CertFocus and TrustLayer sit at opposite ends of the COI tracking market.
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CertFocus, from Vertikal RMS, is a managed program with credentialed insurance reviewers and the rare habit of publishing per vendor pricing. TrustLayer is software with a public API, built on a large insured network, free up to 50 vendors on Starter, then $10 per additional vendor per month, with Pro and Complete quoted. Here is the honest difference, and where self serve software with published pricing fits instead.
Feature by feature, using only what each vendor publishes. Where a vendor publishes nothing, this table says not published rather than guessing.
Compiled from vertikalrms.com and trustlayer.io in July 2026. TrustLayer publishes only its Starter tier (free up to 50 vendors, then $10 per additional vendor per month) and prices Pro and Complete by quote, so no per vendor figure is shown for those tiers. Vendors change products and pricing, so verify before you buy.
These two are not lighter and heavier versions of the same thing. They solve COI tracking with different machinery, and the right pick depends on whether you want people or a network doing the reading.
CertFocus publishes per vendor pricing on the Vertikal RMS site: self service at 6 to 8 dollars per vendor per year with the Hawk-I AI, and full service at 13 to 29 dollars per vendor per year with credentialed account managers. TrustLayer Starter is free up to 50 vendors and $10 per additional vendor per month above that, while Pro and Complete go through a sales conversation with no published price. If you need to build a budget before a demo, that is the single biggest split between them.
CertFocus full service puts CIC, CPCU, CISR and CRIS credentialed reviewers between your contract and the certificate. TrustLayer leans on a network of more than 517,000 companies that learns from over 400,000 certificates a month, so when a party is already in the network the data can flow with less manual review. One buys judgment, the other buys scale.
Beyond COIs, TrustLayer tracks W9s, business and professional licenses, contracts and custom documents in one place. CertFocus pairs COI tracking with vendor prequalification, which is the workflow owners and general contractors reach for before a subcontractor is hired. Decide which document set actually matters to your program before you compare features.
CertFocus applies an annual minimum and a one time implementation fee, because credentialed reviewers are people. TrustLayer Starter is free up to 50 vendors, but Pro and Complete are built for mid market and enterprise, so their onboarding assumes a certain scale. A buyer with a few hundred vendors is below the shape of either paid option.
Vertikal RMS offers a vendor pay option, where your suppliers cover the per vendor cost rather than you. That model is common in commercial real estate. TrustLayer does not publish a vendor pay tier, so its cost stays with you.
A credentialed managed service takes an implementation. An enterprise platform takes a sales cycle and onboarding. If your honest problem is that certificates arrive by email and nobody notices when one expires, both are heavier than the job requires.
If you want the wider field than these two, our best COI tracking software roundup compares fifteen platforms, and the single vendor deep dives live at CertFocus alternative and TrustLayer alternative. Other head to heads buyers ask for are myCOI vs TrustLayer and CertFocus vs myCOI.
CertFocus asks you to buy a review team, TrustLayer asks you to grow into an enterprise platform. COISoftware is the option in the middle: the AI reading, without the minimum or the sales cycle.
Upload an ACORD 25 and the insurer, NAIC number, policy numbers, limits, dates and additional insured status come back in seconds, from crooked scans and phone photos as well as clean PDFs.
Published monthly plans starting at 49 dollars, a free demo, no annual minimum and no implementation fee. Size the cost before anyone books a demo.
Set minimum limits, required coverages and endorsement wording by vendor type, and every arriving certificate is scored against them automatically.
Reminders at 60, 30 and 15 days land in your inbox instead of on a calendar somebody has to keep, so a lapse is caught before a crew shows up uninsured.
If you already have a risk manager or broker who can read a certificate, you are not paying a second time for credentialed staff you do not need.
Produce the compliance record an auditor, insurer or client asks for without rebuilding it from an inbox.
COISoftware reads the ACORD 25 the same way both platforms do, then applies the checks behind certificate of insurance verification and the ongoing monitoring in vendor insurance compliance software. If you are weighing a managed service against software, read COI tracking software vs a managed service first.
Four questions settle most of these evaluations faster than a demo does.
If nobody internally can spot a missing completed operations endorsement or a blanket versus scheduled additional insured, buy the human layer. CertFocus full service provides it. TrustLayer and self serve software both assume you or your broker can read a certificate.
Tip: Answer this one first. It points you toward the managed service or away from it.
TrustLayer Starter is free up to 50 vendors and $10 per additional vendor per month above that, so 300 vendors cost $2,500 a month; Pro and Complete are built for mid market and enterprise programs tracking many parties. If you track a few dozen to a few hundred vendors, compare that per vendor charge with a flat monthly plan.
CertFocus publishes per vendor rates, so you can model a budget before you call. TrustLayer Starter is free up to 50 vendors and $10 per additional vendor per month above that, and Pro and Complete are quoted. If procurement needs a number this quarter without a sales cycle, that difference alone can pick the vendor.
