Cap table management is a category where the dominant incumbent — Carta — went through a public trust crisis in early 2024 over the use of customer data for its secondary-market business. The fallout reshuffled the competitive landscape: Pulley accelerated, AngelList Stack picked up share at the seed stage, and Shareworks (Morgan Stanley at Work) consolidated late-stage and public-company equity admin.
This review compares the leading platforms across pricing, 409A capabilities, equity admin features, and the institutional trust environment in 2026.
In This Article:
Snapshot
Still the broadest platform — cap table, 409A, fund admin, ESOP. Customer trust has partially recovered but procurement scrutiny remains elevated.
Best for: Late-stage with fund admin needs
The clearest Carta alternative for seed–Series B. Better pricing, narrower scope, strong cap table modeling.
Best for: Seed to Series B
Morgan Stanley at Work's equity admin platform; dominant at late-stage private and public companies. Strong integration with MS retail brokerage.
Best for: Late-stage private & public
Bundle of cap table + banking + incorporation for early-stage startups. Free at smaller sizes.
Best for: Pre-seed to seed
EU-leading cap table and equity admin platform; strong multi-jurisdictional support across European employee stock plans.
Best for: EU-headquartered companies
Key Findings
- Post-Carta-controversy, many institutional investors now ask for explicit data-use representations in cap table vendor procurement.
- Pulley and AngelList Stack have meaningfully eroded Carta's seed-to-Series-B share through pricing and trust positioning.
- Shareworks remains entrenched at the late-stage and public-company end — Carta has struggled to displace it.
- Equity admin (RSUs, ISO/NSO exercises, ESPPs) is the highest-friction layer; switching vendors mid-program is operationally painful.
Carta
Carta remains the broadest single platform — cap table, 409A valuations, equity admin, fund administration, and secondary-market tools. The 2024 controversy around the use of customer data in its secondary business prompted commitments to firewall changes and customer opt-outs, and Carta's public posture has shifted materially. For many late-stage companies the integration breadth still wins on procurement, but the conversation now includes data-use representations that were not standard before 2024.
Pulley
Pulley positioned itself as the trusted, narrowly-scoped alternative for seed-through-Series-B companies. The cap-table modeling and waterfall tools are arguably better than Carta's; pricing is lower; the product avoids the multi-business conflicts that drew attention to Carta. Pulley's growth has been the most visible competitive story in the segment.
AngelList Stack
AngelList Stack bundles cap table, banking, and incorporation for early-stage startups; the seed-stage form is free or near-free, which has made it the default first-stop for many founders. The platform's strength is the seamless bundling rather than depth of cap-table-specific features.
Ledgy
Ledgy is the leading EU cap-table and equity-admin platform, with strong support for the multi-jurisdictional employee stock plans common at European tech companies. For companies with significant EU employee headcount, Ledgy outperforms U.S.-centric platforms on local plan compliance.
How to Choose
- Pre-seed to seed: AngelList Stack — bundled, low-friction.
- Seed to Series B: Pulley — strongest cap-table modeling, transparent data practices.
- Late-stage approaching IPO: Shareworks — best employee experience and brokerage integration.
- Multi-business needs (cap table + fund admin): Carta — but procurement should include explicit data-use representations.
- EU headcount-heavy: Ledgy.
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