There are different levels of service.

In itself planting a tree is very easy and cheap, of the 3 billion trees in the UK, most drop thousands of seeds each year and some germinate all by themselves for free. On the other hand, planting seedlings can be done mechanically using a Damcon PL10 with four row attachment, you can plant 20,000 in a day, costing cents per tree.

But these things are kind of irrelevant, to have a healthy mature tree in twenty years time, you need to plant about a dozen smaller trees of a handful of species relatively close together, then let them grow and compete and then cut down the weaker ones, over a twenty year period, this costs a lot of money.

Some some tree planting websites might just be selling you nature taking its course, some might be planting 20,000 seedlings in a day, and some might be selling you the service of planting and growing a tree over a twenty year period.

There's also the land side of things. Some services plant trees on behalf of schools, hospitals and landowners, they don't worry about the land. In ten years time the site might be a car park or a building site and your tree was long gone. Some services run plantations or whole reforested areas, and have long term plans to keep the tree cover for hundreds of years.

There are different levels of service.

In itself planting a tree is very easy and cheap, of the 3 billion trees in the UK, most drop thousands of seeds each year and some germinate all by themselves for free. On the other hand, planting seedlings can be done mechanically using a Damcon PL10 with four row attachment, you can plant 20,000 in a day, costing cents per tree.

But these things are kind of irrelevant, to have a healthy mature tree in twenty years time, you need to plant about a dozen smaller trees of a handful of species relatively close together, then let them grow and compete and then cut down the weaker ones, over a twenty year period, this costs a lot of money.

Some tree planting websites might just be selling you nature taking its course, some might be planting 20,000 seedlings in a day, and some might be selling you the service of planting and growing a tree over a twenty year period.

There's also the land side of things. Some services plant trees on behalf of schools, hospitals and landowners, they don't worry about the land. In ten years time the site might be a car park or a building site and your tree will be gone. Some services run plantations or whole reforested areas, and have long term plans to keep the tree cover for hundreds of years.