Pulley Cap Table Shutdown: What to Export and Where to Go

Every Pulley cap table needs a new home before 8 December 2026, when Pulley closes its app and ends support. Customers who opt in by 30 November get an assisted move to Carta at their current price for a year. Anyone moving elsewhere exports the records alone, and Pulley’s limited read access ends on 31 January 2027.

The choice of provider draws most of the attention, yet it can be changed again next year. What cannot be redone after January is the export. It holds the ledger of every issue and transfer behind the cap table, the signed grants and consents, and the 409A reports. It also holds the record of each option exercised in 2026, which employers need for tax statements due the day after Pulley’s access ends.

The Pulley shutdown calendar

Date	What happens	What it changes
15 Sep 2026	Pulley publishes its shutdown FAQ	84 days of notice before the app closes
30 Nov 2026	Last day to opt in to the assisted Carta migration	After it, a new Carta account carries no guaranteed price or credits
8 Dec 2026	The app closes and Pulley’s support ends	Without a new provider under contract, access to the cap table ends
14 Dec 2026	A signing window opened on 30 Nov is still running	Six days after the app has closed
31 Jan 2027	Limited data access through the Pulley app ends	The last day anything can be retrieved
1 Feb 2027	Form 3921 statements for 2026 ISO exercises are due to employees	31 January 2027 is a Sunday, so the date moves to Monday

Source: Pulley’s shutdown FAQ (15 September 2026, re-read 21 October 2026); 26 U.S.C. § 6039(b) and the IRS General Instructions for Certain Information Returns. The 84 days and the 14 December and 1 February dates are calculated from those terms.

Which Pulley deadline binds first?

For a Pulley cap table moving to Carta, the binding date is 30 November. Pulley’s shutdown FAQ says that if a customer has not opted in to sharing its details with Carta by then, “Pulley offers no guarantee regarding timing, pricing, or disruption to service”. A company can still open a Carta account afterwards, but without the assisted migration and under a contract with “no guaranteed pricing or credits applied”. Opting in commits nobody to anything: Pulley describes it as consent to share contact and contract details, “not a contractual agreement to migrate to Carta”.

The opt-in starts a second clock. Carta then sends a new 12-month agreement, and the customer has two weeks from its arrival to sign. An agreement that arrives on 30 November can still be open on 14 December, six days after the app has closed (our arithmetic). Pulley’s own advice is three words long: “Pulley recommends not waiting”.

For every other destination, 8 December binds, because Pulley “is unable to assist a migration to a different provider in any capacity”. The export is the customer’s job, and after the app closes the FAQ promises access only “in a limited format”, which it does not define. Counted from 21 October, that leaves 40 days to the opt-in deadline, 48 days to the shutdown and 102 days to the end of data access.

What does Carta’s offer to Pulley customers include?

We found no Carta page addressed to Pulley customers, so its terms come from Pulley’s FAQ. A customer signs a new Carta-provided 12-month contract, and Pulley pricing “will be honored for your first full year on Carta”, with a credit for any unused prepaid balance. The contract and its year-1 price take effect on the day of signing, whatever the migration date, and Carta bills annually, semi-annually or quarterly, never monthly. Migration takes a few business days for most accounts and moves the “cap table data, documents, transaction history, and equity records”. Carta also accepts Pulley’s existing 409A as-is until it expires, and says it will support the defence of Pulley’s earlier valuations.

What the offer leaves open is year 2. The FAQ prices only the first year, and Carta prices each plan per stakeholder with a minimum annual fee, without publishing the figures. A Pulley cap table on the Growth plan, at the list $3,500 a year, therefore costs a known amount to late 2027 and an unknown one after it. Plan placement matters as much as price. Carta’s page puts Form 3921 and 409A valuations in its Grow plan, and ASC 718 reporting and Rule 701 management in Scale, its top plan, while Pulley’s price list showed stock-based compensation reporting only in its own top tier. A renewal on a lower Carta plan can push the year-end tax forms, or the audit schedule of option expense, back onto the finance team.

The smallest customers face a different question. Carta’s free Launch plan covers up to 25 stakeholders and $1M raised, which is the size of Pulley’s $1,200 Startup plan with its 25 stakeholders. A company inside both limits should ask Carta in writing whether year 2 can sit on Launch.

What do other cap table providers offer Pulley customers?

Four other providers publish offers aimed at Pulley customers, and each says it will do the migration itself. None has Pulley’s cooperation, so on these routes the company either exports the data or, on Eqvista’s route, gives a migration specialist read-only access to the Pulley account. CX Cash is being built to model ownership beside a system of record such as these, and is not one of the providers compared.

