CompareArx vs Carta
Ownership
made easy.
Carta is designed for mature startups with complex cap tables. Arx gives you everything you need for early-stage, without the traditional cap table complexity.
Equity system of record
A
ARX
Fundraising operating system
All your tools in one workspace
Why settle for a slice,
when you can have the whole pie.
Carta lets you manage your cap table. In Arx, that's just a feature. The Arx workspace runs your entire fundraise, not a slice of it. Open your investor list and add anyone to the data room, which connects to your forecast, your deck, and your cap table. Ask Arx to make changes for you, get suggestions and action items that will help you close the round.
An equity-management platform.
Cap table of record, 409A valuations, fund administration, equity and option management, secondary transactions, data room. Deep, compliance-grade, and built to serve a company, and the funds on the other side of the table. Primarily focuses on growth-stage startups; early-stage companies use a fraction of the features available while paying the full cost.
System of record · built for scale
A
ARX
A fundraising operating system.
Investor CRM, warm-intro paths, deck analytics, live data room, forecast, investor updates, bookings, and an AI that acts across all of it. Your cap table and data room sit inside the workflows that actually close the round. Built on the best industry practices, specifically for early-stage startups.
System of action
Onboarding
Carta needs lawyers to start.
Arx walks you through it.
Using Carta comes with managing legal docs and a setup that assumes you already know how equity works. Arx is guided from the first screen: a step-by-step onboarding explains each concept in plain language as you go. You finish with a cap table you actually understand how to manage at early stage.
Add your SAFEs
✓
Founders & shares
2
Add your SAFEs In progress
3
Set the option pool
4
Review the pro forma
Where they diverge
Feature by feature, by stage.
Arx covers the entire early-stage fundraising workflow end to end. Carta goes deeper on equity administration that's needed at Series A and beyond.
Capability
AARX
Fundraising workflow
Investor CRM & pipelineStages, check sizes, conversation history
✓ Built in
✕ Not offered
Warm-intro pathsMap advisors and existing investors to funds
✓ Built in
✕ Not offered
Pitch deck analyticsPer-slide dwell, viewer-level tracking
✓ Per-slide heatmap
✕ Not offered
Investor updatesComposed, sent from your own domain
✓ Built in
✕ Not offered
Forecast / financial modelDrivers-driven, benchmarked
✓ Built in
✕ Not offered
Meeting bookingsInvestor scheduling with prep briefs
✓ Built in
✕ Not offered
AI assistantActs across your data · Claude via MCP
✓ Built in
✕ Limited
The data room
Investor data roomShare diligence materials with investors
✓ Built in
✓ Fundraising add-on
Live-linked materialsDeck, cap table, forecast auto-update in the room
✓ Always current
✕ Manual re-upload
Per-investor scoped roomsDifferent contents, different lifespans
✓ Built in
✕ Limited
Per-file activity logWho opened what, for how long
✓ Per viewer
✓ Available
Mix files & external linksLoom, Linear, Docs, tracked uniformly
✓ Built in
✕ Files only
Email gate & expirationsOne-time code, auto-revoke access
✓ Built in
✓ Available
Equity & back office
Cap table & SAFEsShareholders, options, convertibles
✓ Founder-grade
✓ Category standard
Pro-forma round modelingPre/post, dilution scenarios
✓ Built in
✓ Available
409A valuationsCompliance-grade, audit-ready
✕ Not offered Series A+
✓ Built in
Fund administrationFor funds, not founders
✕ Not offered Series A+
✓ Built in
Equity admin at scaleRSUs, option exercises, 83(b), filings
✕ Basic Series A+
✓ Built in
Secondary transactions & liquidityTender offers, secondaries
✕ Not offered Series A+
✓ Built in
Pricing & onboarding
Pricing modelWhat you actually pay
✓ Flat $99/mo, unlimited seats
Scales with stakeholders
OnboardingSetup & time to first value
✓ Guided onboarding
Often requires lawyers
The data room
The room that
stays current.
Traditional data rooms like Carta go stale fast, because they can only rely on manual file uploads. Arx room pulls live from the rest of your workspace, deck, cap table and forecast update automatically.
Company
Product
Financials
Legal
Team
Product demoLinkOpen
ForecastLinkOpen
Cap tableLinkOpen
Customer interviewLinkOpen
Analytics
Track activity for
each investor.
Arx has the connectivity layer that Carta lacks. All investor activity across your data rooms is synced with their existing records in your pipeline, so you always know just how much due diligence someone has done.
Data room activity
FundTimeLast activityFiles viewed
Northbeam Capital41m2h ago15 / 17
Atlas Partners22mYesterday9 / 14
Charge VC8m3d ago4 / 9
Halo Capital3m5d ago2 / 7
Takeaway
Use Arx to run the raise. Get Carta at scale.
Carta is good for what it's for. It's the category standard for cap-table-of-record, but majority of its features apply to Series A+ startups.
When the job isn't administering equity but raising the money in the first place, a $99/mo workspace that runs the entire raise beats paying for an enterprise equity platform you're using at a fraction of its capability. Arx is the tool for the years before you need Carta.
Carta
Talk to Sales
Traditional Carta plans are custom quotes that scale with your shareholder count.
Arx
$99/mo
Flat, unlimited seats. The cap table plus nine other tools you'd otherwise buy separately. Zero sales calls.