How Carta pricing works — and what actually drives the bill

What cap table software actually meters on

Almost every vendor in this category prices on the same primary dimension: how many stakeholders are on your cap table. That is a deliberate choice — it correlates with company size, it grows automatically as you hire, and it is impossible to game without giving people equity you did not want to give them. Everything else in the quote is a modifier on top of that.

Why "stakeholder" is the word that decides your bill

A stakeholder is not the same as an employee, and it is not the same as a shareholder. Depending on the vendor it can include founders, investors, holders of outstanding options whether vested or not, SAFE and convertible note holders, warrant holders, and former employees who exercised or still hold vested options. A forty-person company can comfortably carry well over a hundred stakeholders.

This is why bills surprise people. You did not change plans; you hired, ran an option grant, and closed a SAFE round, and you crossed a band. It is also why comparing two quotes without pinning the definition is meaningless — one vendor counting unexercised option holders and another not will produce numbers that are not measuring the same thing.

409A valuations: bundled, separate, or a service

A 409A valuation establishes the fair market value of common stock so that options can be granted at or above it. Under the US Treasury regulations, a valuation determined by a qualified independent appraisal, made no more than twelve months before the relevant transaction, is presumed reasonable, and the IRS can only rebut that presumption by showing the method or its application was grossly unreasonable. That rebuttable presumption is the reason startups buy valuations at all, and the reason they buy them repeatedly.

Vendors package this differently: bundled into a plan tier, sold as an add-on, or performed by a third party the platform introduces you to. All three are legitimate. What changes the multi-year cost is cadence — how often a refresh is required by your circumstances, whether refreshes after a material event are included, and what audit support costs when your accountant asks questions about the model.

Fund administration is a different meter entirely

If you are a fund manager rather than an operating company, none of the stakeholder-count logic applies to you. Fund administration is typically priced against fund size, the number of funds or vehicles, and the number of LPs, and it is a service business with people attached rather than a seat-based subscription. Comparing a fund admin quote against a cap table plan is comparing two unrelated products that happen to be sold by the same company.

What actually makes the bill grow

• Hiring. Every option grant is a new stakeholder, and the option pool is the fastest-growing part of most cap tables.
• Attrition. Ex-employees who exercised, or who hold vested options during a post-termination exercise window, generally stay on the register.
• SAFE and note rounds. A party round with twenty angels adds twenty stakeholders before it converts into anything.
• A second entity. A holdco, a UK subsidiary or an SPV is usually a separate subscription.
• Valuation cadence. A material event can require a refresh sooner than the annual rhythm you budgeted for.
• Modules you enabled during a round and never turned off.

How to run the pricing conversation

Where to find current pricing

Carta publishes its current tiers at carta.com/pricing. Pulley publishes its pricing too, which makes it a useful benchmark even if you do not buy it. Most other vendors in the category publish an entry tier and quote the rest, so a short email asking for a quote at your stakeholder count and at that count plus fifty will tell you more than any published table.

If the number comes back higher than the job is worth, the alternatives guide at /alternatives/carta-alternatives covers the ten products that compete for it, including which of them publish pricing.