Pulley alternatives: where to move your cap table before December 8

Pulley is shutting down on December 8, 2026, and roughly every startup on it now has the same question: move to Carta because it is the assisted path, or use the forced migration as a reason to look properly?

This is the honest version of that comparison. No affiliate links, no scores out of ten, and no pretence that a cap table decision is a feature-grid decision. Where a vendor publishes a price we quote it and link the page. Where a vendor does not, we say so rather than repeating a number from an aggregator.

Three dates, in the order they bind you

Date	What happens
November 30, 2026	Last day to opt in to the Carta migration offer. Once the agreement arrives you have two weeks to sign it.
December 8, 2026	Pulley ceases operations. The application becomes inaccessible.
January 31, 2027	Your Pulley data remains available “in a limited format” through the app until this date, then it is gone.

Two things follow from that table. The first is that the real deadline is November 30, not December 8, if the Carta offer matters to you. The second is that January 31 is not a safety net: Pulley does not define what “limited format” contains, and you should not plan around a format nobody has described.

Start with the constraint nobody mentions

Pulley says it is “unable to assist a migration to a different provider in any capacity.” Read that literally. If you pick anything other than Carta, you are responsible for the export, the import and the reconciliation — and you only have a live Pulley app to export from until December 8.

So the order of operations is fixed regardless of your choice:

1. Export everything now — holder ledger, grants with full vesting schedules, 409A reports, board consents, SAFEs, 83(b) elections.
2. Then evaluate.
3. Then migrate and reconcile against your own files.

Anyone who tells you to evaluate first is costing you the only leverage you have. The full export checklist is here, and it takes an afternoon.

The five questions that actually decide this

Where are your entities? A US-only Delaware C-corp and a company with a UK parent and an Indian subsidiary are not shopping in the same market. Geography eliminates more options than features do.

Who needs to log in? If employees, ex-employees and investors all need a portal, stakeholder experience matters more than admin features. If it is you and your lawyer, it does not.

Do you need a 409A next year? Bundled valuations are the single biggest swing in total cost, and the published add-on price is $1,500 at both Cake Equity and Qapita. Compare the subscription plus the valuation, never the subscription alone.

What is your next financing event? If a priced round or a tender is coming, scenario modelling and waterfall quality matter. If nothing is imminent, buy less.

How hard is it to leave? The question Pulley’s customers are now asking retroactively. Ask every vendor what a full export looks like, in what format, and whether it includes documents and vesting schedules — before you sign.

Published pricing, side by side

List prices as published by each vendor in late 2026. Currency is USD unless the vendor states otherwise, and every figure below is on the vendor’s own pricing page.

Provider	Free tier	Entry paid tier	Per-stakeholder	409A
Carta	Not published	Not published	Not published	Bundled at higher tiers
Ledgy	Not published	Not published	Not published	Quote
Cake Equity	$0, 5 stakeholders	$1,000/yr (Build)	+$1 (Build), +$5 (Team)	$1,500 add-on; Team includes two
Eqvista	$0, under 20 stakeholders	$2 per stakeholder/month	$2/month	$990–$2,590/yr bundled by stage
Fidelity Private Shares	$0, 25 stakeholders and under $1M raised	Contact sales	Not published	In the Growth tier
Qapita	$0, 25 stakeholders and under $1M raised	$1,600/yr to 40 stakeholders	+$40/yr (entry), +$60/yr (next tier)	$1,500 add-on

Neither Carta nor Ledgy publishes a full price list. Third-party “pricing” pages for both are worth less than they look: for Carta alone, two aggregators we checked while writing this quoted an entry plan at $280 a year and a plan range of $2,988–$11,988 a month — for the same product, in the same month. Get a quote with your actual stakeholder count and ignore the rest.

A worked comparison

Take a company with 35 stakeholders that needs one 409A in the next twelve months, priced off published list rates only:

• Qapita — $1,600 entry plan covers up to 40 stakeholders, plus the $1,500 409A add-on: $3,100 a year.
• Eqvista — the Seed-stage bundle is $1,990 a year and includes both the 409A and the premium cap table: $1,990 a year. Cap table alone, at $2 per stakeholder per month, would be $840.
• Cake Equity — the Team plan is $2,750 a year and includes two 409As, so from $2,750, plus $5 for each stakeholder above the plan’s included count.
• Fidelity Private Shares — free at 25 stakeholders and under $1M raised; at 35 stakeholders you are into a quoted tier.
• Carta and Ledgy — quote only.

The spread between the cheapest and the most expensive published option here is roughly $1,100 a year. That is real money at seed stage, and it is also less than one hour of your lawyer’s time spent fixing a cap table that was migrated badly. Price this decision, but do not let price decide it.

