How it fits with the standards
Credential Commons does not compete with Verifiable Credentials or Open Badges. They answer a different question. This page says plainly which question each one answers, so you can see what you actually need.
Two different questions
A credential has two halves. The first: what is this thing? — its name, its volume, its language, its provider, the learning outcomes, which version of the curriculum it belongs to. The second: who earned it, and who says so? — the person, the date, the evidence, the issuer's signature. Verifiable Credentials and Open Badges answer the second question very well. Credential Commons answers the first.
Description comes before the award
Most of the work happens before anyone earns anything. A programme is designed, its outcomes are written, its volume is set, it is published in a catalogue, it is revised year after year. None of that has a person in it — which is also why it can be published openly without touching anyone's personal data. Credential Commons is the shape for that stage. When someone finally earns the thing, an issuer signs it into a Verifiable Credential and the description travels with it.
A signature is not quality
A Verifiable Credential proves that a particular issuer said a particular thing, and that nobody altered it afterwards. It does not check whether what they said is any good. A badge with no volume, no language and a one-line description signs and verifies exactly as cleanly as a complete one. Credential Commons is the check that runs before the signature: it tells you, in plain language, what is missing.
Which one do you need?
Find the row that matches your question. Most organisations end up using two or three of these together — they stack, they do not replace each other.
| Standard | What it actually is | You need it when… | What it does not do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Credential Commons | A thin shared shape for describing an offering, a curriculum and a credential — plus a validator that tells you what is missing. | You want your catalogue, curricula and credentials to be readable by other organisations, and you want to know whether your data is actually complete. | It issues nothing, signs nothing and awards nothing to a person. It is not an authority and grants no stamp of its own. |
| W3C Verifiable Credentials | A general container and signature format: proof that a named issuer said something about a named subject, and that it has not been altered since. | You have to prove who issued a credential and that nobody changed it — a wallet, a cross-border check, a fraud-sensitive context. | It says nothing about what a credential should contain. Any content, complete or empty, signs equally well. |
| Open Badges 3.0 | A Verifiable Credentials profile for achievements: this person earned this achievement, with evidence and a date. | You award something to individual people and want it to land in a wallet or a badge platform. | Its credits field has no ECTS/EAP unit attached, and its criteria field is free narrative rather than structured learning outcomes. |
| CTDL | A rich vocabulary for describing credentials, competencies and the organisations behind them, used mainly in the United States. | You publish into the US credential ecosystem, or you need its depth of credential-type distinctions. | It is large. Adopting it fully is a project, not an afternoon. |
| ELM / Europass | The European Learning Model — the data model behind Europass and European digital credentials. | You need European recognition: Europass, EQF levels, cross-border mobility. | It is built for the European formal machinery; it does not tell you whether your own data is complete. |
| schema.edu.ee | A national vocabulary that fixes local meaning — the terms an Estonian regulator, school or funder actually uses. Other countries have their own. | You operate in that country and the local terms have to be exact. | On its own it does not travel outside its country. |
| schema.org | The general web vocabulary that search engines and AI assistants already read. | You want your programmes to be understood on the open web, by search and by AI agents. | For education it stays shallow: a bare credit count and competency link exist, but no ECTS model, outcome structure, or versioning. |
Feature by feature
Ten things credential data has to do, and which standard actually does each one. Open a row for the detail.
✓ does this ◑ partly, or without the distinction that matters – out of scope
Describe an offering before anyone earns it ✓ Core purpose – Out of scope ◑ Achievement only ✓ Yes, in depth ✓ Yes, EU-shaped ◑ Course, coarse
Everything that exists before a learner enrols: the programme, its outcomes, its volume, its versions. No person is involved, so it can be published openly. Verifiable Credentials and Open Badges only start once somebody has earned something; Open Badges can define the achievement, but not the programme around it.
State the volume in a credit unit ✓ ECTS/EAP + hours – Out of scope ◑ Number, no unit ✓ Yes, typed ✓ Yes, ECTS-native ◑ Bare number
How much learning this actually is. Open Badges 3.0 has creditsAvailable and schema.org has numberOfCredits, but both are plain numbers — nothing says whether it is ECTS, EAP or contact hours. Credential Commons requires a credit value and keeps academic hours and clock hours apart, because two different regulators ask for two different units.
