# What to use instead of FactSet Workstation

FactSet prices the Workstation by proposal. Which cards here cover its screening, Excel models, estimates and transcripts — two of them on FactSet's own data.

*https://stockmarketstack.com/alternatives/factset*

## The subject

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Product | FactSet Workstation |
| Status | live |
| Website | https://www.factset.com/marketplace/catalog/product/factset-workstation |
| Category | Fundamental Data & Stock Research Platforms |

FactSet's institutional desktop — 800-plus data sources, screening, portfolio analytics, AI research tools and live-linked Excel and PowerPoint, priced by proposal from its sales team.

## Replacements

*Ordered by how much of the original’s job each one covers, closest first. Paid placement does not affect this order.*

1. [Portfolio123](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/portfolio123.md) — FactSet's own point-in-time fundamentals and estimates, for ranking, screening and backtests on US, Canadian and European stocks, from 35 dollars a month.
2. [Daloopa](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/daloopa.md) — The model job — reported KPIs, segments and guidance written into your own Excel model, each figure linked to its filing. Quote-only, sold to firms.
3. [Wisesheets](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/wisesheets.md) — Live-linked spreadsheets for one person — financials, estimates and prices as worksheet functions in Excel or Google Sheets, 60 dollars a year.
4. [YCharts](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/ycharts.md) — The wealth-desk job — research, portfolio construction and branded client reports, with FactSet named among its suppliers. Quote-only, 7-day trial.
5. [Financial Modeling Prep](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/financial-modeling-prep.md) — The programmatic job — statements, estimates, transcripts and 13F holdings over REST, free to start and 149 a month at the top self-serve tier.
6. [GuruFocus](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/gurufocus.md) — Thirty years of financials, a deep screener and an Excel add-in, with estimates from Refinitiv and Morningstar, sold by region from 549 dollars a year.
7. [Quartr](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/quartr.md) — Earnings-call audio, live transcripts, decks and filings for about 16,000 companies, free on mobile with AI chat; the searchable web app is quote-only.

## The product

FactSet Research Systems is a Norwalk, Connecticut company whose year ends on 31 August, and the
Workstation is its desktop. FactSet's Workstation page, read on 9 October 2026, describes it as
one environment joining 800-plus data sources — FactSet's own datasets, third-party data and a
firm's in-house content — keyed to permanent entity and security identifiers. Around that sit
alerting, charting and screening; screening across 10 million-plus private companies for M&A
work; portfolio performance, risk and attribution with 120-plus risk models and four optimisers;
live-linked Excel and PowerPoint models; programmatic access to 1,100-plus datasets; and FactSet
Intelligence, its AI layer for search, chat, transcript analysis and portfolio commentary.

FactSet's 10-K for the year to 31 August 2025 says who pays for it: 8,996 clients and 237,324
users, with buy-side firms — asset managers, asset owners, hedge funds, wealth managers — at about
82 per cent of organic subscription value and banks, brokers and private equity at 18 per cent.
The fourth-quarter results filed on 30 September 2026 put annual subscription value at 2,565.2
million dollars, across more than 9,200 clients and 260,000 users.

Divide one by the other and you get a figure just under 10,000 dollars a user, which is not a
price: the total includes data feeds, managed services and enterprise analytics alongside the
desktops. FactSet's pricing page offers a personalised proposal and nothing else.

People leave the Workstation for the usual institutional reasons — a seat that ended with a job,
a budget review, a fund too small to justify it — and they rarely used all of it. A portfolio
manager, a banker, an advisor and a quant on the same contract use it four different ways.

## What to use instead

Split it by who sat at the desk, because the Workstation is sold by firm type and each one used
a different part.

**The quant and the screener.** [Portfolio123](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/portfolio123) is the one pick that runs on
FactSet's own fundamentals and estimates, point-in-time, with delisted stocks kept in the history.
Ranking systems, screens and backtests over five to twenty years depend on the plan; US, Canada and
Europe are covered, Asia is not. If you screened rather than ranked,
[GuruFocus](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/gurufocus) has thirty years of financials and a screener with backtests to
2006 on its upper tier, on Morningstar fundamentals.

**The analyst with a model.** FactSet's live-linked Excel is the hardest piece to replace, and two
picks cover it from opposite ends. [Daloopa](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/daloopa) writes reported figures, segments,
KPIs and guidance into the analyst's own workbook, each linked to the page it came from — sold by
quote, to firms. [Wisesheets](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/wisesheets) is the self-serve version: worksheet functions
that take ranges of tickers and periods, at 60 dollars a year on a personal licence. GuruFocus
also sells an Excel add-in, capped at 2,000 queries below Premium Plus.

