Vena vs Pigment: Excel, modeling, scope and pricing compared
Vena keeps Excel as the planning interface and puts a governed database, workflow and audit trail behind it. Pigment moves the model into its own engine and web app, and treats Excel as one connected endpoint.
Key Takeaways
- Excel decides most evaluations. Vena plans in Excel templates, while Pigment models in its own app and connects Excel through an add-in.
- Scope splits two ways. Pigment plans across sales, workforce and supply chain. Vena covers close and account reconciliation, which Pigment doesn't.
- Pigment publishes more security evidence, including ISO 27001 and a pen-test summary in a self-service trust center. Vena's Deloitte-audited SOC reports come on request.
- Neither publishes pricing. Vendr medians put Vena at about $34,000 a year and Pigment at about $74,000.
Why Vena vs Pigment is a hard call
On a checklist, these two converge. Both advertise budgeting, forecasting, scenarios, reporting, workflow and AI. Both connect to the same ERPs and sell to the same job title.
In a deployment they behave differently, because they answer the core question in opposite ways: keep planning in Excel, or move the model out of it.
This guide skips the shared feature list and covers what decides it: where the model lives, who has to change how they work, and what each one costs.
- Experience
- Ran budgeting and the three-statement model for her finance team at JL Clark
- FP&A consultant and finance and accounting expert
- Writes Datarails’ Excel and FP&A technology coverage
The team wasn’t pushing back on the software. They were pushing back on the accountability that came with it.
What happened: every budget cycle she sent out more than 40 spreadsheets. When someone added a row or a column, every link downstream quietly broke. A platform fixed the mechanics fast. The people part took longer.
Read the full story
At JL Clark, our planning was disconnected from the start. Every budget cycle I sent out more than 40 spreadsheets and hoped people emailed them back on time. Then the real work started: consolidating all of them into one three-statement model. That held together until someone “helped” by adding a row or a column to their workbook, and every link downstream quietly broke. I spent more time repairing the model than analyzing what was in it.
Moving to a platform fixed the mechanics fast. The people part took longer. For the first time we had an audit trail of every input, and comparing actuals to budget took a click instead of a week. That was great for finance. But a department head who used to submit a number and never hear about it again felt watched.
Questions to ask any vendor, from an FP&A consultant who ran budgeting across 40+ spreadsheets
- When a contributor changes the structure of their input, does the model break, or does the system stop the change? Nobody demos this. A demo file has no one adding a column to it.
- What does the audit trail look like to the contributor, not just to finance? The same log reads as governance to one side of the business and surveillance to the other.
- How do I roll out budget-versus-actual visibility so it doesn’t feel like a gotcha? Ask for the change-management playbook, not just the feature.
Vena vs Pigment: Which one fits your team
| If this matters most | Choose Vena | Choose Pigment | Choose Datarails |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where work happens | Keep planning in Excel, with governance added underneath | Move the model out of spreadsheets into one web app | Excel or Google Sheets stays the interface, on one governed data layer |
| Planning scope | Finance planning plus close and account reconciliation | Finance, sales, HR and supply chain on one shared model | FP&A plus close, cash and spend on one data layer |
| Corporate stack | Microsoft 365, with Power BI as the reporting standard | Google Workspace first, via the Sheets add-on | Existing Excel models; connects to 600+ data sources |
| AI approach | Agents inside Excel and Microsoft Teams, plus a Vena MCP server | Agents on a central model, plus a published MCP server | AI Assistant and Inflow Agents, plus the FinanceOS AI Connector for outside AI tools |
| Security review | Deloitte-audited SOC 1 and SOC 2 Type II, on request | Self-service trust center with ISO 27001 and a pen-test summary | SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 |
| Budget | Third-party median about $34,000 a year | Third-party median about $74,000 a year | $35,000 to $80,000 a year for most mid-market teams; enterprise typically from $100,000 |
Based on the vendor documentation and analyst sources listed at the end of this guide. The Datarails column appears on the page when readers turn on Compare with Datarails.
Quick fit check
4 questionsAnswer four questions to see which way you lean. Open each question to compare the options.
Possible results: Leaning Vena, Leaning Pigment, Too close to call, or Split by function (when finance leans Vena and the wider business leans Pigment). Next step: test the result on your own data, using the evaluation steps below.
