If your Anaplan estate is mostly finance, price Pigment before you sign the renewal. If it also runs supply chain and sales planning on large sparse models, stay and negotiate the escalator. Workday Adaptive Planning is the right move only if you already run Workday, OneStream only if consolidation and close are the reason you are shopping, and Datarails is the wrong answer for almost anyone who outgrew spreadsheets badly enough to buy Anaplan in the first place.
None of the five vendors publishes a rate card. Every price below is either a vendor's own published range or a third party's transaction data, labelled with who published it and when; all were checked on November 15, 2026.
| Pick it if | Do not pick it if | Price evidence (who published it) | Flagship AI, release status | Rebuild evidence | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pigment | Your Anaplan use is FP&A, headcount and revenue planning, and you want faster model changes | You plan supply chain at SKU-by-location-by-week grain across a multi-model estate | Median $74,000/yr across 117 purchases (Vendr, updated Feb 2026) | Modeler Agent, GA March 4, 2026 | Europcar: 10 weeks, replacing Anaplan |
| Workday Adaptive Planning | You run Workday HCM or Financials and want one vendor and one agent console | You have no Workday footprint, or you need complex multi-dimensional supply chain models | Authors $250 to $500/user/month list, contributors $30 to $60 (Redress Compliance estimate, Dec 2025) | Planning Agent (read-only analysis) in production; Decision Intelligence launched to early adopters May 2026, now listed as GA by Workday with no GA date | No public reference timeline found |
| OneStream | Consolidation, intercompany and close are failing, and planning is the second problem | You only need planning; you will pay for a close platform you do not use | Licence $150K to $300K+/yr typical, Year 1 all-in $600K to $1.9M (CFO Shortlist, Sept 2026) | Four SensibleAI Agents, GA May 19, 2026 | 6 to 9 months phased, 12 to 18 complex (CFO Shortlist) |
| Datarails | A finance team of under ~15 that lives in Excel and needs consolidation of actuals plus reporting | You bought Anaplan because Excel broke; this puts you back in Excel | $35,000 to $80,000/yr mid-market (Datarails' own figure, Oct 2026) | AI Agents included from the Professional plan | Datarails claims 4 to 6 weeks |
| Anaplan (stay) | Connected planning spans finance, supply chain and sales on Polaris-scale models | Your models are finance-only and nobody outside FP&A logs in | Median $108,320/yr across 68 purchases (Vendr, Feb 2026) | CoModeler, limited availability Nov 2025, availability announced Mar 25, 2026 | n/a |
The loser here is Datarails as an Anaplan replacement. It is a good product for a different buyer. Its own pricing page sizes the top Expert plan at 15 users plus 50 viewers, a ceiling built for one finance team rather than the multi-department user base Anaplan is sold on.
What Does Anaplan Actually Cost You at Renewal?
Anaplan does not publish prices; its pricing page is a contact form. The transaction data that does exist splits into two very different populations, and you need to know which one you are in before any alternative's quote means anything.
Vendr reports a median contract of $108,320 a year, ranging from $30,858 to $299,703, with buyers saving about 10% off initial quotes (page updated February 2026). SpendHound, which draws on de-identified spend from its own customers, reports an average of $1,299,507 a year for enterprises over 1,000 employees, up 7.67% year on year, and $123,030 for companies of 50 to 1,000 employees (published October 28, 2026). Both can be true. Vendr's sample tops out around $300,000, which suggests it captures smaller deployments than SpendHound's enterprise average does.
The renewal risk is the escalator. CFO Shortlist says standard multi-year Anaplan contracts default to a 10% annual increase and recommends negotiating it down to 3% to 5% (published September 24, 2026). It also puts Year 1 total cost including implementation at $500K to $2.5M+, which is the number to hold against a challenger's "we can be live in ten weeks" pitch: you already paid most of that once.
Anaplan has been privately held since Thoma Bravo bought it for about $10.4 billion in 2022. OneStream followed the same path this year: Hg closed its $6.4 billion take-private in early April 2026.