Carry learning outcomes as structure, not prose ✓ Identified nodes – Out of scope ◑ Narrative criteria ✓ Yes, competency-based ✓ Yes, native ◑ teaches, loosely
Outcomes you can point at and reuse — the same outcome shared between a programme and its courses, and rolled up to a broader one. Open Badges keeps its criteria as free narrative text. Credential Commons requires at least one outcome (a Violation if missing) on its course, curriculum and program profiles; only its micro-credential profile leaves outcomes as a recommended, Warning-level addition.
Align an outcome to a competency framework ✓ Neutral slot – Out of scope ✓ alignment object ✓ Yes, central ✓ Yes, ESCO-ready ◑ competencyRequired
Linking what is learned to ESCO, EQF, O*NET or a national framework. This is the one row where Open Badges is strong. Credential Commons mandates no framework at all: it fixes the slot and keeps the link readable whichever framework you put in it, so two adopters can choose differently and stay interoperable.
Claim a qualification level ✓ Optional slot – Out of scope ◑ Via alignment ✓ Yes ✓ Yes, EQF-native ◑ educationalLevel
A recognised level, such as 1–8 in the EQF. Credential Commons leaves this optional on purpose: level frameworks are a translation device for formal qualifications, and a micro-credential that makes no level claim is still perfectly conformant.
Keep versions of a curriculum over time ◑ New @id, no field – Signs one moment ◑ Version string ◑ Version identifier ◑ Version identifier – Out of scope
Which version of a programme a credential belongs to, and keeping the earlier ones readable instead of overwriting them. Most standards can label a version. Credential Commons has no version field of its own: the convention is that a revised curriculum gets its own identifier, so an older cohort still resolves to what it actually studied rather than to today's edition.
Award it to a named person ◑ Maps to OB3 ✓ Core purpose ✓ Core purpose – Out of scope ✓ Yes, via EDC – Out of scope
The moment somebody earns it: the person, the date, the evidence. Credential Commons has an achievement profile that maps straight onto an Open Badges 3.0 AchievementCredential, but it never issues or holds anything itself. This row is what Verifiable Credentials and Open Badges exist for.
Prove who issued it and that nothing changed – Not its job ✓ Core purpose ✓ Inherits from VC – Out of scope ✓ Built on VC – Out of scope
Cryptographic proof that a named issuer said this and that nobody altered it afterwards. Credential Commons deliberately does none of this. A signature proves authorship, not quality — the two jobs stay cleaner apart, and this is the half Verifiable Credentials does properly.
Tell you what is missing from your data ✓ One command, free – Out of scope ◑ Schema validation ◑ Registry review ◑ Schema validation – Out of scope
Not whether the file parses, but whether anything is missing that the next organisation will need — a credit value, a language, an outcome. Running cc validate reports it in plain language, free and with no sign-up. Schema validation tells you the shape is legal; it does not tell you the record is useful.
Be readable on the open web and by AI ✓ JSON-LD + llms.txt – Out of scope ◑ Rarely public ◑ Registry search ◑ Europass search ✓ Core purpose
Whether a search engine or an assistant can read your programme and quote it correctly. schema.org is what they already parse, and issued badges usually sit in a wallet where nobody can see them. Credential Commons reuses schema.org, adds the fields education needs, and publishes a machine-readable summary so assistants get the answer rather than guessing.
Open a row to see why.
What Credential Commons adds
Description before the award, with no person in it
The catalogue, the curriculum, the outcomes, the volume — the part that exists before anyone enrols, and can therefore be published openly.
A conformance mirror
One command tells you in plain language what is missing. Nothing else on this page checks your data for you.
One description, several outputs
Describe your offering once, then export to CTDL, ELM/Europass or Open Badges 3.0. You do not have to bet on a single standard.
The European measures
ECTS/EAP credits, academic versus clock hours, an optional EQF level, structured learning outcomes — the fields European funders and regulators actually ask for.
Versions that stay readable
There is no version field to fill in: a revised curriculum gets its own identifier, so a learner's older credential still resolves to what they actually studied.
Where the join is still rough
Being honest about this is part of the point. Exporting to Open Badges 3.0 currently loses two things that matter most in Europe: OB3's credit field carries no unit, so ECTS/EAP still has to travel as an alignment or an extension, and its criteria field is narrative, so structured learning outcomes map only loosely. That gap is exactly why a description layer is needed. Closing it properly is open work — the crosswalks live in the repository and pull requests are welcome.
None of this asks you to pick a side. Describe your data once in a shape that is complete, and the standard your audience already trusts is one export away.