The short version
Pulley built its name as the founder-friendly alternative to Carta: a clean cap table, a delivered 409A valuation service, and genuinely strong fundraise and scenario modeling, priced in tiers that scale with your stakeholder count and stage. Vquity takes a different bet: one flat all-inclusive plan, a native desktop app alongside the web app, six populated region profiles, and a cap table that talks natively to accounting and HR because it lives inside the Lisan platform.
If your must-have is a done-for-you 409A from the same vendor that hosts your cap table, Pulley is the safer pick today. If you are outside the US, growing headcount fast, or want your equity data wired into your books, your HR system, and a diligence-ready data room, the Vquity vs Pulley decision tilts the other way.
Everything below about Pulley reflects public information checked on 18 July 2026, including Pulley's pricing page. Capabilities and packaging move, and public pages do not expose every workflow, so verify anything decisive directly with Pulley.
Vquity vs Pulley: capability comparison
| Capability | Vquity | Pulley |
|---|---|---|
| Cap table: shareholders, share classes, transaction ledger | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Delivered 409A valuation service | ✗ No Vquity tracks the 409A/FMV lifecycle (recalc, rollback, audit, expiry alerts) but you bring the valuation from a provider | ✓ Yes a real Pulley strength |
| Fundraise & scenario modeling | ✓ Yes scenario modeler chains rounds and exits | ✓ Yes a mature, well-regarded part of the product |
| Exit waterfall modeling (prefs, participation caps, escrow, carve-outs) | ✓ Yes what-if modeling, not an audit deliverable | ✓ Yes |
| Employees submit option exercises from the portal | ✗ No exercise approvals are admin-side today | ✓ Yes polished exercise flow |
| SAFE conversion + atomic close-round wizard | ✓ Yes YC-style post-money solver, pool top-up, and snapshot in one step | ✓ Yes |
| Flat pricing with no per-stakeholder metering | ✓ Yes | ✗ No public pricing uses stakeholder and stage bands |
| Native desktop app | ✓ Yes native Windows app on the same data as the web app; macOS planned | Not verified no desktop download found on reviewed public pages |
| Configured region profiles: US, UK/EU, UAE, Saudi Arabia, India, Singapore/SEA | ✓ Yes instrument labels, currencies, valuation labels | Different approach confirm required jurisdiction and workflow directly |
| Native accounting + HR sync | ✓ Yes ASC 718 postings to Vinance GL; PeopleX HR events | Partial third-party integrations |
| Diligence data room with AI extraction & readiness score | ✓ Yes ~120 document types, editable extracted fields, 12-item readiness score | Not verified confirm the required diligence workflow directly |
| Built-in legal template studio with autofill | ✓ Yes Contract Studio: 23+ templates filled from company records | Partial some document generation; narrower scope |
| Importer for competitor exports | ✓ Yes Carta, Pulley, and AngelList exports with auto-detect + dedup | ✓ Yes Carta import is a Pulley selling point |
| Passwordless OTP stakeholder portals with offline cache | ✓ Yes | ✗ No managed login accounts |
Where Pulley wins
Being honest about this is cheaper than you finding out later.
Delivered 409A valuations. Pulley produces an audit-defensible 409A as a service. Vquity does not. It tracks the 409A/FMV lifecycle (recalculation, rollback, full audit trail, expiry alerts) but you bring the valuation itself from a provider. If bundling a done-for-you 409A with your cap table is the requirement, Pulley wins that deal, full stop.
Portal-side option exercise. Pulley's employee-facing exercise flow is polished: an employee can initiate an exercise from their own portal. In Vquity, employees see their full equity picture in the portal, but exercise approvals run through the admin-side queue. There is no portal submission path today.
Fundraise modeling maturity. Pulley has invested in round and dilution modeling for years and it shows. Vquity's scenario modeler chains rounds and exits and holds up well, but Pulley's fundraise tooling is the more battle-tested of the two.
Track record. Pulley has years of US startups, law firms, and investors on the platform. Vquity is newer. If vendor tenure is your primary criterion, that favors them.
Where Vquity wins
Company-based pricing model. Pulley's public pricing checked on 18 July 2026 uses stakeholder and company-stage bands. Vquity states a company-based plan without per-stakeholder metering. Get current quotes from both vendors and model them against your hiring plan. See Vquity pricing.
A dedicated Windows app. Vquity ships a native Windows desktop app on the same workspace data as the web app. No Pulley desktop download was found on the public pages reviewed, but confirm current client availability directly with Pulley.
Explicit regional configuration. Six populated region profiles configure instrument labels, currencies, Indian numbering, and valuation terminology for the US, UK/EU, UAE, Saudi Arabia, India, and Singapore/SEA. These are workflow defaults rather than legal or tax advice; compare the specific jurisdictional processes you need in both products.
Accounting and HR in the same platform. Vquity posts ASC 718 stock-comp expense (Black-Scholes) straight to the Vinance general ledger and syncs employee events from PeopleX HR into grants. That is native platform sync, not a third-party connector.
Data room + AI extraction. A structured data room with ~120 document types across 8 sections, instant classification on upload, AI extraction with editable fields and a full override audit trail, version-aware renewal chaining, and a 12-item diligence readiness score. This is a diligence product, not a documents folder.
Contract Studio. 23+ built-in legal templates (SAFEs, ESOP paperwork, transfers, founder and governance documents) autofilled from your company records, with e-sign tags. Read more on the Contract Studio page.
An importer built for leaving. Vquity ships a dedicated importer for Pulley exports (and Carta and AngelList) with format auto-detection and deduplication, so switching is a project measured in hours, not weeks.
Pricing models: metered tiers vs one flat plan
The structural difference matters more than a stale number. Pulley's public pricing checked on 18 July 2026 uses plans based on stakeholder counts and company stage, while Vquity states a per-company model without per-stakeholder metering. Check the current inclusions and request quotes before comparing total cost.
Vquity is one all-inclusive plan on the Lisan platform. Every module is enabled (cap table, rounds, options, waterfall modeling, data room, portals, Contract Studio) and stakeholder count never appears on an invoice. It is free to start, and for plan specifics you talk to us; there is no tier matrix to decode. We publish no competitor prices here because they change; check Pulley's current page and do the three-year math on your own headcount plan.
Switching from Pulley
Migration is deliberate, not automatic reconciliation. Export your Pulley workbook, drop it into Vquity's importer, and it auto-detects the format and maps supported share-class, holder, round, and option sheets, with stable deduplication on import. Compare totals and instrument details against Pulley before taking a baseline snapshot or archiving the old account. Signed documents can go through the Data Room's separate extraction-and-review flow. On the way out, XLSX and JSON export company details, share classes, shareholders, rounds, grants, and warrants; CSV exports shareholders; JSON restores the structured backup; and Data Room files download as a zip.
Bottom line
Choose Pulley if you want a delivered 409A and portal-side exercises from a US-focused incumbent-alternative with mature fundraise modeling. Choose Vquity if flat pricing, a desktop app, regional depth, native accounting/HR sync, and a real data room are worth more to you than a bundled valuation. Comparing against the incumbent instead? Read Vquity vs Carta. Or skip the reading and load the sample company in the app. It takes one click.