What each provider offers Pulley customers, in its own words

Provider	Migration, as described	Price terms for Pulley customers	409A
Carta (opt in by 30 Nov)	A few business days for most accounts, with Pulley’s cooperation	Pulley price for the first full year, credit for prepaid time; year 2 unstated	Accepts Pulley’s 409A until it expires; supports its defence
Cake	Most in 48 hours (2 to 5 business days); free basic migration	List: Build $1,000 a year for 25 stakeholders; Team $2,750 for 40, annual only	Team includes two 409As a year
Eqvista	As little as 1 to 5 business days, white-glove, at no charge	30% off the current Pulley invoice; a year-2 price lock	Says it will defend Pulley’s 409As
EquityList	Most Pulley migrations in under 12 hours	Matches the remaining Pulley term; the same page also offers 50% off year one	First auditor-supported 409A free
Mantle	Self-serve in an afternoon; concierge in 1 to 5 business days	$100 off its $1,200 annual Essentials plan until 8 Dec	Not mentioned in the offer

Source: Pulley’s FAQ for Carta’s terms; each provider’s own pricing or offer page, read on 21 October 2026. Vendor statements, untested.

Two of these pages contradict themselves. EquityList promises to “match the remaining term of your Pulley contract” and, further down the same page, advertises 50% off year one. Mantle’s comparison lists its Starter plan at $1,200 a year while its FAQ calls the same plan free. On a $3,500 Pulley Growth invoice, Eqvista’s 30% comes to $2,450 for the year (our arithmetic), Cake’s Team list price is $2,750, and Mantle’s own table puts its Growth plan at $3,000. Only Eqvista mentions year 2, and its page does not say at what level the price is locked or for how long. Each of these is an offer read from a marketing page; the contract is what binds.

What must a Pulley cap table export contain?

The record the law cares about is the stock ledger. Under Delaware’s corporation law, the ledger is the only evidence of who may examine the stockholder list or vote at a meeting (§ 219). Section 224 allows it to live in electronic databases only if the records can be “converted into clearly legible paper form within a reasonable time”, can produce the stockholder list and record transfers of stock. The corporation must convert them on request of anyone entitled to inspect.

Lawyers would recognise the problem as one of chain of custody: evidence keeps its weight only while every handover between custodians is logged. A ledger behaves the same way, because its value lies in the record of each issue, transfer, repurchase and cancellation, which a cap table taken as of one date leaves out. The parallel stops at the consequence: a broken chain can exclude evidence, while a gap in a ledger leaves the shares valid and only harder to prove. Eqvista makes the same point when it notes that the shutdown “does not by itself cancel or invalidate the equity your company has issued”.

Pulley’s help centre describes three ways to download the cap table as an Excel file, “as of a specific date or for all time”, plus a Detailed Cap Table report under Company, then Reports. The all-time export is the one that carries the transfers. The help centre describes no bulk export of documents. Report exports on other platforms share the gap: on Carta, according to Cake’s migration guide, “signed documents and valuation reports are not in those exports and have to be downloaded on their own”.

What to take out of Pulley before 31 January 2027

Record	Why the company needs it	Where it is needed next
All-time detailed cap table: every issue, transfer, repurchase and cancellation	It is the stock ledger under Delaware §§ 219 and 224	The new provider, auditors and the next round’s diligence
Option grants with vesting schedules and the 2026 exercise history	Form 3921 for each ISO exercise; the $100,000 ISO limit	Employee statements due 1 February 2027
Every 409A report, with its valuation date	The 12-month presumption and its defence	The next option grant
SAFEs, convertible notes and warrants, with the signed instruments	Their conversion terms	The next priced round
Board consents and grant agreements	Proof that each issue and grant was approved	Diligence and audits
2026 stock-based compensation expense by grant, where Pulley produced it	ASC 718 expense in the 2026 accounts	The year-end audit

Source: Delaware Code §§ 219 and 224; 26 U.S.C. §§ 422 and 6039; 26 CFR 1.409A-1; Pulley’s help centre and price list.

The same files are what a data room for the next round is built from, and reconciling the export against them is the step most likely to be skipped under a deadline. “Most companies find out their cap table has problems in the middle of a diligence process or an audit, when the cost of fixing them is highest,” said Will Tanem, a technical accounting partner at BPM, in the firm’s note on the shutdown. BPM sells that reconciliation work, so the view comes from an interested party, but the timing he describes is the expensive one.

Which 2027 deadlines depend on Pulley’s records?

The first is tax. A corporation must file Form 3921 for each transfer of stock on the exercise of an incentive stock option during a calendar year. Section 6039(b) requires a statement to each employee “on or before January 31 of the year following”. In 2027 that date falls on a Sunday, and the IRS general instructions move a weekend due date to the next business day, so statements for 2026 exercises are due on Monday 1 February, the day after Pulley’s access ends. For 2025 exercises the IRS dates were 2 February 2026 for the statements, and 2 March 2026 on paper or 31 March 2026 electronically for the IRS copies. Every exercise recorded in Pulley between 1 January and 8 December 2026 has to be in hand before then, and on Carta, Form 3921 comes with the Grow plan.