Pigment: The Default Alternative for Finance-Led Estates
Pigment is the alternative most Anaplan customers should price first, because it competes on the same ground (multi-dimensional, cloud, business-owned modelling) and its evidence of a fast Anaplan rebuild is the most specific of the four.
The best reference is Europcar, which replaced Anaplan with Pigment in a 10-week implementation, against nine months for the previous rollout. The scope was not small: five planning cycles (actuals, five-year plan, budget, quarterly and monthly forecast), 130 countries, 15 subsidiaries and an SAP S/4HANA integration. Treat it as a vendor case study, which it is, but the scope is concrete enough to hold Pigment's sales team to.
On price, Vendr reports a median of $74,000 a year across 117 purchases, from $33,640 to $168,100, with about 10% average savings (updated February 2026). That is roughly a third below Vendr's Anaplan median, though the two samples are not the same customers and Pigment does not publish a rate card either.
Who should not pick Pigment: teams whose Anaplan estate is mainly supply chain, with SKU, location and week dimensions and very sparse data. That is the workload Anaplan's Polaris engine was built for. Pigment does have supply chain customers (CFO Shortlist lists Unilever, Danone and BJ's Wholesale Club for demand and inventory planning), but none of them is published as an Anaplan supply chain replacement, and CFO Shortlist tells buyers to verify multi-echelon and constraint-based planning in a demo. If your demand planners are the heaviest users, run that model in the Pigment proof of concept, not the P&L.
The Modeler Agent's Real Release Status
The Modeler Agent is Pigment's AI that builds and edits models from a plain-language description. Pigment's launch post, dated March 4, 2026, says it is generally available and that access goes through your customer success manager. It is GA, but you will not get it by default.
The configuration documentation has the details a finance controller should read before anyone turns it on:
- The agent "makes permanent changes to your model." The docs describe no undo; recovery means restoring a block or an application from backup.
- In applications managed by Test & Deploy, the agent runs in Ask mode only. Pigment's own guidance is to use it in the Dev environment.
- Deletions always need a human to validate them, even with Auto-accept on. Everything else can be bulk-accepted.
- Blocks the agent creates carry the access rights of the person who ran it, and "access rights are not re-checked when other Members view the output." An agent session run by a finance admin can produce a view that a regional manager should not see.
- Every change is logged in Application History and attributed to the member who ran the agent.
Pigment's customer claims for the agent are build-speed claims: Carta cut model build time from a week to two days, per the launch post. None of them is an accuracy claim, which is why the audit process later in this piece matters.
Workday Adaptive Planning: Only if Workday Is Already Your System of Record
Adaptive Planning is the right move when your HR and financials already run on Workday, because the integration and the single agent console are the value. Without that footprint, it is a capable mid-market planning tool with less modelling depth than Anaplan, and you would be trading down.
Workday does not publish prices; its pricing page says "Pricing varies" and offers a 30-day trial and the option to draw down an AWS commitment. The most detailed public estimate comes from Redress Compliance, an advisory firm: $250 to $500 per author per month at list, $30 to $60 per contributor and $5 to $15 per viewer, with add-on modules priced separately (last updated December 30, 2025). Those are one firm's estimates, not Workday's.
The AI is the part to read carefully, because Workday has two things with similar names:
- Planning Agent (Data Exploration skill): the documentation describes variance analysis and insight on open matrix reports, available to Planning Agent customers in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Singapore. Every described capability reads data. Each prompt is a new query, answers come only in U.S. English, and Workday tells users to verify the numbers.
- Adaptive Decision Intelligence: announced May 27, 2026, it adds Monte Carlo scenario comparison and lets a leader commit an approved scenario to the plan with an audit trail of sources, assumptions and approver. It launched to early adopters only, with broader availability "expected later this year." An undated 2026 Workday blog post now lists Decision Intelligence as generally available but gives no GA date, so ask your account executive for one in writing.
