Free Cap Table Template: 5 No-Cost Tools That Replace a $14,500 Carta Bill

Pulley, Carta Launch, and Eqvista all give you a $0 cap table tool if you're under roughly 20-25 stakeholders. That's the short answer. The longer answer is that the free tier disappears fast, and picking the wrong one now means a messy migration later.

I've watched founders burn a Friday afternoon rebuilding a cap table in Excel because their free tool hit a stakeholder wall mid-raise. A free cap table tool in 2026 isn't a nice-to-have — Carta's median customer now pays around $14,500 a year, with some bills running past $77,000, and roughly 40% of startups surveyed say they're actively planning to switch providers to cut that cost. Below are the five real free options, ranked, plus exactly where each one's free tier ends.

What Is the Best Free Cap Table Tool for Early-Stage Founders?

Pulley is the best free cap table tool for most early-stage founders in 2026 — it's free for up to 25 stakeholders, includes SAFE and equity plan modeling out of the box, and has no time limit tied to the free tier. Carta Launch is the closest competitor, free for under 25 stakeholders or startups that haven't raised past $1M, but it converts to a paid plan the moment either threshold is crossed. Eqvista rounds out the top three with a free tier for under 20 stakeholders.

Figures are 2026 pricing pulled directly from Carta, Pulley, Eqvista, Foresight, and Capboard pricing pages, checked July 2026. AngelList Stack stopped onboarding new standalone cap-table customers in August 2026 while rebuilding around SPV infrastructure.

The 5 Best Free Cap Table Templates and Tools, Ranked

Free Cap Table Tool vs. Paying for Carta: What Actually Changes

The honest case for a free cap table tool isn't just cost — it's that most pre-seed and seed startups don't yet have the complexity that justifies Carta's compliance stack. You don't need ASC 820-grade 409A valuation workflows with three stakeholders and a SAFE. You do need one once you're granting options to a fifth hire and prepping for a priced round. That transition point, not an arbitrary calendar date, is when the free tier should end for you.

Carta's pricing has moved aggressively toward the enterprise end in 2026 — $149-599 a month depending on which compliance and reporting features you need — and multiple founders have reported renewal quotes running 3-5x their original contract. That's the gap the free tools above are built to fill, at least until a company outgrows them. For a deeper walkthrough of how ownership tracking actually works across rounds, our cap table guide covers the mechanics free tools handle automatically.