GoParity Review - A Real Impact Licence, and a Default Year Its Marketing Does Not Mention

GoParity is a Portuguese crowdlending platform that funds solar installations, agrifood projects, cooperatives and social enterprises, and then tells you how much carbon dioxide your money avoided. It is authorised by Portugal’s securities regulator, it has been going since 2017, and it publishes the default disclosure that European law requires. That last point matters more than it sounds, because most of its peers publish something vaguer. What the disclosure shows is that in the twelve-month window ending in 2025, 53 of 228 loans on the platform defaulted. That is 23.25%. The number appears in a signed PDF in the website footer. It does not appear anywhere near the impact report.

What is GoParity in 60 seconds

GoParity is a marketplace where retail investors lend to organisations doing something environmentally or socially useful. A project owner applies, GoParity grades it from A+ to C- using its own model plus external inputs from Iberinform and Wiserfunding, the campaign is listed with a Key Investment Information Sheet, and investors fund it from EUR 20 upwards in exchange for interest on a fixed repayment schedule. There is no buyback guarantee and no provision fund. If a borrower stops paying, your money depends on recovery, and recovery costs are deducted from whatever is recovered before anything reaches you.

Two structural points matter. First, the group now holds two separate licences in two countries. Lending is provided by Power Parity, S.A. under the Portuguese CMVM. Equity is provided by Bolsa Social, S.L. under the Spanish CNMV, following an acquisition announced in January 2026. GoParity’s own legal notice states that the applicable regulatory framework, investor protections, costs, risks and supervisory authority all differ depending on which of the two you are using. Second, GoParity’s public identity is built on impact metrics, and those metrics are produced in-house. The lending numbers are regulated and disclosed. The carbon numbers are not.

Strengths

• A directly verifiable ECSP authorisation, and an unusually clear one. Power Parity, S.A. appears in the ESMA register of crowdfunding service providers with CMVM as competent authority, authorisation date 25 January 2024, status active, and a named list of permitted services. It has been on the CMVM’s own national register since 11 December 2018 under the earlier Portuguese law, so this is not a recent arrival. Two things are worth reading precisely. The authorisation covers facilitation of granting of loans with individual portfolio management of loans, which is the more demanding of the two lending permissions in Regulation (EU) 2020/1503, and it covers no securities placement at all. And it is passported into 25 other member states, every EU country except Czechia. That is genuine, checkable regulatory standing, and it is a stronger frame than the Swiss self-regulatory membership our Editor’s Pick operates under. The standard caveat still applies in the same breath: ECSP authorisation regulates conduct, not solvency, and it carries no investor compensation scheme. GoParity says so itself in its investor information page.

• It publishes a proper Article 20 default disclosure, and does not soften it. Article 20 of the crowdfunding regulation requires providers to publish project default rates for at least the preceding 36 months, and Delegated Regulation (EU) 2022/2115 sets the method. GoParity’s Default Rate Report, signed in Lisbon on 30 April 2026 and linked from every page footer, does the job properly: a stated definition of default following the 90-day and unlikely-to-pay tests, non-overlapping 12-month windows, a 60-month observation period, a year-by-year table, and a breakdown by risk grade. Across the platforms we have examined, the common pattern is a headline claim of zero investor losses sitting on top of a visibly troubled book. GoParity is not doing that. It prints 23.25% for 2025 on its own document. That does not make the portfolio good. It makes it legible, which is rarer than it should be.

• Eight years of operating history, a funded balance sheet and named institutional owners. The company has been lending since 2017 and has now returned EUR 32M of capital and interest to investors, including 150 loans repaid in full. It raised EUR 2.9M in May 2025, led by 3xP Global’s Impact Innovation Fund with participation from Mustard Seed Maze, Schneider Electric, Regenerative.eco and InvestEco, plus roughly EUR 470,000 from more than 800 retail shareholders through Crowdcube. The team is 32 people. Compared with the two-or-three-person operators behind several platforms in this index, that is real institutional depth. It is also a company that raised money explicitly, in its own words, to “reach profitability”, which tells you it was not profitable at the time.

