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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
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
Production Planning (2nd), Predictive Analytics (3rd)
Planful
Ranking in Business Performance Management
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Financial Close Software (19th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Business Performance Management category, the mindshare of Anaplan is 6.5%, down from 14.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Planful is 3.3%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Performance Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Anaplan6.5%
Planful3.3%
Other90.2%
Business Performance Management
 

Featured Reviews

Segun Oladele - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Manager, Accounting at BIC
Reporting and forecasting have become more automated through intuitive data organization and flexible number calendarization
I do not have any improvements from my own end at this time.There are some specific features or functionality that I would like to see included in Anaplan in the future. From what we have been using, I do not think there is any specific one because we import and export numbers. Importing and exporting with CSV files is already available in Anaplan. I do not have any special requests from Anaplan. I still decided to give Anaplan an eight because I have not seen a specific dashboard on Anaplan. Anaplan could have a dashboard where you can see the flow of your numbers displayed on pictorials rather than just saying this is the number. Simple dashboards should be implemented.
reviewer1110591 - PeerSpot reviewer
Financial Planning & Analysis - Finance Manager at a engineering company with 501-1,000 employees
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

"It's real-time connected planning, so the calculations are pretty much seamless as far as your model is connected."
"The best thing is that it's very intuitive and user-friendly. You don't need coding skills to manipulate the platform."
"I am impressed with the tool’s real-time calculations and intuitive interface. The tool’s user interface is the best compared to other software that I have worked with. I also find the tool’s management reporting feature valuable."
"Anaplan paid for itself with what it saved on new hires."
"Anaplan is a worthwhile investment for a top performing planning solution in any sector, Finance, Capacity, or Budgeting, etc."
"Anaplan is excellent for summarizing clean data and is easier to use for reporting and security, while Planning Analytics is better for data cleansing and low-level data manipulation."
"Anaplan is a three-dimensional cloud platform that is good for analyzing data, visualization, integration, terrific for visibility."
"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."
"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."
"I believe the ROI is very high."
"Planful has probably cut our time in half, given that we can now leverage the cloud-based services to interact with our subs for getting their forecast inputs."
 

Cons

"It would be nice if the solution offered better extensions."
"Right now, we haven't seen any ROI from using Anaplan."
"Anaplan's workflow component is probably the biggest area for improvement. I'd also like to see Anaplan add an ad hoc reporting tool that allows users to query things. It's going to factor into how you design your data set and your models, but I'd like the ability to create ad hoc queries against the data that's in there."
"Anaplan can be improved, particularly regarding latency issues when running deployments that may cause the system to hang."
"The solution could improve by better dashboards and while entering the form loss and project implementation the ability to use graphical shapes more effectively."
"When there is a lot of data, it sometimes takes long to load."
"One improvement that could be added to Anaplan is to stabilize the models when data complexity increases, allowing us to manage our time and space well."
"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."
"The part that we liked about Excel is that it had a better interface in terms of just graphical illustration of our results."
"Some of the behind the scenes processing for the simulation engines has a learning curve to use in that there are certain changes that need to happen for the reporting to be "Live"."
"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

"The price of the solution is expensive."
"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."
"We are currently using a free workspace license for 90 days. We are satisfied with the price of the solution. There are additional costs if you want more storage, the default limit is 250 GB."
"Anaplan is a bit pricier compared to its competitors - the license costs about $4,000 per user annually."
"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."
"A value-for-money product and a very reasonable price compared to competitors like SAP or IBM."
"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."
"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
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Retailer
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise18
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
Tandem Diabetes Care, Reed Exhibitions, SkyGolf, Zep Inc., Thule, Stylesight, Schumacher Group, Parsons Electric, Nextag, Groupon
Find out what your peers are saying about Anaplan vs. Planful and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,456 professionals have used our research since 2012.