What Will CBAM Actually Cost You?

CBAM's certificate cost is driven by three numbers: how many tonnes of embedded emissions your imports carry, the current EU ETS price, and how much of that is offset by the free allocation adjustment and any carbon price already paid abroad. Published default values are deliberately conservative, so they almost always produce a higher bill than an installation's real, verified emissions would — the fastest way to lower your CBAM cost is rarely paying less per tonne, it's proving you emit less per tonne.

Doing nothing is sometimes the right short-term call: importers who stay below the annual mass-based threshold of 50 tonnes don't need authorised-declarant status at all, and CBAM's certificate obligation only phases in from 2026. But the threshold is per importer per year, not per shipment, and it disappears fast once volumes grow — 'wait and see' needs a real number behind it, not a guess.

Cora's free cost simulator puts a number on all of this before you commit to anything: enter a CN code, country of origin and weight, and it shows your projected certificate cost under both the default and actual-values method, side by side, for every year through the end of the definitive period.