• Honest disclosure of what the licence does not give you, and legible pricing. GoParity’s investor-information page lists the mandatory warnings without decoration: partial or total loss of capital, no achievement of the estimated return, liquidity risk, no CMVM approval of any project, no Investor Compensation Scheme, no Deposit Guarantee Fund. The published fee schedule, updated April 2026, is specific rather than gestural: opening, topping up and investing are free, SEPA withdrawals are free, assigning a loan to another investor costs 1% of outstanding capital, and there is a EUR 36 annual inactivity fee. Borrower-side pricing is published in the same document. You can work out what the platform earns and what it charges you, which is not true everywhere.

Things to Watch

• The 2025 default year is severe, and the way the headline is calculated hides it. GoParity’s own table reads 1.64% (2021), 5.60% (2022), 14.95% (2023), 7.96% (2024) and 23.25% (2025). The report’s headline is 10.68%, which is the simple average of those five annual rates. But the years are not the same size. Our arithmetic on GoParity’s own numbers: 108 default events across 834 loan-year observations gives a volume-weighted rate of 12.95%, and 2025 alone carries 53 of those 108 defaults. The deterioration is concentrated in two grades. In 2025, B- defaulted at 26.88% (25 of 93) and C+ at 37.31% (25 of 67). Those two grades held 160 of the 228 loans and produced 50 of the 53 defaults, which by our arithmetic is a 31.25% default rate across 70% of the book. GoParity’s own published expected default rates for those grades are 11.59% and 16.51%, so realised 2025 outcomes ran at roughly 2.3 times expectation in both. And the expected rate is defined as equal to the historical 60-month average, which means it will lag any deterioration by construction. B- is worth staring at on its own: it defaulted at 3.53% in 2024 and 26.88% in 2025.

• The disclosure stops exactly where investor loss begins, while the marketing return is survivorship-based. The Article 20 report counts loans. It contains no euro amounts at all: no amount in default, no amount in arrears, no restructured balance, no recoveries, no write-offs, no loss-given-default. GoParity’s credit policy defines a “Non-Recoverable” category for loans past 365 days with no expectation of repayment, and prices loans using an internal LGD parameter, so the company estimates these things and does not publish them. Meanwhile the only return figure it does publish, 5.4% a year, is explicitly the average on the 150 loans that repaid in full. Loans that defaulted are not in that denominator. A prospective investor cannot reconcile “23.25% of loans defaulted” with “5.4% average annual return” from public data, because the two numbers describe different populations. Treat every GoParity return figure as an upper bound. The widely quoted 5.26% is P2P Empire’s, not GoParity’s.

• The impact numbers are self-produced, and the public impact page is currently broken. GoParity’s headline claim is that EUR 1,000 avoids 1.6 tonnes of CO2 a year. The framework was rebuilt in 2025 with technical advisory support from UNDP AltFinLab, which is a credible input, but UNDP printed an explicit disclaimer that the collaboration “does not constitute endorsement by UNDP of any specific platform, product or financial instrument”. No auditor, assurance provider or standard (GHG Protocol conformity, ISO 14064, PCAF, IRIS+) verifies any project figure. The report says results are “verified by us”. GHG Protocol is invoked once, aspirationally, and only for GoParity’s own office footprint. Worse, when we checked goparity.com/about/our-impact on 2 September 2026 it still carried “Lorem ipsum” placeholder text in the impact-metrics module, and its per-country map showed figures such as 21,999,238 tonnes of CO2 avoided in Portugal against a company-wide claim of 31,311 tonnes a year. That is a units error of roughly a thousandfold sitting on a live public page. The same report separately says 8 people impacted per EUR 1,000 in one place and 14 in another, 75 trees in one and 78 in another, and 18 countries in one place and 21 in another. B Corp certification is real and current (May 2021, recertified 2025, score 93.2, verifiable on the B Lab directory), but it certifies company practices, its weakest pillar is Environment at 10.3, and it tests none of the carbon arithmetic.

• Trustpilot has turned, and what investors complain about is exactly what the default table shows. The score is 2.8 out of 5 across 151 reviews as of 2 September 2026, with a barbell distribution: 54% five-star and 33% one-star. The five-star mass is older; the one-star mass is 2026. The complaints are uniform and specific. One investor in July 2026: “Some of my investments are in default over 6 months or 1 year and go parity simply let them without any notifications or updates, the risk class does not reflect that. Usually it is classified as B.” A Danish investor in July 2026 reported three defaults out of four active projects. An investor in Spain in May 2026 reported nine positions unpaid. Another in August 2026 described a repayment arriving 16 months late. These are individual accounts, not audited data, but they are consistent with a 23.25% default year concentrated in the B- and C+ grades. Trustpilot separately flags that the company has not replied to negative reviews, and we found no company reply on any 2026 review. GoParity did reply substantively through late 2025.