The same grant and vesting history feeds the ISO limit in § 422(d). Where options first exercisable by one person in a calendar year cover more than $100,000 of stock, the law treats the excess as options that are not incentive stock options. Companies that size grants against that limit, as most option pool plans do, need the history to carry on doing so.

The second deadline is valuation. Carta’s promise to accept Pulley’s 409A until it expires has a precise reading in the 409A regulations. An independent appraisal is presumed reasonable for a grant made no more than 12 months after its valuation date. An earlier value stops being reasonable once later information “may materially affect the value of the corporation”, whatever its age. A migration resets neither clock. Options granted at a price the IRS later rejects expose their holders to an additional 20% tax on the compensation included in income, which is why the full report, with its date and assumptions, belongs in the export. The mechanics of how a 409A sets the strike price are the same on any platform.

The third applies to larger option programmes. Under Rule 701, which exempts securities issued under compensatory plans, a company that sells more than $10 million of such securities in any 12 months owes the holders extra disclosure before the sale. The grant and exercise history gives the 12-month total, and Carta places Rule 701 management in its Scale plan.

How should a Pulley customer decide before 30 November?

Export the Pulley cap table first, then choose. The all-time ledger, the signed documents, every 409A report and the 2026 exercise history matter whichever provider follows, and Pulley holds none of them after 31 January 2027. The Carta route costs the least work and fixes the year-1 price, and since opting in commits nobody, a company still deciding loses nothing by opting in early and comparing. The other providers advertise faster migrations and deeper first-year discounts, at the cost of doing the export alone. On any route the year-2 price is the number to get in writing, and the migrated ledger is the thing to check line by line against the signed documents before the next grant relies on it.

If you run the cap table yourself

Founders and finance leads own both the export and the choice. The order that loses nothing is to download the all-time cap table and the documents this month, opt in to Carta before 30 November even while comparing, and ask every provider, Carta included, for its year-2 price in writing. Sign with the one whose contract states it, then reconcile the new ledger against the signed grants before the next option grant.

If you advise a Pulley customer

Accountants, lawyers and investors on the board have narrower checks. Accountants need the 2026 exercise history before 31 January for the Form 3921 statements due on 1 February, and the 2026 option expense by grant for the year-end audit. Counsel should confirm that the migrated ledger records every transfer and that each grant has its board consent. Investors can ask for both answers at the next board meeting, since a gap found during the next round costs more than one found now.

Notes and sources

• Pulley (Prolific Labs Inc.) (2026). FAQ: What is happening with Pulley’s shutdown. Pulley Guides, 15 September 2026; re-read 21 October 2026.
• Pulley (2025). Download an Excel of the cap table. Pulley Help Center, 3 June 2025.
• Pulley (2026). Pricing. pulley.com, read 7 October 2026.
• Carta (2026). Pricing for companies. carta.com, archived copy of 17 September 2026.
• Cake Equity (2026). Pricing, read 21 October 2026; and How do I export my cap table from Carta?, Cake help centre.
• Eqvista (2026). Switch from Pulley to Eqvista and How to Migrate Your Cap Table from Pulley to Eqvista?, read 21 October 2026.
• Vele, J. (2026). Pulley Is Shutting Down: Key Dates, Your Data, and What to Do Next. Eqvista, 16 September 2026.
• EquityList (2026). Moving from Pulley? Read 21 October 2026.
• Mantle (2026). Mantle: The Flat-Rate Pulley Alternative. Read 21 October 2026.
• BPM (2026). Pulley Is Shutting Down: What to Do with Your Cap Table Before December 8. 17 September 2026.
• State of Delaware. Delaware Code, Title 8, §§ 219 and 224.
• United States Code, Title 26, §§ 409A, 422 and 6039; Treasury Regulations, 26 CFR 1.409A-1.
• Internal Revenue Service (2025). Instructions for Forms 3921 and 3922 (April 2025); General Instructions for Certain Information Returns (2025).
• Securities and Exchange Commission. 17 CFR 230.701 (Rule 701).

Carta’s terms are as Pulley’s FAQ states them; we found no Carta page addressed to Pulley customers. The provider offers are each provider’s own words on the pages listed, read on 21 October 2026, and were not tested. Figures without a cited source (the 84 days of notice, 14 December, 1 February 2027, the day counts from 21 October and the $2,450) are our arithmetic on the cited terms. Nothing here is legal or tax advice; a company’s counsel and accountants should confirm the records and deadlines that apply to it.