Workiva Pricing: Is It Worth It For GRC In 2025?

In this comprehensive buyer guide, I’ll cover everything that is publicly known about Workiva’s pricing, including how they calculate their pricing, as well as some reported numbers from verified users of the platform.

💡 I’ll also introduce you to a Workiva alternative that has a more affordable pricing structure, is quicker to set up, and comes with premium customer support and best-in-class reporting.

How Does Workiva Calculate Its Pricing?

Workiva may be sold as a cloud (SaaS) subscription, but the price depends on many factors.

Here's what is available of how Workiva calculates its pricing:

Workiva uses a solution-based licensing model: Under this model, price is driven by the expected use of each solution module.

➡️ In other words, you will be mainly paying for the modules you deploy, not by a flat per-seat fee.

💡 Additionally, Workiva’s contracts typically range in length from 12 to 36 months.

However, I did find an older document from 2015 that shows the brand’s historical pricing structures (that might not be relevant in 2025):

The number of users, level of customer support, and length of contract also play a role in determining the final price.
Add‑ons and services: All quotes include core usage and support, but many services incur extra fees. For example, Workiva explicitly charges separately for one‑time services like document setup and XBRL tagging.

Workiva also includes the use of our service and technical support as part of the license.

Sources:

SEC Gov - wk-20241231.
SEC Gov - 10-K.

Does Workiva Have A Free Plan Or A Free Trial?

As of October 2025, Workiva does not offer a permanent free plan or a free trial – or, at least, one that I could find.

How Much Does Workiva Really Cost?

Based on 3rd party data from Vendr from 84 purchases of the solution, the average cost of Workiva is $59,653/year, with the lower range being $36,212/year and the highest reported price being $155,760/year.

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Source: Vendr.

Any surprises at renewal?

According to a verified mid-market user of Workiva, the company has a standard uplift of 10-15% per year on the price, unless there’s a multi-year agreement, where you can control the renewal uplift cap.

Source: Vendr.

Another reviewer on Vendr claims that they were facing a 5% renewal uplift, but were able to negotiate it down to 2% and then lock in their price for the duration of their 36-month contract.

Is Workiva Worth The Cost?

Users at the enterprise level generally appreciate the platform’s automation capabilities and financial reporting.

‘’The automation of Workiva has transformed the way our reporting team works. It has allowed us to integrate our financial reports in a way that flows through all of our deliverables in a quick and smooth process.’’ – G2 Review.

However, some users have been looking to switch from Workiva, as the platform requires a significant investment to get started with the tool, is complex to learn how to use effectively, and has bugs.

Starting with when you’re purchasing the tool, a user of the platform mentions that the solution requires a significant investment and can be difficult to implement.

‘’The platform required significant investment and was difficult to implement.’’ – G2 Review.

Apart from this, when you get to the platform itself, users of the platform mention that the tool comes with a steep learning curve, which means you’ll need to spend some time figuring out how the platform’s interface and features work.

‘’One drawback, however, is the initial learning curve — it takes time to become fully comfortable with the platform’s interface and functionality.’’ – G2 Review.

And finally, some customers are not happy with how many bugs and glithces they come across inside of the tool, which some of them claim has been affecting their performance.

‘’Workiva can be very buggy. When it comes down to meeting our tight external reporting deadlines, it becomes very irritating to have to deal with glitches or bugs that affect performance.’’ – G2 Review.

Are You Looking For a Workiva Alternative?

SmartSuite offers the best Workiva alternative for GRC with our modern, no-code project management platform that helps you simplify complex regulatory requirements.

Perfect for banks and credit unions, our GRC platform lets you streamline and automate policy creation, approval, and control assessments, all in one place.

Our tool helps you move faster, manage policies smarter, and adapt easily, without having to sign up for multiple training sessions on how to use the platform.

💡 SmartSuite has recently partnered with the Cyber Risk Institute to deliver a CRI profile for U.S. Banks' compliance needs.

Let’s go over the functionality that makes SmartSuite the best choice for teams looking to switch from Workiva: 👇

All-In-One GRC

Tools like Workiva make it so that best-in-class GRC software can be accessible only to the biggest of enterprises.

However, we believe compliance should be simple, automated, and accessible to all financial institutions, regardless of their size.

Our no-code, easy-to-use tool empowers compliance managers and CISOs to automate all GRC processes with ease.

SmartSuite helps you achieve and maintain compliance without the expense and complexity of adapting legacy GRC solutions like Workiva to accommodate new compliance requirements.

Here are the use cases that you’ll get with SmartSuite:

Create reports and dynamic dashboards: Monitor executive views into your organization's overall risk profile with powerful charting and metrics widgets.

Collaborate and respond to risks in real-time: Instantly engage key stakeholders in a real-time discussion of potential threats or vulnerabilities.

Our platform will also let you get immediate updates when critical information is available.

Automate policy creation, real-time approval, and control assessments: Streamline risk management by building an integrated program on a single platform.
Keep risk and compliance data secure: Define your teams and manage access to information across all GRC practice areas.

Integrate with your existing systems: Our GRC software lets you integrate with existing systems and data to consolidate and centralize your data.

Automate for accuracy and efficiency: Remove inefficiencies and the chance for human error by automating repeatable workflows.

