Corvee Alternatives for CPA Firms: 6 Options, Priced

Two of the vendors below publish a complete, checkable rate card on their own website. Two publish nothing at all. One publishes a pricing model with the actual rate removed. We label each figure VERIFIED when it was read off the vendor's own page on August 27, 2026, and REPORTED when it came from a third party the vendor has not confirmed. One figure on this page is reported and could not be re-verified when we tried, and it is flagged in every place it appears rather than quietly promoted.

The one number we refuse to launder

The $10,000 to $15,000 a year figure for legacy Corvee is the most quoted number about this product and it is the weakest one on this page. It arrived in our research from three third party pages on August 26. When we went back on August 27 to confirm it against the primary sources before publishing, unclekam.com's cited pricing page returned 404, mavizontech.com's returned 404, and aeanet.org returned 403. A site restricted search of the first domain surfaced no indexed pages at all. Two further verification passes, one targeting first person dollar figures and one targeting aggregator pricing pages, surfaced nothing usable, and DuckDuckGo returned a CAPTCHA on both fallback attempts.

So we are doing the boring thing. The figure stays labelled reported everywhere it appears on this page, including inside the calculator defaults and the chart, and every model built on it is presented as a floor rather than a fact. If you are a current customer, the number on your invoice is worth more than every source in this paragraph combined, and the calculator has a field for it.

Normalise it: what a year actually costs

Per month, per year and per household pricing are not comparable until you convert them. Below is one year of each option at the tier a firm doing real planning work would actually buy, with annual billing applied where the vendor offers it.

Read that table honestly and the first thing it says is that the rented options in this category are not expensive by mid market software standards. The most expensive published annual figure on it is $15,499. That is the single most important context for everything below, and it is the opposite of what a page trying to sell you a six figure build would want you to notice first.

The three year and five year model

Now hold each path for three and five years. Rental costs are held flat with no escalator, because there is no published post-acquisition price to escalate from and inventing one would be exactly the sort of number this page refuses to print. The build side is the fixed fee once, plus a maintenance line at 15 percent of the build price a year, charged in every year of the horizon. That 15 percent is a software industry heuristic, not a ColabContent contract term, and the calculator lets you change it.

The row we are obliged to point at is not the last one, it is the whole bottom half. At legacy Corvee pricing, a commissioned build loses the cost argument outright, and it loses it at every price we would quote. Our cheapest scope, $45,000, costs $78,750 over five years against $60,000 for staying put. It would not catch up until roughly year nine. At the $100,000 midpoint it is $175,000 against $60,000, which is not close and will not become close.

Three things flip that, and all three are checkable rather than rhetorical. First, spend level: a firm actually paying above about $15,750 a year crosses over against a $45,000 build inside five years, and a firm at about $35,000 a year breaks even against a $100,000 build at exactly year five, with anything above that crossing sooner. Second, a real escalator: no post-acquisition price is published, so if you set the escalator field above zero you are pricing in risk rather than reporting a fact, and the crossover moves in. Third, scope: if the build is replacing more than a planning tool, the comparison is not against one $12,000 subscription any more, and the honest way to test that is to add up every licence it would retire before you run the numbers. Absent one of those three, the correct advice is to keep renting, and we would say that on a call.

Cumulative spend, five years out, straight from the table above. Two rented paths: staying on Instead at the $12,000 legacy midpoint, and TaxPlanIQ Growth on annual billing at $10,169. Against them, a commissioned build at $100,000, the midpoint of our fixed fee range, paid once at year zero with 15 percent a year maintenance. Neither rented line is ever overtaken, which is the honest result and the reason this chart is on the page rather than in a drawer. The fourth line is the one that changes the answer: a firm whose real spend is $35,000 a year, which happens when planning work is bundled with other modules or when plan volume forces tier upgrades. That line meets the build line at exactly year five, at $175,000 on each path.

