How to choose an ESG reporting tool

"ESG reporting" covers two different businesses that happen to share a label. One side rates or scores companies from the outside — investors, lenders and buyers use these ratings to decide who to invest in, lend to or buy from. The other side is software a company uses to collect its own data and produce its own disclosures. Confusing the two wastes time: a company cannot "subscribe" to a better MSCI rating, and an investor cannot get much use out of a corporate reporting platform's raw output. Work out which side of the table you sit on before you look at a single feature.

If you are being rated: understand who is driving the request

CDP, MSCI ESG Research and Morningstar Sustainalytics all produce scores about companies, but the mechanism differs. CDP is a non-profit disclosure system: a company responds to CDP's climate, water or forests questionnaire, usually because an investor or customer requested it through CDP's own platform, and disclosure is typically free when driven by that request. MSCI ESG Research and Sustainalytics work differently — their analysts build ratings largely from public disclosures, news and other independent sources rather than a company's own questionnaire response, which means a company being rated has limited direct control over the process and is not the one paying for the rating; asset managers and lenders license the output instead. EcoVadis sits closer to CDP's model but for procurement rather than investment: a buyer requests a supplier's EcoVadis assessment, the supplier completes it with evidence, and the resulting score is shared network-wide so the same supplier is not re-assessed by every customer separately.

If you are reporting: decide how many frameworks you are feeding at once

Novisto, Position Green, Sphera and Workiva are all corporate-side platforms, but they solve the "collect once, report many times" problem differently. Novisto centralizes data collection and maps the same underlying figures to CSRD/ESRS, GRI, SASB, TCFD and CDP simultaneously, aimed at large companies that need one governed data lineage behind several disclosures rather than separate spreadsheets per framework. Workiva approaches the same problem from the opposite direction: it began as a tool for SEC filings and XBRL tagging, and many large public companies adopt its ESG module as an extension of a reporting workflow they already run for financial filings, which matters if your CFO's team already lives in Workiva. If your company reports to only one or two frameworks today, this breadth matters less than it will once a second regulatory requirement lands.

Decide if you want software alone, or software with advisory

Position Green was formed from several Nordic ESG software and consultancy businesses and still pairs its platform with in-house advisory services rather than selling a pure self-serve product — useful if your sustainability function is small and CSRD double materiality is new territory. Novisto and Workiva are closer to pure software plays, assuming you either have the expertise in-house or will bring in separate consultants as needed. Neither approach is wrong; it depends on whether you are buying a tool or buying expertise packaged with a tool.

Check whether ESG is a module or the whole product

Sphera is the widest platform in this list by scope: ESG and CSRD/ESRS reporting sit alongside EHS incident management, product stewardship and chemical compliance, and supply-chain risk analytics, with carbon accounting added through its 2023 acquisition of Emitwise. That breadth is the point if you are a heavy-industry or manufacturing company that wants safety, compliance and sustainability reporting in one system rather than three. It is unnecessary complexity if ESG disclosure is your only requirement — in that case, a narrower reporting-only platform is less to learn and configure.

Understand what "double materiality" actually requires

CSRD's double materiality assessment — reporting both how sustainability issues affect your company financially and how your company affects people and the environment — is now a named feature across Novisto, Position Green, Sphera and Workiva, but depth varies. Ask each vendor to show you an actual completed materiality assessment in their tool, not a slide describing the concept, and check whether the stakeholder-engagement workflow that feeds it is built into the product or handled entirely offline and re-typed in.

A shortlist by situation

• An investor or customer has asked you to disclose through CDP. Respond through CDP directly; there is no substitute product to buy.
• A customer wants to see your supplier sustainability score. EcoVadis is the standard reference procurement teams request.
• You are an asset manager or lender needing independent ratings on companies you do not control. MSCI ESG Research and Morningstar Sustainalytics are the two most widely licensed investor-facing ratings, and are worth comparing directly.
• You are a large company feeding data to several disclosure frameworks at once and want one governed source. Novisto.
• Your CFO's team already runs SEC filings through Workiva. Extend into Workiva's ESG module rather than adopting a second, disconnected system.
• You are a heavy-industry company that wants EHS, product compliance and ESG reporting together. Sphera.
• You are a European mid-market company new to CSRD and want advisory alongside the software. Position Green.

Questions to ask a vendor

1. Is this a rating you receive passively, based on public information, or an assessment you actively complete and control?
2. If you already disclose to one framework, how much of that data can this tool reuse for a second framework without re-entry?
3. Does the double-materiality workflow live inside the product, including stakeholder input, or is that step handled outside it?
4. What audit trail exists if an external assurance provider needs to verify a disclosed figure?
5. Is pricing based on company size, number of frameworks, number of users, or some combination — and how does it change as you add a framework next year?

Common mistakes

Treating an investor-facing rating like MSCI's or Sustainalytics' as something you can directly "improve" by buying software — the rating is built independently from public sources, so the real lever is the underlying disclosures and behaviour, not a subscription. Buying a broad multi-framework platform when a single, well-scoped framework is your only near-term requirement, and paying for configuration you will not use for years. And underestimating how much a "double materiality" feature actually depends on a stakeholder-engagement process no software can automate away.

For two direct match-ups, read MSCI ESG Research vs Morningstar Sustainalytics and Novisto vs Workiva. See every tool in this category at every tool in this category.