Circularise Alternatives: DPP Platforms Compared (2026)
A fair, factual look at the leading Digital Product Passport platforms - Circularise, Spherity, TrusTrace, atma.io, inriver, and DPPAutomate - and how to choose.
How to read this comparison
The Digital Product Passport (DPP) market is young and crowded. Analysts now count more than two dozen vendors across several tiers, from enterprise suites to focused sector specialists. There is no single best platform - there is the best platform for your products, your team, and your budget. This guide stays neutral: it describes what each well-known player is known for and gives you a selection framework you can apply to any of them.
If you want the deeper methodology behind these criteria, our DPP buying guide walks through procurement in detail.
The criteria that actually matter
Before looking at names, decide which of these weigh most for you:
- Regulatory coverage - does it support your specific obligation: the battery passport under Regulation (EU) 2023/1542, ESPR delegated acts for your product group, or both?
- Data collection - how does it gather supplier and material data across a multi-tier supply chain? This is where most projects stall.
- Data carrier and resolution - GS1 identifiers, QR or NFC, and a resolver that serves a live passport, not a static file.
- Tiered access - can it gate sensitive fields for authorities while serving public data, as the regulations require?
- Verification and trust - source traceability, versioning, and where relevant cryptographic or third-party verification.
- Integrations - does it connect to your ERP, PIM, and PLM rather than becoming another silo?
- Time to first passport and total cost - how fast can you ship one, and what does it cost at your volume?
The players, neutrally described
The vendors below are established names buyers commonly shortlist. Descriptions reflect each company's publicly stated focus; confirm current capabilities directly with each vendor for your use case.
| Platform | Commonly known for |
|---|---|
| Circularise | Supply-chain traceability and material tracking, with a background in privacy-preserving data exchange and decentralised approaches. Often shortlisted for material-heavy and battery supply chains. |
| Spherity | Decentralised identity and verifiable-credentials expertise; frequently associated with battery passport and identity-centric DPP work. |
| TrusTrace | Supply-chain traceability with a strong footprint in textiles and apparel; publishes buyer-education material on DPP selection. |
| Avery Dennison / atma.io | A connected-product cloud operating at very large item volumes, paired with physical labelling and RFID; member of EU DPP consortia. |
| inriver | Product Information Management (PIM) heritage, positioning the DPP as an extension of existing product-data workflows. |
| DPPAutomate | AI-assisted data collection, validation, and passport generation across both the Battery Regulation and ESPR, with transparent self-serve pricing. |
This is not an exhaustive list, and the market includes large enterprise suites and sector consortia as well. The right shortlist depends on your sector and scale, not on brand size.
Matching a platform to your situation
A few honest rules of thumb:
- If you make batteries, prioritise platforms with demonstrable battery passport coverage and support for dynamic fields like state of health. The binding 18 February 2027 date leaves little room for tooling that cannot handle Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 today.
- If you make textiles or apparel, vendors with deep supply-chain traceability in that sector will save you months of supplier onboarding.
- If you already run a strong PIM, a DPP that extends your existing product data may integrate faster than a standalone system.
- If you operate at very high item volumes, weigh platforms built for that scale and for physical labelling and serialization.
- If you are a smaller team that needs to ship passports quickly without a heavyweight implementation, prioritise self-serve onboarding, transparent pricing, and automated data collection.
Where DPPAutomate fits - and where it does not
We build DPPAutomate, so treat this paragraph as a disclosed point of view rather than a neutral verdict. DPPAutomate is designed for teams that want to go from product data to a compliant passport quickly, across both the Battery Regulation and ESPR, with AI doing the heavy lifting on data collection and field validation. Our pricing is public and self-serve, and the platform covers identifier issuance, tiered access, verification, and the live passport.
Where DPPAutomate may not be the best fit: if you need a single enterprise suite that also runs your global RFID labelling at billions of items, a specialised connected-product cloud may serve you better. We would rather you pick the right tool than the wrong one with our name on it.
A simple selection process
- Write down your obligation - battery passport, ESPR group, or both - and your volume.
- Score 3 to 4 vendors against the seven criteria above, weighted for your situation.
- Run a real pilot with one product line and your actual supplier data, not a demo dataset.
- Measure time to first verified passport and the cost to scale from one to many.
- Decide on evidence, not on brand recognition.
The bottom line
Circularise, Spherity, TrusTrace, atma.io, inriver, and DPPAutomate each have genuine strengths, and the best choice is the one that fits your products and constraints. Use the seven criteria, run a real pilot, and decide on results.
Want to benchmark DPPAutomate against your shortlist? Read the DPP buying guide, explore the platform, or check pricing.