The realistic shortlist

Carta

The default, and for most US companies the sensible one right now — not because it is the best product for everybody, but because it is the only path where someone else does the migration. Pulley describes it as “a direct migration process that brings your entire cap table and history from Pulley to Carta with no lift required.” Customers who opt in keep their current Pulley pricing for their first full year, receive credits for unused prepaid balances, and sign a new Carta agreement.

Two things to check before you sign: the year-two price, which is where the economics actually land, and the contract term. A year of price protection is worth a lot; a three-year commitment signed in a hurry is worth considerably less.

Best when: you are US-based, you want this finished, and a year of price protection buys you time to decide properly.

Ledgy

The usual European answer. Strong on multi-entity, multi-country employee equity and the reporting European companies actually need, with HR-system integrations that matter once you are past a few dozen employees. It also publishes no price list, so budget a sales conversation rather than a checkout.

Best when: your entities or your employees sit in Europe.

Cake Equity

The APAC and Australian counterpart, and the most transparent pricing in this group. The Build plan is $1,000 a year with $1 per additional stakeholder; the Team plan is $2,750 a year, adds $5 per additional stakeholder and includes two 409A valuations, which Cake values at $3,000. A 409A can be added to any annual plan for $1,500. Cake also advertises free basic migration on the Team plan and a managed migration — “reconciled and signed off before go-live” — on the Pro plan, which matters more than usual for a company leaving a platform that will not help it leave.

Best when: your company or your employees are in Australia or Asia-Pacific, or you want the migration itself handled without Carta.

Eqvista

The cheapest defensible option for a company that needs a real system of record. The free tier runs to under 20 stakeholders; the premium cap table is $2 per stakeholder per month, with custom pricing above 50. The interesting line is the bundle: a 409A plus the premium cap table priced by stage, from $990 a year pre-revenue, $1,290 for friends-and-family, $1,990 at seed and $2,590 at Series A. Extras are priced à la carte too — ASC 718 reporting from $500, QSBS attestation from $1,000, expedited 83(b) processing from $490.

Best when: you are early, cost-sensitive, and want a valuation path bundled in.

Fidelity Private Shares

The bank-backed option. The Launch tier is free up to 25 stakeholders and under $1M raised, and it is a real tier rather than a trial — cap table management, equity plan generation, data room, board consents, scenario modelling, 83(b) generation, a Rule 701 exemption check and electronic securities. Above that, Startup, Growth and Scale are all quoted; 409A valuations, ASC 718 and HRIS and payroll integration arrive at Growth.

Institutional backing is worth something in a year when a $50M-funded challenger just shut down.

Best when: you are pre-priced-round, or you value the balance sheet behind the product.

Qapita

Built for companies whose stakeholders are spread across jurisdictions. Pricing is published and stakeholder-banded: free to 25 stakeholders and under $1M raised, $1,600 a year to 40 stakeholders (then $40 per stakeholder per year), $3,000 a year to 50 stakeholders (then $60). A 409A is a $1,500 add-on. Unusually, it also prices the human help — analyst support at $125 an hour, employee town halls at $500 an hour — which is either refreshing or a warning, depending on how much help you expect to need.

Best when: your team is global and your compliance surface is the problem.

Cost: compare the bundle, not the sticker

Published prices are a starting point, not an answer. The line items that move the total are:

• Stakeholder count tiers, which step up exactly when you hire. At Qapita’s entry plan, stakeholder 41 costs $40; at the next tier, stakeholder 51 costs $60.
• 409A valuations, bundled or not. A $1,500 add-on on a $1,600 plan nearly doubles it.
• Entity count, where multi-entity groups usually land in an enterprise conversation regardless of vendor.
• Contract term, where a three-year lock at a good rate is worth less than it looks when the vendor’s own future is the risk you just experienced.

Ask for the all-in number for the next two years, including the valuation, with your actual stakeholder count. Then compare.

What we would do this week

If you are US-based and nothing about Carta offends you: opt in before November 30, take the price hold, and use the year to decide properly. That is the lowest-risk path and it costs you nothing to keep open.

If you are outside the US, or you have wanted off this stack for a while: export now, shortlist two providers on geography, and run the migration in October rather than December, when every other Pulley customer will be doing the same thing and every vendor’s onboarding queue is full.

Either way, keep your own copy of everything. That is the actual lesson of this shutdown, and it is the one thing no vendor can take away from you.

---

Where we fit, honestly: ESOP.fyi is an AI-native cap table, ESOP and liquidity platform opening its first cohort in Q4 2026 — after Pulley goes dark. If you need to move before December 8, move; we are not pretending to be your migration target today. If you would rather not sign a multi-year contract this quarter, join the waitlist and we will email you once, when doors open.