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Carbon pricing should be a central element of climate mitigation strategies, helping countries rapidly transition to “net zero” greenhouse gas emissions. Policymakers considering carbon pricing face choices between carbon taxes and emissions trading systems (ETSs) and in their design. This includes administration, price levels, emissions coverage, relation to other mitigation instruments, use of revenues to address efficiency and distributional objectives, supporting measures to address competitiveness concerns, political economy aspects, and coordination at the global level. This paper discusses these issues, providing guidance on the choice between carbon taxes and ETSs and their design. Overall, carbon taxes have significant practical, environmental, and economic advantages (especially for developing countries) due to ease of administration, price certainty which promotes investment, the potential to raise significant revenues, and coverage of broader emissions sources. However, ETSs provide more certainty over emissions levels, can be implemented by environment ministries, and some free permit allocations might garner political support from affected firms (at a fiscal cost).