A job offer that lists 25,000 stock options can look huge. It might be a rounding error. How do you check that without a finance degree?
Thing is, a lot of "equity apps" are built for buyers. Crowdfunding sites and pre-IPO marketplaces help people purchase shares as investors. They do not decode the grant in your offer letter.
If you're choosing a U.S. job, you need a different stack. Employee portals such as Carta and Ledgy show vesting and grant type once you have access. Offer-comparison tools put that equity next to salary, benefits, and taxes. The useful question is not where you buy startup stock. It's what this grant means if you take the job.
What equity in a job offer actually is
Your options are a right to buy shares later at a set strike price. They are not a bonus check. They are not shares you can sell the week you start.
U.S. startups usually grant incentive stock options (ISOs) or nonstatutory options (NSOs). Some later-stage firms use RSUs instead. Carta's ISO/NSO explainer is the plain-language version of those mechanics. The strike is supposed to match a 409A valuation, an independent appraisal of private-company common stock. A strike far below a real 409A is a tax problem, not a gift.
Vesting is the other half. Many plans use a one-year cliff, then monthly vesting after that. Leave before the cliff and you typically keep nothing.
The share count without context is noise. Ownership is shares granted divided by fully diluted shares, times 100. Founding Hunt uses a simple case: 10,000 shares in a company with 10 million fully diluted shares is 0.1%. Compare that percentage across offers. Don't compare raw option counts.
Paper to collect before you open an app
Apps cannot invent a cap table you don't have. Get the files first.
- The offer letter, including grant size and type (ISO, NSO, or RSU).
- The form of option agreement or a short equity-plan summary.
- The current strike price or 409A figure, if recruiting will share it.
- The fully diluted share count, including the option pool.
- Liquidation preference terms, at least whether they are a standard 1x non-participating stack or something heavier.
Ask for the fully diluted count in writing. If they won't give it, you cannot price the grant. Aption's offer framework makes the same point: a grant of "10,000 options" tells you almost nothing on its own.
Employee portals that show your grant
You will not pick Carta the way you pick a job board. The employer already chose the system. Your job is to read what it shows, and to know what it hides.
| Tool | Best for | What it tends to show | Catch for candidates |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carta | Employees at U.S. startups already on Carta | Option type, vesting, 409A-related strike context | Login often arrives after you start |
| Ledgy | Companies that want staff to see grants without emailing finance | Award details, vesting, scheme documents in an employee dashboard | Only useful if that employer runs Ledgy |
| Pulley | Founders and finance running the cap table | Fundraising scenarios, dilution views, 409A workflow | You rarely get a candidate account |
Ledgy's employee dashboard is built so people can open their own awards instead of pinging HR for PDFs. Pulley's equity-software guide is aimed at companies, not job seekers, which is why it shows up here as a cap-table engine rather than a hunting app.
Until you have a login, you're working from PDFs and whatever the recruiter forwards, which is slower than a dashboard but enough to do the ownership math. Screenshot the grant page once you join. Keep those numbers next to any competing offer.
Offer comparison apps versus equity portals
Portals tell you what you were granted. They do not tell you whether to take the job.
That's the gap offer-comparison tools try to fill. Some of them let you line up salary, health benefits, retirement, taxes, cost of living, and equity on one screen. Job Comparator-style products help when one package is heavy on options and the other is heavy on cash.
They will not magically value private shares. You'll still type in an estimate, or a range. Treat that field as a scratch pad, not a market price.
If both offers are early-stage, compare ownership percentage and exercise cost first. Then look at cash. Mixing an optimistic exit value into a comparator is how people talk themselves into a pay cut they can't afford.
Ownership, dilution, and what it costs to exercise
Do the arithmetic on paper even if an app will later pretty it up.
The Startup Law Blog walks through a clean example: 50,000 options at a $0.25 strike cost $12,500 to exercise and equal 0.5% of 10 million fully diluted shares. Write those two figures down. The percentage is your stake. The $12,500 is cash you may need if you leave and only have a short window to exercise.
