Top Pulley alternatives, and why you don't have to move to Carta

• Pulley is shutting down. Final operations end December 8, 2026, the real deadline is November 30, where its offer to support transition to Carta expires.
• In conversations we've had with Pulley customers since the announcement, here are the four considerations that keep coming up: feature parity, comparable pricing, a smooth transition, and long-term stability.
• Cake, Carta, Qapita, Eqvista, and Ledgy are the serious alternatives, each with real tradeoffs worth knowing before you pick.
• Cake matches what Pulley offered feature for feature, at a lower entry price, with real additions (QSBS, AI/MCP access) Pulley didn't have.

You're likely here because you need a Pulley alternative, and if we're honest, a Carta alternative too.

You chose Pulley for a reason: it was faster, more affordable, and more founder-friendly than Carta, and for years, it delivered on that. There's a good chance you even switched to Pulley from Carta because of the same things: costs that spike at renewal, data concerns, and how hard it is to get a hold of customer support.

And now, in a strange plot twist, this shutdown is steering you right back toward the platform you avoided. You don't have to go back.

Time is of the essence either way. Pulley shuts down December 8, and if you're weighing the Carta transition offer specifically, that decision needs to be made by November 30.

This guide walks through what to weigh before picking a replacement, and where the top Pulley alternatives each stand on the criteria that matter.

What actually matters when picking a replacement

In the short time since Pulley's shutdown was announced, Cake's team has been, back-to-back, fielding conversations with Pulley customers weighing what's next for them.

Four things keep coming up on nearly every call: feature parity, comparable pricing, a smooth transition, and long-term stability.

• Feature parity. You want to make sure the alternative has the essential features Pulley has: cap table management, equity grants, digital signing, scenario modeling, 409A, and so on.
• Comparable pricing. You want to know the price actually matches the depth you're getting, not just chase the cheapest number on the page.
• A smooth transition. How much manual work falls on you, and how confident you can be that historical grants, vesting schedules, and signed documents come across intact.
• Stability. This is the one nobody thought to ask about before. Will this platform still be here next year, or is this a second migration waiting to happen?

Top Pulley alternatives, compared

Here's how Cake, Qapita, Eqvista, and Ledgy stack up against the criteria that actually matter: entry pricing, how much of Pulley's feature set each one covers, migration, and where each platform stands out. The detailed breakdown of each follows right after this table.

Cake: the closest match to Pulley

Cake has all the features you had with Pulley.

• Cap table and equity management
• Founder vesting, custom vesting
• ISO/NSO, RSU/RSA, Warrants
• Investor comms and reporting
• Scenario modeling, SAFEs, Cons
• 409A valuations
• Built-in compliance: Form 3921, ASC 718, 83(b), Rule 701

..and it goes further where Pulley didn't.

• QSBS eligibility and attestation
• Employee app and equity education
• Audit log that tracks all historical changes and transactions
• As we write this guide, we are shipping the Cake MCP, with Cake AI on the way.

Rated higher than Pulley in G2 for Product Direction, we are constantly listening, adapting, and shipping new features that help our customers scale.

You're not just looking for a platform capable of importing the cap table Pulley managed yesterday. You're choosing the platform you'll rely on as your equity, compliance, and finance requirements change over the next several years.

On pricing, Cake stays close to the startup-friendly positioning that made Pulley attractive in the first place.

• Paid plans start at $1,000 a year, against Pulley's $1,200
• Team runs $2,750 against Pulley's former $3,500 Growth plan, which includes (2) 409A Valuation per year.
• If you migrate now, we credit back what you already paid Pulley

Most importantly, moving to Cake doesn't mean choosing another early-stage tool you'll necessarily have to replace once the cap table becomes more complicated.

Cake is designed to follow companies from their earliest fundraising and equity decisions into complex equity structures and later-stage requirements.

For companies that originally chose Pulley because they wanted something modern, founder-friendly and could scale as your startup grows, Cake is the closest match.

Qapita

Qapita spans cap table and equity plan management with a broader footprint for companies scaling across countries.

