Eqvista Alternative: Why the Free Tier Gets Expensive, and What It Never Covers Outside the US

Eqvista is a legitimate, low-cost cap table and 409A tool built for US companies — free up to 20 shareholders, then $2 per shareholder per month. The catch for most non-US founders isn't the price on day one; it's that the bill grows in lockstep with the exact things a growing company does — issuing ESOP, adding SAFE holders, bringing on advisors — while the product itself has no answer for general assembly governance, jurisdiction-aware legal documents, or a fundraising pipeline. If your company sits outside the US, or your stakeholder count is about to move past "founders and a couple of investors," that's the gap worth checking before you commit.

Most "Eqvista alternative" searches surface the same feature-grid comparisons — Carta, Pulley, Ledgy, Qapita, all measured against Eqvista on price and shareholder caps. None of them ask the question that actually matters for a founder outside the US: does the tool assume Delaware and 409A, or does it work for the company law you're actually operating under. That's the gap this piece covers.

What Eqvista actually does well

Eqvista's core pitch is real: cap table management, vesting and options tracking, and 409A valuations bundled into one low-cost product, with a free tier that genuinely works for a small company. G2 and Capterra reviewers consistently rate it well on ease of use and support responsiveness, and at $990 a year for unlimited 409A valuation updates, it's a fraction of what a standalone valuation firm charges. For a US-incorporated startup with a straightforward option pool and no governance complexity beyond board consent, Eqvista does the job it says it does, at a price that's hard to beat.

The Premium plan adds e-signature, board resolutions, 83(b) election tracking, ASC 718 compliance, waterfall modeling, and spreadsheet import — a reasonable feature set for a company whose entire compliance calendar runs on US securities law. None of that is a knock on Eqvista. It's a knock on treating it as a global default when its entire pricing and feature model is built around one country's tax code.

Where it breaks

Per-shareholder pricing punishes exactly the growth you want. The Freemium plan covers 20 shareholders. That sounds generous until you count what actually lands on a cap table: co-founders, the first angel round, a SAFE or two, then an ESOP pool granting to five or six early employees. Most Seed-stage companies blow past 20 stakeholders before their first priced round — and every grantee added after that makes the software more expensive, not just the payroll. A tool that gets pricier every time you do the thing it's supposed to help you do has its incentives backwards.

409A doesn't exist outside the US. 409A is a US Internal Revenue Code section governing how private companies price employee stock options to avoid tax penalties for US taxpayers. If your ESOP grantees are employees in Riyadh, Lagos, or Jakarta, the valuation product Eqvista prices at $990/year as a headline feature is solving a compliance problem that doesn't apply to your company. Meanwhile the problem you do have — a jurisdiction-appropriate grant agreement your local lawyer will actually accept — isn't addressed by a 409A report.

No general assembly governance. Saudi Arabia's Companies Law requires convening a general assembly — quorum-checked, shareholding-weighted voting, formally minuted — for material shareholder decisions like capital changes or board appointments. That's how KSA company law works, not an optional best practice. Eqvista's public feature list covers board resolutions, which map to US board-consent norms, with no mention of assemblies, quorum, or shareholder voting. If your operating entity runs under law that requires assembly-based governance, that obligation lives entirely outside the tool.

The data room is storage, not a pipeline. Eqvista's Premium plan includes a secure data room for documents — that solves "where do I put files for investors to see." It doesn't solve "which of fourteen funds are soft-circled, at what stage, and what does the raise look like if half convert." A fundraising CRM is a different product, and nothing in Eqvista's public materials describes one. Most founders end up running that in a spreadsheet regardless of which cap table tool they picked.

No jurisdiction coverage beyond the US. Eqvista's legal document generation — 83(b) elections, board resolutions, standard grant agreements — is built for US filings, with no published mention of KSA, UAE, or other non-US jurisdiction-specific templates. A founder's agreement or ESOP grant that's valid boilerplate in Delaware isn't automatically valid, or even relevant, under Saudi or UAE commercial law.

