Kabaun
Kabaun is a French AI-native carbon accounting platform that calculates Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions under the GHG Protocol, exports CSRD, SBTi and BEGES reports, and runs its Klem agent on EU-hosted data only.
What is Kabaun?
Kabaun is a carbon management platform published by the French company Kabaun, a SAS registered on 20 August 2021. It sells itself as AI-native: built around artificial intelligence from day one rather than, in its own words, a legacy platform with a chatbot bolted on in 2024. The product comes in three named blocks. Kabaun Connect is a no-code carbon ETL that extracts data on a schedule or on a webhook trigger, deduplicates it, normalises units, validates it and loads it incrementally, writing an audit trail at every step; it ships connectors for SAP S/4HANA, Oracle ERP Cloud, Sage 100 and X3, Odoo 16-17, Salesforce and Cegid, plus CSV, Excel and FEC files, PDF invoice OCR and a REST API described with OpenAPI 3.0. Klem is the embedded agent, presented as a copilot rather than a general-purpose chatbot: it maps columns at import, suggests emission factors, spots anomalies and inconsistencies, warns when the SBTi trajectory drifts and drafts action plans ranked by impact. Klem is trained on the GHG Protocol, BEGES, CSRD and the Base ADEME, and every action it takes is sourced, logged and replayable. Kabaun App is the dashboard and the GHG Protocol calculation engine. Behind the calculation sit a claimed 270,000 emission factors from ten named databases, among them Base Carbone ADEME (48,200), EPA (62,100), DEFRA (38,400), Exiobase (45,000), OpenCEDA (31,200), Agribalyse (2,800 products), Base Impact ADEME (12,600), GLEC (8,700), cloud carbon data for AWS, Azure and GCP (4,200) and Spain's Miteco (17,100). Six frameworks are covered: GHG Protocol, CSRD, SBTi, BEGES, Bilan Carbone ADEME and TCFD. Data is structured by site, country, legal entity and custom axes such as business unit, brand, project or season, with line-by-line traceability from source to report. Scope 3 gets the full fifteen categories, versioned custom factors, a simplified product footprint and supplier scoring. Kabaun advertises 57 native features across 13 emission domains and a three-week go-live. On security it claims TLS 1.3 and AES-256 encryption, MFA, SAML 2.0 and OAuth 2.0 SSO, multi-tenant isolation through Row Level Security and a signed, timestamped audit trail, with no call to any external LLM and an MCP architecture that never leaves the tenant. The company reports eight employees on LinkedIn, led by Nicolas Soum and Alexandre Paschutine.
What it does
- Calculate Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions on a GHG Protocol engine
- Pull carbon data automatically from CSV, Excel, FEC files and ERP systems
- Map import columns and match emission factors with AI
- Flag anomalies and inconsistencies before the audit
- Consolidate a footprint across sites, legal entities and countries
- Generate CSRD, SBTi, BEGES and Bilan Carbone ADEME exports
- Project an SBTi trajectory and produce impact-ranked action plans
When to use Kabaun / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Kabaun is the right fit.
