Evisort vs Ironclad: Which in 2026?
Quick answer: These are shortlisted against each other because they overlap on paper and diverge in practice. Evisort reads a pile of agreements nobody has looked at since signing and tells you what is in them. Ironclad governs what happens next: approvals, signature, repository, obligations tracked from the moment they are created. Both are reported from around $30,000 a year, so cost will not decide it. Ask instead whether the uncomfortable question in your business is what did we already agree to, or how does the next one get signed. Evisort answers the first much better and Ironclad answers the second.
At a glance
| Evisort | Ironclad | |
|---|---|---|
| Reported price | ~$30,000 to $150,000 a year | ~$30,000 to $250,000 a year, marketplace median near $40,000 across 363 recorded purchases |
| Price transparency | No published price; reported figures available | No published price; reported figures available |
| Core job | Reading contracts you have already signed | Governing the ones you are about to sign |
| Extraction from legacy documents | The product; works on unstructured and scattered sets | Present, but much depends on metadata captured at signature |
| Approval routing | Present, lighter | Conditional by value, risk and department; the reference implementation |
| Obligation tracking | Identified from the document text itself | Tracked from what was entered when the contract was created |
| Ownership | Part of Workday following acquisition | Independent |
| Best on | An inherited estate nobody has read | A high volume of new agreements needing sign-off |
Which one, by buyer
| If you are | Choose | Because |
|---|---|---|
| A business that cannot say what its existing contracts commit it to | Evisort | Extraction across scattered, unstructured and often scanned agreements is what it was built for, and Ironclad is materially weaker on documents signed before you bought it. |
| A business where deals stall waiting for sign-off | Ironclad | Conditional routing across finance, security and the deal desk is the strongest here, and no amount of extraction fixes an approval bottleneck. |
| A legal team asked to report on exposure across the estate | Evisort | Reporting on terms across a whole set is the question it answers directly, rather than reporting on the metadata someone remembered to enter. |
| A business with a high volume of new sales agreements | Ironclad | Salesforce integration and template-driven creation mean the deal team never leaves the CRM. Evisort is not built for that flow. |
| A business with both problems and one budget | Ironclad | It does the backward-looking job adequately and the forward-looking job well. Evisort does the reverse but the forward-looking gap is harder to work around manually. |
| A mid-sized team signing a few hundred agreements a year | Neither | Both start around $30,000 a year and are deployments measured in months. Contractbook or Juro reach most of the value far cheaper. |
Backward-looking and forward-looking
The cleanest way to separate these is time. Evisort points at the past: thousands of agreements in shared drives and email, signed by people who have left, with terms nobody has summarised. It reads them and produces an answer.
Ironclad points at the future. Its value starts when someone needs a new contract and continues through approval, signature and the obligations that follow, all captured as they are created rather than extracted later.
Both claim the other's territory. Ironclad extracts from legacy documents and Evisort has workflow, and both will demo it competently. The difference shows up on your worst documents rather than on the vendor's sample set, which is why testing on your own scanned and inherited agreements matters more than any feature list.
Where Ironclad's obligation tracking actually comes from
This is the most useful distinction and it is rarely stated. Ironclad tracks obligations well when the obligation was captured at creation, because someone selected a term type or filled a field as the contract went through.
For agreements signed before you bought it, that metadata does not exist, and what it can tell you falls sharply. Evisort derives the same information from the document text, so it does not care whether anyone entered anything.
So a business whose real anxiety is the legacy estate should be sceptical of an Ironclad demo built on contracts created inside Ironclad. Ask to see it read something old and badly scanned.
The Workday acquisition is a real variable
Evisort is now part of Workday, which changes how it will be sold, priced and developed in ways nobody outside can yet describe. That is not a criticism of the product, which is strong.
It is a reason to ask specific questions on a multi-year commitment: whether renewal routes through Workday's commercial team, whether the roadmap now serves Workday's suite, and what happens if you are not a Workday customer.
Ironclad's independence is worth something here, though it is worth remembering that independence is also a state that can change.
Frequently asked questions
Is Evisort or Ironclad better?
Evisort is better if the problem is contracts you have already signed and cannot summarise. Ironclad is better if the problem is how the next contract gets approved and signed. Both are reported from around $30,000 a year, so the decision turns on which question is costing you more.
How much does each cost?
Evisort is reported at approximately $30,000 to $150,000 a year. Ironclad is reported at $30,000 to $250,000, with a marketplace median near $40,000 across 363 recorded purchases. Neither publishes a rate card, so both figures are directional rather than quotes.
Which is better at reading old contracts?
Evisort, clearly. It derives terms from the document text, so it works on agreements signed long before you bought it. Ironclad's obligation tracking leans on metadata captured when a contract was created, which does not exist for a legacy estate. Test both on your worst scanned documents rather than on a clean sample.
Does either handle approvals properly?
Ironclad is the reference implementation for conditional routing by value, risk and department. Evisort has workflow but it is lighter, and if approval delay is your bottleneck the comparison is not close.
Does the Workday acquisition matter?
It is worth asking about on a multi-year commitment. How renewal is handled, whether the roadmap now serves the Workday suite, and what the relationship looks like if you are not a Workday customer. The product is strong; the commercial picture is less settled than it was.
Can one tool do both jobs?
Ironclad comes closer, because it handles the forward-looking job well and the backward-looking one adequately. If you can only buy one and you have both problems, that asymmetry usually decides it, since an approval bottleneck is harder to work around manually than a reading exercise.
Do we need either at our size?
Both start around $30,000 a year and are implementations measured in months with an internal owner. A business signing a few hundred agreements a year reaches most of the value with Contractbook or Juro at a fraction of the cost and in weeks.