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The drivetrain as an important part of wind turbines needs to be improved in order to deal with today’s high development and cost pressure. One important step towards enhanced drivetrains is to identify the most suitable concept for a targeted onshore application in an early design stage. With this purpose, a holistic lifecycle system evaluation approach relying on minimum input information is presented. In order to identify a dominant solution, an additive target system is defined taking cost, ecological sustainability, and supplied energy into account. This multi-criteria decision is aggregated by defining a macrosocial evaluation criterion: “drivetrain specific energy supply effort”. A physics- and empirically-based model is developed to quantify the targets for different onshore drivetrain concepts. The validity of the model results is shown by a comparison to meta-analysis findings. Being utilized on a drivetrain concept comparison between geared and direct drive the approach’s value is showcased. Both concepts score on a comparable level slightly differing in weak and strong wind regimes. An exemplary trade-off between investment- and operational effort shows, that for both concepts the investment effort is higher than the operational. The comparison furthermore shows how robust decision support can be provided by parameter variation and finally it stresses, that the decision maker’s preferences need to be incorporated in the decision. Concluding, this analysis shows that physics- and empirically-based model approaches enable holistic wind turbine drivetrain concept comparisons in an early design stage.