How Cloud Providers Count Your Emissions

Compare how AWS, Google Cloud, Azure and Oracle count your emissions: scopes, bases, units, timing and history.

Multi-cloudReference60 seconds

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The four side by side

From each provider’s documentation, checked 2026-10-18.

What	AWS	Google Cloud	Azure	Oracle Cloud
Scopes	Scope 1, 2 and 3.	Scope 1, 2 and 3.	Scope 1, 2 and 3.	Not documented; the figures come from electricity.
What Scope 3 includes	Making IT hardware, buildings and equipment; upstream fuel and energy, including grid losses; upstream transport.	Making equipment and buildings, staff travel and commuting, grid losses and upstream fuel.	Hardware materials, making components, transport and end of life. Data center buildings are not included.	Not documented.
Location-based	Yes, since June 2025.	Yes, from hourly grid figures.	Not shown: the portal reports Scope 2 market-based.	Power-based method only (Compute and Storage).
Market-based	Yes; the console shows it by default.	Yes, since September 2024, with data from January 2023.	Yes.	Yes: the spend-based method (list price times a regional factor) and the power-based one.
Broken down by	Account, Region, service and month.	Billing account, project, service, region and month; AI inference by SKU from January 2026.	Subscription, resource group, resource, resource type, location and month.	Day or month; tenancy, compartment, region, availability domain, service, SKU, resource and tag.
Units	Metric tonnes (MTCO2e), to the gram.	Kilograms (kgCO2e) in the export; tonnes in the console.	Metric tonnes in the methodology; check the header of your export.	Metric tonnes (MTCO2e).
When a month appears	By the 21st of the following month.	The export lands on the 15th of the following month.	The previous month by the 19th.	Not documented.
History	Back to January 2022.	Back to January 2021.	12 months only, so export every month to keep more.	Not documented.
Hardware and buildings	IT hardware over 6 years, buildings over 50, shared by use.	Equipment over 4 years, buildings over 20, shared by electricity use.	Equipment over 6 years, shared by use; buildings not counted.	Not documented.
Third-party assurance	The methodology is third-party assured.	Not yet assured, Google says; the allocation method was reviewed against the GHG Protocol.	Not documented.	Not documented; Oracle calls every figure an estimate.
Export	CSV, API, and Data Exports to S3 as CSV or Parquet.	BigQuery, through the Data Transfer Service.	CSV, and the carbon emission reports REST API, up to 100 subscriptions a query.	CSV, and the Usage API.
Cost	No extra charge.	No charge stated for the report; BigQuery storage and queries are billed as usual.	Free.	For paying commercial customers; no separate price.

What trips people up

Units. Google exports kilograms; AWS and Oracle report metric tonnes. Convert before you add.
Two bases. Only AWS and Google give both location-based and market-based figures. Azure’s portal shows market-based only, so it cannot be added to a location-based total.
Hardware lifetimes. Google spreads equipment over 4 years, AWS and Azure over 6, so the same server carries different manufacturing carbon each year. Azure leaves buildings out.
Restatements. AWS and Google recalculate history when their models change. Keep the model version with every export, and export a whole year in one go for a report.
Retention. Azure keeps 12 months. Export every month, or last year is gone.
Software scores. The SCI standard accepts location-based figures only, so for software carbon use AWS’s or Google’s location-based numbers.

Each provider

AWS

AWS Sustainability console, launched March 2026, with an API and the CARBON_EMISSIONS table in Data Exports. It replaced the Customer Carbon Footprint Tool, retired on 30 June 2026.

Model 3.0.1 (April 2026) recalculated all history; each June the previous year is republished with utility invoice data.
Market-based figures change as Amazon winds down unbundled renewable certificates (February 2026).

AWS methodology

Google Cloud

Carbon Footprint, in the console, with a monthly export to BigQuery.

Model version 17 arrived with the July 2026 data; Google refreshes the model about twice a year.
The offsets fields in the export were set to empty in August 2025.

Google methodology

Azure

Azure carbon optimization, in the portal, with a CSV export and a REST API. The older Emissions Impact Dashboard for Power BI retires on 31 March 2027.

The Emissions Impact Dashboard retires on 31 March 2027; carbon optimization replaces it.

Microsoft methodology

Oracle Cloud

Carbon Emissions Analysis, in Billing and Cost Management, with a CSV download and the Usage API.

The power-based method arrived in June 2025, alongside the older spend-based one.

Oracle documentation

Put them together

The Cloud Carbon Report Analyzer reads every provider’s export, converts the units and never adds one basis to the other. Cloud Carbon per Dollar sets the result beside your bill, and the Cloud and IT Scope 3 Estimator covers the suppliers that report nothing.

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Questions

Why do the clouds’ carbon numbers differ for similar workloads?

They count differently: which scopes and Scope 3 categories they include, location-based or market-based electricity, how long they spread the hardware’s manufacturing carbon over, and whether buildings count. The table on this page sets those choices side by side.

Which basis should I report?

Most frameworks ask for both: location-based (the grid where the work ran) and market-based (after the provider’s energy purchases). Software carbon scores (SCI) accept location-based only. Azure’s portal gives market-based only, so check what your framework needs before you rely on it.

Where do cloud emissions go in our own report?

For a customer, all of the provider’s emissions are your Scope 3, usually Category 1, purchased goods and services, even the parts the provider calls its own Scope 1 and 2.

How often does this page change?

When a provider changes its method or its tool. AWS and Google have each changed their model in the last year. The date the page was checked is above the table.

More tools for: Carbon and sustainability

Four reports, four methods. Finitizer puts them on one basis.

Finitizer reads every cloud’s carbon report each month, keeps the model versions, and sets the emissions beside the cost of the services behind them.

See how Finitizer works

How Cloud Providers Count Your Emissions