Register instrument · Opened 17 Aug 2026 · Certian
Four pathways organisations are asked about in procurement, set against the same attributes: what each one assesses, who performs the assessment, whether a public register of holders exists, and what each does — and does not — confer under the EU AI Act. The register compares stated attributes. It does not rank them, score them, or recommend one.
| Attribute | ISO/IEC 42001 | IEEE CertifAIEd | Responsible AI Institute | Nemko AI Trust Mark |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | An international management-system standard. Certification is to the standard, issued by a certification body. | A certification mark and ethics-assessment programme administered under the IEEE Conformity Assessment Program (ICAP). | A non-profit membership body issuing verification badges and maturity classifications. Its own current description: it issues badges, not certifications, and provides independent verification rather than certification. | A certification seal for AI-embedded products, issued by a commercial certification group. |
| Steward | ISO and IEC (published December 2023). | IEEE Standards Association. | Responsible AI Institute, a non-profit based in Austin, Texas. | Nemko Digital, part of the Nemko Group. |
| What is assessed | The organisation’s AI management system across the AI lifecycle — not a product. Scope is defined by the organisation and stated on the certificate. | A specific product, service, or system, assessed for ethics governance during design and implementation against criteria for transparency, accountability, privacy, and algorithmic bias. | Organisational AI governance maturity, classified in tiers and mapped to external frameworks including ISO/IEC 42001, the NIST AI RMF, and the EU AI Act. A separate pathway addresses agentic systems. | An AI-embedded product, reviewed for governance and compliance against stated regulations and standards including the EU AI Act and ISO/IEC 42001. |
| Who assesses | Third-party certification bodies, following an audit. | IEEE Authorized Assessors conduct the assessment; an independent IEEE Authorized Certifier reviews the resulting Case for Ethics document and issues the certificate. | The institute itself, as an independent third party. | Nemko Digital. |
| Accreditation of the assessor | Yes — certification bodies are accredited by national accreditation bodies. ANAB (US), UKAS (UK), RvA (Netherlands) and SAC (Singapore) accreditations are held by named bodies. | Administered under IEEE’s own conformity assessment programme; assessors are IEEE-authorised. Not examined: whether any national accreditation body accredits the scheme. | Not examined. | Not examined for the AI Trust Mark specifically. |
| Public register of holders | No single public register. Certificates are issued and listed by individual certification bodies. | Yes — the certifier adds the holder to the CertifAIEd registry. | Yes — verified credentials are displayed on the Responsible AI Registry. | Not examined. |
| Renewal | Surveillance and recertification follow the certification body’s accredited scheme. | Not examined. | Not examined. | Re-assessment is required after two years to maintain the certification. |
| Published price | No published price; set by the certification body. | No published price for product certification — stated as dependent on size and scope. The professional training course is separately priced. | No published price; access runs through membership and programme tiers. | No published price. |
| Recorded holders | Held across industry; among the earliest publicly announced were cloud AI services certified in late 2024. | The City of Vienna, recorded as the first city to earn the mark. | Not examined. | Samsung Electronics’ HRM Remote Support Service, recorded as the first grant of the mark alongside the Korean AI+ certificate, March 2026. |
| EU AI Act status | Not a harmonised standard. The AI Office indicated in May 2024 that it was not fully aligned with the final AI Act text; it is not part of the EU harmonisation process, and a bespoke European standard (prEN 18286) is being developed for the Article 17 quality-management requirement instead. | Presented by its steward as aligned with emerging AI regulation. Not a harmonised standard. | Maps its assessments to the EU AI Act among other frameworks. Not a harmonised standard. | Assesses against the EU AI Act among other standards. Not a harmonised standard. |
Under Article 40 of the AI Act, a presumption of conformity attaches only to harmonised standards whose references have been published in the Official Journal of the European Union, and only for the requirements those standards cover. As of this entry, no harmonised standard developed under the AI Act mandate has been cited in the Official Journal. None of the four pathways above confers a presumption of conformity. The European quality-management standard intended for the Article 17 requirement, EN 18286, has reached approval and is the most advanced of the deliverables; citation in the Official Journal is a separate step, at the Commission’s discretion. What these pathways do confer is what each states it confers — an assessment, a mark, a badge, or a certificate — which may still carry weight with a customer, a board, or a procurement panel.
“Not examined” means not examined. An empty attribute in this table is a statement about this register’s reading queue, not about the pathway. Attributes are recorded as each steward publishes them; where a steward publishes no figure — price, most often — the table says so rather than estimating.
Cite as: Certian, AI Certification Comparison, certian.com/certifications — with the date shown. Corrections are appended and dated rather than applied silently. A steward who believes an attribute here is wrong or out of date is invited to write to [email protected]; corrections are recorded with a date.
Sources, retrieved 17 Aug 2026 — ISO/IEC 42001: ANAB accreditation programme · certification-body statements of UKAS, RvA, ANAB and SAC accreditation · early accredited certification announcement. IEEE CertifAIEd: IEEE Standards Association programme page · IEEE Europe product-certification page · IEEE certification process document. Responsible AI Institute: institute website · its published questions and answers. Nemko: AI Trust Mark page · first-grant announcement, March 2026. EU AI Act status: Commission — understanding the standardisation of the AI Act · CEN-CENELEC JTC 21 · Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, Article 40.