Carta
Carta is a comprehensive equity management platform that helps you manage cap tables, valuations, and equity plans while ensuring compliance for your company, investors, and employees.
Drata
Drata is a compliance automation platform that helps you achieve and maintain continuous security compliance across frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001, and HIPAA through automated evidence collection.
Quick Comparison
| Feature | Carta | Drata |
|---|---|---|
| Website | carta.com | drata.com |
| Pricing Model | Freemium | Custom |
| Starting Price | Free | Custom Pricing |
| FREE Trial | ✘ No free trial | ✘ No free trial |
| Free Plan | ✓ Has free plan | ✘ No free plan |
| Product Demo | ✓ Request demo here | ✓ Request demo here |
| Deployment | ||
| Integrations | ||
| Target Users | ||
| Target Industries | ||
| Customer Count | 0 | 0 |
| Founded Year | 2012 | 2020 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, USA | San Diego, USA |
Overview
Carta
Carta simplifies how you manage equity, from your first hire to your eventual exit. Instead of messy spreadsheets, you get a centralized platform to track your cap table, issue electronic securities, and stay compliant with tax regulations like 409A valuations. You can automate the entire equity lifecycle, ensuring that your legal, finance, and HR teams stay perfectly aligned as your company grows.
The platform serves everyone from early-stage startups to late-stage private and public companies. You can provide your employees with a clear view of their ownership and vesting schedules through a dedicated portal, while giving your investors real-time access to their holdings. It eliminates the manual overhead of equity administration so you can focus on building your business.
Drata
Drata helps you automate your entire compliance journey by connecting directly to your tech stack. Instead of manually collecting screenshots and spreadsheets, you can integrate your cloud providers, HR systems, and developer tools to monitor your security posture in real-time. The platform automatically gathers evidence for audits, ensuring you stay compliant every day of the year rather than just once an annual cycle.
You can manage multiple frameworks simultaneously, including SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and GDPR, from a single centralized dashboard. The software provides pre-mapped controls and automated tests that alert you the moment a security gap appears. This proactive approach reduces the time your team spends on manual audit prep by hundreds of hours, allowing you to focus on building your product while maintaining trust with your customers.
Overview
Carta Features
- Automated Cap Table Track your company's ownership in real-time with a digital cap table that updates automatically whenever you issue new shares.
- 409A Valuations Get audit-ready valuations from experts quickly so you can stay compliant with IRS regulations when granting employee stock options.
- Electronic Securities Issue and sign stock options, warrants, and RSUs electronically to eliminate paper trails and speed up the board approval process.
- Employee Equity Portal Give your team a dedicated dashboard where they can track their vesting progress and understand the potential value of their holdings.
- Scenario Modeling Run what-if analyses to see how future funding rounds or exit events will impact your ownership and dilution levels.
- Compliance Tracking Stay on top of Rule 701 limits and Form 3921 filings with automated alerts and reporting built directly into your workflow.
Drata Features
- Automated Evidence Collection. Connect your cloud and HR tools to automatically gather audit-ready evidence without manual data entry or constant screenshots.
- Continuous Monitoring. Monitor your security controls 24/7 and receive instant alerts if any system falls out of compliance.
- Pre-mapped Frameworks. Access ready-to-use controls for SOC 2, ISO 27001, and HIPAA that map directly to your existing workflows.
- Personnel Management. Track employee background checks, security training completion, and policy acknowledgments automatically in one central location.
- Risk Assessment Tool. Identify and document your organization's security risks with built-in templates and automated scoring to prioritize your efforts.
- Trust Center. Build customer trust by sharing your real-time security posture and compliance reports through a professional, public-facing portal.
Pricing Comparison
Carta Pricing
- Up to 25 stakeholders
- Digital cap table management
- Electronic security issuance
- Onboarding support
- Standard equity reporting
- Everything in Launch, plus:
- Unlimited stakeholders
- Audit-ready 409A valuations
- Scenario modeling tools
- Equity plan administration
- Advanced compliance reporting
Drata Pricing
Pros & Cons
Carta
Pros
- Eliminates manual spreadsheet errors in cap tables
- Streamlines the 409A valuation process significantly
- Provides excellent visibility for employee shareholders
- Simplifies communication between companies and investors
Cons
- Pricing increases sharply as stakeholder count grows
- Customer support response times can be inconsistent
- Initial data migration requires significant manual effort
Drata
Pros
- Extensive library of native integrations saves significant time
- Automated evidence collection eliminates manual spreadsheet tracking
- Excellent customer success team provides expert audit guidance
- User-friendly interface makes complex compliance tasks feel manageable
Cons
- Initial setup requires significant time for deep integrations
- Custom pricing can be high for very small startups
- Occasional false positives in automated tests require manual review