Vena vs Pigment in Excel: Native or connected
If your analysts’ know-how lives in spreadsheet logic, Vena keeps it and adds governance underneath. If the spreadsheets are the problem you’re buying software to remove, Pigment’s model-first approach is the point. A real template with nested formulas, hidden columns and a multi-level rollup shows the difference in about 20 minutes.
Pigment
Excel is a connected surface. A free add-in on Microsoft AppSource pulls data into a sheet and pushes ranges back. The model is built in Pigment.
Excel plus one data layer
Datarails also keeps spreadsheets as the interface, in Excel or Google Sheets, and runs FP&A, close, cash and spend on the same governed data.
Vena
Excel is the front end. Contributors enter numbers in a workbook, and values land in the central database with version history and an audit trail.
What we learned from 212 finance professionals about why Excel isn’t going away
The world runs on Excel and, it turns out, Gen Z and Millennials working in the CFO’s Office love it even more than their predecessors.
Vena vs Pigment at a glance
Vendor documentation and analyst sources, verified 29 September 2026.
| Company | Vena | Pigment | Datarails |
|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Excel-native FP&A and corporate performance management | Business planning and performance management platform | AI operating system for finance teams, built on FinanceOS |
| Founded | 2011. Toronto, Canada | 2019. Paris, France, by Eléonore Crespo and Romain Niccoli | 2015 |
| Ownership and funding | Privately held. No revenue published | Venture-backed. Close to $400 million raised, $1 billion valuation in 2024 | Venture-backed. $70 million Series C, January 2026 |
| Customers | 2,000+ | Names Unilever, Merck, Datadog and Keolis among enterprise customers | Thousands of finance teams |
| Scope | Planning, reporting, consolidation and account reconciliation | Finance, sales, workforce and supply chain planning | Datarails FP&A, Month-End Close, Cash, Spend and Desk run on FinanceOS |
| Stated time to go-live | Not documented | Not documented | 4 to 6 weeks for most FP&A implementations |
| Pricing published | No. Plan names only: Professional and Complete | No | Typical ranges in the pricing guide |
Customer counts, funding and go-live time are company-reported.
| Capability | Vena | Pigment | Datarails |
|---|---|---|---|
| Budgeting and forecasting | Yes (Excel templates, rolling forecasts) | Yes (rolling forecasts on the shared model) | Yes (Datarails FP&A) |
| Excel as planning interface | Yes (core design) | Partial (add-in pushes and pulls data. Modeling stays in Pigment) | Yes (Excel-connected, Google Sheets too) |
| Google Sheets connector | Not documented | Yes (Google Workspace add-on) | Yes (native Google Sheets integration) |
| Multidimensional modeling engine | Yes (CubeFLEX) | Yes (native sparse engine) | Models stay in Excel, on the governed data layer |
| Dashboards and visual reporting | Yes (Vena Insights, on embedded Power BI) | Yes (native boards and dashboards) | Yes (dashboards on governed data) |
| PowerPoint deck automation | Yes (Vena for PowerPoint) | Yes (Pigment Connector for PowerPoint) | Yes (live-linked decks) |
| Financial consolidation | Yes (in platform) | Partial (multi-entity modeling, not a close suite) | Yes (Consolidation) |
| Close management | Yes (including account reconciliation) | No (not a stated product area) | Yes (Month-End Close) |
| Workforce planning | Yes | Yes (published use case) | Yes (headcount planning in Excel) |
| Sales and revenue planning | Yes (extended by Acterys) | Yes (core use case) | Yes (driver models in Excel) |
| Supply chain planning | Not documented | Yes (published use case) | – |
| AI agents | Yes (Planning, Reporting, Analytics agents, via Vena AI) | Yes (Analyst Agent and Modeler Agent) | Yes (AI Assistant and Inflow Agents) |
| Statistical or ML forecasting | Yes (within Vena Insights) | Yes (Predictions) | Yes |
| Connection for outside AI tools | Yes (Vena MCP server for Claude, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity) | Yes (published MCP server) | Yes (FinanceOS AI Connector) |
Partial means conditional, limited or a paid add-on. Not documented means we could not verify it either way.