Most vendor comparison charts on the internet are drawn so the lines cross somewhere flattering. This one does not cross at all on the numbers most Corvee customers would enter, and that is the finding. A subscription at $12,000 a year is a genuinely cheap way to buy a strategy library, and no honest arithmetic turns $60,000 over five years into more than $175,000. If the only thing you care about is the five year sticker price at that spend level, close this page and go renegotiate your renewal.

What the chart also shows is where the answer changes, and it changes in one axis only: your actual spend. The dotted green line is not a hypothetical, it is the shape of a firm whose planning work is bundled into a larger platform bill, or whose plan volume has pushed it up two tiers, or that is running multi entity and multi state work at a level the entry tiers were never priced for. That firm hits break even on a $100,000 build at year five and is ahead every year afterward, because one line has a slope and the other is nearly flat. Below is the tool that finds your own number instead of ours.

Every default below is a figure from the table above, and every one is editable, because the defaults are a reported market estimate and your invoice is a fact. Nothing is submitted anywhere. There is no email gate, no external request and no stored value. The arithmetic runs in your browser and stops there. At the defaults it will tell you that renting is cheaper, because it is, and the most useful output on the tool is the break even line that tells you what you would have to be paying for that to stop being true.

One note on the roster before the list. Most of what is published about Corvee right now is either the acquirer's own page explaining the deal to worried customers or a vendor page nominating itself as the answer. Nobody has put the honest range in one place, which is unusual for a category this established. Here it is, starting with the option most comparison pages never lead with: do nothing.

1. Stay on Instead, if you are an existing Corvee customer

What it is. The default, and for a large share of readers the correct answer. The product you already use, under new ownership, with the same login.

Price. Unchanged, per the vendor. VERIFIED as a quotation from instead.com/corvee on August 27, 2026: your pricing stays the same, and existing accounts, data and workflows remain exactly as they are.

Best for. Any firm with working planning workflows built on Corvee that is not currently in price pain. The switching cost of a tax planning tool is not the licence, it is the strategy templates, the client deliverable formats and the muscle memory of the people using it. Ripping that out to make a point about vendor risk is more expensive than the risk.

Where it falls short. The assurance has no stated duration on it and it is not a contract term. It also sits on the same page whose tax planning plan link reads Coming soon, which means the acquirer has not published what this product will cost going forward. That is a real, named, currently unresolved uncertainty rather than a hypothetical one, and it is a reasonable thing to raise with your account contact in writing.

Verdict. Stay, for now, and get the pricing assurance dated in writing before your next renewal.

2. Instead, as a new customer

What it is. The same platform, bought fresh, on the acquirer's commercial model rather than Corvee's old one.

Price. VERIFIED from instead.com/pricing on August 27, 2026, and the verified part is the shape rather than the amount. The base platform is free with unlimited users, entities and e-file. The tax research, planning and drafting work runs on a pay per credit layer. No per credit rate is published, credits are stated to be valid for 12 months, and volume pricing is handled by contacting sales.

Best for. Firms that specifically want the Corvee strategy engine and are prepared to run a sales process to find out what it costs. Also worth noting fairly: Instead's own page claims 1,500 plus tax planning strategies across all entity types and more than $5 billion in client tax savings identified. Those are vendor marketing claims on the vendor's own page, we did not audit either one, and we are repeating them as claims rather than as facts.

Where it falls short. You cannot budget for it from public information, which is the entire problem this page exists to name. A free base platform with metered usage is a fine model, but it converts a predictable annual line item into a variable one whose unit rate you cannot benchmark against anything.

Verdict. Proceed with caution, and get the quote in writing before assuming anything resembling legacy pricing applies to you.

3. TaxPlanIQ

What it is. The most directly feature comparable rented alternative to what Corvee used to sell standalone. A CPA vetted strategy library, an AI assistant branded jAIne, guided 45 day onboarding, and a recurring group coaching layer that is a genuine part of the value for firms building a planning service line from scratch.

Price. VERIFIED from taxplaniq.com/pricing on August 27, 2026. Basic is $397 a month for one user and caps you at 12 plans a year. Standard is $697 a month for two users with unlimited plans and $35 a month per additional user. Growth is $997 a month for five users with unlimited plans, $20 a month per additional user, and scenario modelling, entity comparison and an ROI guarantee added. Annual billing takes 15 percent off any tier, which puts Growth at $10,169 a year.

