EcoVadis Guide: How the Rating Works, Who Gets Assessed, and What Changed in 2026

What Is EcoVadis?

EcoVadis is a private sustainability ratings provider, founded in Paris in 2007, that scores companies on how well they manage sustainability across four themes: environment, labor and human rights, ethics, and sustainable procurement. Companies are assessed because a customer asked them to be, and the company being rated pays for its own subscription. The output is a scorecard with a score from 0 to 100, a rating for each theme, and, above certain percentile cut-offs, a medal. Scorecards are valid for 12 months. More than 150,000 companies have been rated across 185+ countries, according to EcoVadis.

EcoVadis scores documents rather than intentions, so an answer in the questionnaire earns nothing unless a dated, formalized document supports it. Medals are percentile-based rather than score-based, so an unchanged score can lose a medal when the rated population improves. Medal eligibility begins at the Premium subscription tier, so a company on the Basic plan gets a score and no medal regardless of how well it performs.

EcoVadis Key Facts at a Glance

How the EcoVadis Rating Works

Every assessment is built from the same 21 criteria, but not every criterion applies to every company. EcoVadis assigns each of the four themes a weight from 1 to 4 based on the materiality of that theme for the industry, size, and risk profile of the company being rated, and the questionnaire is cut to match. A 40-person software firm and a 4,000-person chemical manufacturer answer different questions and are scored against different expectations. The methodology also applies an adjustment of up to six points based on the risk profile of the countries a company operates in, as set out in the EcoVadis methodology disclosure document.

Within each theme, scoring follows a three-layer structure that EcoVadis calls policies, actions, and results:

• Policies — the formal commitments and objectives a company has written down, including quantitative targets.
• Actions — what has actually been implemented, including management systems, training, audits, and certifications.
• Results — the performance a company reports and can evidence, including published metrics and third-party verification.

Only questionnaire declarations supported by document evidence are credited. Evidence must be formalized, dated, complete, credible, and machine-readable. A policy described in an email does not count. A policy signed, dated, and published does.

An analyst reviews every submission against internal checklists, which is why the timeline is measured in weeks rather than days and why the same answers submitted with better documentation produce a different score.

How Are Companies Scored?

Medal scoring is relative, not absolute. Since 2024, EcoVadis has awarded medals on percentile rank against every company rated in the preceding 12 months, replacing the fixed score thresholds many buyers still quote from memory.

All four medal levels also require a minimum of 30 points in each individual theme, per EcoVadis. A company with a strong environment score and a weak sustainable procurement score gets no medal, whatever the overall total.

Because the rated population improves year over year, holding a score flat means moving down the distribution. A company that scored 62 and took Silver in one cycle can score 63 the next and take Bronze. If a customer contract specifies a medal level, that requirement moves independently of your own performance. Raise it with them directly rather than absorbing it.

Medals and badges are valid for 12 months, matching scorecard validity.

What Changed in 2026

EcoVadis published methodology V10.0 in January 2026 and made a series of scoring and evidence changes through Q1 and Q2. The changes are documented in the EcoVadis methodology updates for Q1 2026.

In Force

• Methodology disclosure documents published April 1, 2026. EcoVadis released full methodology documentation for all rating products, moved to Major.Minor version numbering, and committed to a 30-day public consultation before any material change affecting more than 10% of rated companies.
• Revenue removed from evidence coverage calculations, April 15, 2026. Site-level coverage for policies, endorsements, and reporting indicators is now calculated on employee count or number of sites. Companies with high revenue and few employees may see coverage assessed differently than in prior cycles.
• In-progress certificates no longer accepted, April 15, 2026. A management system certification that is under way earns nothing. At the same time, sustainability and certification audit reports became acceptable evidence for policies, actions, and reporting, and database screenshots became acceptable proof of certification where a public verification database exists.
• GRI “with reference” reporting now scores 75, April 14, 2026. Companies reporting with reference to the GRI Universal Standards no longer need full GRI conformance to earn a strong reporting score.
• CSDDD alignment in the environment theme, April 15, 2026. The biodiversity, air pollution, and materials, chemicals and waste criteria were reworded against the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, and a new option covers offshore waste discharge prevention. Two new questions on environmental risk assessment and disruption response were added, and the standalone water risk assessment measure was removed.
• Scope 2 split into location-based and market-based, May 7, 2026. The single scope 2 field became two, aligning with the GHG Protocol. Companies that have only ever reported one scope 2 figure need both.

In Progress

• ESMA authorization, decision expected around May 2027. The EU ESG Ratings Regulation has applied since July 2, 2026 and requires ESG rating providers operating in the EU to be authorized by ESMA. EcoVadis notified ESMA of its intention to apply on July 8, 2026 and appears on ESMA's register of notifying providers. Full applications from established providers are due by November 2, 2026. EcoVadis states that its products and methodology do not change as a result, and that rated companies need make no internal adjustment.

Who Gets Assessed, and Who Decides

A company is assessed when a customer, prospective customer, or lender asks it to be, usually as a condition of an RFP, a supplier onboarding process, or an annual supplier review. Requests concentrate in sectors where large buyers have published value chain commitments: automotive, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, food and beverage, industrial manufacturing, and increasingly logistics and professional services.

The rated unit is a legal entity. Groups with multiple subsidiaries can manage scorecards at group level and share documents across entities on the Corporate plan, but each entity that a buyer asks about needs its own scorecard. Confirm which legal entity your customer is actually asking to see before you start, because assessing the wrong one costs a full cycle.

How Long Does an EcoVadis Assessment Take?

A standard assessment campaign runs 12 to 16 weeks from invitation to scorecard publication, according to EcoVadis support. An expedited RFP track compresses this to 6 to 8 weeks by removing the registration phase, fixing a non-extendable submission deadline, and prioritizing analyst review, and it is capped at 20 participating companies.