**The advisor.** FactSet sells the Workstation to wealth managers with client portals and
proposal tools. [YCharts](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/ycharts) is built for that seat — research, portfolio
construction and branded client reports — and names FactSet among its financial-data suppliers.
It is quote-only too, but unlike FactSet it publishes a plan aimed at individual investors.

**The developer.** FactSet's API is priced the way everything else there is, by proposal. [Financial Modeling
Prep](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/financial-modeling-prep) sells statements, estimates, transcripts and 13F holdings over
REST with published prices, on personal-use terms below its quoted Enterprise plan.

**The transcripts.** [Quartr](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/quartr) carries the calls themselves — live audio, real-time
transcripts, decks and filings — free on mobile. For a transcript archive as data, the
[earnings-call transcripts how-to](https://stockmarketstack.com/how-to/get-earnings-call-transcripts-as-data) lists the routes.

## What you give up

**Portfolio analytics.** Attribution, risk decomposition across 120-plus risk models and a choice
of optimisers are a large part of what buy-side firms pay FactSet for, and nothing in this
catalogue sells them as a service. The [analysis libraries](https://stockmarketstack.com/categories/analysis-libraries) —
[Riskfolio-Lib](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/riskfolio-lib), [PyPortfolioOpt](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/pyportfolioopt) — do the
mathematics in Python, on data and factor definitions you supply yourself.

**One identifier under everything.** FactSet keys every dataset, its own and a client's, to
permanent entity and security identifiers, so a holding, a filing and an estimate join without
effort. With four vendors you join on tickers and ISINs and maintain the mapping;
[CUSIP, ISIN and FIGI](https://stockmarketstack.com/guides/cusip-isin-figi-identifiers) covers what each identifier survives.

**The consensus you quoted.** A consensus figure belongs to whoever collected it. The picks carry
other suppliers' — GuruFocus names Refinitiv and Morningstar, the S&P resellers carry S&P's — so an
EPS consensus quoted from FactSet in a past memo will not reappear unchanged. Different
contributors, different cut-off times.

## Migration notes

**Keep the data licence if the data was the point.** Portfolio123 lets customers who already
license FactSet download point-in-time data through its API and screener reports; without one, a
recent screen downloads values for the first 500 tickers only and an older one downloads blank.
A firm dropping Workstation seats but keeping a FactSet data feed has a cheaper configuration
available than starting over.

**Convert live links before access lapses.** Every cell in a FactSet-linked workbook is a request
to FactSet. Save a values-only copy of each model you need to keep, and note the field codes
beside it, so the rebuild in Daloopa, Wisesheets or a script knows what each cell meant.

**Expect point-in-time to move.** Portfolio123's own documentation says FactSet backfills figures
released after an announcement, so a backtest re-run later can change. That was true inside the
Workstation as well; it is simply more visible when you run the backtest yourself.

**Read the reseller's terms, not FactSet's.** A screen on FactSet data inside Portfolio123 or
YCharts is governed by that vendor's licence, and personal-use plans such as Wisesheets' and
Financial Modeling Prep's do not cover a number circulated round a team. Anything shown to a
client is [redistribution](https://stockmarketstack.com/glossary/redistribution).

## FAQ

### How much does FactSet cost?

FactSet does not publish a price. Its pricing page, read on 9 October 2026, says solutions and costs are built to each firm's needs and asks you to contact sales for a personalised proposal. What FactSet does disclose is the total, in its SEC filings — 2,565.2 million dollars of annual subscription value at 31 August 2026, across more than 9,200 clients and 260,000 users. That is every product it sells, not a Workstation seat price.

### Is there a free version of FactSet?

No free tier. The Workstation page carries a Try For Free button, but the length and terms of the trial are not published on it. Students reach it, where they reach it at all, through a university licence. In this catalogue, Quartr's mobile app is free, Financial Modeling Prep has a free plan of 250 calls a day, and Portfolio123's free account includes 30 days of screening on FactSet data.

### Which products here run on FactSet data?

Portfolio123 takes its fundamentals and estimates from FactSet, YCharts names FactSet for financials and sector data, FAST Graphs credits FactSet for pricing, and etf.com's fund data is FactSet's. The supplier is the same; the licence is the reseller's, which is why Portfolio123 truncates downloads unless you hold your own FactSet or Compustat licence.

### Who does FactSet compete with?

FactSet's annual report for the year to 31 August 2025 names its largest competitors as Bloomberg, S&P's Market Intelligence division and LSEG's Data and Analytics division, formerly Refinitiv, with BlackRock Aladdin, MSCI and Morningstar among the rest.