How It Works

1. Register and complete the entry knowledge test. Create an account and complete identity verification (KYC, the identity check required by law) plus the appropriateness assessment that Regulation (EU) 2020/1503 requires of non-sophisticated investors.
2. Fund your wallet. Money is held by MangoPay S.A., a Luxembourg electronic money institution registered with the Bank of Portugal under number 7830, not by GoParity itself. Topping up is free.
3. Choose projects, or set a strategy. Each campaign publishes a rate, a term, a risk grade from A+ to C-, and a Key Investment Information Sheet. Minimum is EUR 20 per investment. Auto-invest strategies are available; 1,285 users had one at end-2025.
4. Receive scheduled repayments. Loans amortise on a payment plan rather than at maturity. Average term on repaid loans has been about 30 months.
5. Exit early only by assignment, and only if a buyer exists. You can assign a loan in progress for a fee of 1% of outstanding capital. Note that GoParity’s own investor-information page still lists “risk of liquidity or lack of a secondary market” among its mandatory warnings, so treat the bulletin board as a possibility, not an exit route.

Who GoParity Is For

GoParity suits an investor who wants renewable energy and social-economy exposure, accepts single-digit returns as the price of that, and is prepared to lose money on individual projects without treating it as a scandal. Several of its own five-star reviewers say this explicitly. The EUR 20 minimum is low, the regulatory frame is real and checkable, the fee schedule is published, and the platform tells you plainly that there is no compensation scheme. If you want your capital doing something specific in the world and you size the position accordingly, GoParity is a coherent choice.

It is a poor fit if you need liquidity, because assignment is a fee-bearing best-effort exit and the platform itself warns you not to count on it. It is a poor fit if you need to know what you actually lost, because no realised loss figure exists. It is a poor fit if the impact reporting is the reason you are here and you need that reporting independently assured, because it is not. And on current evidence it is a poor fit for anyone concentrating: a 23.25% default year in the B- and C+ grades means diversification across many small positions is not optional here, it is the only thing standing between you and the grade-level default rate.

Compared to Alternatives

GoParity vs. Maclear. These two are opposites on almost every axis except the absence of an investor compensation scheme. Maclear operates under Swiss self-regulatory membership covering anti-money-laundering compliance, targets returns near 14.9%, and lends to SME borrowers across Europe on a collateralised basis. GoParity holds a full ECSP authorisation from a national securities regulator, passported across 25 member states, and returns single digits. On regulatory standing GoParity is clearly ahead. On published loss transparency the comparison is less flattering to both: GoParity publishes default counts but no realised losses, and Maclear’s formal collateral recovery process has limited operational track record. On yield the gap is roughly threefold. An investor choosing between them is choosing between a supervised European licence with modest returns and a higher-yield Swiss structure with a thinner regulatory perimeter.

GoParity vs. Mintos. Mintos is the scale benchmark: MiFID II-regulated by Latvijas Banka, investor compensation up to EUR 20,000, a working secondary market, dozens of independent loan originators, and a decade of history. GoParity has none of the first three. What it has that Mintos does not is direct lending to identified project owners with published project documentation, a single national supervisor, and an impact thesis. Yields are broadly comparable in the mid-to-high single digits once Mintos losses are accounted for, but the risk shapes differ completely: Mintos concentrates originator risk and offers liquidity, GoParity concentrates project risk and offers almost none. For most portfolios Mintos is the core holding and GoParity is a themed satellite, sized small.

GoParity vs. EvenFi. This is the more instructive comparison, because both platforms publish a real Article 20 disclosure and both disclosures are unflattering. EvenFi reports 28.60% of projects and 16.90% of amount in default across all cohorts, and publishes euro amounts. GoParity reports a 10.68% 60-month average with a 23.25% worst year, and publishes no euro amounts at all. So EvenFi’s headline is worse but its disclosure is more complete; GoParity’s headline is better but stops before the money. On everything else GoParity is the stronger operation: 32 staff against three, a funded balance sheet against shrinking accounts, Trustpilot 2.8 against 1.2, and no business model built on administering other platforms’ wind-downs. The shared lesson is the one worth carrying: on both platforms, the rating grades did a poor job of separating outcomes.

