Finmark Alternative: Free Financial Model Builder for Startups

Finmark is gone. BILL acquired the company in 2022 and officially shut it down on April 1, 2026. If you were using Finmark for your startup's financial projections, you need a new home.

I built ModelForge specifically for this problem. It generates investor-ready 5-year financial projections with full 3-statement models. It's free to start, and it handles five different business types that Finmark never distinguished between.

Here's how it compares, what you gain by switching, and how to get started in under 5 minutes.

What happened to Finmark?#

BILL completed their acquisition of Finmark in November 2022. For a while, not much changed. Then in early 2026, BILL announced they would sunset the product entirely. As of April 1, 2026, existing users can no longer access their accounts or data.

Finmark raised $11M in VC funding (YC S20) and validated that founders are willing to pay $50-100/month for purpose-built financial modeling. The product had real traction. But once BILL absorbed the team, the standalone product became redundant to their broader financial operations platform.

The problem: BILL's recommended alternatives are enterprise-grade tools priced at $250/month or more. That's not helpful if you're a pre-seed founder trying to put together projections for your first investor meeting.

ModelForge vs. Finmark: what's different#

Here's the honest comparison. Finmark did some things well. ModelForge does other things better.

Where Finmark was better#

Finmark had accounting integrations (QuickBooks, Xero, Stripe) that pulled in actual revenue data. ModelForge doesn't have this yet. If your primary use case was "plan vs. actual" comparison with live data, that feature is on the roadmap but not available today.

Finmark also had unlimited users and collaboration features. ModelForge is currently single-user.

Where ModelForge is better#

Five dedicated financial engines. This is the biggest difference. Finmark treated every startup the same. Whether you were building a SaaS product, running a marketplace, or operating a consulting firm, you got the same generic template.

ModelForge has five separate calculation engines:

• SaaS/Subscription: Seat-based MRR with expansion, logo churn, seat churn, and price escalation
• E-commerce/DTC: Order-based revenue with inventory as a balance sheet asset, returns, and fulfillment costs
• Marketplace: GMV x take rate with dual buyer/supplier waterfalls
• Services/Consulting: Billable hours x rate with consultant salaries as COGS (not OpEx) and WIP tracking
• Usage-Based: Consumption x unit price with prepaid credits and deferred revenue

Each engine has its own revenue formula, COGS structure, working capital items, unit economics, and KPI definitions. A marketplace model tracks GMV and take rate. A services model tracks utilization and billable hours. These aren't cosmetic differences. They change how every number flows through the financial statements.

Full 3-statement financials. Finmark focused on P&L and cash runway. ModelForge generates a complete Income Statement, Cash Flow Statement, and Balance Sheet that balance every month. Working capital items (inventory, work-in-progress, deferred revenue) flow correctly between all three statements. This is what VCs at Series A and beyond expect to see.

Sensitivity analysis. Finmark didn't have tornado charts showing which assumptions drive the most variance in your outcomes. ModelForge lets you pick any KPI, any year, and see the top 15 parameters ranked by impact. You can sweep individual parameters to see exactly where breakeven shifts.

Benchmark validation. Every slider in ModelForge has a tooltip showing the industry benchmark from sources like KeyBanc, OpenView, Bessemer, and SaaS Capital. If your monthly churn assumption is at 8% and the industry median is 3-5%, you'll see an amber warning. 64 guardrails total across all five model types.

How to migrate from Finmark in 5 minutes#

Finmark didn't export data in a format you can import elsewhere. But recreating your model in ModelForge is fast because the tool does most of the work for you.

1. Go to ModelForge and pick your business model type
2. Choose Quick Start to load industry-standard defaults, or Guided Setup to answer 8 questions about your business
3. Review the dashboard: your 5-year projections are computed instantly with KPIs, charts, and a GO/NO-GO scorecard
4. Customize in the Playground: adjust any of 60+ assumptions with real-time chart updates
5. Export: download your model as an Excel file with real formulas, PDF report, or Word document

The whole process takes 5-20 minutes depending on how much you customize. If you had specific assumptions in Finmark you want to preserve, open the Playground and set them manually. The benchmark tooltips will help you validate that your numbers are reasonable.

What about other Finmark alternatives?#

Causal (now Lucanet)#

Powerful but expensive. Minimum $250/month after the free tier. Moved upmarket after the Lucanet acquisition. Good for Series B+ companies with finance teams. Overkill (and overpriced) for early-stage founders.

Forecastr#

Software plus a dedicated analyst. Great if you want someone to build your model for you. Custom pricing, usually $200+/month. Not self-serve.

Sturppy#

Closest to ModelForge in positioning. Targets startups who want to "ditch Excel." But it uses generic templates, not model-type-specific engines. No sensitivity analysis. No balance sheet.

ProjectionHub#

Guided spreadsheet templates. Industry-specific but not interactive. No real-time charts, no scenario analysis. More like an Excel template with a form on top.

Free Excel/Google Sheets templates#

Taylor Davidson's Foresight model has 50,000+ downloads. It's solid for SaaS. But it's a spreadsheet. One wrong formula edit and everything breaks silently. No benchmark validation, no sensitivity analysis, no auto-generated scenarios.

Who ModelForge is built for#

Founders preparing to raise. You need investor-ready projections but don't want to spend 40 hours in a spreadsheet or $250/month on Causal.

Consultants and fractional CFOs. You build financial models for clients. ModelForge saves you 4-8 hours per model and produces professional output.

Accelerator programs. You have 50 companies in a cohort and they all need financial models for demo day. Half of them are SaaS, a quarter are marketplaces, and the rest are services businesses. One tool handles all of them.

Get started#

ModelForge is free to use. No credit card required. You can build a complete model, see your dashboard, and export to Excel/PDF.

If you're building a SaaS product, check out the SaaS financial model template guide for a deep dive into MRR, churn, and seat-based pricing. Running a two-sided platform? The marketplace financial model guide covers GMV, take rates, and dual-sided waterfalls. For a broader overview of what investors expect across all five business types, read how to build a financial model for investors.

If you were a Finmark user and something specific about the migration doesn't work for your use case, reach out. I'm actively building based on user feedback and the Finmark feature gap is top of mind.