When to use Kabaun
- Mid-sized and large European companies facing CSRD, ESRS E1 or the French BEGES obligation, or fielding carbon requests from EU customers
- Multi-site and multi-entity groups that need emissions consolidated by site, country, legal entity and custom axes such as business unit, brand or project
- Manufacturing, logistics and transport, food, construction, retail, e-commerce, digital, B2B services and finance companies, the sectors Kabaun names as its targets
- Finance and CSR teams leaving spreadsheets behind and handing a line-by-line auditable footprint to a statutory auditor, who gets a read-only access mode
- Procurement and supply chain teams running upstream Scope 3 collection, with supplier questionnaires, carbon scoring per tier and automated reminders
When not to use Kabaun
- Individuals, freelancers and micro-businesses: access is granted only after a Kabaun salesperson validates the request, and the terms allow a refusal without any stated reason, explicitly on the basis of how well the applicant matches the target audience of industrial groups and mid-sized companies
- Anyone looking for a free tool or a cheap entry point: there is no permanent free plan, and the subscription starts at €190/month excl. VAT once the 14-day trial ends
- Buyers who want the AI on the entry plan: the Starter tier excludes Klem, the REST API and multi-site consolidation, so the copilot that defines the product is missing
- Field teams needing a mobile app, or users who need an interface in a language other than French or English: Kabaun is browser-only and bilingual
- Organisations expecting the vendor to stand behind the numbers: the terms supply emission factors and methodologies for information only and disclaim liability for the decisions, analyses and reports produced
How to use Kabaun
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Request access through the sign-up form on kabaun.com, knowing that a Kabaun salesperson reviews and validates every request before an account is opened
- Start the 14-day free trial, which runs from the day the account is actually opened and requires no credit card
- Explore the full feature set during the trial, subject to the technical restrictions the publisher reserves the right to set
- Week 1: let Kabaun Connect pull your data in while Klem maps the columns automatically
- Pick your import route, or combine all three: automatic connectors (ERP, accounting, HR), files (CSV, Excel, FEC) and manual entry for the exceptions
- Week 2: run the Scope 1, 2 and 3 calculation, then clear the anomalies Klem raises
- Where data is incomplete, use the hybrid approach: physical data (kWh, kg, km) where it exists, monetary data converted through sector ratios elsewhere
- Correct and re-run a calculation whenever you need to: imports are versioned, so no history is lost
- Week 3: work from the live dashboard and pull the CSRD, SBTi and BEGES exports, with Klem monitoring continuously from then on
- Lean on the announced onboarding, a guided demo with the team or a 15-minute slot in the founder's calendar; upgrades take effect immediately, downgrades at renewal
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Public, detailed pricing with a plan-by-plan comparison running to more than 40 lines, still uncommon in this market
- Sovereign EU hosting on OVH servers in France, listed on all four plans, with no transfer outside the EU
- No call to any external LLM: Klem stays inside the tenant, and Kabaun commits in writing to never training on customer data
- Line-by-line traceability and a signed audit trail built with statutory auditors in mind, including a read-only auditor mode
- Ten emission-factor databases named and quantified one by one rather than a single unverifiable total
- Broad regulatory coverage: GHG Protocol, CSRD and ESRS E1, SBTi, BEGES, Bilan Carbone ADEME and TCFD, with a three-week go-live announced without an outside consultant
- Clear commercial terms: 14-day trial without a credit card, 20% discount on annual billing, explicit data ownership, export in Excel, CSV or JSON at any time, and a full English version of the site alongside the French one
Cons
- Access is not self-service: a salesperson validates every request and may refuse it without giving a reason
- No permanent free plan, and an entry ticket of €190/month excl. VAT
- The Starter plan excludes Klem, the REST API and multi-site consolidation, so the AI that defines the product is absent from the entry tier
- The home page and the pricing page contradict each other on what Starter contains: 2 users, 20 AI credits, Connect CSV and self-service support on one, 1 user, no Klem and email support on the other. Only the €190 price matches
- No public API documentation, the footer "API documentation" link pointing to the contact page; no mobile app either, and the interface exists in French and English only
- Outdated legal notices: the published head office (Bois-Colombes) and share capital (€10,000) no longer match the register, which records a Paris head office since 10 November 2023 and capital of €12,197.05, with the registry moved from Nanterre to Paris
- Thin public evidence: a privacy policy dated 31 August 2023 with no retention period, no subprocessor list and no named DPO, ISO 27001 cited only as a framework, demonstration figures instead of real customers, no named client or competitor, and commitment terms that are not published but referred to the sales team
Pricing & Plans
Kabaun offers no permanent free plan. Access begins with a 14-day trial that requires no credit card but remains subject to sales validation, after which the lowest price point is €190/month excl. VAT for the Starter plan. Standard is €450 per month and Business €890 per month, while Enterprise is quoted on request. An annual commitment carries a 20% discount, bringing the three published plans to €1,824, €4,320 and €8,544 per year respectively; the pricing page displays monthly rates by default. Plans are segmented by headcount: under 50 employees, 50 to 250, 250 to 500 and above 500. A supplier sub-workspace is announced at €50 on the Starter plan. Outside the subscription, Kabaun sells services on a one-off basis: carbon footprint support at €990, €2,490 or €5,900, import of a previous footprint at €500 per year, training from €500 to €2,400 (with climate awareness sessions at €1,200 per day), a custom emission factor or product footprint at €600 per reference, report and SBTi compliance audits at €1,200 and €1,500, decarbonisation strategy at €3,500, climate benchmarking at €1,800, a bespoke climate dashboard at €3,500 and automated ESG reporting at €2,800. All prices are shown excluding tax, with VAT added according to the country of residence. Payment is by Visa, Mastercard or American Express, and by SEPA transfer for annual plans. Minimum commitment terms are not published and are referred to the sales team.