Not the clean sample PDF. The crooked phone photo of a fax. Whichever tool reads that correctly is the one that survives contact with your inbox, and COISoftware lets you run that test free, today, before you commit to either platform.
Three straight answers rather than a scorecard that always ends with us winning.
CertFocus is the rare full service platform that publishes per vendor pricing, staffs the review with CIC, CPCU, CISR and CRIS credentialed account managers, and offers a vendor pay tier that can move the cost to your suppliers. For an owner or general contractor that wants insurance expertise plus prequalification and can accept an annual minimum, it is a strong fit. Our deep dive is at CertFocus alternative.
TrustLayer is software with a public API, built on a large insured network, tracking COIs, W9s, licenses, contracts and custom documents with a modern interface risk teams like. For a company managing many vendors that wants automation and network data rather than a review team, it fits. The trade is quote based pricing and a scale that assumes you are past the small business stage. The detail is in our TrustLayer alternative write up.
If the honest description of your problem is that certificates arrive by email, live in a folder, and nobody notices when one expires, you do not need credentialed reviewers or an enterprise rollout. You need AI that reads them, rules that check them and reminders that chase them. That is a COI tracking system you can stand up this week, and the migration path from a spreadsheet is covered in manual COI tracking vs software.
CertFocus, from Vertikal RMS, is a managed program that pairs software with credentialed insurance reviewers and publishes per vendor pricing. TrustLayer is software with a public API, built on a network of more than 517,000 companies, free up to 50 vendors on Starter, then $10 per additional vendor per month, with Pro and Complete quoted. CertFocus buys you judgment and a price on paper. TrustLayer buys you a modern platform and network scale.
CertFocus publishes per vendor pricing on the Vertikal RMS site: self service at roughly 6 to 8 dollars per vendor per year and full service at roughly 13 to 29 dollars per vendor per year, with credentialed account managers on the full service tier. An annual minimum and a one time implementation fee apply, and a vendor pay option can shift the cost to your suppliers. Verify current figures before you buy.
TrustLayer Starter is free up to 50 vendors and, according to its Starter page, $10 per additional vendor per month above that. Checked 2026-09-01, its plans page lists Pro and Complete at 0 to 1500+ vendors with no price shown, so those tiers are quoted after a demo. Ignore the specific monthly figures repeated in comparison articles: none of them come from TrustLayer.
CertFocus does not publish a free plan, because it is a managed service built around human review. TrustLayer does publish a free plan: its Starter tier covers up to 50 vendors, with $10 per additional vendor per month above that, and Pro and Complete are quoted. If testing full extraction and rule checking on your own certificates before you commit matters, COISoftware has a free 10-document demo for exactly that.
CertFocus suits owners and general contractors that want credentialed reviewers, vendor prequalification and published per vendor pricing. TrustLayer suits larger risk teams that want a modern platform and network data across many vendors. For a smaller general contractor tracking subcontractor certificates directly, self serve software is usually faster to stand up and cheaper to run.
If the objection is the annual minimum or quote based enterprise pricing, COISoftware publishes monthly plans and a free demo and needs no sales call. If you want credentialed human review, CertFocus is the transparent priced option. If you want the widest view, the best COI tracking software roundup compares fifteen platforms side by side.
Plans and prices of other vendors are quoted from their own public pages, checked in September 2026. Prices change, so confirm them at the source before you decide. Where a vendor publishes no price, we say so instead of guessing.
Our own prices are on the pricing page, and you can test COISoftware on your own certificate before you pay anything.
What the TrustLayer rating covers, and the products that share its name.
Fifteen COI tracking platforms compared honestly, with every published price.
TrustLayer pricing, network and where it still wins.
CertFocus per vendor pricing, minimums and fit.
Published pricing, vendor count bands and endorsement checking compared.
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$288 charged today
One shared monthly allowance. Spend it on either model, or mix: 1 Pro AI certificate = 5 Base AI certificates. A certificate counts as one, whatever its page count.
| Base AI Faster | 2,500 certificates |
| Pro AI Best accuracy | 500 certificates |
Four times the monthly certificate allowance and four times the Smart Reports.
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per month
per month
$888 charged today
One shared monthly allowance. Spend it on either model, or mix: 1 Pro AI certificate = 5 Base AI certificates. A certificate counts as one, whatever its page count.
| Base AI Faster | 10,000 certificates |
| Pro AI Best accuracy | 2,000 certificates |
The largest certificate allowances, API access and the most Smart Reports.
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per month
per month
$ charged today
Two separate monthly allowances, one per AI model. Certificates read with Base AI count only toward the Base AI allowance, and certificates read with Pro AI only toward the Pro AI allowance. A certificate counts as one, whatever its page count.
| Base AI Faster | certificates |
| Pro AI Best accuracy | certificates |
Double the Pro 350K allowances for the largest certificate programs.
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$59,880 charged today
