Pigment vs Planful: a trial against plan plus close from one vendor

The scope difference is clean and settles most of this comparison. Planful combines planning with Close, Consolidation and Reporting products and also covers sales, marketing, HR, IT and operations planning. Pigment's listed scope is planning plus consolidation, and close management is not part of it. If your month end is the painful part, that is the whole answer.

Where Pigment pulls ahead is evaluation and adoption. It publishes a 14-day trial in a private workspace with weekly office hours, and it is built so business partners outside finance work in the plan through custom Frames screens. Planful lists no trial, which means the decision is made on demos and references no matter how carefully you run them.

Pigment is cloud planning software: FP&A, consolidation, revenue, headcount, sales and supply chain planning in one model, with AI agents and custom Frames screens. Planful is financial planning and close software: budgeting and forecasting plus Close, Consolidation and Reporting products, and planning for sales, marketing, HR, IT and operations. That overlap is real, which is why the two end up on the same shortlist, but the design assumptions underneath differ.

Keep Pigment on the list if this is you: fast-growing companies where sales and HR plan in the same model as finance. Drop it if this is closer: a team that wants to keep Excel as the front end. The limitation worth naming up front is that it is not Excel-based, so a spreadsheet-heavy team faces more change, and close management is not in its listed scope.

Keep Planful on the list if this is you: mid-market finance teams running planning and a moderate consolidation with one small team. Drop it if this is closer: a many-entity consolidation across several ERPs. Its own limitation is that the close products cost extra and there is no trial, so scoping takes a sales cycle.

Both vendors now ship AI that touches the same work, and both leave the detail to the quote. Planful lists AI Analyst and Planner features and an MCP server that lets users query Planful data in Claude under the same dimension security as the application. Pigment lists Modeler and Analyst agents. Ask each one, in writing, which agents the subscription includes.

The table below carries the facts you can check without a sales call: pricing model, deployment, platform support and trial access. Read it before the demos, then use the sections underneath for the parts that depend on your own environment.

Trial access is the row that separates these two. Pricing does not: both are quote-based, so no table on this page or anywhere else can rank them on cost.

Neither vendor publishes a price, so the only honest comparison is of what drives each quote. There are no dollar figures to put side by side below, and that is the finding rather than a gap in the research: both vendors' own pages were read on 25 September 2026 and neither carries a price.

Pigment publishes no prices and pigment.com/pricing returns a 404, so paid plans are quoted through its contact form. Trial: A 14-day free trial in a private workspace, with weekly office hours.

Planful publishes no prices and planful.com/pricing returns a 404, so Planning, Close, Consolidation and Reporting are each quoted separately. Trial: No free trial is listed.

Planful's packaging is the thing to price carefully. Close, Consolidation and Reporting are separate products on top of Planning, so a full-scope quote adds up product by product. If you only need one of them, price that product alone before you compare, because the suite number and the single-product number are far apart.

Pigment is quoted on the planning use cases and users you license, with the AI agent question open. The practical move is the same for both: get first-year and second-year totals in writing at the scope you expect to reach, and model the difference yourself with the finance consolidation ROI calculator if consolidation is in scope.

What moves the Pigment number: the planning use cases and users you license, plus which AI agents are included, which has to be confirmed in the quote. For Planful: Close, Consolidation and Reporting are separate products on top of Planning, so a full scope quote adds up product by product. Ask both vendors to put the first-year total in writing, license plus services plus any module you would need in year two, and model it yourself with the forecasting software ROI calculator before the renewal conversation rather than after it.

Rollout on Pigment: model design still needs a trained owner, even with the Modeler and Analyst agents. On Planful: entities, departments and reports can be added without rebuilding the model, which is Planful's own claim and worth testing in the demo. That is the difference that shows up in the project plan rather than in the demo.

Planful's rollout claim is that entities, departments and reports can be added without rebuilding the model, which is a meaningful promise for a growing group and worth asking it to demonstrate on a real multi-entity example. Pigment's rollout story starts with the trial, which gives you evidence Planful cannot offer.

Neither removes the need for a model owner. Pigment says as much itself: model design still needs a trained owner even with its agents. If no one will own it, a tool with more prebuilt structure, such as Workday Adaptive Planning, is the safer purchase, and its 30-day trial is covered on the Pigment and Adaptive Planning comparison.

Plan the first close or first cycle after go-live before you sign. Write down who owns configuration changes, who answers an auditor's question about the records, and what happens to your data if you leave. Starting from an annual budget template makes those answers concrete instead of aspirational.