| Control | Vena | Pigment | Datarails |
|---|---|---|---|
| SOC 1 | Yes (Type II, audited by Deloitte, on request) | Yes (Type II, in trust center) | Yes (Type II) |
| SOC 2 | Yes (Type II, audited by Deloitte, on request) | Yes (Type II, in trust center) | Yes (Type II) |
| ISO 27001 | Not documented (data centers certified, platform not claimed) | Yes (announced 29 April 2026) | Yes |
| CSA | Yes (Trusted Cloud Provider member) | Yes (CSA STAR Level 1) | – |
| GDPR | Yes (TRUSTe programme participant) | Yes (plus CCPA/CPRA) | Yes (DPA published) |
| SSO | Yes (SAML 2.0, optional IP restriction) | Yes (SAML 2.0, plus Google Login) | Yes (SSO integration) |
| SCIM provisioning | Not documented | Yes | – |
| MFA | Yes (customer-configurable) | Yes (plus domain allowlisting) | – |
| Access control | Yes (security and permissions model) | Yes (RBAC plus attribute-based data access) | Yes (data-level permissions across reports, models, workflows and AI) |
| Encryption | Yes (AES-256 at rest, TLS 1.2+ in transit) | Yes (documented in trust center) | Yes |
| Penetration test evidence | Not documented | Yes (executive summary in trust center) | Yes (summary on the compliance documents page) |
| SOX support | Yes (SOC 1 covers financial reporting controls) | Yes (stated support for relevant SOX provisions) | Yes (SOC 1 Type II covers financial reporting controls) |
What actually separates Vena and Pigment
| Difference | Vena | Pigment | Datarails | Ask in the demo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Where model logic lives | Structure sits in CubeFLEX, but logic is often expressed in the workbook. Fast to change, and easy to change badly. | Dimensions, metrics and blocks in Pigment’s own editor. Stricter to author; harder to break silently. | Models stay in Excel and read from one governed data layer. | Who owns a model change after go-live, finance or a builder? |
| AI: inside Microsoft or on the model | Vena AI runs Planning, Reporting and Analytics agents inside Excel and Teams, backed by the Vena Omega context engine. A Vena MCP server also opens governed Vena data to outside AI tools. | Analyst Agent, Modeler Agent and Predictions on the central model, plus an MCP server. Dresner’s 2025 Agentic AI report ranked it first among EPM vendors. | AI Assistant and Inflow Agents, plus the FinanceOS AI Connector on governed finance data. | What exactly can the agent see, and what stops it from answering from a stale dataset? |
| Scope beyond planning | Consolidation, close and account reconciliation in platform. Operational planning extended by the Acterys acquisition. | Sales, workforce and supply chain planning on one model. Close and reconciliation are not stated product areas. | Datarails FP&A, Month-End Close, Cash, Spend and Desk on one governed data layer. | Which of our workflows still needs a separate tool after go-live? |
Swipe the table sideways to see all columns.
What we learned from 270 CFOs and finance leaders about the AI tools finance teams already use
On average, finance teams are running 2.5 LLMs, often using one to check the other.
Ask both vendors: Which of these assistants can read your planning data, and does every answer show the numbers it used?
Vena vs Pigment pricing
Neither vendor publishes list pricing. Both quote on user counts and types, modules or use cases, and term. Both price implementation separately. The figures below are third-party medians from Vendr’s procurement data, across different customer mixes. Use them as negotiating context, not as a quote benchmark.
Leads marketing and sales at Datarails as one revenue team. Helped start FP&A Today, the finance podcast.
Get year-one implementation, tier gating and the renewal uplift in writing before you compare totals. If you need Vena Insights or a sandbox, price Vena’s Complete plan, or the comparison with Pigment won’t be like for like.
| Pricing factor | Vena | Pigment | Datarails |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reported cost | About $34,000 median annual contract (Vendr, third-party estimate) | About $74,000 median annual contract (Vendr, third-party estimate) | $35,000 to $80,000 for most mid-market teams; enterprise typically from $100,000 |
| Model | Annual subscription by seat type (power user, contributor, view-only) plus modules | Annual subscription: platform fee plus seats and licensed use cases | Quote moves with users, source-system connections, support level and products added |
| Add-ons and tiers | Complete adds Vena Insights, premium support, a sandbox and managed services | Not publicly documented | Consolidation, governance, the AI Assistant and Inflow Agents, and the FinanceOS AI Connector included from the Professional plan |
| Implementation | Priced separately. Vena services or certified partners | Priced separately. Pigment or partners, including Deloitte | One-time onboarding fee, delivered by Datarails’ own team |
| Contract | Annual, custom-quoted | Annual, custom-quoted | Not published |
| Free trial | No self-serve trial | No self-serve trial. Demo and proof of concept instead | Not published |
Five-year cost with renewal increases
Illustrative math on the third-party figures above, not a quote. Both vendors use their Vendr median at an assumed 5.5% a year, since neither has a reported renewal figure. Pigment’s median is weighted toward larger, multi-function deployments, so the two starting points don’t compare directly.
| Vendor | Annual increase | Year 1 | Year 5 | Five-year total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vena | 5.5% | $34,000 | $42,120 | $189,757 |
| Pigment | 5.5% | $74,000 | $91,673 | $413,001 |
On these assumptions, Pigment costs $223,244 more than Vena over five years.