Best for. A firm that wants Corvee's category of tool without the brand transition question hanging over it, that values the coaching and community layer, and that wants a number it can read before a sales call.

Where it falls short. Read the term before you sign. All three tiers carry a stated 12 month commitment regardless of billing frequency, so the monthly price is a payment schedule rather than an exit. The 12 plan cap on Basic is also the kind of limit that quietly forces a tier upgrade in year two, which is worth modelling at your real plan volume rather than your current one. And structurally it is the same purchase shape as Corvee: rent, forever, on someone else's roadmap.

Verdict. The best like for like swap on this page, and the cheapest credible answer for most readers. It solves the price opacity and the transition anxiety. It does not solve renting.

4. Holistiplan

What it is. A scanning tool. It reads existing 1040s at scale and surfaces planning opportunities across a book of individual clients, which is a genuinely excellent thing to own if that is the job you have.

Price. VERIFIED from holistiplan.com/pricing on August 27, 2026. Basic Tax runs $749 a year at 30 households up to $11,049 a year at 750 households. Premium Tax runs $1,499 a year at 30 households up to $15,499 a year at 750. Both are on a stated 12 month term regardless of payment frequency.

Best for. Wealth management practices, registered investment advisers, and CPA firms whose planning work really is 1040 review across a large individual book.

Where it falls short. It is named in the same breath as Corvee constantly and it is usually the wrong comparison. Corvee's five figure tier was sold for entity structuring and multi year business tax strategy. Holistiplan is built around the individual return. If your planning work is S corporation elections, entity restructuring, multi state apportionment and owner compensation strategy, this tool is not a replacement and switching to it will feel like a downgrade because it is one for that job.

Verdict. Excellent at its actual job. Disqualified for most Corvee buyers, and we would rather say that than pad the roster.

5. Thomson Reuters Planner CS

What it is. The enterprise suite answer, sold inside or alongside the CS Professional Suite that many mid market firms already run for compliance.

Price. Not published, and we are printing no number. tax.thomsonreuters.com/en/planner-cs returned 404 on August 27, 2026, and no search surfaced a dollar figure from any source we would stand behind. The absence is the finding. Enterprise tax suite vendors routinely gate price behind a sales conversation, and that gate is itself a legitimate reason a firm might prefer a fixed, quoted, one time number.

Best for. Firms already paying for UltraTax CS or GoSystem Tax that want one vendor, one contract and one support path, and that do not mind the opacity.

Where it falls short. Same problem as Instead's new customer model, from a different direction. You cannot evaluate it against anything on this page without a sales cycle, and the integration advantage only exists if you are already inside that ecosystem.

Verdict. Worth a call only if you are already a CS Professional Suite firm. Otherwise the opacity is not worth the effort.

6. Spreadsheets plus a general AI assistant

What it is. The cheapest possible answer, and it belongs on this page precisely because a page selling builds would leave it off. A well built model in a spreadsheet, plus a general assistant for research and drafting, at no cost beyond a subscription the firm probably already has.

Price. Effectively nothing incremental.

Best for. A solo practitioner or a very small shop running two or three plans a year, or a firm testing whether clients will actually pay for planning before committing to software for it. This is a real answer and it is the right one more often than the software category admits.

Where it falls short. The moment tax planning becomes a billed, repeatable service line, this stops working, and the failure modes are the ones that matter in a regulated profession. No audit trail. No version history on a strategy you delivered to a client eighteen months ago. No vetted, sourced strategy library, and a general purpose model is not a substitute for CPA reviewed positions with authority behind them. It also puts client tax return information into whatever tool the preparer happens to open, which is a Section 7216 conversation your firm should have deliberately rather than by accident.

Verdict. Right for a firm testing the service line. Wrong the day you invoice for it.