- Starter — €190/month excl. VAT (€1
- 824 per year) — under 50 employees — 1 project
- 1 user according to the pricing page and 2 according to the home page
- simplified Scopes 1
- 2 and 3
- Base ADEME
- CSV import and manual entry
- PDF report
- Standard — €450/month excl. VAT (€4
- 320 per year) — 50 to 250 employees — 3 projects
- 5 users
- full GHG Protocol Scope 3
- Klem AI included with 100 credits a year
- REST API capped at 500 calls a day
- Excel export
- 50 invoice OCR a month
- Business — €890/month excl. VAT (€8
- 544 per year) — 250 to 500 employees — the tier Kabaun flags as recommended — unlimited projects
- users and sites
- 500 Klem credits a year
- REST API capped at 1
- 000 calls a day
- ERP connectors
- CSRD-ready export
- Enterprise — on quotation — above 500 employees — everything in Business plus dedicated deployment
- multi-entity support
- custom sub-workspaces
- audit-ready exports
- bespoke Kabaun AI
- unlimited REST API and webhooks
- SSO with delegated access
- contractual SLA
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Kabaun handles your data.
GDPR overview
Kabaun claims GDPR compliance explicitly on its home page, its security page and its FAQ. Processing is said to follow Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and the amended French law of 6 January 1978, with Kabaun acting as a processor for customer data. Rights under Articles 15 to 22, meaning access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability and objection, are listed and exercised by email to legal@kabaun.com or by post to the registered office, with the right to complain to the CNIL stated. A record of processing activities and a Data Processing Agreement are available on request. Hosting stays in the EU, with no transfer outside the Union without explicit agreement, and no Article 27 representative is named because the publisher is established in France. One caveat: the privacy policy still carries an effective date of 31 August 2023, while the terms are dated 2 May 2026.
Who owns the data?
Kabaun's terms are explicit: data you import or enter stays the exclusive property of your organisation, and Kabaun acts only as a processor under the GDPR. For the duration of the contract you grant the publisher a licence to use that data strictly to the extent needed to deliver the service, and nothing broader. Kabaun states separately that customer data is never used to train third-party models and never sent to OpenAI, Google or Anthropic. The platform itself, its code, interfaces, methodologies and proprietary emission-factor databases remain Kabaun's property. Reversibility is written down: a full export in Excel, CSV or JSON is available at any time, including at the end of the contract.
Reuse rights
You keep free use of your own data: nothing in the terms requires permission to reuse what you export, and a full export in Excel, CSV or JSON is available at any time, including at contract end. On Kabaun's side, the marketing site collects surname, first name, email, phone number, company name, IP address and browsing data, to deliver the service, answer enquiries, improve the site and communicate about offers; the publisher states it does not sell this data and shares it only where the service or the law requires. Inside the platform, Kabaun processes energy consumption, purchases and fixed assets (FEC ledger, invoicing), transport, expense claims, headcount and commuting data, with the personal fields described as minimised and anonymised as early as possible. Klem, the built-in agent, works strictly in-app: no data reaches OpenAI, Google, Anthropic or any other external LLM, the MCP architecture stays inside the tenant, tenants are isolated by Row Level Security down to AI queries, and data is never used to train third-party models. One caveat: the public site sets technical, analytics and advertising cookies.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
All Kabaun data is hosted in the European Union, on OVH servers located in France, and the publisher states that no data is transferred to servers outside the EU. The FAQ adds a nuance worth noting: no transfer outside the EU without explicit agreement. Sovereign EU hosting appears as a line on all four plans of the pricing comparison. The marketing site itself is hosted by OVH SAS, 2 rue Kellermann, 59100 Roubaix, according to the legal notices, and an independent network check confirms it: the site's IP address, 51.68.70.20, belongs to OVH SAS in France (AS16276). On the operational side, Kabaun mentions daily backups and separated test and production environments, with a disaster recovery plan of RTO under 4 hours and RPO under 1 hour offered on the Enterprise plan only. One gap remains: no list of subprocessors is published, so OVH is the only processing partner identifiable from public information.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Kabaun.
