Top Carbon Credit Exchanges for 2025

 One of the very early participants in the global carbon market, the Carbon Trade Exchange (CTX), is headquartered in London, England. In contrast to previous carbon exchanges, CTX is a member-based spot exchange that welcomes a wide range of market players. The exchange is used by smaller players like single brokers, mid-size players like project developers, and large-size players like multinational corporations. The exchange has established relationships with various parties in the global carbon ecosystem, including Gold Standard, Verra VCS, and the UNFCCC CDM Registry.

 Xpansiv is a premier market-infrastructure platform for environmental commodities based out in the USA. Being one of the largest carbon-offset exchanges, Xpansive recently launched CBL Auctions which offers real-time insight into voluntary carbon, including quotes, portfolio tracking, charting, OTC trading, and now an electronic auction service that helps project developers earn top dollar for their carbon credits. The other divisions of the exchange include  H2OX, the leading spot exchange for water; XSignals, which provides end-of-day and historical market data; EMA, the leading multi-registry portfolio management system for all environmental commodities; and APX, the leading provider of registry infrastructure for energy and environmental markets. Xpansiv is the digital nexus where sustainability and price signals merge. 

The Toucan Protocol was founded and is headquartered in Berlin, Germany, in 2020. Being a young exchange, Toucan has already created a strong foundation for carbon markets to fund climate crisis solutions. Its ultimate vision is to form a programmable carbon as a new kind of money to make DeFi (decentralized finance) functional. Toucan believes that its protocol can help rapidly scale the impact of planet-positive projects by turning carbon credits into tokens with Toucan’s infrastructure. The protocol has a Carbon Bridge, which allows owners of carbon credits from verified sources to link each to a unique digital token called a TCO2. These are stored in a smart contract on a blockchain database called the Open Climate Registry.

Started in 2019, AirCarbon Exchange is a Singapore-based Carbon Credits market that has gained a unique place as it is a digital exchange platform that brings traditional commodities trading infrastructure to the carbon markets. This means the exchanges bring benefits like low fees, efficient trading, settlement risk mitigation, and transparent pricing. The exchange uses distributed ledger technology on a traditional trading architecture. It leverages blockchain architecture to create securitized carbon credits.ACX securitizes carbon credits around market demand. This allows traders to take positions in an asset class instead of individual projects.  A one tCO2e carbon credit backs every token (digital receipt) in the Exchange’s Trust.