How we compare these tools
No enterprise checklist — and no pretend lab. What we score, where the facts come from, and how you can check every claim yourself.
Read this first: we build YourPAZ
Solo Founder Stack is published by the team behind YourPAZ. We build the tool that sits at #1 on this site, and we compare it here with alternatives. That is a conflict of interest, so we handle it the only honest way we know how: we say it up front on every page, we present rankings as our score — an editorial judgment, not an independent verdict — and for every criterion below we explain how to check the underlying facts yourself, so you never have to take our word for anything.
What we score
- Total monthly cost at parity — the real all-in price for one person, with AI and the features you'd actually use. Source: each vendor's public pricing page, including seat minimums and AI add-on pricing. Check it yourself: the pricing page is linked from every vendor's homepage.
- Surface coverage — out of (tasks, notes, meetings, ideas, decisions, contacts, calendar, AI), how many surfaces the tool covers well enough that you wouldn't want a second subscription for that surface. Source: the vendors' own feature documentation.
- Workspace separation — can you keep "Work", "Personal" and "Side-project" properly separate without running multiple paid accounts? Source: vendor documentation on workspaces and plans.
- AI: included or add-on, and where it runs — is AI part of the base price, and which providers process your data? Source: pricing pages plus the vendors' privacy and subprocessor documentation.
- Data hosting — EU or US by default. Source: the vendors' privacy policies, DPAs and subprocessor lists.
What we did NOT do
- No user panel, no blind reviewers, no timed lab benchmark. We're not going to pretend otherwise.
- No scoring of SSO, workload-balancing views, portfolio dashboards or enterprise audit logs. You're one person; so is the founder who built YourPAZ.
- No affiliate deals. There are no affiliate links on this site and we take no money from the other vendors listed.
Where the facts come from
- Competitor facts (prices, seat minimums, AI add-ons, hosting) come from the vendors' public pricing pages and documentation, checked May 2026. Prices are rounded and can change — always confirm on the vendor's own page before you buy.
- YourPAZ facts come first-hand: we build and operate it, and we run our own company on it every day. Claims like "EU-hosted on Hetzner", "AI included at €9/month", "no OpenAI or Anthropic in the production path" and "self-hostable via Docker" are things we control and you can verify on the free tier or in the public docs.
- Judgment calls ("cleanest", "best", "over-engineered") are exactly that — our editorial opinion, and we try to phrase them so you can tell them apart from checkable facts.
What "our score" means
The ranking weighs the criteria above for a one-person business: price sensitivity high, enterprise features irrelevant, EU hosting a plus. It is an editorial weighting, not the output of an independent test — and a different weighting gives a different winner. If you're a solo dev shipping only code, Linear probably wins for you. If your life is back-to-back meetings, Motion might. We say so in the ranking itself.
How we make money
YourPAZ is our product. This site exists to explain, to the people the mainstream listicles ignore, why we built it and how it honestly compares with the alternatives. Outbound YourPAZ links are tagged so we can see whether these pages are useful. That's the whole business model — no affiliate commissions, no sponsored placements.
Corrections
If we've got a competitor fact wrong — a price, a feature, a hosting claim — email hello@solofounderstack.com and we'll correct the page.