Ant Forest (Alipay)
Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China 路 Company 路 National 路 since 2016
Alipay's gamified green-points program that has funded hundreds of millions of trees in China's drylands
About
Ant Forest is a program inside Ant Group's Alipay app, launched in August 2016. Users earn 'green energy' points for low-carbon actions such as walking, cycling or paying bills online, grow a virtual tree, and Ant Group then pays partner foundations (the China Green Foundation, the SEE Foundation and others) to plant a real tree, mostly drought-tolerant species such as saxaul in Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Qinghai and other arid provinces linked to China's Three-North Shelterbelt Program. It won the UN Champions of the Earth award in 2019. It is a corporate program, not a charity: the planting is funded from Ant Group's own money and carried out by its NGO partners.
What they run
Users' green-energy points are converted into real trees that Ant Group pays partner foundations to plant in China's arid north and west, about 90 percent of them in Three-North Shelterbelt Program areas.
The China Green Foundation is Ant Forest's largest planting partner, running roughly 440 Ant Forest-funded projects across seven provincial-level regions since 2017.
Trees by type of work
| Activity | Trees | Years |
|---|---|---|
| 馃尡 Afforestation | 386,000,000 | 2026 |
Only figures attached to a named program count here. Organization-wide totals sit in the table below.
The numbers
| Metric | Year | Value | Program | Confidence | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trees plantedto date | 2025 | 619,000,000 | Organization-wide | Self-reported | sourceChina Daily, 22 Jun 2026, citing a Nature commentary: Ant Forest 'has funded more than 619 million drought-resistant trees and shrubs' (Ant's own Oct 2025 release gave the same 619 million as of Aug 2025) |
| Trees plantedto date | 2026 | 700,000,000 | Organization-wide | Self-reported | sourceAnt Group release of 28 Aug 2026 (Business Wire China): more than 700 million users 'have helped support the planting of over 700 million trees' since 2016; RMB 5.1 billion invested over ten years |
| Hectares restoredto date | 2026 | 200,000 | Ant Forest projects with the China Green Foundation | Self-reported | sourceChina Daily, 22 Jun 2026: 'more than 200,000 hectares of desertified land' treated through the CGF-Ant Forest projects, about 90 percent in Three-North Shelterbelt areas |
| Trees plantedto date | 2026 | 386,000,000 | Ant Forest projects with the China Green Foundation | Self-reported | sourceChina Daily, 22 Jun 2026, quoting CGF secretary general Zhang Quanzhou: 386 million trees planted since 2017 across about 440 Ant Forest projects in seven provincial-level regions |
How they report
What earned it
- 0/20 Publishes annual tree figures: No year-by-year figures found
- 0/15 Figures are recent: No dated annual figure
- 10/10 Every figure has a public source: 4 of 4 figures link to a source
- 0/15 Publishes financials or cost per tree: No financial figure recorded
- 0/15 Reports survival or monitoring: No survival or monitoring figure
- 0/10 Independently verified figure: All figures are the organization's own
- 10/10 Breaks figures down by program: Figures attached to named programs
- 0/5 Reports volunteers or events: No volunteer figures or events
Upcoming events
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