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.
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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.
In this order: setup effort, what it really costs, how your data comes back out, whether
you can leave, and who each budgeting and planning tool is built for. Why those five, and why there is no
score out of ten, 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.
Management reporting and simple forecasting on top of your ledger
Ranked #1 of 13 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, accountants use it across dozens of clients, and consolidated groups, including multi-currency, are part of the Pro plan. 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
No complex driver modelling
Right for
Small companies and their accountants needing a monthly board pack
Wrong for
Finance teams collecting budgets from many department heads
Planning engine that keeps Excel and Google Sheets as the front end
Ranked #2 of 13 in Best Budgeting Software in 2026.
Pricing on requestNorth 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
Quoted
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 StatesQuoted per organisation, three tiers (Bronze, Silver, Gold)
Cash flow forecasting fed straight from the ledger and bank
Ranked #3 of 13 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 consolidating several entities means the Scale plan with a monthly charge per extra entity.
What stands out
Cash flow only
Published pricing
Scenario planning
Where it costs you
Cash only, not profit and loss planning
Multi-entity consolidation only on the top Scale plan
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 13 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 13 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 13 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 13 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
Budgeting, consolidation and reporting for mid-sized finance teams
Ranked #8 of 13 in Best Budgeting Software in 2026.
Pricing on requestNorth America
Prophix makes most sense where planning and consolidation are the same people's problem: a group with several entities that closes the month and budgets the next year with a small team.
It is a defined product rather than a blank modelling canvas, which shortens setup compared with Anaplan. The price is quoted, services are normally part of the first project, and exports of the model logic should be checked before signing.
What stands out
Consolidation
Mid-market
Quoted
Where it costs you
The first model usually needs vendor services or a partner
Consolidation is part of what you pay for, used or not
Right for
Mid-sized finance teams needing budgets and group consolidation in one system
Wrong for
Small companies that only need a departmental budget
Group consolidation first, with planning built around it
Ranked #9 of 13 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 #10 of 13 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 #11 of 13 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 #12 of 13 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 #13 of 13 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
2 of the 13 tools here publish what they cost; the other 11 quote per organisation. The ones you can compare without a sales call: Fathom, Float.
02
Decide how much the jurisdiction matters
These 13 vendors are established in 7 countries across 3 regions (North America 6, Europe 6, Asia-Pacific 1). That decides whose disclosure law applies to what the vendor holds, wherever the servers are.
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 reads Xero, QuickBooks and Sage directly, Float reads Xero and QuickBooks Online, and both 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
6 answers
What is the best budgeting and planning in 2026?
Fathom leads our ranking of 13. Connects to Xero, QuickBooks, MYOB or Sage and produces the board pack, the KPI set and a three-way forecast without a modelling project, which is why accounting firms run client reporting on it.
Now part of The Access Group. Multi-currency consolidation of groups is included, but budgeting is deliberately simple: no multi-user workflow for departmental submissions and no complex drivers.
Which budgeting and planning tools publish their pricing?
2 of the 13, with the pricing model each one publishes:
Fathom: Per company per month by tier, published.
Float: Per organisation per month by tier, published.
The other 11 quote per organisation.
Is there a free budgeting and planning tool?
No. None of the 13 offer a usable free tier.
Where are these budgeting and planning vendors established?
In 7 countries across 3 regions: North America 6, Europe 6, Asia-Pacific 1.
Fathom: Australia.
Cube: United States.
Float: United Kingdom.
Agicap: France.
Jedox: Germany.
Pigment: France.
Board: Switzerland.
Prophix: Canada.
Lucanet: Germany.
Vena: Canada.
Planful: United States.
Workday Adaptive Planning: United States.
Anaplan: United States.
What should you use instead of Fathom?
Cube and Float are the next two on this page. Cube is for Finance teams wanting governance and refreshed actuals without abandoning Excel; Float is for Owner-managed businesses that need to see the cash runway.
Who should not buy Fathom?
Finance teams collecting budgets from many department heads. Budget submission workflow is minimal.
If your budgeting and planning product belongs among these 13, tell us what it does and who it is for. Inclusion is an editorial call; what a listing is and is not is set out under software advice.