7. A commissioned build you own

What it is. Not a clone of Corvee. A system built around your firm's actual planning workflow, the entity types you serve, the strategies you actually run, the deliverable format your clients already recognise, and the integration into whatever tax prep stack you keep. Owned by the firm at handoff, running in the firm's own cloud tenant.

Price. A fixed fee of $45,000 to $180,000, set after a free 45 minute diagnosis call and after integration depth is named, paid in two instalments at build start and handoff. Maintenance modelled at 15 percent a year as an industry heuristic rather than a standing contract term.

Best for. Firms whose real annual spend on this category has crept well past the reported legacy band, firms running enough plan volume that per plan caps and tier upgrades keep biting, and firms that want the planning logic to be an owned asset rather than a renewal. It also needs a named person internally willing to own the system, which is not a formality.

Where it falls short. On cost, at the price band most readers of this page are in, and we have already shown the arithmetic twice. Below roughly $15,750 a year of real spend, our cheapest scope does not return its cost inside five years. It is also a bigger single cheque, it needs a tighter scope than buying software does, and it takes longer to arrive than a signup form.

Verdict. The only option on this list where the bill stops going up, and the wrong option for a firm paying $12,000 a year. Both of those are true at the same time.

Every argument below is either arithmetic you can check on this page or a structural fact about the two models. Where an argument does not honestly apply to your firm, we say so inside the argument rather than in a footnote, and the section after this one is six situations where all of them fail at once.

One. The math, restated honestly. A subscription never ends. Staying on Instead at the reported legacy midpoint is $36,000 over three years and $60,000 over five, and year six starts again from zero. A $100,000 build is $145,000 over three and $175,000 over five, and year six adds $15,000. The slope is the whole argument, and at $12,000 a year the slope is not steep enough for it to win inside five years. It wins at year five for a firm paying $35,000, at year five for a $45,000 build against a firm paying $15,750, and at roughly year nine for a $45,000 build against a firm paying $12,000. Those four numbers are the entire financial case, stated at full strength and no further.

Two. Usage pricing taxes the thing you want more of. Instead's published model is a free platform with metered credits. Every plan you run has a marginal cost, which means the firm has a small financial reason not to run one more plan, at exactly the moment a planning service line needs volume to become profitable. TaxPlanIQ's Basic tier does the same thing more bluntly with a 12 plan annual cap. An owned system has no per plan cost at all, so the question stops being what each plan costs to produce and becomes what each plan is worth to the client.

Three. Asset versus expense. A subscription is rent and it leaves nothing behind. A commissioned build is a piece of the firm: transferable, on the balance sheet rather than only on the expense line, and a real item in a merger or succession conversation. For a partner group thinking about a five to ten year horizon, that difference is not cosmetic. For a firm with a two year horizon it is irrelevant, and we would not lead with it.

Four. Built around your workflow rather than the median firm's. Every product in the roundup is calibrated against the average customer in its category. You pay for the whole bundle and adapt your process to the part of it you use. A commissioned system starts from your entity mix, your review hierarchy and the deliverable format your clients already read. Nobody gets retrained into somebody else's assumptions about how a planning engagement should run.

Five. AI at the core rather than metered on top. This one is concrete rather than rhetorical, because the pricing pages say it. Instead sells the research, planning and drafting work as a credit layer on top of a free platform. TaxPlanIQ bundles its assistant into tiers that step up in price. Either way the intelligence is the thing being metered. In a commissioned build the AI is the system, there is no separate AI line, and adding a preparer costs nothing.

Six. Unlimited seats. Preparers, reviewers, seasonal staff during compliance season, and where appropriate the client themselves. Zero marginal cost per person changes the question from who needs a licence to who needs access, which is a better question and one that seasonal firms in this profession ask every January.

Seven. Data ownership and no exit negotiation. Your client data, your strategy library, your export path, in your own tenant, under an agreement you wrote. This one carries specific weight in a CPA firm because the data in question is client tax return information, and the scope of who may use and disclose it under IRC Section 7216 is a decision your firm should be making deliberately rather than inheriting from a vendor's terms of service. Owning the system means that scope is a document you author.