Eqvista vs Govy, side by side

What to check before you switch anything

Skip the price-per-shareholder spreadsheet and ask these instead:

1. Does the price grow with your stakeholder count, or stay flat? Per-seat pricing looks cheap at 10 shareholders and expensive at 60 — model your bill a year out, not today.
2. Is 409A actually relevant to your company? If your grantees aren't US taxpayers, a bundled 409A product is a feature you're paying for and not using.
3. Does your jurisdiction require assembly-based governance? If material shareholder decisions legally require a convened, quorum-checked, minuted assembly — as in Saudi Arabia — check whether that's a built-in workflow or something you're tracking in a separate document.
4. Is the data room a pipeline, or just storage? Ask specifically whether the tool tracks investor stage, soft-circled amounts, and forecast — not just "can I upload a PDF."
5. Are the legal documents jurisdiction-specific? A board resolution template built for Delaware doesn't answer a question governed by UAE free-zone rules or Saudi commercial law.

Where Govy fits — and where it honestly doesn't

Govy runs cap table, multi-instrument ESOP (stock options, RSUs, SARs, phantom shares), treasury, fundraising CRM, a Google Drive-connected investor data room, board and general assembly governance, and e-signature in one login, at a flat monthly price that doesn't change as your stakeholder list grows. Legal template packs ship for KSA, UAE, US-Delaware, and the UK, and the product runs in 8 languages including full Arabic and Urdu RTL. For a founder watching an Eqvista bill climb every time they grant equity, that's a structurally different pricing model, not just a cheaper one. Our piece on cap table spreadsheet errors covers what usually pushes a founder off a spreadsheet and into evaluating tools like this in the first place.

To be direct about the boundary: Govy doesn't do 409A valuations, US secondary transactions, or fund administration — if a formal 409A report is a real requirement for your company, that's still a separate engagement no matter which cap table tool you use. Govy also has no Nafath/Absher identity verification and no Saudi government registry integration (MCI, Tadawul/Edaa) yet. Our guide to cap table software for MENA startups goes deeper on the general assembly requirement specifically, including what "quorum-checked" actually means in practice.

The honest shortlist

If your company is US-incorporated, your option pool is small and likely to stay that way, and you need a real 409A report at a low price, Eqvista is a genuinely good, well-reviewed tool and this isn't an argument against it. If you're outside the US, your stakeholder count is heading past 20 as you raise and grant equity, or your company law requires general assembly governance that a US-built board-resolution workflow doesn't touch, that's the gap Eqvista's public product doesn't cover — and the one a flat-priced, jurisdiction-aware alternative is built to close.

See how the cap table, governance, and fundraising pieces fit together in one ledger at govy.tech.

FAQ

Is Eqvista free?

Eqvista's Freemium plan is free up to 20 shareholders, after which the Premium plan bills $2 per shareholder per month. That per-shareholder pricing is transparent, but it means the bill grows every time you add an investor, an advisor, or an ESOP grantee — the exact moment your cap table gets more complex is the moment the tool gets more expensive.

Does Eqvista support Saudi Arabia or UAE company law?

Eqvista's public feature set is built around US concepts — 409A valuations, 83(b) elections, ASC 718 compliance — with no published mention of general assembly governance, quorum computation, or shareholding-weighted voting. If your operating entity is in Saudi Arabia or the UAE, where general assemblies are a legal requirement for material shareholder decisions, that obligation sits outside anything Eqvista's product pages describe.

What happens to my Eqvista bill as my company grows?

It rises directly with headcount on the cap table. Every option grantee, every SAFE holder, every advisor with equity counts as a shareholder under the Premium plan's per-seat pricing. A company that goes from 20 to 60 stakeholders after a seed round and a first ESOP tranche can see its bill roughly triple in the same stretch of time its admin burden triples too.

Does Eqvista include a fundraising CRM or investor data room?

Eqvista includes a secure data room for document storage, and its 409A valuation service supports fundraising-adjacent compliance. Public materials don't describe a fundraising pipeline — stage tracking, soft-circled amounts, one-click SAFE conversion, or a forecast view — as a distinct feature, so most founders end up running investor outreach in a separate spreadsheet or CRM regardless.

What's the best Eqvista alternative for a startup outside the US?

It depends on what's actually missing. If the gap is 409A valuations or US secondary compliance, Eqvista or a dedicated 409A provider is still the right call. If the gap is general assembly governance, jurisdiction-aware legal documents outside the US, a flat price that doesn't scale with stakeholder count, and a fundraising CRM in the same login as the cap table, that's the gap Govy is built to close.