Budgeting software is what a finance team uses instead of a workbook with forty linked tabs: departmental budgets, rolling forecasts, scenarios and the variance report that follows.
This guide ranks the products on how long the first model takes to build, what the licence becomes once the implementation partner is added, and whether the model is yours to take away.
Vendors can pay for visibility on this page. It never changes what an entry
says about a product, including the criticism, and we earn nothing when you click through to a
vendor. How that works.
In short
What budgeting and planning software does
Budgeting and planning software collects departmental budgets, models revenue and cost drivers, compares plan against actuals from the ledger and produces forecasts and scenarios.
Five things, in this order. Feature counts are not among them: they are the least useful
comparison in software, because every vendor ticks every box.
01
Setup effort in budgeting and planning software
What the first ninety days of a budgeting and planning software rollout cost in hours, not in licence fees. A product that needs a partner engagement before it does anything is a different purchase from one a team configures in an afternoon.
02
What budgeting and planning software really costs
What the bill becomes once the modules a normal buyer of budgeting and planning software needs are added, and whether you can read that number without a sales conversation.
03
Getting your data out of budgeting and planning software
How your own data comes back out, in what format, and whether that export is included in the budgeting and planning software contract or billed as a project.
04
Independence from the vendor
Whether you can buy budgeting and planning software, run it and leave it on your own terms. This test decides most of the order on this page, and it is why the largest vendors in budgeting and planning software often sit below the smaller ones.
05
Who the product is built for
The size and shape of company each budgeting and planning software product was actually built for. Most regret in software comes from buying for a company you are not yet.
The fourth test decides most of the order on this page, and it is the reason the largest
budgeting and planning software vendors sit below the smaller ones. A product with a published price, an export
that works and no mandatory implementation partner is a product you can leave.
A platform suite that arrives with a quote, a partner and a two-year commitment may well be
the better software and is still the harder decision to reverse. We rank budgeting and planning software for the
buyer who has to live with that decision without a procurement department, which is a stated
bias rather than a hidden one.
We do not publish a score out of ten. A number like 8.4 is a judgement dressed as a
measurement, and nobody can check it.
What you can check is on this page: what each budgeting and planning tool costs, where the vendor is
established, whether the price is published, and what we think it is bad at. Our full method
is on the how we work page.
Enterprises planning supply chain or sales capacity at scale
Finance teams that only need a departmental budget
Country is where the vendor is headquartered or contracts from, which is a
different question from where your data is hosted. Where the two tell different stories, the
entry says so.
Planning engine that keeps Excel and Google Sheets as the front end
Ranked #1 of 12 in Best Budgeting Software in 2026.
Published pricingNorth America
Cube accepts that finance will keep working in a spreadsheet and fixes what actually breaks: where the actuals come from, which version is current, and who changed a number. Actuals refresh from the ledger, versions are kept centrally, and nobody learns a modelling language.
Implementation is weeks. Push it towards multi-entity consolidation or a large driver-based model and you will feel the ceiling, and the underlying spreadsheet discipline is still your own responsibility.
What stands out
Spreadsheet front end
Published pricing
Short implementation
Where it costs you
Heavy driver-based modelling hits limits
Still a spreadsheet, with the habits that brings
Right for
Finance teams wanting governance and refreshed actuals without abandoning Excel
Wrong for
Groups consolidating many entities with complex driver models
United StatesPer organisation per month by tier, published
Management reporting and simple forecasting on top of your ledger
Ranked #2 of 12 in Best Budgeting Software in 2026.
Published pricingAsia-Pacific
Fathom is reporting first and planning second, which matches what a company under a hundred people needs: actuals against last year, a few KPIs, a cash forecast and a document the board can read.
It installs against the ledger in an hour and accountants use it across dozens of clients. The budgeting side is a single owner filling in numbers. There is no departmental submission cycle, no approval chain and no serious driver modelling.
