Four trackers, four different answers
How CostLens compares to Cledara, Substly, and Sastrify on price, data-entry model, and what each tool is actually built to do. Sources cited below — check each vendor's site for anything you plan to buy on.
TL;DR
- Four tools, four different answers to the same job. CostLens is a manual ledger. Cledara is a virtual-card platform. Substly is automated discovery for SMBs. Sastrify is procurement-as-a-service for mid-market finance teams.
- Pricing ranges from $12/mo flat (CostLens) to €12.5k–25k a year (Sastrify). Picking the wrong one costs either time or a lot of money.
- If you're a 10–30 person team with one finance lead who already knows which subscriptions they pay for, CostLens is the shortest path. The other three solve bigger, heavier problems with matching overhead.
Built for
- Anyone shopping for a SaaS subscription tracker who already has a shortlist
- Someone who landed here searching "cledara alternative" or "substly vs sastrify"
- A founder or finance lead wondering if a free spreadsheet still does the job
- A buyer trying to match tool shape to team shape before starting a sales conversation
Side by side
Feature comparison
Claims verified against each vendor's public site in April 2026: cledara.com/pricing and /faq; substly.com/pricing; sastrify.com/pricing and their integrations doc. Check the live sites for anything you'll act on.
Match tool shape to team shape
10–30 people, one finance lead
You already know which subscriptions you pay for. You want a ledger that sends renewal reminders and flags duplicates without reading your bank or inbox. Flat $12/mo, no sales call, ready in an afternoon.
Startups routing SaaS through virtual cards
You want per-tool virtual cards, a request-and-approve flow tied to card issuance, and 2% cashback on SaaS spend. You're comfortable giving the tool Gmail access and migrating SaaS payments onto its cards.
SMBs that want automated discovery
You run 30–150 subscriptions and adding each by hand feels like too much. Substly pitches a multi-source discovery engine, a 30-minute setup, and a €95/mo entry tier. Middle ground between CostLens and Cledara.
200+ people with a procurement function
You want negotiation help backed by a $6B benchmark dataset, intake-to-procure workflows, and deep accounting integrations. Budget starts at €12,500/yr. If you're under 50 people, this is probably overkill.
Frequently asked
Which one should I pick?
If you're a 10-30 person team with one finance lead: CostLens. If you want to route SaaS payments through virtual cards and earn 2% cashback: Cledara. If you want automated discovery at SMB scale and €95/mo fits: Substly. If you're 200+ people and want a procurement partner with a negotiation benchmark database: Sastrify. The shapes don't overlap much in practice.
Which is the cheapest?
CostLens at $12/mo flat, or $108 a year. Substly starts at €95/mo. Cledara's Basic tier is £100/mo (waived if you put 10 apps on their cards in the first month), plus £200/mo per add-on module. Sastrify starts at €12,500 a year.
What about Vendr?
Vendr is a SaaS buying and negotiation service, closer in shape to Sastrify than to a subscription tracker. If your main pain is getting better contract terms at renewal, Vendr is worth a look. If your main pain is knowing what you pay for in the first place, start with a tracker — CostLens, Substly, or Cledara — and add a negotiation service on top later.
What about Zluri, Torii, or BetterCloud?
Those sit in a different category: identity governance and SaaS operations for enterprise IT. They run desktop agents, IdP integrations, and automated access reviews. Useful if you're the IT team at a 500-person company. Overkill if you're the finance lead at a 20-person startup looking for a clean subscription ledger.
Isn't CostLens just a fancy spreadsheet?
That's the most honest summary. It's a structured spreadsheet with renewal reminders, duplicate flags, and budget alerts you don't have to maintain. The real competitor for CostLens isn't Cledara, it's the Google Sheet that's two months out of date on someone's laptop.
Can I switch between these tools?
All four export CSV. If you're already on one and want to try CostLens, export your subscription list, email it to [email protected], and we'll help you import. Going the other direction (out of CostLens) is also CSV — you keep your data.
Why is CostLens so much cheaper?
Flat-price, small-team positioning plus a narrow product. We don't issue cards, don't scan inboxes, don't run procurement workflows, don't maintain a 15,000-vendor benchmark dataset. The other tools do real work on those axes and charge accordingly. The question is whether you need that work done for you.