SmartSuite's no-code automation builder provides you with a visual interface that makes it easy to respond to events and take action.

That means your compliance team can customize your GRC workflows without technical resources.

Monitor, measure and score: Create risk calculations and metrics to evaluate every aspect of risk.

Policy management: It’s possible to establish a strong foundation from the get-go with streamlined and flexible policy management.

You’ll be able to assign ownership, manage revisions, and ensure your policies consistently align with key business initiatives and regulatory requirements.

PSTOS Compliance Tracker: Designed for regulatory compliance and built on SmartSuite.

This solution focuses on data security as the core of compliance frameworks with services such as compliance readiness, virtual CISO, and IT security implementation.

Learn more about it from this webinar that we did on the topic:

Prioritize & Mitigate Risks

With SmartSuite, you can create a centralized risk register to effectively identify potential risks to your organization.

You will be able to properly assess threats and establish risk mitigation strategies inside SmartSuite.

Your team can ensure that the appropriate controls are in place and measure their effectiveness by evaluating risk indicators and displaying results in SmartSuite’s rollup reports and dashboards.

💡 Pro Tip: Teams that use our platform use automation to move tasks through defined workflow stages that comply with their policies and procedures.

We understand how crucial threat management is and the need to respond quickly to incidents.

SmartSuite lets you centralize incident response and threat mitigation by linking incidents to assets and organizational data to offer context during your investigations.

Your compliance team can also set up automation with our no-code automation builder to escalate critical events to make sure that your team is aware of active risks to your organization.

Out-Of-The-Box GRC Templates

Our team has prepared a few GRC templates for compliance teams looking to get started right away, instead of building everything from scratch.

Our general risk management template includes:

Risk register, where you can break down the risks, the risk owner, the annual loss expectancy, risk event category, risk type, volatility, and status.

Issue assessments, where you’ll be able to see a comprehensive breakdown of each risk.

Action plans, where you can describe the actions (best practices) to mitigate the risks.

A separate tab for control standards, your findings, exception requests, risk assessment by type, and risk assessment issues.

You can customize our risk management template here.

Alternatively, check out and customize our 14 other risk management templates for various use cases, such as contract management, policy management, and incident management.

How is SmartSuite different from Workiva?

Workiva offers an enterprise-grade platform that connects data, reporting, audits, and integrations for finance, audit, ESG and compliance workflows.

The software is built for large organizations with complex regulatory and reporting requirements.

On the other hand, SmartSuite is a flexible, no-code work management platform with ready-made GRC templates, fast setup, heavy customization, and built-in collaboration for teams that want to build a tailored GRC program quickly without heavy IT and/or consulting effort.

Our platform offers a solution for compliance leaders with:

A modern software with an intuitive interface that does not confuse your team or require training.
An affordable and transparent pricing model with a generous free plan to help you get started.
Customizable reports and dashboards, where you can build custom reports for your GRC workflows.
Automated workflows that can help your team build multi-step automations to trigger actions at the right time.
Best-in-class customer support and account management will help your team with setting up the automation inside the platform.
Integrations with GRC platforms like Ascent, Bitsight, Black Kite, NetSkope, RapidRatings, Regology, Riskrecon, Secure Controls Framework, and Security Scorecard.

💡 Case Study: Learn how MediaLab transformed operations, minimized risk, and saved $40,000+ per year by cutting software costs.

How Is SmartSuite’s Pricing Different From Workiva’s?

Unlike Workiva, SmartSuite offers a generous free plan with access to 250+ automation actions, team collaboration, multi-dashboard views, and more with affordable per-seat pricing.

There are four paid plans with a 14-day free trial (no CC required):

Team: Starts at $12/user per month, including Gantt charts, timeline views, 5000 automation runs, and native time tracking.
Professional: Starts at $30/user per month and adds two-factor authentication, Gmail & Outlook integrations, and unlimited editors.
Enterprise: Starts at $45/user/month and includes access to audit logs, data loss prevention, and 50,000 monthly API calls.
Signature: A customized plan tailored to your organization’s needs and team size with no predefined limits.

Next Steps: Get Started With SmartSuite & Our GRC Templates For Free

If you’re looking to build GRC workstreams and effectively prioritize and mitigate risks, you can give SmartSuite a chance with our free plan and ready-to-use GRC templates.

Our tool offers just the right customization, native collaboration capabilities and a library of 200+ project management templates to help compliance teams create and maintain a project management workflow.

Here’s what's in it for your team when you try SmartSuite:

Access to a generous free plan with features including multi-board views (Kanban, Chart, Map, Timeline, Card, and Calendar), 100 automation/month, and 40+ field types, including formula and linked record fields.
No-code automation builder to set up to 500,000 trigger/action workflows.
Built-in productivity tools, including time tracking, status tracking, and checklists.
Team collaboration and planning tools such as whiteboards and SmartSuite docs.
Resource management across projects and teams.
40+ field types, including the option to add your custom fields.

Or, if you’d like to talk to our experts, schedule a demo.

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Workiva Pricing: Is It Worth It For GRC In 2025?

How Does Workiva Calculate Its Pricing?

Does Workiva Have A Free Plan Or A Free Trial?