Anaplan vs Pigment: an independent comparison for FP&A teams (October 2026)

Anaplan or Pigment: the verdict

Anaplan vs Pigment: comparison table

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Pricing: Anaplan has a public range, Pigment only a trial

Neither vendor shows plan names or amounts on its own website. Anaplan's pricing address now leads to its contact page and a demo request, and Pigment's trial page states that it does not offer self-service purchasing. The only public number we found for either tool comes from the UK government's G-Cloud marketplace, where Anaplan Limited lists its planning, modelling, budgeting and forecasting software at £180 to £25,000 a licence a year.

That range is wide on purpose. It covers everything from a light user to a full model builder, so it says little about what a company with 50 or 500 users would pay. It does show that Anaplan prices by licence type and per year, and that you can expect a spread of two orders of magnitude between roles. The same listing states that no free trial is offered. Pigment has no comparable public listing for its software. The G-Cloud entries under the Pigment name that we found belong to a consulting firm and are unrelated.

Pigment's 14-day free trial starts with the first login, needs no credit card and limits data storage, calculation capacity and AI credits. After 14 days the workspace becomes read-only, and continuing means talking to Pigment's team. Two weeks is short for a full planning model, so prepare data and a model brief before you sign up. The AI credit limit also tells you that Pigment meters AI use.

Anaplan's AI Gateway describes controls for consumption management and rate limiting. That points to metered AI use as well, although neither vendor publishes what an agent costs. Ask both in writing whether agents are part of the base license, which agents need extra licenses, and what happens to consumption limits at renewal.

Contract terms follow the same pattern. Anaplan's G-Cloud entry gives a monthly availability target of 99.5 percent and a 30-day window to retrieve data after the contract ends. Pigment publishes no contract terms. For both, request the initial term, automatic renewal, the cap on price increases, the price of each user type, environment limits and the cost of extra non-production models. Our directory shows 43 quote-only tools in this category, so a missing price list is normal, but a missing contract summary should not stop you from asking.

AI features: Anaplan ships role-based agents, Pigment ships analysis and modeling agents

Anaplan names its agents by business role. Finance Analyst monitors performance, automates month-end steps and explains the drivers behind a change. Sales Analyst, Supply Chain Analyst and Workforce Analyst do the same for revenue, supply and headcount questions. CoModeler helps model builders turn a business need into logic and calculations. Forecaster adds machine learning forecasts, Optimizer is an algorithmic engine for constrained problems, and Analyst is a conversational assistant for self-service questions on a model.

On March 25, 2026 Anaplan announced CoModeler, Custom Analyst and Agent Studio together with 12 new applications, among them Project Cost Planning, Profitability Analysis, Subscription Revenue Planning and Sales Forecasting. Custom Analyst and Agent Studio let customers deploy their own assistants on custom-built models under governance controls. The AI Gateway connects outside language model interfaces and enterprise agents through a governed MCP connection, with permissions, auditability, consumption management and rate limiting. Anaplan describes its design as three layers: deterministic calculation engines, traditional AI for forecasting and generative agents. Its public pages do not mark each agent as generally available or in preview, so ask for the release status of every agent you plan to use.

Pigment's AI page lists what is available now: Modeler Agent, which builds and evolves models from a description, Analyst Agent, Custom Agents with uploaded documents, Documentation Agent for platform questions, machine learning forecasting, a Navigation Assistant and a Formula Explainer. The Pigment MCP server lets outside assistants such as ChatGPT or Claude connect to Pigment data in a controlled way. Planner Agent for scenario simulation is listed as coming soon, so it should not count in a buying decision yet.

Pigment's Analyst Agent scans live data, detects trends and anomalies, writes variance narratives and builds sub-reports by department or region. A report can be saved as a recurring mission that is refreshed and notifies users when new insights appear. Pigment says the agent follows the same permissions and business logic as the workspace and that outputs are explainable. That permission point is the one to test, because an agent that ignores row-level access rights would be a compliance problem.

On training data the two vendors say the same thing. Anaplan states that customer data, model structures and metadata are never used to train, retrain or fine-tune foundation models. Pigment's security page says customer data is strictly isolated and never used to train foundation models, that AI-generated insights are labeled and that human oversight is maintained. Neither names its language model providers on the pages we read, and for Pigment we found no AI sub-processor list. Ask for both, since a model provider is a sub-processor under GDPR.

On governance, Anaplan announced on September 10, 2026 that it holds ISO/IEC 42001, the management standard for AI systems, certified by Bay Mountain Security on August 13, 2026. Pigment states that its AI governance framework is aligned with the EU AI Act, which is a statement of intent, not a certificate. Across our category, only 2 tools list an ISO/IEC 42001 certificate.

Company profile: scale and age against pace and funding

Anaplan describes itself on its about page with 2,800+ customers, a team of more than 2,000, 48 percent or more of the Fortune 50, 250+ partners and more than two million models deployed. Its contact page names Miami as global headquarters and lists a Frankfurt office. Thoma Bravo completed its purchase of Anaplan on June 22, 2022, an all-cash deal of about $10.4 billion at $63.75 per share. In January 2026 a report relayed by Yahoo Finance said Anaplan could file confidentially for an IPO within weeks, adding that plans could change. We found no confirmation of a filing or listing as of October 2026. An ownership change is worth a clause in your contract either way.

Pigment says it has 500+ employees, offices in Paris, London, New York, Toronto and San Francisco, and that most of its revenue now comes from North America. Its own information page counts $397 million raised across Series A to D, and TechCrunch reported the $145 million Series D led by ICONIQ Growth in April 2024. Named customers include Unilever, Siemens, Snowflake, Danone, Figma and Notion. It was founded by Eléonore Crespo and Romain Niccoli.

