Karma Alternative: Evergreen vs Karma
For teams comparing two bots that live in chat. Karma awards points with a @name++ command in Slack, Teams or Telegram and lets admins turn them into gift cards; Evergreen gives seeds that become planted trees.
Karma at a glance
- Pricing
$3 per user per month, 10% off billed annually, based on active members with a minimum of 5 seats, a 30-day free trial without a credit card and an enterprise option by email; gift-card rewards are charged separately at face value plus a 10% fee. (as read on 7 September 2026)
- Best for
Karma is the right choice for a small technical team that likes the @name++ mechanic, wants Telegram as well as Slack and Teams, and either skips rewards or is happy to run gift cards through the bot.
- Website
karmabot.chat
What Karma is
Karma is a recognition bot for Slack, Microsoft Teams and Telegram. The mechanic is @name++, or @name 5++ with a note, and there are emoji reactions and trigger words that award points, group kudos to a whole channel, and leaderboards from a /k command or the web dashboard. In moderated mode requests go to an approver first. Each kudos can carry a company value tag, and the dashboard offers a values adoption chart, a connectivity map, CSV export and an AI executive summary.
Rewards are optional. Admins set a karma cost per reward, choose from automated gift cards fulfilled through Tango Card in 34 countries or build custom rewards, and the company card is charged the face value plus a 10 percent fee. Pricing is a single plan at $3 per user per month, 10 percent off billed annually, based on active members, with a five-seat minimum, a 30-day trial without a card, and a free plan afterwards whose limits are not described.
Who it suits
Engineering and product teams who already think in ++ and want recognition to be almost frictionless. The Telegram support is unusual and matters to some distributed companies. If your team will happily leave karma as points with no cash value, Karma is cheap and quick; if you turn on gift cards, you are running a small points economy with a fee and a tax question.
How the two products approach recognition
Evergreen asks for a sentence. A colleague gives a seed in Slack or Microsoft Teams with a message and optional value tags, and it is posted to a public channel. Every three seeds a person receives are planted as one real tree through a reforestation partner, and the company gets a reporting dashboard, a monthly team recap and a public impact page.
The ++ is fast, and speed has a cost: a plus-plus tells the recipient they did something good and tells nobody what it was. Evergreen’s weekly allowance and public channel are built to produce the message that names the thing, which is what the recognition messages pages are about. Karma’s leaderboards reward the people who give most; Evergreen has no leaderboard and reports quietly.
The tree replaces the reward settings page. There is no karma cost to set, no 10 percent fee and no country list for gift cards, and nothing is taxable. The accumulation has a destination that everybody can see, and it is the same for the intern and the CTO.
On price the two are close. Karma is $3 per active member with a five-seat minimum; Evergreen is $3.99 per active user per month with no minimum, billed monthly, with a 14-day trial and no card.
What switching involves
Install Evergreen in the same channels, set up your value tags to match Karma’s, and pick a public channel for seeds. If gift cards were live, give people a deadline to spend karma first. The habit transfers in a week or two; the change people notice is that a seed comes with a reason.
Where Karma is strong
A chat-native mechanic: @name++ or @name 5++ with a note, emoji reactions and trigger words that award points, group kudos to a whole channel and leaderboards from a /k command.
One published price with everything included: $3 per user per month based on active members, with a 30-day full trial and no card.
Company values tags on each kudos, a values adoption chart, a connectivity map and an AI executive summary in the web dashboard.
Works in Slack, Microsoft Teams and Telegram, with a web dashboard.
Rewards are optional: admins can set karma costs for automated gift cards or fully custom rewards, including group rewards teams chip in to.
Where it falls short
Gift-card rewards are charged at face value plus a 10 percent fee, on top of the subscription, and are a taxable benefit; the site lists 34 countries for gift cards.
A five-seat minimum and a no-refunds policy, and the free plan after the trial is not described in detail.
Points with an approval step in moderated mode and a leaderboard reward volume, and without rewards the karma has no end.
No HRIS integrations or surveys, and Google Chat is not supported.
How Evergreen differs
- Seeds end as trees
Every three seeds a person receives are planted as one real tree through a reforestation partner. There is no reward settings page, no fee and no taxable benefit.
- A message, not a plus-plus
A seed is given with a message and optional value tags and posted to a public channel. The design asks for a sentence, not a suffix.
- No leaderboard
Evergreen reports on who gives and receives and which values come up, in a dashboard and a monthly recap, without ranking people in the channel.
- No minimum seats
Evergreen is $3.99 per active user per month, monthly, for however many people interacted, with a 14-day trial and no card.
Verdict
Karma suits a small, chat-heavy team that wants a quick ++ and does not mind a points economy with a fee on the way out. Evergreen suits a team that wants each recognition to carry a written reason and a value, no fee and no gift card, and a planted tree as the visible result; the price is close, so the decision is about what you want the currency to become.
Questions people ask
- How much does Karma bot cost?
Karma is $3 per user per month, with 10 percent off when billed annually, based on active members in your workspace and with a minimum of 5 seats. There is a 30-day trial without a card. Gift-card rewards are charged separately at face value plus a 10 percent fee. Evergreen is $3.99 per active user per month with no minimum and nothing to redeem.
- How do karma points turn into rewards?
Admins set a karma cost for each reward, for example 50 karma for a $50 card; automated gift cards are fulfilled through Tango Card in 34 countries and charged to the company card at face value plus 10 percent. In Evergreen there is no exchange: three received seeds become one planted tree.
- Does Karma work in Telegram, and does Evergreen?
Karma works in Slack, Microsoft Teams and Telegram with a web dashboard. Evergreen works in Slack and Microsoft Teams.
- Is Karma or Evergreen better for company values?
Both tag recognition to values and report on it. Karma has a values adoption chart and an AI summary; Evergreen has a tag analytics dashboard and a monthly recap, and its company values pages describe what to write for each value.
Sources
Reviewed against these pages on 7 September 2026. If something here is out of date, tell us at evergreen.so/contact.
Where recognition happens
Evergreen pricing
$3.99 per active user per month. Only people who have used Evergreen are billed; no card and no setup cost to start.
See pricing
Employee recognition: the complete guide
What recognition is, why it works, the types, how to build a program, what to say and how to measure it.
Read the guide
Other comparisons
Only pay for active users who use Evergreen
Lots of support, with a help center and direct email options
Cancel at any time, so why not give us a try
Start feeling good about work
For only $3.99 per active user a month. In the 14 day free trial we don’t plant real trees, but you can skip the trial if you like.
No credit card needed • No setup costs