Workday-enabled customers have to register the Planning Agent in Workday's Agent System of Record before using it. A sandbox instance does not consume Flex Credits, per the Planning Agent docs; our Workday Rising 2026 recap covers how Workday meters agents on those credits.
Who should not pick Adaptive: anyone without a Workday footprint, and anyone whose Anaplan models carry supply chain or territory planning that Adaptive's sheet-based modelling was not designed for.
OneStream: Worth It When Consolidation Is the Problem
OneStream is the right replacement when the real problem is the close: consolidation, intercompany eliminations and statutory reporting living in a different tool from the plan. It unifies the two, and that is what you pay for. If you only need planning, it is the most expensive way to get it.
CFO Shortlist's estimates put a typical enterprise licence at $150K to $300K+ a year, implementation services at $500K to $2M+, and all-in Year 1 cost at $600K to $1.9M, with phased deployments taking 6 to 9 months and complex global ones 12 to 18 (published September 24, 2026). That is the longest and most expensive rebuild on this list, and it is a third-party estimate with no rate card behind it.
OneStream's AI is the most conservative of the four, which suits its buyer. On May 19, 2026 it made four SensibleAI Agents generally available: Forecast Agent, Finance Analyst, Search Agent and Deep Analysis. They analyse and explain inside OneStream's governed models, inherit role-based access, and keep an audit trail back to source data. OneStream does not describe any of them building or restructuring a model the way Pigment's Modeler Agent does. Forecast Agent is bundled with the SensibleAI Forecast product; OneStream gives no pricing for the other three.
Who should not pick OneStream: a company that replaced its close tool recently or is happy with it. If your close already runs on BlackLine or FloQast, see our month-end close software comparison before you buy a second consolidation engine.
Datarails: The Right Tool for a Different Buyer
Datarails is the pick for a small finance team that runs on Excel and needs actuals consolidated from the ERP, CRM and HRIS into the workbooks it already trusts. For an Anaplan customer, it is a step back into the spreadsheet model that Anaplan was bought to replace.
Its pricing page publishes plans but no prices: Professional includes 2 users and 1 integration, Premium 5 users and 2 integrations, Expert 15 users plus 50 viewers and 3 integrations. Datarails' own cost guide says most mid-market teams spend $35,000 to $80,000 a year, enterprise plans start above $100,000, and most implementations go live in 4 to 6 weeks (updated October 12, 2026). Those are the vendor's numbers.
Its AI shipped early. Datarails launched Strategy, Planning and Reporting agents in January 2026 alongside a $70M Series C, and the pricing page lists AI Agents on the entry Professional plan. In March it added FinanceOS, an MCP connector that feeds governed finance data to outside AI tools, priced on usage.
Who should not pick Datarails: any team with more than one model builder, driver-based models that span departments, or planners outside finance. If your Anaplan workspace has supply chain or sales users, Datarails cannot host them.
How Long Does Rebuilding an Anaplan Model Take?
Plan on a rebuild. No tool imports an Anaplan model; you re-implement its lists, modules, formulas and integrations in the new grammar, and the timeline is set by how many of those you have and how well documented they are.
The public reference points, all from vendors or their analysts:
| Platform | Published rebuild time | Source and caveat |
|---|---|---|
| Pigment | 10 weeks (vs 9 months for the prior Anaplan rollout) | Europcar case study, vendor-published |
| Datarails | 4 to 6 weeks typical | Datarails' own cost guide |
| OneStream | 6 to 9 months phased, 12 to 18 complex | CFO Shortlist estimate |
| Workday Adaptive Planning | No public Anaplan-replacement timeline found | Ask for two reference customers |
Three things push the number up more than the platform does. The first is hierarchy maintenance: cost centres, products and territories that are mastered in Anaplan lists today need a new owner and a sync. The second is integrations; CFO Shortlist reports that integration work runs 40% to 60% over estimate across the category. The third is undocumented formula logic, which you only discover when the new model's forecast does not tie to the old one. We saw the same pattern in Alteryx migrations: the licence was cheap to swap, and rebuilding the workflows took the time.
