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Anaplan vs Planful comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Anaplan
Ranking in Business Performance Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Production Planning (4th), Predictive Analytics (4th)
Planful
Ranking in Business Performance Management
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Financial Close Software (20th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Business Performance Management category, the mindshare of Anaplan is 9.8%, down from 14.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Planful is 2.9%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Performance Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Anaplan9.8%
Planful2.9%
Other87.3%
Business Performance Management
 

Featured Reviews

Antonio Flor - PeerSpot reviewer
Real-time data integration enhances operational efficiency and flexibility
As a client developer and solutions architect, I use Anaplan for building modules and deploying logic end-to-end. I work closely with the business in an agile manner to ensure the model aligns with business needs Anaplan offers flexibility in building different options within the platform. The…
reviewer1110591 - PeerSpot reviewer
It has helped us speed up the turnaround time on our consolidation, and we haven't had anything come up that the program has not been able to solve
The part that we liked about Excel is that it had a better interface in terms of just graphical illustration of our results. So, if we wanted to look at our financial trends and put it into some type of graphical interface for people to look at, we still have to leverage Excel for that. The dashboards aren't as usable as maybe some of the other solutions, such as Tableau or other BI tools. The application that we use today for our BI tools is Tableau. That's how people absorb information. We don't really use the functionality or dashboards within Planful because of the robustness of Tableau. That's our single source of data. If Planful was better or more comparable in terms of features and functionality, we could probably leverage that in Planful.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The best thing is that it's very intuitive and user-friendly. You don't need coding skills to manipulate the platform."
"You don't need to have a programming language to use Anaplan."
"Anaplan's connected planning feature is its most valuable aspect, allowing for seamless financial planning, HR planning, and updates."
"It's real-time connected planning, so the calculations are pretty much seamless as far as your model is connected."
"Anaplan's most valuable features are that it's a no-coding platform, everything can be scaled to your other functions, and it's easy to learn and use (especially because Anaplan provides excellent interactive training)."
"It's highly flexible. If you've got a complex environment with complex calculations, you can build that out. So that's a really good positive."
"This product has a very good modeling feature, and its graphical representation of visualizations has also been valuable."
"The solution works very well for budgeting."
"It has helped us speed up the turnaround time on our consolidation. We don't have to do reporting in Excel anymore, which has cut down on the errors and the efficiency of our close time."
 

Cons

"There are so many business rules to set up in the system that as a business user it's hard to gauge what they're doing and it's possible to get lost."
"The negative is that the higher the flexibility, the higher is the complexity. That can act against you as a negative because it does require a model builder or a coder/developer."
"Automation needs to be built into this solution."
"One key area of improvement is pricing."
"The cloud engine slows down when working with a large dataset. It still lacks a powerful engine."
"The visualization tools in the product are limited in comparison to other reporting tools."
"Anaplan should come up with flexible options to connect to a data warehouse rather than an Anaplan hub."
"The price of the solution can improve."
"The part that we liked about Excel is that it had a better interface in terms of just graphical illustration of our results. So, if we wanted to look at our financial trends and put it into some type of graphical interface for people to look at, we still have to leverage Excel for that. The dashboards aren't as usable as maybe some of the other solutions, such as Tableau or other BI tools."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is a yearly subscription. So a customer initially buys a workspace and specifies how much GB they want. The minimum starts at around 30 GB. You can buy multiple workspaces."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"The entry-level is anywhere from about $30,000 to $50,000 a year, however, it does go up significantly after that depending on the complexity and how much space you're using."
"The tool’s pricing is reasonable and competitive with other solutions."
"A value-for-money product and a very reasonable price compared to competitors like SAP or IBM."
"The cost of Anaplan is a challenge for clients, especially if they don't have an ongoing long-term use case for it. It's a $50,000 licensing fee just to get started. Clients need a strong business case to switch from Excel to Anaplan. But if clients have used something similar in the past, such as Hyperion or other solutions, that's not a factor because they know what to expect."
"The license is a yearly subscription. There are three licensing tiers: the model builder, planner, and the reporting."
"Anaplan is a bit pricier compared to its competitors - the license costs about $4,000 per user annually."
"Right now, everything is on a three-year term contract, and that is our main cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
7%
Computer Software Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise12
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What are your main use cases for Anaplan?
Anaplan is an industry-leading cloud-based corporate performance management (CPM) platform that combines business planning and analytics in a single solution. It is designed to assist organizations...
Is Board better than Anaplan as a Business Intelligence (BI) solution?
We've had several FP&A departments include Anaplan in their analytics discussions, and while BI information IS generated, the focus is generally on compiling input from various sources and simu...
Is Anaplan better than SAP ERP?
There are different aspects of both Anaplan and SAP ERP that I like and dislike. Anaplan improves forecast accuracy and drives up the quality of analytics. Rather than spending all of their time co...
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Comparisons

 

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Sample Customers

HP, ForeScout, DocuSign, EAT, Pandora, Aviva, Intel Security, Zalora
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Find out what your peers are saying about Anaplan vs. Planful and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,787 professionals have used our research since 2012.