How to run a fair Vena vs Pigment evaluation
Neither vendor publishes a standard timeline. Third-party estimates run from a couple of months to well over six, driven by source systems, model complexity, consolidation scope and how much spreadsheet logic gets rebuilt. Run both through the same five steps instead.
Leads marketing and sales at Datarails as one revenue team. Helped start FP&A Today, the finance podcast.
Bring your own workbook, not a demo file. Make a structural change, then refresh a second time. If the link survives both, it will survive budget season.
- Fix the scope first. Count the source systems in phase one, decide if multi-entity consolidation is live on day one, and agree who owns changes in month six.
- Use your own template, not a sample file, and check that formulas and hidden columns survive the round trip.
- Put your least technical contributor through a budget submission in both: a spreadsheet in Vena, a guided Sequences flow in Pigment.
- Reproduce the AI claims on your data. Run Vena AI in Excel and Pigment’s Analyst Agent on the same variance question.
- Call a reference customer of similar size and ERP from each vendor. Ask how long phase one took against the original plan.
Vena and Pigment limitations
Raise these with both vendors before the final round.
| Limitation | Vena | Pigment |
|---|---|---|
| Keeps spreadsheet habits, including the ones a team may want to escape. | Applies | No |
| Sandbox, Vena Insights and premium support sit in the Complete plan only. | Applies | No |
| Analytics depth is tied to Power BI, and a Google Sheets interface isn't documented. A weaker match outside Microsoft. | Applies | No |
| No ISO 27001 certification published for the platform. | Applies | No |
| Contributors and analysts must learn a new modeling interface. Excel is an endpoint, not the planning surface. | No | Applies |
| Close management and account reconciliation aren't stated product areas. You still need a close tool. | No | Applies |
| Third-party median runs at roughly twice Vena's. | No | Applies |
| Venture-backed and scaling fast. Weigh vendor trajectory alongside product fit. | No | Applies |
| No public pricing and no self-serve trial. | Applies | Applies |
| Implementation is a separate project, priced apart from the license. | Applies | Applies |
| AI claims move faster than they can be verified. Reproduce them on your own data. | Applies | Applies |
| Neither replaces the ERP. Both depend on what upstream systems send them. | Applies | Applies |
Where Datarails fits next to Vena and Pigment
Disclosure: Datarails publishes this guide and competes in FP&A. It is not one of the two products compared above.
Excel stays the interface
Datarails FP&A keeps existing Excel and Google Sheets models connected to governed data through FinanceOS, which connects to 600+ data sources across ERP, CRM, HRIS and banking.
One data layer under every product
Datarails FP&A, Month-End Close, Cash, Spend and Desk run on the same governed data, and each plan adds products to it.
Typical pricing ranges are published
Most mid-market teams invest $35,000 to $80,000 a year, and enterprise plans typically start above $100,000. Ranges and plan inclusions are in the pricing guide.
Where it doesn’t fit. If one model has to serve finance, sales, workforce and supply chain planners, that is Pigment’s central premise. Test that cross-functional need with Datarails directly before you count it.
Vena vs Pigment FAQ
Are Vena and Pigment direct competitors?
Yes. Both sell to finance teams replacing spreadsheet-only planning, and both sit in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Financial Planning Software, Vena as a Challenger and Pigment as a Visionary. For connected planning at enterprise scale, see Anaplan vs Pigment.
Does Pigment work with Excel?
Yes, as a connected endpoint. The Pigment Connector for Excel is a free Office add-in that pulls data from a Pigment view and pushes cell ranges back. Equivalent connectors cover Google Sheets and PowerPoint. The model itself is built and maintained in Pigment.
Does Vena require Power BI?
Not for finance reporting. Excel-grid reports connect straight to CubeFLEX. Vena Insights, the dashboard layer, is built on embedded Power BI and sits in the Complete plan.
Can either platform handle financial close?
Vena can. Pigment isn’t positioned there.
- Vena covers consolidation, close and account reconciliation in the platform.
