Carta Alternative: Carta Pricing, 409A Valuation Cost, and What Your Business Is Actually Worth

Carta does not publish a flat, self-serve price. Pricing is quoted per company based on stage, stakeholder count and which modules you buy, and a 409A valuation is normally a separate add-on rather than something bundled into the base subscription. That is the honest starting point, and it is worth stating plainly because a lot of pages on this topic quote confident numbers that contradict each other.

We tried to verify Carta's list prices directly in July 2026 and could not: the pricing page is behind bot protection and returns nothing to an automated request. So rather than invent a number, here is what independent sources actually report, with the caveat that they disagree.

The practical takeaway for a founder: budget in the low five figures a year once you are past the earliest stage, expect the 409A to be priced on top, and get the quote in writing with the stakeholder tier spelled out, because stakeholder count is the variable that moves the number most. If a vendor will not put a price on a page, the price is negotiable, and buyers who benchmark against contract data routinely save low double digits in percentage terms.

For comparison, our own pricing is published and starts at $29 a month, month to month. That is not a like-for-like comparison and we are not pretending it is. We do not run your cap table or file anything with the IRS. We answer one question, quickly, for a fraction of the cost.

Plan on roughly two to four weeks end to end for a standard 409A, with the analyst work itself typically taking about 10 to 20 business days after you have submitted complete financials and cap table data. Expedited service is generally available at extra cost, and the first valuation always takes longer than renewals because the provider is building the model from scratch.

The sequence looks like this in practice. You upload financial statements, projections, the current cap table and details of the most recent financing round. An analyst picks a valuation approach, most often a backsolve from the last preferred round for a recently funded company, or an income or market approach where there is no clean recent round. They allocate enterprise value across the share classes, usually with an option pricing model, then apply a discount for lack of marketability to arrive at common stock fair market value. You get a draft, you review it, the report is finalized, and your board formally accepts it.

That board acceptance step matters and founders skip it. A 409A only creates safe harbor once the board has adopted the valuation. Grants made before adoption sit outside the protection you paid for.

The valuation is then good for twelve months or until a material event, whichever comes first. A new priced round, a signed term sheet, a major customer loss, an acquisition offer or a significant change in projections all reset the clock. Companies that grant options continuously usually refresh every twelve months as a matter of routine.

A 409A prices a startup's common stock for tax compliance and is deliberately conservative. Acquisition prices are routinely several times the value a 409A implies, so the two numbers should never be used interchangeably.

Three mechanics drive the gap. First, a 409A values common stock specifically, and common sits behind every preferred share in the liquidation waterfall, so a meaningful slice of enterprise value is allocated away before common gets anything. Second, the analyst applies a discount for lack of marketability, often 20% to 35%, because nobody can sell those shares freely. Third, the whole exercise is calibrated for defensibility with the IRS, and a low, well-supported number is the outcome that serves everyone: the company, the employees receiving options, and the provider whose report has to survive an audit.

An acquisition works the opposite way. A buyer pays for control of the whole company, for strategic fit, for the customer relationships and often a premium simply because they have decided they want the asset. None of the discounts that shape a 409A apply.

So if your question is "what would somebody pay me for this," a 409A is the wrong instrument even when it is executed perfectly. What you want is an earnings-based view: a multiple applied to normalized seller discretionary earnings or EBITDA, cross-checked against a revenue multiple and a discounted cash flow, then benchmarked to comparable sales of similar businesses. When those three methods disagree, the disagreement itself tells you which argument a buyer will make.

Almost every page ranking for "Carta alternatives" is written by a cap table vendor and lists other cap table vendors. That is useful if you actually need a cap table. It is useless if you landed there because you typed a valuation question into a search box. The table below covers both cases honestly.

Pulley and Eqvista figures are as reported by those vendors and third-party trackers in July 2026. Pricing changes, so confirm before you buy. The broader business valuation software comparison puts these side by side with the appraiser-grade tools.

These two products barely overlap. The useful way to choose is by what the number has to do once you have it.

A founder who is fielding acquisition interest genuinely needs both, for different reasons. Carta or a peer handles the 409A because that is a compliance obligation with legal consequences for your employees. An earnings-based estimate tells you whether the offer on the table is close to what your multiple should be, which is the number you negotiate on.

• Choose Carta if you have institutional investors, a real cap table and an option pool. The compliance burden is not optional and running it in a spreadsheet stops working fast. Benchmark the quote before you sign, because the price is negotiable.
• Choose Pulley or Eqvista if you need the same compliance outcome at a lower price point and you can live with a smaller ecosystem. Eqvista is the only one of the three that publishes 409A pricing openly.
• Choose Businessappraisal if you own a cash-flowing business and want to know what it would sell for. Enter revenue, earnings and growth, get a range from three methods, and see which value drivers move it.
• Choose a credentialed appraiser the moment a lender, a court or the IRS has to rely on the figure. Our guide to a certified appraisal versus an estimate covers exactly where that line sits, and what a business valuation costs covers the fee ranges.

Owners who are actively heading for an exit should also read how to prepare a business for sale, because most of the value created in the last year before a sale comes from cleaning up earnings and reducing owner dependence, not from picking a different multiple.