Cradle Lease Accounting Pricing: What It Costs

Cradle publishes its pricing, which puts it in a small minority of lease accounting vendors. On its own site Cradle states that pricing starts at 99 dollars per month for a plan managing up to 10 agreements, and that a 199 dollar per month plan covers portfolios up to 20. Larger portfolios are directed to book a demo or call. Cradle also states that pricing is based on the number of leases managed and that adding users has no bearing on the price.

That is the whole published ladder, quoted from the vendor rather than from a directory. Below is what it means in practice, what it does not cover, and the one cost that sits outside every plan.

Cradle pricing at a glance

Verified against the Cradle site on September 6, 2026. Published pricing changes without notice, so treat the two listed figures as a starting point and confirm them on the order form.

How much does Cradle cost?

Cradle costs 99 dollars per month for up to 10 lease agreements and 199 dollars per month for up to 20. Anything above 20 agreements is quoted rather than listed, and Cradle points those buyers to a demo or a phone call. Pricing is driven by lease count alone, so adding colleagues to the account does not change the bill.

Does Cradle charge per user?

No. Cradle states plainly that the number of users added has no bearing on the price, and that it encourages collaboration. For a finance team this is the more useful half of the pricing model: the controller, two staff accountants and the external auditor can all sit in the same system during fieldwork without anyone counting seats.

Is there a free trial of Cradle?

Yes. Cradle runs a free trial and offers self-serve signup, and its homepage title leads with the trial rather than a demo request. A small portfolio can therefore be modeled the same afternoon without a sales conversation. That is unusual in lease accounting, where most vendors gate the product behind a scheduled call.

What standards does Cradle support?

Cradle names ASC 842, IFRS 16, GASB 87, GASB 96, FRS 102 and AASB 16, and publishes dedicated software or guide pages for most of them. The GASB coverage matters more than it looks: public sector, utility and higher education finance teams routinely shortlist products that turn out to have no GASB path at all, and the absence is rarely stated during a demo.

Why do the directory listings show different Cradle prices?

Because most of them are not reading the vendor site. Software directories carry pricing that was correct at some point, plus estimated implementation and migration ranges that are modeled rather than published. Some of those estimates are presented with enough precision to look sourced. If a figure does not appear on the vendor site, treat it as an opinion and price your own scenario instead.

What does Cradle pricing not include?

The lease data. Cradle is a calculation and reporting engine, and it expects the terms to already be known. The words abstract, extract, OCR and upload appear zero times on its homepage. Someone still has to read every document and key in the commencement date, the rent schedule, the escalation clauses, the renewal options, the incentives and the discount rate before Cradle can produce a schedule.

That work is the real line item. Abstracting a commercial lease by hand runs roughly four to eight analyst hours depending on how messy the document is, and for a 60 lease portfolio that is most of a quarter of one person's time. It does not appear on any pricing page in this category because no lease accounting vendor is selling it.

How does Cradle pricing compare with the rest of the category?

Favorably, on transparency alone. Of the seventeen lease platforms we have now checked directly against their own pages, only three publish a real number: Cradle, iLeasePro and Occupier. Several publish a pricing page with no price on it. Black Owl Systems heads its pricing page with a claim that the plans are transparent and prices all five tiers Contact Sales, which we go through in our writeup of Black Owl Systems pricing. If you are weighing the two directly, the Cradle vs Black Owl Systems comparison sets them side by side on price, standards and abstraction.

Is Cradle worth it for a small portfolio?

For a lessee with 10 to 20 leases reporting under ASC 842 or GASB, the published plans are priced below what most of this category will quote, and the trial lets you prove the calculations before committing. The judgment call is not really the subscription. It is whether you have the analyst hours to load the portfolio, because that cost is the same whichever platform you sign.

What should I do before I buy?

Abstract two leases first: your messiest one and your most typical one. You will finish knowing your true field list, how your renewal options are actually structured and how bad your worst document is. That is the information the vendor will ask you for anyway, and it turns a demo into a real test instead of a slideshow. Our lease abstraction tool pulls the terms out with every field linked back to the clause it came from, and exports to Excel, CSV, JSON or an API so the data drops straight into whichever platform you choose.

If you are still building a shortlist rather than closing one out, the best lease abstraction software roundup covers the wider field on accuracy, pricing and what each product will and will not read for you. And when the evaluation has to go in front of a CFO or a board, the comparison table you built is usually two clicks from being turned into the deck you present, which saves rebuilding it from scratch.

Which lease platforms actually publish a price?

We check this vendor by vendor, against each company's own pages rather than a directory. As of September 2026, seventeen lease platforms have been checked and three publish a real number a buyer can budget against.

The gap between the marketing language and the page content is the part worth knowing. Two vendors in this category describe their pricing as transparent and publish no dollar amount anywhere on the page that says so. Several redirect or return a 404 on their own pricing URL. One returns a working pricing page with no pricing on it. None of that is a reason to rule a product out, but it does tell you how long your evaluation is going to take.

What happens to the price above 20 leases?

It becomes a quote. Cradle publishes plans only up to 20 agreements and sends larger portfolios to a demo or a phone call. So a 45 lease portfolio cannot be priced from the website, and neither can a 200 lease one. That still leaves Cradle ahead of most of this category, where nothing is listed at any size, but it means the published ladder is a small-portfolio ladder rather than a full price list.

If you are above that line, ask for the per lease rate rather than the total, and ask whether it steps at bands. Two vendors quoting the same annual figure can behave very differently the year you add fifteen locations.

The short version

Cradle publishes 99 dollars per month for up to 10 agreements and 199 dollars for up to 20, does not charge by user, offers a free trial, and covers ASC 842, IFRS 16 and GASB. It does not read your leases. Price the subscription from the vendor site, price the abstraction work separately, and do not let a directory estimate stand in for either.

Last updated September 2026. Pricing verified against the Cradle site on September 6, 2026.