Dilution is the next cut. Underdog's equity guide shows why: 40,000 shares in a 10 million share company is 0.4%. If the pool expands and the fully diluted count becomes 15 million, that same grant is about 0.27%. Turns out the letter you signed never promised you a frozen percentage.
You can spend an hour in a portal staring at a clean vesting chart and still have no idea whether a 1x non-participating preference or a participating stack sits on top of common, which is exactly how a headline acquisition can look enormous while common stock, the class your options convert into, gets a much thinner slice, and offer letters almost never print that in bold.
Aption describes an Equity Simulator for playing out those dilution paths. Use something like that only after you have the share count. Guessing the denominator makes the chart theater.
Seed-stage ranges vary by role and city. Founding Hunt cites a seed-stage founding engineer in San Francisco around 0.5-2% equity with base pay in a $90K-$140K band. That's a benchmark from one guide, not a promise. Later stages shrink the percentage. Sometimes they also raise the odds that the paper is worth something.
Tax timing if you actually exercise
This is not tax advice. The IRS still wants you to know the category you're in.
For many nonstatutory options, IRS Topic 427 says there is no tax at grant when the option has no readily determinable fair market value. You include the spread (fair market value minus what you paid) as income when you exercise. That spread also becomes basis.
ISOs are pickier. You generally need to have been an employee through the grant, with only a short post-employment exercise window, and you need to meet the holding-period rules in 26 CFR 1.422-1. ISO treatment looks cleaner on paper. ISO treatment still has alternative minimum tax risk in the year you exercise, which Topic 427 flags explicitly.
A disqualifying disposition (selling too soon) can yank you out of ISO treatment. Don't guess the dates. Put grant date, exercise date, and any sale date on a calendar before you tap exercise in Carta or Ledgy.
To be honest, this is the step people skip because the portal makes exercise look like a button. The button can create a tax bill when the stock is still illiquid.
If you need cash to exercise and hold, that's a separate product category. Secfi's new-hire options guide discusses secondary sales and financing. Those are liquidity tools, not job-search apps. Use them only after you understand the grant.
What these apps will not do for you
They will not turn private common stock into rent money. Illiquid equity is a bet on a later event: a sale, an IPO, or a tender. None of the dashboards above can time that.
They also will not fix a bad preference stack. A 1x non-participating preference is ordinary. Participating or stacked multiples can starve common in a modest exit. Ask. If the recruiter doesn't know, ask finance.
Investor apps that sell crowdfunding shares or OTC access answer a different search. Skip them while you're comparing job offers. Buying a token in a company you don't work for will not help you negotiate ISO terms at the company you might join.
Small teams sometimes still run grants in spreadsheets. If that's the case, the "app" is your notes plus the plan document. Paid equity software is not required for you to do the ownership math.
FAQ
Do I get Carta or Ledgy access before I accept? Often no. Many employers provision the account after your start date. Until then, work from the offer letter and any grant PDF they attach.
What's the difference between ISOs and NSOs in an offer? ISOs can get capital-gains treatment if you meet employee and holding-period tests, with AMT as the catch. NSOs usually create ordinary income on the spread at exercise. Keep Carta's ISO/NSO explainer and IRS Topic 427 open while you read the grant.
Can I compare two equity offers inside a job-search app? You can line them up in an offer comparator if you enter ownership %, exercise cost, and a conservative value range. The comparator will not know the cap table. You still have to bring those numbers.
Are pre-IPO investing apps useful for this? Not for evaluating employment grants. They are for people buying shares as outsiders. Different risk, different documents, different rules.
Pull the grant documents for every live offer. Write four numbers on one page: ownership percentage, strike, time to fully vest, and cash needed to exercise. Then open Carta, Ledgy, or the comparator only to check those numbers, not to replace them. If a recruiter won't give you the fully diluted share count, treat that as part of the offer.