• Its free tier covers 25 stakeholders for companies that have raised under $1 million
• Paid tiers run $1,600/yr (40 stakeholders)
• And runs up to $3,000/yr (50 stakeholders, 409A included)

That makes Qapita more expensive than Cake at comparable paid stages. The tradeoff is that Qapita has a broader global footprint outside of the US.

For a Pulley customer, Qapita is a credible option if transparent pricing and broader international capabilities matter more than finding the closest possible replacement.

Eqvista

Eqvista takes a noticeably different approach to pricing, and for smaller cap tables it can be difficult to beat.

• Free plan supports fewer than 20 stakeholders. Above that, Premium costs $2 per stakeholder per month. 
• The important distinction is how valuation pricing works. Eqvista's 409A and Premium Cap Table bundle starts at $990 a year for pre-revenue startups, then rises by company stage: $1,290 for F&F/Angel, $1,990 for Seed and $2,590 for Series A, with Series B+ priced separately.

That means the headline "$2 per stakeholder" isn't the whole cost comparison if you also need recurring valuations.

For a small or relatively straightforward company, the economics are compelling. Where I'd look more carefully is further down the road: if you expect increasingly complex reporting, multi-entity structures or a broader finance stack, compare the requirements you'll have at Series A or B rather than just the price of managing today's cap table.

Ledgy

Ledgy is the outlier in this comparison because its center of gravity is different from Pulley's.

• It has a free Launch plan with cap table management, equity plans and grants for up to 50 stakeholders. But the step into its more sophisticated functionality is substantial:
• Scale starts at €5,000 a year, while Enterprise starts at €18,000. Financial reporting is separately priced from €3,000 a year.

What you get in return is a platform built particularly deeply around international equity administration, more specifically, EU/UK.

That makes Ledgy a strong alternative when your equity problem is becoming international: multiple entities, employees across jurisdictions, UK or European schemes, and increasingly complex share-plan administration.

The question nobody asks until it's too late

Kim, Cake's CEO, wrote his thoughts about the Pulley closure. The piece isn't a pitch. It's an argument for asking a different question than the ones most people ask when picking software:

Not just what features does this have, but what's this company's actual financial health, and how much can you rely on it being here next year.

A vendor that's raised a large round and has well-known investors isn't necessarily telling you anything about whether it's burning through that money every month.

A vendor that's generating its own cash is telling you something concrete about its own durability, whether or not it makes for a flashier pitch. That's a fair question to ask any vendor on this list, Cake included, before signing anything. Kim has answered this at length in his own post.

Why investors and lawyers recommend Cake

Cake partners with dozens of top startup law firms that are already comfortable working inside Cake, so grant approvals, financing rounds, and compliance workflows don't stall while someone learns a new tool.

"As a US attorney, our partnership with Cake has been invaluable in guiding clients through cap tables and equity incentive plans seamlessly. Cake's innovative solutions are dedicated to simplifying equity resulting in a streamlined process for US attorneys, offering an efficient platform for managing equity matters. Their team's expertise and responsiveness make them a trusted partner in ensuring seamless transactions. I wholeheartedly recommend Cake Equity for your equity needs."
^{—Matt Secrist, Partner at Taft Law}

It's also increasingly common for investors and law firms to hold and administer positions across several different cap table platforms, so moving off a bigger, more established name isn't the red flag it used to be.

What they do care about: a clean, audit-ready cap table, correct 409A history, and documents that reconcile the first time. That's the bar Cake is built to clear.

Why founders and finance leaders prefer Cake

Founders and finance leaders don't switch cap table platforms lightly, especially after years on the same one. That's exactly the position Tom Hakel was in when he decided to give Cake a try:

I've been a Carta guy for the last 12 years. However, we wanted more value for our money. So we tried Cake and, the delightful surprise was it was a better product. We saved money with a better product.
^{—Tom Hakel, Founder & CFO}

Read more Cake stories.

Make this your last cap table switch

Pulley's shutdown put a lot of founders through an unplanned migration on someone else's timeline. The way to avoid a repeat is to stop optimizing for the fastest way out of this one, and start asking whether the next platform is somewhere your company can actually stay.

That means checking the same four things again before you sign anything: feature parity, comparable pricing, a smooth transition, and, this time, real evidence of stability. Get that right once, and this is the last time you have to do this.