What stands out
Published pricing
Ledger-native
Accountant favourite
Where it costs you
Budget submission workflow is minimal
Consolidation across entities is limited
Right for
Small companies and their accountants needing a monthly board pack
Wrong for
Finance teams collecting budgets from many department heads
Cash flow forecasting fed straight from the ledger and bank
Ranked #3 of 12 in Best Budgeting Software in 2026.
Published pricingEurope
Float takes the bills and invoices already in your ledger, adds the bank balance, and shows when cash gets tight, with scenarios for the hire you are considering or the customer who pays late.
That is the question a growing company asks weekly, and the setup is same-day. It is not budgeting software. There is no departmental workflow, the profit and loss side is thin, and a group with several entities will outgrow it immediately.
What stands out
Cash flow only
Published pricing
Scenario planning
Where it costs you
Cash only, not profit and loss planning
No multi-entity consolidation
Right for
Owner-managed businesses that need to see the cash runway
Wrong for
Finance teams running an annual departmental budget round
United KingdomPer organisation per month by tier, published
Cash and liquidity planning across banks and legal entities
Ranked #4 of 12 in Best Budgeting Software in 2026.
Pricing on requestEurope
Agicap is treasury software wearing a planning label, and that is a compliment: it connects to European banks, aggregates balances across entities and builds a liquidity plan a CFO can defend.
Companies with cash spread over several banks get value on day one. Treat the budgeting features as secondary; a real departmental budget round is better run in Cube or Planful. Expect quoted pricing and an attentive sales team.
What stands out
Multi-bank
Multi-entity cash
EU vendor
Where it costs you
Profit and loss budgeting is weaker than the cash side
Quote-only, with a persistent sales process
Right for
Groups managing liquidity across several banks, currencies and legal entities
Wrong for
Single-entity companies with one bank account and simple cash
Multidimensional modelling that finance drives from a real Excel add-in
Ranked #5 of 12 in Best Budgeting Software in 2026.
Pricing on requestEurope
Jedox gives you a real multidimensional database with an Excel add-in over it, so a controller can slice cost centres, products and periods without waiting on IT. In the German mid-market it is the established answer and the partner network is dense.
The price of that power is the start: expect a partner for the first model, training for everyone else, and an interface built for people who use it daily rather than quarterly.
What stands out
OLAP model
Excel add-in
German vendor
Where it costs you
First build usually needs a partner
Interface expects trained users
Right for
German-speaking mid-market groups with dimension-heavy cost centre and product models
Connected planning across finance, sales and headcount in one model
Ranked #6 of 12 in Best Budgeting Software in 2026.
Pricing on requestEurope
Pigment is the European product to put against Anaplan, and it wins on speed of change: reshaping a model or running a new scenario takes hours rather than a partner engagement, and the output is presentable enough to go straight to a board.
It assumes a planning owner inside the company. Without one, models decay quietly and nobody notices until a forecast is wrong. Pricing starts where a dedicated FP&A function exists.
What stands out
Driver-based
Fast scenarios
French vendor
Where it costs you
Needs a dedicated model owner internally
Entry pricing rules out small companies
Right for
Scale-ups planning revenue, headcount and cost inside one connected model
Wrong for
Companies without someone to own the model full-time
Planning and analytics in one toolkit rather than two products
Ranked #7 of 12 in Best Budgeting Software in 2026.
Pricing on requestEurope
Board removes the usual split where the plan lives in one product and the reporting on it in another, which saves a class of reconciliation argument. Retail and manufacturing groups with volume-driven models use it well.
It is a toolkit, not an application: partners build the first version, and the second and third depend on whether anyone inside keeps ownership. Left alone it becomes a collection of dashboards whose numbers disagree.
What stands out
Planning plus BI
Toolkit approach
Swiss vendor
Where it costs you
Toolkit approach means someone must build it
Dashboards proliferate without governance
Right for
Retail and manufacturing groups wanting planning and analytics together
Group consolidation first, with planning built around it
Ranked #8 of 12 in Best Budgeting Software in 2026.