Eight. Vendor risk you stop carrying. This page is itself the example. A tax planning product with an installed base of firms was acquired, its pricing page now redirects to the acquirer, the successor's plan page reads Coming soon, and the third party review coverage that would let a buyer research it independently is thinning out. Nothing has broken for existing customers and we are not going to pretend it has. But every firm on that product is now waiting on somebody else's pricing announcement, and a system you own does not get acquired.

What we can actually prove

Arguments are worth what the evidence behind them is worth, so here is ours with nothing rounded up, and one honest limitation stated first. We have not built a tax planning strategy engine, and we have not migrated anybody off Corvee. If a firm on this page needs a reference from an identical engagement, we do not have one and will say so on the call rather than reach for an adjacent story.

What we do have is delivery evidence in professional services firms with the same shape of problem. Jim Glaser Law is our nameable reference and the principal takes reference calls. The LELF platform is the fullest example of what a commission looks like at real operational volume: a 47-attorney litigation firm runs its matter, invoice and trust operation on it, holding 13,296 matters, 4,396 clients and 5,684 invoices, with trust reconciled byte identical against the system it replaced. That firm is under confidentiality and stays anonymised, which is why we name the platform and not the firm. Across our practice we have handled more than 6,000 AI handled calls and delivered more than forty commissions.

What that evidence supports is a specific claim: we can build a system that carries real operational volume inside a professional services firm and reconciles to the penny under audit. What it does not support is any claim about tax planning strategy content, and that is the part of a Corvee replacement that would need your firm's own subject matter expertise driving the scope rather than ours.

Six situations where every argument in the previous section fails, and where we would tell you to stay put on a call. On this particular page the first one covers most readers, which is not the usual outcome and we are not going to bury it.

Firms paying inside the reported legacy band. If your real annual spend on tax planning software is $10,000 to $15,000 a year, the arithmetic does not work and it does not get close. Our cheapest scope costs $78,750 over five years against $60,000 for staying at the midpoint. Below about $15,750 a year, no build we would quote returns its cost inside five years. Renegotiate at renewal and spend the energy on something else.

Existing Corvee customers whose workflows work. Instead states your pricing, accounts and workflows are unchanged. If nothing is broken and nothing has moved on your invoice, doing nothing this year is a legitimate strategy, not procrastination. Put a calendar reminder on your renewal date and revisit then.

Firms building a planning service line from scratch. If you do not yet know which strategies your client base actually needs, you cannot scope a system around them, and you would be paying us to make guesses you are better placed to make. Buy TaxPlanIQ or stay on Instead, run eighteen months of real engagements, and let the pattern show up in your own data first. The coaching layer TaxPlanIQ bundles is genuinely useful at that stage and we do not offer an equivalent.

Firms that need a working tool this quarter. A commissioned build ships a working prototype in seven to ten days and production in five to seven weeks. A signup form is faster than that and it is not close. If the deadline is real and near, buy.

Firms where nobody will own the system internally. An owned build needs a named person who cares about it, even at a light touch. Firms without that person are better off renting, because the alternative is an orphaned system that decays quietly and nobody notices until compliance season.

Firms whose constraint is not the planning tool at all. If the hours are leaking in document intake, review bottlenecks or client chasing, changing planning software is motion rather than progress. A meaningful share of the diagnosis calls we run end with us recommending the firm keep what it has, and this is the most common reason.

1. Are you an existing Corvee customer whose invoice has not changed and whose workflows work? If yes, stop here for now. Instead's own page says nothing changes. Ask your account contact for the pricing assurance in writing with a date on it, put your renewal in the calendar, and come back to this page ninety days before it. If no, continue.

2. Do you know your actual annual spend on this category, including any bundled modules? If no, stop and go find the invoice and the order form. Every decision after this one depends on it, and the reported band on this page is a substitute for that document rather than a replacement for it. If yes, continue.

3. Run your number in the calculator above. Is your annual spend below about $15,750? If yes, stop. No build we would scope returns its cost inside five years at that spend level. Shortlist TaxPlanIQ against your current tool, negotiate, and move on. If no, continue.