Even staying is not free. Anaplan's own Polaris modelling guidance says Polaris models are "almost always limited by calculation effort," and a formula that makes the engine work across every possible cell of a heavily dimensioned line item "will take much longer in Polaris than any formula can take in Classic." Moving a large Classic model to Polaris is a partial rebuild of its own.
How Do You Audit an Agent-Built Model Before It Reaches the Board?
You audit it the way you would audit a new analyst's model: in a separate environment, against numbers you already trust, with a diff of every structural change. The vendors give you some of the tooling; none of them gives you the tie-out.
What each platform gives you:
- Anaplan: deployed mode blocks structural changes to a production model, and changes move from development to production through revision tags under its lifecycle management. Anaplan's CoModeler was in limited availability from November 2025, and its March 25, 2026 release announced availability without a separate GA date.
- Pigment: Test & Deploy restricts the Modeler Agent to Ask mode in managed applications, formulas can be previewed in the Formula Playground before you accept them, and Application History attributes every change.
- Workday Adaptive Planning: the Planning Agent reads rather than writes. Decision Intelligence records the approver of a committed scenario.
- OneStream: agents run on the deterministic engine with an audit trail back to source.
What you have to add yourself:
- Freeze last quarter's board pack figures (revenue, gross margin, opex by function, headcount) and require any agent-edited model to reproduce them to the dollar before it is promoted.
- On Pigment specifically, re-check access on every block the agent created, because the docs say viewer access is not re-checked against the creator's rights.
- Have a human modeller review every new or changed formula, using the vendor's diff or history view, before production.
- Agents build in development only. Nothing an agent touched goes to production without a named reviewer.
If the agent's output feeds a board deck through an analytics layer, the same discipline applies there; our semantic layer comparison covers how to keep metric definitions in one place.
Who Should Stay on Anaplan?
Stay if Anaplan is your connected-planning backbone: finance, supply chain and sales planning in linked models, with supply chain at a grain where most cells are empty. That is the case Polaris was designed for, and none of the four alternatives has public evidence of replacing an estate like that.
The test is who logs in. If demand planners, sales operations and workforce planners all work in Anaplan models that feed the financial plan, a move to Pigment or Adaptive means re-platforming three departments to save money on one. Use the alternatives as leverage instead: get a written Pigment quote for the finance models alone, then take it to the renewal and push the escalator toward the 3% to 5% CFO Shortlist recommends.
The Decision: What Actually Predicts Regret
Four criteria predict regret better than any feature list:
- Who outside finance uses the models. If no one does, Pigment, Adaptive or even Datarails is on the table. Two or more departments mean you should stay or pick Pigment after a supply chain proof of concept.
- Your system of record. Workday HCM or Financials tilts the answer to Adaptive, because the agent console, identity and data already live there. SAP or NetSuite does not tilt anything.
- Whether the close is broken. If it is, OneStream's cost is defensible. If it is not, you are paying for a consolidation engine you will not use.
- The AI release status in your contract. Pigment's Modeler Agent and OneStream's four agents are GA. Workday's Decision Intelligence was early-adopter only at launch, and Anaplan's agent rollout has moved in stages since late 2025. Put the GA date and the price of any metered credits into the order form, not the slide deck.
What changes the answer: a credible demand-planning reference for Pigment at your SKU count would make it the default for mixed estates too. A published Adaptive Planning timeline for an Anaplan replacement would make it more than a Workday-shop answer.
The Bottom Line
Pigment's case to the finance-only Anaplan customer is build speed and a median price about a third lower in Vendr's data. Anaplan's case to companies whose plans span the supply chain is that rebuilding three departments' models costs more than the escalator, and for those companies it usually does.
This week, list every Anaplan model by the department that owns it and the number of active users, then ask Pigment for a quote on the finance models only and send it to your Anaplan account team before the renewal call.
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