Pricing on requestEurope
Lucanet's centre of gravity is the statutory consolidation: intercompany elimination, currency translation and a group close that stands up to an auditor, delivered faster than the enterprise consolidation tools.
Planning attaches to that cleanly, which suits a group that budgets by entity. Bought purely as budgeting software it is neither the most flexible nor the cheapest option here, and the brand now covers several acquired products, so ask exactly which one your quote describes.
What stands out
IFRS and HGB
Consolidation
Mid-market groups
Where it costs you
Planning is secondary to consolidation
Several acquired products now share one brand
Right for
Mid-market groups consolidating several entities under IFRS or HGB rules
Wrong for
Single-entity companies that need only a departmental budget
Excel-native planning with a database and workflow behind it
Ranked #9 of 12 in Best Budgeting Software in 2026.
Pricing on requestNorth America
Vena puts a database, workflow and audit trail behind Excel, so budget templates stop circulating by email and submissions are tracked centrally. For a finance team that knows Excel deeply, adoption is the easy part and the migration is short.
The catch is philosophical: you keep spreadsheet logic, including the broken links and hidden assumptions, and simply govern it better. Pricing is quoted, with implementation as a separate line.
What stands out
Excel interface
Workflow control
Microsoft stack
Where it costs you
Models inherit spreadsheet fragility
Implementation charged on top of a quoted licence
Right for
Microsoft-centred finance teams unwilling to give up Excel as the interface
Wrong for
Companies trying to break the spreadsheet habit entirely
Structured budgeting, close and reporting for mid-market finance
Ranked #10 of 12 in Best Budgeting Software in 2026.
Pricing on requestNorth America
Planful is strongest at the administration of budgeting: pushing templates to department heads, tracking who has submitted, running approvals and reporting the result, with close and reconciliation support alongside.
That is most of the pain in a company with fifty cost centres. When the model itself needs rethinking, it is more rigid than Pigment or Jedox, and the commercial side is quoted with an owner whose horizon may be shorter than your contract.
What stands out
Budget workflow
Close support
Mid-market
Where it costs you
Less flexible than Pigment for model redesign
Private equity ownership over a multi-year contract
Right for
Mid-market finance teams running a budget round with many contributors
Planning suite with workforce data wired into the model
Ranked #11 of 12 in Best Budgeting Software in 2026.
Pricing on requestNorth America
The argument for Adaptive Planning is the data it already has: positions, salaries and hiring plans arrive from Workday rather than from an HR spreadsheet with last month's numbers.
For workforce-heavy planning in a Workday shop that is a real saving. Standalone, the case weakens. You pay enterprise prices, go through an enterprise sales cycle, and find the modelling less open than Pigment or Jedox once you leave the templates.
What stands out
Workforce planning
Suite integration
Enterprise sales
Where it costs you
Weaker case outside the Workday estate
Modelling feels constrained beyond standard templates
Right for
Workday customers planning headcount and financials in the same system
Wrong for
Companies running payroll and HR in another system
Enterprise planning platform with its own modelling language
Ranked #12 of 12 in Best Budgeting Software in 2026.
Pricing on requestNorth America
Anaplan exists for planning problems that break everything else: supply chain, territory and quota, large workforce models with real dependencies. It scales, and the modelling language is expressive once someone knows it.
That knowledge is the issue. Most implementations run on certified modellers from a partner, capacity pricing rises with model size, and years of logic end up in a proprietary format that takes a project to leave.
What stands out
Very large models
Certified modellers
Partner-led
Where it costs you
Depends on certified modellers, usually from a partner
Workspace capacity pricing grows with the model
Right for
Enterprises planning supply chain or sales capacity at scale
Wrong for
Finance teams that only need a departmental budget
United StatesQuoted, by workspace capacity and users
Budgeting and planning software collects departmental budgets, models revenue and cost drivers, compares plan against actuals from the ledger and produces forecasts and scenarios. The differences that matter are rarely in the feature list, so this is
the order we would work through them.