Plan against the 12-to-16-week figure. The compressible part of the timeline is registration and questionnaire completion. Analyst review is not compressible, and a submission that arrives with gaps in its evidence gets scored as submitted rather than sent back for another try. Reassessment happens only when a rated company renews, so a lapsed subscription means a lapsed scorecard and a buyer looking at nothing.

What You Have to Submit

The questionnaire is generated from your industry, size, and country, and typically runs to a few dozen questions. Each answer needs a document behind it. In practice the evidence file for a mid-sized manufacturer includes:

• Signed and dated policies covering each material theme, with quantitative targets where the criterion asks for them.
• Management system certifications, in force rather than in progress. ISO 14001, ISO 45001, and ISO 27001 are the ones most often requested.
• Training records, audit reports, supplier codes of conduct, and grievance mechanism documentation.
• Reported performance metrics, including scope 1, scope 2 location-based, scope 2 market-based, and scope 3 emissions, energy consumption, water, waste, and health and safety rates.
• A published sustainability report or equivalent public disclosure carrying those metrics, which is what the reporting indicators are testing.

The Carbon Action Manager

EcoVadis runs a separate carbon product alongside the main rating. The Carbon Action Manager collects primary emissions data from suppliers across scopes 1, 2, and 3 plus product carbon footprints, segments suppliers by carbon maturity, and tracks improvement over time. EcoVadis reports 48,000+ companies reporting carbon metrics on its network and 135,000+ carbon assessments conducted.

A carbon request is a different request from a rating request, and it arrives on its own invitation. Buyers building a scope 3 inventory from supplier-specific data increasingly send both. If your customer is asking for product-level footprints, that is the carbon module rather than the sustainability rating, and the data it wants is more granular than anything the main questionnaire asks for.

EcoVadis vs CDP, CSRD and California: Do They Overlap?

They ask different questions of the same underlying data.

• EcoVadis rates management maturity across four themes, for an audience of your customers, and scores you on documented policies, actions, and results.
• CDP is a voluntary environmental disclosure questionnaire scored A to D-, for an audience of investors and customers, and it goes deeper on climate specifically, including targets, transition planning, and value chain engagement.
• CSRD is EU law with defined scope thresholds, double materiality, and third-party assurance.
• California SB 253 and SB 261 are US state law requiring scope 1, 2, and eventually 3 emissions and climate risk reporting from companies above revenue thresholds doing business in the state.

The boundaries and the audiences differ. The measurement underneath does not. Scope 1 and 2 emissions calculated once, with activity data, factor versions, and evidence attached to each figure, answer the environment theme in EcoVadis, the emissions modules in CDP, the climate standard in CSRD, and the California requirement. Scope 3 calculated once does the same work across all four, and the scope 3 data maturity problem is the same problem in each. What differs between frameworks is the export, not the inventory.

Companies that run these as four separate projects rebuild the same numbers four times a year and reconcile the differences afterward. Our guide to choosing a climate disclosure framework sets out how to decide which of these you actually owe.

How to Prepare

1. Confirm the Entity and the Plan Tier Before You Buy

Ask your customer which legal entity they need a scorecard for, and check whether their requirement mentions a medal. If it does, you need Premium or above, because medal eligibility begins there. Settling this first avoids paying for a scorecard your buyer cannot use.

2. Assemble the Evidence File Before You Open the Questionnaire

Collect signed and dated policies, in-force certifications, audit reports, training records, and your published metrics first. The questionnaire takes a few days. Locating a dated anti-corruption policy that nobody has updated since 2019 takes weeks, and the answer earns nothing without it.

3. Close the Results Layer on Environment First

Policies and actions are cheap to document. Results are not, and the environment theme is where the gap usually shows. Get scope 1, scope 2 location-based, scope 2 market-based, and your best available scope 3 figures calculated with a traceable method and published somewhere public.

4. Retire Your In-Progress Certifications from the Evidence File

Since April 15, 2026, certificates described as in progress earn nothing. Check what you submitted last cycle and replace anything that has not completed, using audit reports or public database records where the certification body maintains one.

5. Build the Inventory Once

An EcoVadis cycle, a CDP response, and a CSRD or California filing draw on the same emissions data and the same evidence trail. Building that once, in a system that keeps the supporting document attached to each figure, is the difference between one measurement project a year and four.

How Gravity Helps You Evidence the Environment Theme

There are several ways to prepare for an EcoVadis cycle, including doing it in-house, hiring a consultancy that specializes in the questionnaire, or running the measurement on a platform. Gravity is an integrated energy and carbon management platform combining software, expert support, and a vendor network, and the part of the assessment it addresses is the results layer that most companies score worst on.

• Automated data collection. Utility bill scanning and utility API connections build scope 1 and 2 from source documents rather than manual entry, which is what makes a reported figure supportable rather than asserted.
• Evidence attached to every figure. Data logs, supporting documents held against each data point, and centralized documentation give you the dated, traceable basis the results indicators are testing, and the same file answers a verifier later.
• Supplier and value chain data. Supplier data enrichment compiles public information on any supplier including CDP scores, emissions, and SBTi commitments, and survey tooling collects what is not public. All 15 scope 3 categories are covered, progressing from spend-based estimates to supplier-specific factors.
• Cross-framework reporting. One inventory formats to CDP, CSRD, California SB 253 and SB 261, ISSB, GRI, and SBTi, so the numbers you put in front of an EcoVadis analyst are the same numbers in every other filing.
• Expert assistance. A dedicated Climate Strategist helps decide the judgment calls, including which scope 3 categories to prioritize and what level of scope 3 completeness is worth reporting in your first cycle.

Talk to an expert about getting your emissions data assessment-ready.