Bottom line on competitors. GoParity is the best-regulated impact-lending option we have looked at and one of a small number of platforms in this index that publishes a default disclosure you can actually use. It is also, on its own numbers, in the middle of a bad credit year that its marketing does not acknowledge.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is GoParity regulated? Yes. Power Parity, S.A. is authorised and supervised by the CMVM, Portugal’s securities regulator, as a crowdfunding service provider under Regulation (EU) 2020/1503, with effect from 25 January 2024, and was on the CMVM’s national register from 11 December 2018 under the previous Portuguese law. It is passported into 25 other member states. Its equity offering comes from a separate company, Bolsa Social, S.L., authorised by Spain’s CNMV. Authorisation regulates conduct, not solvency, and there is no investor compensation scheme.

What is the actual default rate? GoParity’s Article 20 report, signed 30 April 2026, gives 23.25% of loans in the 2025 window (53 of 228), with a 60-month simple average of 10.68%. Our own volume-weighted calculation on the same table gives 12.95%. The worst grades in 2025 were C+ at 37.31% and B- at 26.88%. GoParity does not publish how much money was lost after recovery, only how many loans defaulted.

How much does GoParity actually return? The company publishes 5.4% a year, but that figure covers only the 150 loans that repaid in full. It is not a portfolio return net of defaults, and no such figure is published. Treat 5.4% as a ceiling, not an expectation.

Are the CO2 savings independently verified? No. GoParity calculates them itself from project-owner forecasts and confirms them with its own staff after implementation. UNDP AltFinLab gave technical advice on the framework in 2025 and published an explicit statement that this does not amount to endorsement. B Corp certification is genuine and current but assesses the company’s practices, not project carbon figures. As of 2 September 2026 the public impact page also carried placeholder text and country figures inconsistent with the company’s own totals by around three orders of magnitude.

What happened to Bolsa Social? GoParity acquired the Spanish impact platform Bolsa Social, announced 14 January 2026, and the company confirms the deal closed in late 2025. Terms were not disclosed. Bolsa Social, S.L. remains a separate legal entity with its own CNMV authorisation (register no. 6, dated 24 March 2023), now a wholly owned subsidiary trading as “Bolsa Social by Goparity”. Its site is live and co-branded, its portfolio pages and logins still work, and new investment is directed to GoParity. Its founder’s head of platform, Marta Abbad, became GoParity’s Head of Equity. Note that 3xP Global, which led GoParity’s 2025 round, was also a Bolsa Social backer, so there was a common shareholder on both sides of the transaction.

Can I get my money out early? Only by assigning your loan to another investor, at a fee of 1% of outstanding capital, and only if someone wants it. GoParity’s own investor-information page still lists lack of a secondary market among its mandatory risk warnings. Plan on holding to maturity.

Bottom Line

GoParity does two things that most of this index does not. It holds a real, checkable ECSP authorisation from a national securities regulator, passported across almost the whole EU. And it publishes a default disclosure that follows the regulation properly and makes the platform look bad. Both deserve credit, and the second one is why this card can say anything precise at all.

What the disclosure shows is a platform whose credit performance deteriorated sharply: 23.25% of loans defaulting in the 2025 window, more than twice its own expected rate in the two grades that carry most of the book, against 3.53% in the same B- grade a year earlier. What it does not show is how much money that cost, because GoParity publishes loan counts and not euros, while advertising a 5.4% return calculated only on the loans that survived. Alongside that sits an impact story that is self-measured, currently contradicted by GoParity’s own live website, and certified by a B Corp process that was never designed to check it.

If the impact thesis is why you are here, GoParity is a legitimate and well-supervised way to act on it, provided you spread small amounts across many projects, avoid the C+ and B- end, expect defaults rather than being surprised by them, and read the default report rather than the impact report. If you are here for the return, the return on offer is single-digit before losses that nobody has quantified.

Affiliate disclosure. CrowdIndex earns a commission when readers sign up to some platforms through links on this page. GoParity is not an affiliate partner of CrowdIndex and there is no commercial link on this page. GoParity’s placement on CrowdIndex is based on the editorial criteria documented on our Methodology page. Capital at risk.