Analyst positioning points the same way. In Gartner's December 2025 Magic Quadrant for Financial Planning Software, Anaplan reports a place in the Leaders quadrant and Pigment reports being named a Visionary for the second year in a row. Gartner says its ratings are opinions, not statements of fact, and both quotes come from the vendors' own announcements. Read the Visionary label as a statement about product direction and the Leader label as one about execution and market presence, not as a verdict on fit for your team.

In our directory Anaplan serves large companies only, while Pigment lists midsize and large. Of the 57 tools in the category, 31 say they serve enterprise buyers, so Anaplan sits in a crowded segment, while Pigment competes in the midmarket as well. Other planning comparisons in our directory, such as Planful vs Vena and Datarails vs Vena, cover the Excel-based end of the market.

Country fit and compliance: Anaplan's regions sit in a 2022 annex, Pigment's on its security page

In our directory Anaplan's strong market is the United States and Pigment's are France and the United States. For European buyers the first question is where planning data lives. Pigment's security page lets customers choose Google Cloud in Frankfurt (europe-west3) or Oregon (us-west1) and describes a French and European sovereign option on S3NS, a Thales subsidiary offering a SecNumCloud 3.2 certified cloud. It describes three Google Cloud zones per region, AES-256 encryption at rest, TLS 1.2 or higher in transit, and a recovery time objective of 6 hours with a recovery point objective of 24 hours, tested yearly.

The Anaplan pages we could read state no hosting regions, but its 2022 data processing addendum names Equinix data centers in Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Virginia in the technical measures annex, and its G-Cloud listing gives the data location as the European Economic Area with user control over storage. The same addendum allows transfers to the United States and other locations of Anaplan's sub-processors. So an EU tenant is possible, but you need the region written into the order form, not assumed.

The addendum is also the better source for contract mechanics. It commits Anaplan to notify a personal data breach within 48 hours of confirmation, gives customers 10 business days to object to a new sub-processor and lets them terminate the affected order schedule without paying the remainder if Anaplan cannot offer a workaround within 30 days. After termination Anaplan deletes the account after 30 days. Audit rights run through independent SOC 1 or SOC 2 Type 2 reports or ISO certificates at least yearly, with a mutually agreed audit plan if the report is not enough. This is the 2022 template, so confirm the current version before signing. Pigment's trust center did not load for automated reading, so we found no public DPA or sub-processor list for Pigment. Ask for both before a pilot.

On certificates, Pigment's security page names SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001, and its information page adds SOC 1 Type 2 and CSA STAR 1. For Anaplan, our directory records SOC 1 and SOC 2, ISO 27001, 27017, 27018 and 42001. We could confirm the ISO/IEC 42001 certificate and the SOC and ISO reporting commitment in the addendum, but not the full list, because the trust center blocked us. Pigment also states that customers can operate it in line with the Sarbanes Oxley Act. Across the category, 14 tools state that they can host data in the EU. Neither vendor publishes a works council guide for German employers, which matters when plans include named employee costs.

Integrations and model ownership: where the project effort goes

A planning platform is only as useful as the data feeding it. Pigment's information page lists connectors to NetSuite, SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud, Sage Intacct, Xero and QuickBooks on the finance side, Salesforce for sales, Workday, Greenhouse, HiBob, Lever, BambooHR, Lucca and Personio for people data, Snowflake, Redshift, Azure SQL, Databricks and BigQuery for warehouses, plus Power BI, Looker, SFTP, cloud storage and a generic API. Its separate integrations page marks some of these as on the roadmap, so ask which connectors are live in your plan.

Anaplan's data management page describes connecting planning data from any source, but it does not list connectors by name. Anaplan projects commonly use partners, and the vendor cites 250+ of them. In a proof of concept, name your ERP and HR system and ask for a live feed, not a file upload.

The second question is who builds and maintains the model. Anaplan's CoModeler and Pigment's Modeler Agent both aim to draft model structures from a description and reduce dependence on specialists. Neither vendor publishes how much of a typical model the agents produce correctly. Give both the same brief, for example a headcount and cost plan by department with three scenarios, and measure how much of the output your controllers can maintain without outside help.

What to test before signing

Start with a written question list. For both vendors ask: how are AI agents licensed and metered, which agents are generally available today, which language model providers process our data, where is our tenant hosted, and which version of the data processing addendum applies. For Anaplan add the region in the order form. For Pigment add the SOC 1 Type 2 report, the DPA and the sub-processor list.

Then run the same test on both. Load 12 months of actuals from your ERP, build a rolling forecast and a headcount plan, and ask each AI agent to explain the largest variance. Check whether the explanation matches what a controller finds by hand and whether the agent respects permissions when a restricted user asks the same question. Pigment's trial gives you 14 days for this, so plan the work before you start the clock. For Anaplan, agree the scope and success criteria of a proof of concept in writing, including who from the vendor or a partner builds what.

Finally, ask each vendor for references from companies of your size, sector and country, and speak to someone who has run a close and a forecast cycle on the platform, not only the project team.

Who should pick Anaplan and who Pigment

The bottom line

If a documented Frankfurt or French sovereign hosting choice and a hands-on trial are requirements, Pigment is the one of the two that shows both on its own pages. If your planning spans finance, sales, supply chain and workforce in a large group, and your auditors want the longest certificate list including ISO/IEC 42001, Anaplan is the safer shortlist entry. In either case, get the AI licensing terms, the hosting region and the current data processing addendum in writing before signing, and run the same 12-month actuals test on both.