse also holds: section 10.1 keeps every right in the platform, its software, its content and its trademarks with WhatsGreen Research & Science GmbH, while the customer holds a simple, non-transferable right of use that lasts only as long as the contract.
Reuse rights
Customers keep their own data and may reuse it as they wish; nothing in the terms limits what a company does with its own listings, audit inputs or Blueprint results. The vendor's own reuse is narrowly drawn. The licence it takes extends to storage, processing and display for matching, and stops there: cross-customer benchmarking and analytics are ruled out in writing. Marketplace listings are the deliberate exception. Company name, city, postcode and country, the listing details, the “member since” date and the number of past trades all become visible to other registered users, because the marketplace cannot function otherwise. Direct contact details are never released automatically: a first enquiry reveals only the enquiring company's name, and email or phone are exchanged solely at the parties' discretion. AI outputs are framed as non-binding simulations, so responsibility for acting on them sits with the customer.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Hosting, database, file storage and backups are handled by Hetzner Online GmbH in Germany, with the privacy policy stating explicitly that no third-country transfer is involved for these. An independent lookup of the site's IP address corroborates this: it resolves to a Hetzner range in Nuremberg. Two further processors sit inside the EU, namely Stripe Payments Europe in Ireland for payments and Microsoft Ireland for transactional email. Three processing operations reach the United States and are handled separately: Anthropic for the language model behind the AI features, Serper for the web search used in partner research, and Google Ireland for Google Maps geocoding; Stripe may also transfer onward to its US group company. Those transfers rely on the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, on EU standard contractual clauses, or on both together with supplementary safeguards. The vendor states that pure infrastructure services which process no personal user data, such as its container registry, are not listed. The site claims European infrastructure and end-to-end encryption throughout.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting EarthScore.
- Every figure on the site is demonstration data; reading the 935,000 euro annual potential as a benchmark would anchor expectations on numbers no published customer result supports
- Blueprint outputs are model-based simulations that the terms declare non-binding and explicitly not engineering advice, yet they carry capital cost and payback figures precise enough to feel decisive
- Company name, city and postcode are visible to other users from the first listing, so posting a waste stream discloses something about your process to anyone on the platform, competitors included
- The vendor is an intermediary only and warrants neither counterparty identity, solvency and capability, nor the accuracy of listing data, nor the legal admissibility of what is traded under waste and export law
- Credit metering quietly rewards running one more agent rather than thinking one more time, and heavy consumption stays invisible until the monthly allowance is gone
- Handing supplier outreach and negotiation drafting to an agent erodes, over time, the judgement of the people who used to do it; the confirm step protects the transaction, not the skill
- Annual prepayment is not refunded pro rata, so a change of mind mid-term is a sunk cost rather than a reversible decision
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Low on the technical side, moderate on the data side. No infrastructure change is required and no integration is mandatory: ERP, energy-management and procurement systems can be connected but are optional, and the vendor advertises a working setup within a few days. The real effort lies elsewhere. Company verification must clear before the full scope of functions unlocks, and the Value Audit draws on several hundred data points covering energy, materials, finance and operations, which somebody inside the plant has to gather. First prioritised levers are announced after two to four weeks.
Deployment
Supported languages
Behind EarthScore
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
Do we have to change our IT infrastructure before we can start?
What does it actually cost to get started?
What are credits, and what happens when they run out?
Where is our data hosted, and who else touches it?
Is our data used to train AI models?
How different is this from an ESG reporting tool?
Who is the platform open to?
Is EarthScore a party to the trades arranged through it?
How long is the commitment, and can we leave?
Is there a mobile app or a public API?
Should you pick EarthScore?
EarthScore is one of the more coherent propositions in a crowded sustainability-software market, largely because it refuses the category. It does not sell reporting; it sells a chain that runs from audit to prioritisation to an actual trade, and it is honest that the value only lands when a by-product finds a buyer. The compliance file is genuinely above average for the segment: German hosting at Hetzner with no third-country transfer, six processors published by name, a contractual no-training commitment, no tracking whatsoever inside the product, and legal documents issued in both German and English. Pricing is public and self-service on all five tiers, credits never expire, and no capability is locked behind a higher plan.
The reservations are about evidence rather than intent. Every number on the site, from the 935,000 euro annual potential down to individual match scores, is demonstration data. There is no customer reference, no testimonial, no certification of the vendor's own, no availability commitment outside an Enterprise agreement, and no customer-facing data processing agreement, which is a notable omission for a platform that ingests plant-level operational data. The company itself is young, registered in November 2022, with the EarthScore trademark filed a year later, and parts of the product are still labelled coming soon.
The decisive unknown is one the site never addresses: marketplace liquidity. The Blueprint side can stand on its own as an analysis tool, but the revenue argument depends on there being counterparties within a sensible radius for your particular waste stream, and nothing published lets a buyer judge that. The 14-day trial, while it lasts, is the cheap way to find out — and the 30 September cut-off makes that a time-limited question rather than an open one.
- Choosing a selection results in a full page refresh.
- Opens in a new window.