01
Decide whether you need a published price
3 of the 12 tools here publish what they cost; the other 9 quote per organisation, which means a sales conversation before you can compare anything. If you are buying without a procurement function, start with the ones that publish: Cube, Fathom, Float.
02
Work out what the first ninety days cost in time
Licence cost is the number in the contract; setup effort is the number that surprises people. Ask every shortlisted vendor who does the configuration, how long it took the last customer of your size, and what happens if that person leaves halfway.
03
Check the exit before the entry
Ask for an export of your own data in a format you can open, and ask whether it is included or billed as a project. A vendor that hesitates here is telling you what renewal negotiations will feel like in three years.
04
Match the tool to the size you are, not the size you plan to be
Most regret in this category comes from buying for a headcount that never arrived. The entry-level products here are not worse; they are aimed at a different company.
05
Decide how much the jurisdiction matters
These 12 vendors are established in 7 countries across 3 regions (Europe 6, North America 5, Asia-Pacific 1). Where a vendor is established decides which government can compel access to what it holds, which is a different question from where the servers are. For most buyers that is a factor, not a veto.
Decide whether you are buying a spreadsheet fix or a model
Two shapes of product hide behind the same search term. One keeps the spreadsheet and fixes what breaks around it: Cube and Vena both put a governed database, refreshed actuals and version control behind Excel, and a finance team is productive in weeks. The other asks you to rebuild your logic in the vendor's modelling engine.
Pigment, Jedox, Board and Anaplan sit here, and the payoff is a model that survives a reorganisation instead of collapsing when a row is inserted. The second is better software and a bigger commitment. If nobody in your team will own that model full-time, the first is the honest choice.
Ask who will own the model after go-live, by name, before choosing.
Count how many people need to enter numbers, not how many read reports.
If your logic changes shape every quarter, favour flexibility over structure.
The licence is rarely the largest number
Quoted planning software usually arrives with an implementation partner attached, and in this category the first-year services bill often matches or beats the licence. Jedox, Board and Anaplan are normally delivered that way, and Planful and Workday Adaptive Planning charge implementation separately.
That is not automatically bad: an experienced partner builds a better model than a first-timer. It is only bad when nobody priced it. Ask for the services estimate in the same document as the licence, ask how many days of change requests a typical customer buys in year two, and ask what happens to the model when the consultant who built it moves on.
Insist on licence and implementation in one written total for year one.
Ask for two references who implemented in the last year, and call them.
Budget for change requests in year two; the first model is never the last.
Actuals decide whether anyone trusts the forecast
A budget only becomes useful when it sits next to real numbers, so the integration to your ledger matters more than the modelling features. Fathom and Float read Xero, QuickBooks and Sage directly and are useful the same day.
At the other end, a group with several ledgers and a consolidation step in between finds that actuals arrive late, mapped by hand, and the variance report is a month behind the meeting. Lucanet and Agicap are built around that plumbing. Ask exactly how account mappings are maintained, who maintains them, and what happens when the chart of accounts changes mid-year.
Connect the tool to your real ledger during the trial, not a demo dataset.
Ask how a new cost centre added in March reaches the model.
Check whether prior-year actuals can be loaded without a services engagement.
Test the exit, because the model is the asset
Three years of planning logic is worth more than the data in it, and that logic is the least portable thing you will ever buy. A spreadsheet-based product has a natural exit: the workbook still opens. Anaplan, Pigment and Board hold their logic in proprietary formats, so leaving means rebuilding the model somewhere else, which is a project with a budget rather than an export.
Ask what actually comes out: numbers by version, yes, but also formulas, hierarchies and the mapping tables. Then ask how long the vendor keeps your data after termination, and whether the export is included or quoted.
Request a full export during the trial and check whether formulas survive it.
Confirm every version and scenario exports, not just the current plan.
Get the post-termination data retention period written into the contract.
