# Financial modeling and scenario planning: what AI models recommend, September 2026

Gane Index, September 2026 Edition. Asked as "financial modeling software" and as "scenario planning tool for finance", six framings each, to twelve models with search on, on behalf of a mid-market B2B company. Page: https://www.gane.ai/index/finance/planning/financial-modeling-and-scenario-planning/2026-09

This is the permanent record of the September 2026 Edition, published September 17, 2026 and superseded since. The current standing: https://www.gane.ai/index/finance/planning/financial-modeling-and-scenario-planning/index.md

**Standing:** Datarails leads with 19% of first choices; verdict contested. 47 first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts.

## First-choice share

| Rank | Product | Share | Negative rate | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | [Datarails](https://www.gane.ai/index/finance/vendors/datarails/index.md) | 19% | 5% | 21 |
| 2 | [Google Sheets](https://www.gane.ai/index/finance/vendors/google-sheets/index.md) | 13% | 0% | 10 |
| 3 | [Cube](https://www.gane.ai/index/finance/vendors/cube/index.md) | 11% | 0% | 18 |
| 4 | [Microsoft Excel](https://www.gane.ai/index/finance/vendors/microsoft-excel/index.md) | 11% | 21% | 14 |
| 5 | [Vena](https://www.gane.ai/index/finance/vendors/vena/index.md) | 6% | 15% | 26 |
| 6 | [Planful](https://www.gane.ai/index/finance/vendors/planful/index.md) | 4% | 11% | 18 |
| 11 | [Workday Adaptive Planning](https://www.gane.ai/index/finance/vendors/workday-adaptive-planning/index.md) | 4% | 35% | 17 |
| 113 | [Anaplan](https://www.gane.ai/index/finance/vendors/anaplan/index.md) | 0% | 47% | 19 |

Rank is by share of first choices among all 114 products named; products with the same share are tied, and the order among them carries no meaning. The table lists those with at least 10 labels.

## Each model's first choice on the direct prompt

- Claude Haiku 4.5: no first choice
- GPT-5.4 mini: Datarails; alternatives Abacum, Anaplan
- Gemini 3.5 Flash: Mosaic, Pigment; alternatives Centage Planning Maestro, Cube, Datarails, Planful
- Perplexity Sonar: Datarails, Drivetrain; alternatives Anaplan, Planful, Vena
- Grok 4.20: Cube, Datarails; alternatives Drivetrain, Limelight, Pigment, Vena
- Mistral Small: Datarails, Limelight; alternatives Cube, Planful, Vena
- DeepSeek V4 Flash: Limelight; alternatives Abacum, Cube, Datarails, Pigment
- Llama 4 Maverick: Datarails; alternatives Abacum, Cube, Lucanet xP&A, Mosaic
- Qwen 3.7 Flash: Cube; alternatives Fathom, Float, Jedox, Jirav
- Kimi K2: Datarails; alternatives Aleph, Centage Planning Maestro, Cube
- GLM 4.7 FlashX: Datarails; alternatives Cube, Drivetrain, Mosaic, Planful
- MiniMax M2.5: Datarails; alternatives Cube, Planful

## Sources the answers cite

53 of 72 answers came back with a source list, from 11 of 12 models. Sites named in the most answers:

- drivetrain.ai: 20 answers, 34 citations
- datarails.com: 17 answers, 20 citations
- farseer.com: 15 answers, 18 citations
- reddit.com: 14 answers, 20 citations
- worldmetrics.org: 14 answers, 20 citations
- learn.g2.com: 14 answers, 14 citations
- cfoshortlist.com: 13 answers, 15 citations
- centage.com: 13 answers, 14 citations

Pages named in the most answers:

- https://datarails.com/best-financial-modeling-software (17 answers)
- https://hebbia.com/resources/best-financial-modeling-software (13 answers)
- https://drivetrain.ai/solutions/financial-modeling-software (12 answers)
- https://centage.com/blog/best-fp-a-software (10 answers)
- https://drivetrain.ai/solutions/financial-modeling-software/scenario-planning-analysis (10 answers)
- https://farseer.com/blog/financial-modeling-tools (10 answers)
- https://fathomhq.com/blog/the-6-best-financial-modelling-software-tools (8 answers)
- https://productive.io/blog/financial-modeling-software (8 answers)
- https://taxilla.com/best-scenario-planning-modeling-tools (8 answers)
- https://barchart.com/story/news/3006151/best-fpa-software-for-financial-modeling-in-2026-top-10-tools-with-pricing (7 answers)

## Warned against

- Anaplan: 9 of 19 labels negative. "You generally want to avoid enterprise-grade tools (like Anaplan or Workday) which cost thousands per month." (Qwen 3.7 Flash, budget prompt)
- Workday Adaptive Planning: 6 of 17 labels negative. "You generally want to avoid enterprise-grade tools (like Anaplan or Workday) which cost thousands per month." (Qwen 3.7 Flash, budget prompt)
- Vena: 4 of 26 labels negative. "Avoid enterprise-class tools like Anaplan, Adaptive, and Vena" (DeepSeek V4 Flash, budget prompt)
- Microsoft Excel: 3 of 14 labels negative. "Spreadsheet-based solutions (Excel with add-ins): Low cost, familiar, but limited scalability" (Claude Haiku 4.5, paraphrase prompt)

## Record

- Method: https://www.gane.ai/index/finance/methodology
- License: CC BY 4.0. Cite as Gane Index, September 2026 Edition, www.gane.ai/index/finance.