Comparisons
Eight questions, and the honest answers to them.
No feature grids. A list of questions worth asking of any business-plan tool, our own answers in full, and a link so you can go and ask the same questions of the alternative.
We will not restate somebody else’s prices or features from second-hand sources. A product that sells you on dated evidence should not publish undated claims about anyone, least of all a competitor.
- Compared with LivePlanLivePlan is the established name in this category and has been for a long time. Anybody choosing business-plan software will look at it, and they should — it is a mature product with a large installed base, and for a lot of businesses that is exactly the right answer.
- Compared with UpmetricsUpmetrics turns up early in any search for business-plan software and has a broad template library, which genuinely helps when the hard part is the blank page. If a large set of starting structures is what you are looking for, go and look at it.
- Compared with a general-purpose AI assistantBecause it works. Reviewers repeatedly report that a general assistant matches the prose quality of paid business-plan tools, and the writing problem in this category is essentially solved. If what you need is a well-structured draft to think against, you already have the tool.
The questions
These decide it, whichever tool you end up with. Take them to whoever you are evaluating, including us.
- Does a language model ever write a number that lands in a financial statement?
- This is the whole question. If prose and figures come from the same generator, nothing downstream can be trusted, and a plausible-sounding number is worse than an obviously wrong one because nobody catches it.
- Our answer. No. The engine is pure TypeScript with no model in it. A model proposes assumptions before the engine runs and describes results after it has run; a test asserts mechanically that every currency figure in generated prose traces to a value the engine computed.
- Is there a balance sheet, and does it balance in every period?
- A profit and loss and a cash flow can each look fine while contradicting each other. The balance sheet is what proves they do not — and its absence is the most common structural gap in this category.
- Our answer. Yes, monthly across sixty periods, with the tie row visible in the statements and asserted in every period. A randomised property test runs the engine over generated assumptions and checks it, which is how two real engine defects were found.
- What happens when you change a price after the plan is written?
- Every tool claims the numbers and the words cannot drift apart. The thing to test is whether that survives a revision, because that is when it breaks.
- Our answer. Every dependent figure updates — in the statements, the charts, and every sentence citing one — and a version snapshot is taken with a visible diff. Nothing is overwritten without a way back.
- Does anything block export when the prose contradicts the model?
- The classic failure is text claiming forty per cent growth against a model showing twelve. It is trivially findable by a reader, which is exactly why it costs so much when they find it.
- Our answer. Yes. Every marked figure in the narrative is extracted and matched against the model, and export stays locked until they reconcile. Twelve checks block and eight advise.
- Does it compute what a credit analyst computes?
- Founders submit plans; banks compute ratios. If the ratio is not in the document, the reader works it out using assumptions you did not choose.
- Our answer. Coverage by year against the threshold in force for the programme, the amortisation schedule, current ratio, debt to equity, sources and uses, and owner compensation as a named line. Thresholds are dated configuration with a source and a confidence level, printed beside the figure.
- Where do the market statistics come from, and do they carry a date?
- Unsourced market claims are the most commonly cited reason plans get rejected, and AI tools are notorious for citing reports that do not exist.
- Our answer. Live web search, and anything returned without a retrievable http source and an ISO date is dropped — including when the model is confident about it. With research unavailable we return nothing and say why, rather than composing a citation.
- Does the Excel export contain formulas or pasted values?
- A banker who wants to audit the model changes a driver and watches what moves. A workbook of pasted values cannot be audited, which is the point at which they go back to asking for a spreadsheet.
- Our answer. Live formulas over a Drivers sheet, so changing a driver recalculates revenue, margin, coverage and the debt schedule. A Filed sheet carries the engine's figures at export with a variance row that reads zero on open — or the workbook and the plan disagree.
- What does cancelling look like, and what is the refund policy?
- The reputational damage in this category is almost entirely here rather than in the software. It is worth two minutes before you enter a card.
- Our answer. The core purchase is one-time per plan and does not renew. The optional subscription cancels in one click, runs to the end of the period you paid for, and there is no form asking you to document what was unsatisfactory.
Or check the answers yourself.
Four complete sample plans, seven calculators running the real engine, and a methodology page that prints what we have not yet verified.