- The published legal identity is out of date. The legal notices and the terms give a head office at 27 Rue Charcot, 92270 Bois-Colombes and a share capital of €10,000, while the company register records a head office at 10 rue de Penthièvre, 75008 Paris since 10 November 2023, a capital of €12,197.05 after three increases in 2025, and a move from the Nanterre registry to the Paris commercial court. The legal notices are themselves dated 31 August 2023, which is what explains all three gaps.
- Kabaun's assurances read stronger than they are. ISO 27001 appears only as "best practices" and as "a framework": no certificate number, no certification body, and the compliance page claims no certification at all. The terms also disclaim liability for the decisions, analyses and reports produced, factors and methodologies being supplied for information only, so the accountability for an audited figure stays with you.
- The site contradicts itself on the Starter plan. The home page advertises 2 users, 20 AI credits, Connect CSV and self-service support; the pricing page advertises 1 user, no Klem AI and email support. Only the €190 monthly price matches, so get the scope of what you are buying in writing.
- Most figures shown on the site are mock-ups. "Groupe Duval SA", 1,247 tCO2e, "Plastinord", "Chimex", "run #2847", 28 ms latency and 99.97% uptime are interface demonstrations, not customer data or references. The only testimonial is signed "S.L., CFO, industrial mid-cap, 800 employees" and cannot be verified, and the customers page names nobody.
- The free trial is conditional. The 14 days are granted only after a discretionary review by a salesperson, who may refuse without stating a reason, so plan for the possibility of being turned away rather than treating the trial as a given.
- The login button leads to a different domain, app.beta.kabaun.earth, with "beta" in the host name, while the marketing site sells subscriptions and never mentions a beta stage anywhere.
- Beneficial ownership cannot be verified. The French beneficial-ownership register has been closed to the public since 31 July 2024 and now requires clearance; the published officers are Nicolas Soum (President) and Alexandre Paschutine (Managing Director), but no shareholding breakdown is available, and a corporate mandate does not establish ultimate ownership.
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Low to moderate. Kabaun advertises a three-week go-live with no outside consultant and about an hour to connect a first ERP, with AI handling the column mapping (six fields out of six resolved at 94.6% average confidence in its own interface example). Three entry levels coexist: manual entry, file import and automatic connectors. Personalised onboarding and scope configuration are announced as included. The real constraint is commercial, not technical: ERP connectors require Business, the REST API and SAML 2.0 or OAuth 2.0 SSO start at Standard, and team training is bundled only with Enterprise, otherwise billed between €500 and €2,400.
Deployment
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind Kabaun
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
How does Kabaun calculate emissions?
How long does it take to get a first carbon footprint?
Is there a free trial?
How much does Kabaun cost?
Is the AI included in every plan?
Where is the data hosted?
Is my data used to train AI models?
Is Kabaun ISO 27001 certified?
Who owns the data, and can I get it back?
Does Kabaun connect to my ERP, and is there an API?
Should you pick Kabaun?
Kabaun is a regulatory niche tool rather than a general-purpose assistant: it exists to produce a corporate carbon footprint that survives an audit. Its two claimed differentiators hold together well, an AI designed into the product instead of added to it, and data sovereignty pushed far enough that no external LLM is ever called, with everything hosted on OVH servers in France. In a market where pricing usually hides behind a demo request, publishing four tiers and a 40-line comparison table is a genuine point in its favour, as is naming and quantifying each of the ten emission-factor databases instead of advertising a round total. The reservations are just as concrete. The AI that carries the product's identity is missing from the entry plan, so €190 a month buys a spreadsheet replacement rather than the copilot the marketing describes. No security certification is published: ISO 27001 appears as a methodology, not a certificate. The privacy policy dates from August 2023, sets out no retention period and names no subprocessor, and the legal notices still carry a head office and a share capital that the company register has since superseded. The interface figures shown across the site are mock-ups, and no customer is named. Set against all that, Kabaun is an eight-person company according to its own LinkedIn page, which is worth holding in mind when reading the top-tier commitments: contractual SLA, dedicated account manager, disaster recovery with RTO under four hours. None of it is implausible; none is independently evidenced either. For a mid-sized European company facing CSRD or BEGES, with an ERP to connect and an auditor to satisfy, Kabaun deserves a serious look, provided you budget for Standard or above, ask for the DPA, and get the commitment terms and security claims in writing before signing.
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