CompareForgecompare tool
Plan Comparison Tool
Enter two or three plans with their prices and features — get normalized monthly and annual costs, a feature matrix, and the cheapest option per month.
Enter your plans
How This Tool Works
You enter the plans — their names, prices, billing periods and features — because plan pricing changes too often for any website to publish reliably. The tool normalizes every plan to a monthly and annual cost, ranks them, and builds a feature matrix from the allowances you list.
Normalization is the whole point: a $99/year plan and a $11.99/month plan look incomparable on their face, but annualized they are $8.25/month versus $11.99 — the annual option is 31% cheaper per month.
How to Use It
Open the provider’s pricing page next to this tool and transcribe each tier: price, whether it bills monthly or annually, and a comma-separated list of the features that matter to you (seats, storage, quality tiers, downloads, offline access).
The feature matrix only includes features you typed — leaving a feature out of one plan’s list marks it absent there. Be strict: only mark a feature if that plan actually includes it.
Understanding the Results
The normalized cost cards show monthly equivalent, yearly total and which plan is cheapest per month. The lowest monthly cost is not automatically the right plan — the feature matrix shows what you sacrifice for it.
When the cheapest plan lacks features you need, the right comparison is between the plans that have them: delete plans from the input until only viable candidates remain.
Worked Example
Two tiers for the same service: $9.99 per month, or $89 per year. Normalized, the annual plan costs $7.42 a month - about 26% less than paying monthly - and the tool shows both figures side by side with the annual totals ($119.88 against $89) so the saving is visible in both directions.
Add a third option that gates the features you need behind a higher tier and the comparison changes character: the cheapest normalized price only wins if it passes your feature gates. The tool keeps price and features in the same view so a cheaper plan that lacks a requirement is eliminated on features rather than celebrated on price.
Important Considerations
Prices you enter are assumed accurate and current. We do not store or verify them — always confirm on the provider’s site before purchase.
The tool does not model taxes, regional pricing, introductory rates that increase later, or per-seat scaling. For multi-seat pricing, enter the full multi-seat price directly.
Annual plans are compared on cost only; lock-in and refund terms are your judgment call.
Methodology & Data
- Monthly equivalent = price ÷ 12 for annual plans, price for monthly plans; annual total = monthly × 12.
- Feature matrix: features are split on commas/newlines, unioned across plans, and checked per plan as exact string matches.
- Cheapest plan = lowest normalized monthly cost among plans with valid prices (≥ 0).
- All data is user-entered at request time; nothing is persisted server-side.
Related Tools
Related Guides
- How to Compare Subscription Plans Properly
A repeatable method for comparing subscription tiers - normalize billing periods, weight the features you use, and catch pricing traps.
- Building a Weighted Decision Matrix That Works
How to build a weighted decision matrix: define criteria, set weights honestly, score options consistently, and read the result without fooling yourself.
Common Questions
How do I compare two subscription plans?
Enter each plan’s price, billing period and features. The tool normalizes both to monthly and annual costs, shows which is cheaper, and builds a side-by-side feature matrix.
Why not use your built-in plan prices?
Subscription pricing changes constantly and varies by region and promotion. User-entered prices are always current — we would rather you type two numbers than trust a stale table.
How is the cheapest plan determined?
By normalized monthly cost: annual prices are divided by 12 and compared directly against monthly prices. The lowest monthly equivalent is flagged.
Can I compare three plans?
Yes — up to three plans. Add the third with the Add plan button; it joins the cost cards and the feature matrix automatically.
What should I list as features?
The differentiators you care about: seats, storage limits, video quality, offline mode, support level. The matrix only includes what you enter, so keep the list to true decision factors.