cfo.ai vs Adlega: Two AI CFOs Compared Honestly (2026)

cfo.ai and Adlega both sell an "AI CFO", but they start from opposite ends. cfo.ai (formerly Runway Financial) connects its agent, Ari, to your ledger, bank and payroll, keeps a live model of the company from that data and alerts you to changes; plans cost $375 or $1,125 a month billed yearly ($500 or $1,500 monthly) with a 14-day trial and no free plan. Adlega is a self-serve SaaS forecasting tool: you set drivers such as pricing, new customers, churn and hires, it builds a 36-month model with native MRR, churn, CAC, burn and runway, and its AI CFO reviews and explains the numbers; there is a free plan and paid plans from $49 a month. If you have months of real books to connect, cfo.ai does more. If you are mostly modelling the future of a SaaS company, Adlega costs a fraction and is built for it.

This comparison is written by the team that makes Adlega. We list where cfo.ai is the better choice and where Adlega is weaker, and every cfo.ai fact below comes from cfo.ai's own site as read on October 22, 2026.

cfo.ai vs Adlega at a glance

cfo.ai facts verified on cfo.ai/pricing, cfo.ai and cfo.ai/integrations on October 22, 2026. Adlega facts from the Adlega pricing section on the same date; Adlega's paid prices are founding-member rates (list prices after launch: $98 and $298 a month). Full cfo.ai plan details: cfo.ai pricing.

What "AI CFO" means in each product

The phrase is the same; the job is different.

cfo.ai's Ari is an operator on top of your books. According to cfo.ai, Ari reads your ledger, banking and payroll without writing back to them, builds and maintains one model of the company inside cfo.ai, prices scenarios, drafts the monthly pack and tells you what changed before you ask. Changes it makes land in a changelog you can roll back, and anything that leaves the model (an email, a call to an outside tool) waits for your approval. cfo.ai is explicit that it does not close your books: your accountant still does that.

Adlega's AI CFO is a guide inside a forecast you build. It asks plain-language questions to set up the model, reviews your assumptions, and answers finance questions grounded in your own numbers, with each answer traced to the drivers and formulas behind it. Usage is metered in Adlega Tokens: 15 a month on Free, 150 on Founder and 1,000 on Growth. The forecast itself is the product: a driver-based operating model where changing one assumption updates every statement, chart and metric. Our guide to what an AI CFO does covers the category in more depth.

Price: what a year costs

cfo.ai's Startup plan costs about nine times Adlega's Founder plan on annual billing. The gap buys real things: live connections to your financial systems, an agent that watches them, Slack and MCP access, and a model that stays current without you re-entering anything. Whether that is worth $4,000 a year depends on how much real data you have to connect.

Where cfo.ai is the better choice

• You have books, payroll and bank accounts with history. A company with a year or more of actuals in QuickBooks or Xero, payroll in Rippling or Gusto and several bank and card accounts gets the most from an agent that reads them all and keeps one model in sync.
• You want the numbers to come to you. Proactive alerts, a Slack app and an MCP server mean questions and changes show up where you already work, instead of in a tool you have to open.
• You need a board pack built from actuals. cfo.ai prepares the pack from the same connected model, with every figure traceable to source rows.
• You are a fractional CFO with many clients. cfo.ai has a partner rate from $262.50 per client per month, billed yearly, with a workspace per client. Adlega has no practice pricing.
• You need warehouse data or SSO. cfo.ai Enterprise covers Snowflake, BigQuery and enterprise ERPs plus SSO / SAML.

Where Adlega is the better choice

• You are modelling the future more than tracking the past. Pre-seed and seed SaaS companies spend most of their planning time on what has not happened yet: pricing, the first sales hires, churn assumptions, how long the cash lasts. A driver-based model handles that directly; a tool built around syncing books has little to sync.
• Your business is SaaS. Adlega ships an MRR waterfall, ARR, churn, CAC, LTV, burn and runway as built-in outputs. cfo.ai is a general company model; it can produce those numbers from your data, but they are not its organising frame.
• Budget matters. A free plan and $490 a year for Founder versus $4,500 a year for cfo.ai Startup. For a company with 12 to 18 months of runway, that difference is real.
• You want to start without a trial clock. Adlega's free plan has no time limit and no credit card; cfo.ai has a 14-day trial.

Where Adlega is weaker

Adlega does not do what makes cfo.ai distinctive. It does not connect to your bank, payroll or CRM today, and apart from the single actuals-sync integration on Founder, its integrations (Stripe, Chargebee, Google Analytics, Google Ads), forecast-vs-actuals and scenario comparison are still rolling out on the Growth plan, so most numbers come from drivers you enter. It has no Slack app, no MCP server and no proactive alerts. Its AI CFO explains and reviews; it does not watch your systems or draft a board pack from actuals. And because it is built around SaaS metrics, a business without recurring revenue will get less from it than from cfo.ai's general model. If live data is the point, cfo.ai is the stronger product.

How to choose

Ask one question: is the model mostly about what has already happened, or what you expect to happen? If you have a finance stack full of history and want an agent to keep a live picture of it, try cfo.ai's 14-day trial. If you are a SaaS founder planning hires, pricing and runway ahead of the data, start on Adlega's free plan and see whether the forecast answers your questions before paying anyone. You can also test the core numbers first with the free runway calculator or scenario planner.

FAQ

What is cfo.ai?

cfo.ai is the new name of Runway Financial, which rebranded on September 10, 2026 and launched Ari, an AI agent that acts as a CFO for founders (SiliconANGLE, FF News). Ari connects to your ledger, bank and payroll and keeps a model of the company current.

What is an AI CFO?

Software that does the modelling, forecasting and explaining part of a CFO's job in plain language. Some, like cfo.ai's Ari, work mainly from connected financial systems; others, like Adlega's AI CFO, work inside a forecast you build. Neither replaces a CFO's judgment, and cfo.ai says Ari does not close your books.

Is cfo.ai the same as Runway?

cfo.ai is the former Runway Financial. It is not Runway the AI video company, which now uses runway.com.

How much does cfo.ai cost compared with Adlega?

cfo.ai Startup is $375 a month billed yearly ($500 monthly) and Growth is $1,125 ($1,500 monthly). Adlega is free, or $41 and $124 a month billed yearly ($49 and $149 monthly). A year of cfo.ai Startup on annual billing is $4,500; a year of Adlega Founder is $490.

Does cfo.ai have a free plan?

No. It has a 14-day free work trial, and during its launch month it offers to build your first model free. Adlega has a free plan with one model and 15 AI CFO tokens a month.

Which AI CFO is better for a SaaS startup?

For an early SaaS company planning ahead of its data, Adlega fits better and costs less. For a company with substantial actuals across several systems that wants an agent to keep them in one live model, cfo.ai does more.

Related: best AI CFO tools, cfo.ai pricing, Runway (cfo.ai) alternatives, Forecastr vs Adlega, best SaaS financial modeling software, and AI financial modeling for SaaS.