Pulley Alternative: Free Cap Table Tools Compared

Searching for a pulley alternative usually means one of two things. Either the price of a full cap table platform feels premature for where the company is today, or you just need to run some numbers before committing to anything. Pulley is a well-regarded, venture-backed platform built for the first job — ongoing equity administration. It isn't built for the second.

This review looks at what Pulley does well, where its weight is more than an early-stage company needs, and how Foundily's free calculators fit the gap in between — including a worked example of modelling a SAFE round before any platform decision gets made.

What Pulley does well

Pulley is a genuine equity management platform, not a spreadsheet with a coat of paint. It handles cap table administration, 409A valuations, share issuance, and investor-facing reporting, and it's used by a real base of venture-backed companies as their system of record. If your company already has multiple share classes, active vesting schedules, and investors who expect a clean data room, that's exactly the job Pulley is built for. Standard-form financing documents published by the NVCA are a useful reference for the priced-round side of that work. Pulley competes directly with Carta, and founders comparing the two are usually choosing between two capable options rather than a good one and a bad one.

The trade-off is scope and cost. Pulley's pricing is quote-based and scales with company stage — there's no published flat rate, and getting a number typically means a sales conversation. That's normal for platform software aimed at companies with real cap tables to manage, but it's a mismatch for a founder who hasn't issued a single share yet and just wants to know what a round would do to their ownership.

Where a free alternative makes more sense

Foundily isn't a competitor to Pulley in the strict sense — it's a different category of tool. It's a free set of calculators for modelling SAFEs, dilution, option pools, and exit waterfalls, plus a metered API and MCP server so agents and internal tools can pull the same maths programmatically. There's no account needed to run a calculation, and nothing gets recorded as a system of truth. That's deliberate: Foundily is for the thinking stage, not the record-keeping stage.

This matters because a lot of the work founders associate with 'cap table software' is actually scenario modelling — what does a $500,000 SAFE cost me in ownership, how much does a 10% option pool dilute existing holders, what happens at exit if the preferred stock has a 1x participating preference. None of that requires a platform of record. It requires a calculator that gets the maths right, which is where a free cap table software tool like Foundily earns its place before any paid platform enters the conversation.

Who Pulley actually suits

Pulley makes the most sense once a company has something real to administer — employees holding vested and unvested options, a board that expects clean reporting, and a 409A valuation that needs to stay current so option strike prices hold up. At that point, tracking equity in a spreadsheet or a free calculator becomes a liability rather than a convenience, because certificates, vesting cliffs, and compliance dates all need to stay in sync without anyone remembering to update them by hand.

• You've closed at least one priced round or have several converted SAFEs on the table.
• You're issuing option grants to employees and need a 409A valuation to set defensible strike prices.
• Your board or investors expect regular, accurate cap table reporting without a manual rebuild each time.
• You need an audit trail for every grant, transfer, and cancellation, not just a current snapshot.

Who a free alternative suits instead

The opposite profile is just as common, especially among founders who land on a pulley alternative search in the first place. Nothing has been issued yet. The company is deciding between SAFE terms, sketching out how much an option pool should be before a raise, or an internal tool needs live equity maths without a human opening a dashboard. None of that needs a system of record — it needs a calculator that's accurate and doesn't ask for a credit card first.

• You haven't issued any shares, options, or SAFEs yet — everything is still a hypothetical scenario.
• You're comparing SAFE terms from two investors and need to see the ownership impact side by side.
• You want the maths available through an API so an internal tool, agent, or script can call it directly.
• You're deciding whether a platform is worth paying for at all, and want to test the numbers first.

A worked example: modelling a SAFE before you commit to a platform

Say a company has 8,000,000 founder shares outstanding and no option pool yet. A new investor offers $500,000 on a post-money SAFE with a $5,000,000 valuation cap and no discount. Before signing anything, the founders want to know exactly what that costs them in ownership — the kind of question a free SAFE calculator answers in seconds.

That's the entire decision in six lines, and it's exactly the sort of check worth running before a term sheet gets signed, not after. Doing this inside a free calculator costs nothing and takes a minute. Doing the equivalent inside a paid platform means either exploring it before subscribing — usually with limited access — or paying first and modelling second, which is the wrong order for a decision that hasn't been made yet. For the underlying mechanics, how a post-money SAFE actually converts covers the conversion maths in more depth.

Pulley, Carta, and where Foundily sits between them

A pulley vs carta comparison is really a choice between two similar platforms — both are equity management platforms with overlapping feature sets, and the right pick depends on pricing, support quality, and which one your investors or lawyers already use. Foundily isn't a third option in that same category. It's a layer underneath both: the free modelling and calculation work that happens before a company is ready to choose, or pay for, a platform of record at all. Our Pulley vs Carta comparison goes deeper on picking between the paid platforms once you're at that stage.

When a free calculator stops being enough

Free modelling has a natural ceiling. The moment a SAFE actually closes, an 83(b) election gets filed, or the first employee option grant goes out, the company needs a system of record — something that tracks certificates, vesting dates, and compliance obligations over time, not just a snapshot calculation. Reference material from the IRS on equity compensation and election deadlines is a useful reminder that some of this carries real legal consequences, not just spreadsheet risk. That's the point where a platform like Pulley starts earning its cost, and where a free calculator — however accurate — isn't the right tool for the job anymore.

Until that point, though, paying for a full equity management platform is often solving a problem the company doesn't have yet. Early-stage guidance from Y Combinator consistently pushes founders toward simplicity before their first priced round, and cap table complexity is a good example of something worth deferring until it's actually earned. Understanding the mechanics first — what dilution actually does to ownership, how a cap table is structured — makes the eventual platform choice better informed too.

The verdict

Pulley is a solid, well-built platform for companies that need real cap table administration — it's not the review's job to argue otherwise, and founders already issuing shares and running 409As will likely find it does that job well. But 'pulley alternative' searches often come from founders who aren't at that stage yet, and for them, a quote-based platform is the wrong first purchase. Foundily fills that earlier gap: free, no-account scenario modelling for SAFEs, dilution, option pools, and exit waterfalls, plus an API for teams that want the same maths available to their own tools and agents.

Model your next round for free in the cap table calculator, and see pricing if you later need the API at scale — no commitment required to start.