DEFRA's Digital Waste Tracking portal vs software: which should you use?

You do not have to buy software to comply with Digital Waste Tracking. DEFRA runs its own government service you can report into directly — though using it carries a £26-a-year charge per organisation. You can also use connected software that captures and submits records for you. Both produce the same legal record — the real question is how much effort each takes, and that comes down almost entirely to your volume of movements.

Portal or software — which should you use?

Digital Waste Tracking (DWT) is DEFRA's government service that replaces paper waste transfer notes and hazardous consignment notes with a single digital record of each waste movement. It was voluntary from April 2026 and is now mandatory for permitted waste receiving sites in England and Wales since 1 October 2026. There is one service, and there are two ways into it: a portal you can log into and use directly, and an API that third-party software connects to in order to submit records on your behalf. Whichever route you take, the record that lands in the service is the same record — and the £26-a-year DEFRA charge is the same too.

What is DEFRA's own service?

DEFRA's Digital Waste Tracking service is the government system that holds the digital record of every waste movement. You can use it directly — log in and key in each movement yourself. Using it carries a £26-a-year charge per organisation (per legal entity), an upfront annual fee that gives 12 months of rolling access. The same service also exposes an API, which is how compliant third-party software integrates: rather than a person typing into the portal, the software sends the record through the API. Both arrive at the same place, and both attract the same £26 DEFRA charge — software is a separate cost layered on top of it.

So "the portal" and "the software" are not rival systems. They are two front doors to one government service. That is why the compliance question is never "which system is the legal one" — it is only "how do I want to produce the record?"

Doing it manually on the portal

The manual route is straightforward: you log into the service and type in each movement. For a firm with a handful of movements, this is genuinely fine — beyond the £26-a-year DEFRA charge there is nothing to install and no software subscription, and DEFRA maintains it. The trade-offs only start to bite as volume grows:

• →Every movement is hand-keyed. Each field of each record is typed in by a person. Ten movements a day is twenty minutes; a hundred is a job in itself.
• →It is online-only. You need a connection and a screen at the moment you record. That is awkward at a gate, a weighbridge or the roadside where the movement actually happens.
• →Each side records separately. The carrier keys their note and the receiver keys their receipt independently — there is no automatic cross-check that the two descriptions of the same load actually match.
• →Coded values are caught by eye. DWT uses case-sensitive coded values (EWC codes and the like). On the portal it is on you to enter the right code correctly; a wrong one is a rejected or inaccurate record.

Using connected software

Connected software sits between the people doing the work and the DEFRA service. Instead of re-keying movements at a desk after the fact, the record is built where and when the movement happens, then submitted for you through the API. What it adds over the portal:

• →Capture at the point of work. The note or receipt is created at the gate or weighbridge — often on a phone — not typed up later from memory or a scrap of paper.
• →Offline working. Good software captures without a connection and submits once back online, so a signal blackspot never stops the record being taken.
• →Validation before submission. The coded values are checked before anything is sent, so an invalid or wrong-case code is caught up front rather than bounced back by DEFRA.
• →Bulk and automatic submission. Records go through the API in volume — you are not typing one movement at a time.
• →Two-sided reconciliation. The carrier's note can be matched against the receiver's receipt for the same load, so the two halves of the movement line up instead of drifting apart.

Portal vs connected software, compared

Using DEFRA's Digital Waste Tracking service costs £26 a year per organisation (per legal entity), whether you enter movements directly on the portal or submit them through the API. Third-party software is an optional, separate cost layered on top of that charge — it does not replace the government service, it connects to it.

So which should you choose?

Be honest about your volume. If you record only a handful of movements, reporting directly on the portal is the right call — just the £26-a-year DEFRA charge, no software to run, and the manual effort is trivial at that scale. There is no need to pay for software capabilities you would barely touch.

Software starts to pay for itself when the manual route becomes a bottleneck: when re-keying eats real time, when being tied to a desk and a connection is impractical for how your gate or crews actually work, or when catching every coded value by eye is a risk you would rather not carry. At that point the capture, offline, validation, bulk submission and reconciliation are doing work the portal simply cannot.

When each duty is mandatory

The choice of route does not change your deadline. Receivers — permitted sites recording incoming waste — have been mandatory since 1 October 2026 in England and Wales (January 2027 in Northern Ireland and Scotland), submitting each Receipt of Waste within 2 working days of arrival (excluding weekends and bank holidays, starting the day after receipt). Carriers, brokers, dealers and producers come into scope from October 2027. Whether you meet those duties on the portal or through software is entirely up to you.

This guide is general information about Digital Waste Tracking, not legal advice. Check your obligations against the primary sources below and, if in doubt, your environmental regulator.