4. Is what you actually need a strategy library, or a workflow? If it is the library, meaning vetted strategies, calculations and client deliverables, then a rented tool is genuinely the right shape of purchase and TaxPlanIQ or Instead is where to look. Stop here and go price them. If it is a workflow that no vendor sells, continue.

5. Can you name that workflow in one sentence, with a rough dollar or hour figure attached? If no, stop, and spend two weeks measuring before anyone spends money. Every failed build we have seen started with an unnamed constraint. If yes, continue.

6. Is a $45,000 to $180,000 fixed fee real this year, and is a partner willing to spend 45 minutes on the diagnosis? If no, park it and revisit at renewal. If yes, that call is the next step, and a meaningful share of them end with us telling a firm to stay where it is.

Almost nobody writing about this category answers this, which is strange, because it is the question that decides whether a firm ever acts on any of the rest. The good news for this specific product is that the answer is smaller than it is for most software categories. Tax planning software is not a system of record. It does not hold your general ledger, your returns or your client files. That makes leaving materially easier than leaving a practice management platform or a document system, and pretending otherwise would inflate a problem to sell a solution.

You are moving four things, and only one of them is the software's. The client plans you have already produced and delivered, which mostly exist as finished documents you already hold. The strategy templates and assumptions your firm has customised inside the tool, which is the part that actually took time to build and the part nobody thinks about until they leave. Any client facing deliverable formatting your clients now recognise. And the scenario inputs behind live, in progress planning engagements, which are the ones that hurt if you switch mid engagement.

Phase one: export and inventory, and do it before you decide anything. Export every produced plan and every customised template while your account is unquestionably active. This is worth doing even if you intend to stay, because it is the cheapest possible insurance against a future pricing conversation going badly. Ask specifically what export formats are available and whether templates come out in a form you can read outside the product, because that answer varies by vendor and it is the difference between an export and a screenshot.

Phase two: parallel run through one full planning cycle. Do not switch tools mid engagement. Run new engagements in the new system and finish existing ones where they started, through at least one complete planning cycle, so gaps surface while you can still go back. In this category the gaps show up as a strategy you used to run in three clicks that now takes an afternoon, and you only find those by doing the work rather than by evaluating a demo.

Phase three: cancel, on the calendar rather than in the moment. Read the term. TaxPlanIQ's tiers carry a stated 12 month commitment regardless of billing frequency and Holistiplan's carry a 12 month term, so an annual contract in this category will renew during a switch if nobody sends the notice. Whatever your current Corvee or Instead order form says about notice periods is the document that matters, not anything on this page.

A realistic total is one planning cycle, not a quarter of project time. This is a genuinely low switching cost category compared with the rest of a firm's stack, and the honest implication of that cuts against us as much as for us: because leaving is cheap, the case for owning has to rest on economics and control rather than on lock-in fear. That is why the arithmetic sections on this page are as blunt as they are.

The option most firms do not consider. You do not have to leave to fix the problem. In a large share of the cases we see, the planning tool is fine, the licence is defensible, and the leak is in a workflow beside it: intake, document chasing, review routing, deadline tracking across entity types. That path keeps your planning tool, keeps the strategy library, and builds the missing piece around it. No migration, no parallel run, no cancellation letter.

If the tool you are actually rethinking is the compliance stack rather than the planning layer, the CCH Axcess alternatives comparison runs the same sourced pricing and total cost treatment for tax preparation software, and the UltraTax and Practice CS comparison does it for the Thomson Reuters side of a firm's stack. If your friction is client document delivery rather than planning, the SafeSend alternatives page covers that category with the same discipline about which prices are published and which are not. For the build side in detail, the CCH Axcess AI workflow playbook documents what integrating at the API layer actually involves inside a CPA firm. If you are choosing an advisor rather than a system, the best AI consultants for CPA firms ranks options on who publishes a price, who names a segment and who can put a client on the phone. And the CPA firm brief is the short version of how a commission works for a firm this size.