What goes wrong most often when buying budgeting and planning software
Buying the platform the CFO saw at a conference. The demo model was built by specialists over weeks; yours starts as an empty workspace.
Ignoring who enters the numbers. Department heads who find the tool awkward will send a spreadsheet instead, and the budget round takes as long as before.
Treating cash forecasting and profit budgeting as the same purchase. Float and Agicap answer a different question than Planful or Pigment do.
Signing a multi-year contract before loading real actuals. Integration to the ledger is where these projects slip, and a demo dataset never shows it.
07
Frequently asked questions
9 answers
What is the best budgeting and planning in 2026?
Cube leads our ranking of 12. Keeps the spreadsheet your team already knows and puts a governed data layer behind it, so actuals refresh and versions are controlled without teaching anyone a new modelling language.
Weeks, not quarters, to go live. The trade is depth: heavy driver-based models, workforce planning at scale and consolidation of many entities are better served by Jedox or Pigment.
How did you rank these budgeting and planning tools?
On what separates products after the demo: how much setup the first ninety days take, what the price becomes once the modules a normal buyer needs are added, how your data comes back out, whether you can buy and leave it without a partner engagement, and who the product is genuinely for.
That fourth test is why the large platform suites usually sit lower here than their market share would suggest. Not on feature counts, and not on a score we invented.
Which budgeting and planning tools publish their pricing?
3 of the 12, with the pricing model each one publishes:
Cube: Per organisation per month by tier, published.
Fathom: Per company per month by tier, published.
Float: Per organisation per month by tier, published.
The other 9 quote per organisation.
Is there a free budgeting and planning tool?
None of the tools here offer a usable free tier, which is itself a signal about who this category is sold to.
Where are these budgeting and planning vendors established?
In 7 countries across 3 regions: Europe 6, North America 5, Asia-Pacific 1.
Cube is established in the United States.
Fathom is established in Australia.
Float is established in the United Kingdom.
Agicap is established in France.
Jedox is established in Germany.
Pigment is established in France.
Board is established in Switzerland.
Lucanet is established in Germany.
Vena is established in Canada.
Planful is established in the United States.
Workday Adaptive Planning is established in the United States.
Anaplan is established in the United States.
Establishment decides whose courts and whose disclosure laws apply, which is a separate question from where the data is hosted.
What should you use instead of Cube?
Fathom and Float are the next two on this page. Fathom is for small companies and their accountants needing a monthly board pack; Float is for Owner-managed businesses that need to see the cash runway.
All 12 are ranked here with what each one is bad at.
Who should not buy Cube?
Groups consolidating many entities with complex driver models. Heavy driver-based modelling hits limits.
Do you get paid for these rankings?
Vendors can pay for visibility, which affects where and how prominently a product appears. It does not change a word of what the entry says about that product, including the criticism, and it cannot buy inclusion for something that does not belong in the category.
We take no commission when you click through to a vendor and we do not know whether you bought anything. The full arrangement is on our disclosure page.
How often is this budgeting and planning guide updated?
Whenever the facts move: a price change, an acquisition, a product that stops being maintained. The published and updated dates at the top of the page are real, and a review means someone went back to the vendor documentation rather than bumping a date.
These 12 products are the ones we judged worth ranking in budgeting and planning. If yours belongs here and is missing, tell us what it does and who it is for, and we will look at it. Inclusion is an editorial call and it is not for sale — but nobody gets considered for a list they were never put in front of.
People land on this page with a shortlist to make, not a browsing habit to feed. That is a narrower audience than a banner reaches and a far more decided one.
Written by us, about you
We describe the product in our own words, say who it suits and say who it does not. A vendor never writes the entry and never sees it before it goes up.
A correction costs nothing
If a fact about your product is wrong here, tell us and we fix it, whether or not there is any money between us. That offer is older than any commercial arrangement on this site.
Placement is separate, and disclosed
Where a product sits in the ranking can be paid for, and the notice above the list says so on every page. What the entry says about the product is not for sale at any price.
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