# A website offers a carbon or green certificate for a fee. Is it worth buying?

Canonical: https://senseible.earth/answers/paid-online-green-certificate-worth-it

Usually not. A buyer or lender values numbers that can be traced to your bills, and a verification statement from an accredited body. A certificate issued after a short online form, with no evidence checked, proves little. Check who issues it and whether anyone looked at your data.

## Questions to ask before paying

- Which standard does it follow, for example ISO 14064-1?
- Is the issuer accredited to verify under ISO 14065?
- Will they look at your bills and invoices, or only a form?
- Will the result name your figures, boundary and period?

## What holds up instead

An inventory built from your own records, and if a buyer asks, a verification statement from an accredited verifier.

## What Senseible does here

Senseible keeps each figure behind a claim traceable to the invoices and bills it came from, so a reader can check the number rather than take the wording on trust.

- [Buyer asks for an ISO 14064 certificate](https://senseible.earth/answers/buyer-asks-for-iso-14064-certificate)
- [Who can verify in India](https://senseible.earth/answers/who-can-verify-iso-14064-1-inventory-india)
- [Choosing a verifier](https://senseible.earth/answers/how-to-choose-a-ghg-verifier-msme)

Sources: [ISO 14064-3 and ISO 14065 (iso.org)](https://www.iso.org), [GHG Protocol Corporate Standard](https://ghgprotocol.org/corporate-standard)

Last reviewed 2026-10-23.