409A Valuation Providers and 409A Valuation Cost: What Each One Charges in 2026

A 409A valuation costs $990 to $5,000 a year for most venture-backed startups, and the price is set by how complicated your cap table is rather than how big your company is. Eqvista publishes the cleanest rate card in the market at $990 a year pre-revenue, $1,290 at friends and family, $1,990 at seed and $2,590 at Series A, each covering unlimited valuations for twelve months. Pulley bundles 409A valuations into its $3,500 a year Growth plan and excludes them from its $1,200 Startup plan. Independent valuation firms charge per report, usually $2,000 to $5,000, and the large firms that serve late-stage companies charge $10,000 to $25,000.

Those numbers are easy to find. What almost nobody tells you before you sign is that the headline price is not the number you will actually pay, because a 409A is not a one time purchase.

How much does a 409A valuation cost in 2026?

Budget $2,000 to $5,000 a year at seed and Series A stage. Below that, pre-revenue companies with a single class of common stock can get a compliant valuation for under $1,500. Above it, once you have multiple preferred classes, warrants, convertible notes and a secondary market in your shares, you are into per-report pricing that scales with the work.

Here is what providers actually publish, checked at each vendor's own pricing page in September 2026 rather than copied from a roundup:

Carta is the name most founders ask about and the one you cannot verify. Carta does not publish 409A pricing on its site and its pages block automated retrieval, so every figure you will read attributing a specific price to Carta traces back to a third party review or a procurement database rather than to Carta. Aggregated buyer data puts Carta's median all-in annual contract around $15,400 with the 409A module adding roughly $2,000 to $5,000, and third party reviews report seed stage 409A pricing in the $1,200 to $2,000 range. Treat all of that as reported rather than confirmed, and get a quote. We keep an updated view of the platform in our Carta alternatives comparison.

Why the headline price is not what you pay

A 409A valuation expires. Under the IRC Section 409A safe harbor, an independent appraisal carries a presumption of reasonableness for twelve months from the valuation date, or until a material event changes what the company is worth, whichever comes first. A priced round is a material event. So is an acquisition offer, a major contract win or loss, or a significant change in how the business operates.

That is the line that decides which pricing model is cheaper for you, and it is the one founders leave out of the comparison. Run three years for a company that raises a priced round in year two, which describes most venture-backed startups:

The per report firm and the unlimited plan look close on a single valuation and diverge by roughly two to one across three years, purely because of the refresh. If you expect to raise, an unlimited plan is priced for you. If you are a bootstrapped company with a flat cap table and no round in sight, you will pay once a year and the per report firm is usually cheaper. Decide which of those two you are before you compare headline numbers, because the headline numbers do not answer the question.

What actually drives your 409A price

Capital structure complexity moves the price more than revenue or headcount does. A company with one class of common stock and a simple option pool is a straightforward exercise. Add participating preferred with a liquidation preference stack, convertible notes that have not converted, warrants issued to a lender, and a tender offer that created observable secondary pricing, and the analyst has to run an option pricing model across several scenarios and defend each one.

The other levers are smaller and more predictable. Turnaround is the obvious one: expedited work typically adds $490 to $3,000 depending on the provider, and the only reason to pay it is that you have already promised someone an option grant. Stage matters because later stage companies have more of everything to analyze. And whether your provider is also your cap table platform matters, because bundled pricing is how most of this market is now sold.

What the provider will ask you for

Every provider wants the same file, and having it ready is the difference between a two week engagement and a five week one:

• A current, reconciled cap table with every class, option grant, warrant and convertible instrument
• Two to three years of financial statements, plus a forward projection
• Your most recent priced round documents and the closing date
• A short business description and the market you sell into
• Any secondary transactions in your shares, including tender offers

The forward projection is the part founders underinvest in and the part the analyst leans on hardest, because a company without meaningful revenue has to be valued largely on what it expects to do. The other input worth understanding is the comparable set: the analyst derives volatility from a group of guideline public companies in your sector, and that choice materially moves your common stock value. Ask which companies they used. You can sanity check the group yourself against public company fundamentals and sector comparables before the draft lands, and a provider who cannot explain the selection is one worth questioning.

What you are actually buying

You are buying a shift in the burden of proof. When a qualified independent appraiser values your common stock, the valuation is presumed reasonable, and if the IRS challenges your strike prices it has to show the valuation was grossly unreasonable. Without the safe harbor, the burden runs the other way and you have to prove your number was right. The consequences of losing that argument fall on your employees: options priced below fair market value trigger immediate taxation on vesting plus a 20 percent additional federal tax, on people who have not sold anything.

To qualify, the appraiser has to be genuinely independent, hold relevant credentials, carry at least five years of relevant experience, and follow generally accepted appraisal practices. That is the whole product. A cheaper valuation that does not meet those conditions is not a discount, it is an uninsured position.

Is a 409A valuation worth the cost?

If you issue stock options, it is not optional and the cost question is only about which provider. A company that grants options without a defensible 409A is exposing its employees to penalty tax and itself to a withholding failure. At $990 to $2,590 a year for an unlimited plan, the safe harbor is one of the cheapest pieces of compliance a startup buys.

Where the cost question does bite is on a company that has not granted options yet and is deciding when to start. There is no reason to buy a 409A before your first grant, and no reason to buy the expensive tier while your cap table is a single class of common stock. Start on the cheapest compliant tier and let the complexity of your own structure move you up it.

How often do you need a new 409A valuation?

Every twelve months, and immediately after any material event, whichever comes first. In practice most venture-backed companies refresh annually and then again out of cycle each time they close a round. A valuation that has gone stale does not fail loudly, which is the danger: you keep issuing grants against it and only find out at diligence, when a buyer or an auditor reads your option ledger and finds grants priced against an expired number.

Where this sits next to a normal business valuation

A 409A is a narrow product with one reader, the IRS, and one job, setting a strike price on common stock. It is not what you use to work out what your company is worth to a buyer, and it deliberately produces a lower number than your preferred share price. If you are pricing a sale, a buyout or a raise rather than an option grant, that is a different engagement at a different price, and we break the whole fee landscape down in what a business valuation costs. If you are choosing tools rather than buying a report, our business valuation software pricing comparison lists published prices across the category, and the Eqvista comparison covers where that platform fits.

If what you actually want is a read on what the business itself is worth, the estimator at the top of this page runs a revenue multiple, an earnings multiple and a discounted cash flow against your numbers and returns a range benchmarked to comparable sales. It is an educational estimate, not a 409A and not a certified appraisal, but it answers a question no 409A is designed to answer.