- Pigment supports multi-entity modeling but doesn’t list close or reconciliation as product areas, so a close tool is still required.
For dedicated close software, see BlackLine vs FloQast.
Which has stronger security credentials?
Both meet common enterprise controls. Pigment publishes more without a sales conversation: SOC 1 and SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 and a pen-test summary in its trust center. Vena shares its Deloitte-audited SOC reports on request and doesn’t publish ISO 27001 for the platform.
Is Pigment only for large enterprises?
No, but it leans that way. Its primary buyers run from mid-market to enterprise, and Fortune reported 57% of new revenue coming from enterprise customers. The $74,000 Vendr median reflects that mix.
What does Pigment's Forrester ROI study show?
A 306% ROI over three years for a composite organization, with payback in under six months. Pigment commissioned it, the composite draws on four customer interviews, and Forrester says it isn’t meant as a competitive analysis. Vena has no equivalent study that we could locate.
What are the main alternatives to Vena and Pigment?
It depends on whether spreadsheets must stay.
- Spreadsheets must stay: Datarails competes most directly on architecture
- Connected cross-functional planning: Anaplan is the closest comparison to Pigment
- Also on both shortlists: Workday Adaptive Planning, OneStream and Planful. Prophix, Jedox and Cube are often evaluated against Vena
See Cube vs Vena for another Excel-side comparison.
Sources (16)
- Vendor. Vena, Security and compliance and Information Security Program: Deloitte-audited SOC 1 and SOC 2 Type II, CSA, TRUSTe, encryption, SSO, zero-trust architecture (venasolutions.com). venasolutions.com
- Vendor. Vena newsroom: Vena Copilot announcement and 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant Challenger placement (venasolutions.com). venasolutions.com
- Third party. BARC, Vena platform review: CubeFLEX, Vena Insights on Power BI, Copilot agents on Azure OpenAI. barc.com barc.com
- Third party. ERP Research, Vena profile, updated August 2026: Omega context engine, connectors, plans and seat types, customer count, Acterys and Morpheo AI deals. erpresearch.com erpresearch.com
- Vendor. Pigment, Security page and Trust Center: SOC 1 and SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, CSA STAR Level 1, GDPR, SSO, SCIM, MFA, access control, pen-test summary (pigment.com, trust.pigment.com). trust.pigment.com
- Vendor. Pigment blog: 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant Visionary placement and product updates including Analyst Agent, Insights, Predictions and Sequences (pigment.com). pigment.com
- Vendor. Pigment recognition page: Dresner Advisory Services ranking for agentic AI in EPM (pigment.com). pigment.com
- Vendor. Pigment documentation: Connector for Excel and Google Sheets connector (kb.pigment.com). kb.pigment.com
- Vendor. Pigment Series D announcement, April 2024: funding and named enterprise customers (pigment.com). pigment.com
- Vendor. Pigment press release, 4 March 2026: ARR milestone, legacy-vendor migrations, Modeler Agent launch (prnewswire.com). prnewswire.com
- Third party. Deloitte, Deloitte and Pigment alliance across the US, UK, France and Belgium (deloitte.com). deloitte.com
- Third party. Fortune, 4 March 2026: Pigment ARR, enterprise customer growth and total funding (fortune.com). fortune.com
- Third party. Forrester Consulting, The Total Economic Impact of Pigment, commissioned study, December 2023 (tei.forrester.com). tei.forrester.com
- Third party. Vendr, Vena Solutions marketplace profile: median annual contract. vendr.com vendr.com
- Third party. Vendr, Pigment marketplace profile: median annual contract. vendr.com vendr.com
- Publisher. Datarails, Series C announcement, January 2026, and FinanceOS scope (datarails.com). datarails.com
Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Financial Planning Software, Regina Crowder, Sid Sahoo, Mike Lashinsky, 1 December 2025. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. GARTNER and PEER INSIGHTS are registered trademarks and MAGIC QUADRANT is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the US and internationally, and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Product names and trademarks belong to their owners. Datarails is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Vena or Pigment.
Annette DeYoung
Annette, Senior Manager, Partner Solutions and Enablement at Datarails, is a highly experienced FP&A Consultant, SaaS whisperer, and all-round expert in Finance and Accounting.
Andrew Mort
Andrew, Senior Content Manager at Datarails, is a veteran technology marketer with experience across personal finance, entertainment, computer vision, augmented reality, radar-on-chip sensors, and financial services.