Supplier price list and quote comparison software, compared
If you're comparing a supplier's old and new price list, or quotes from several suppliers for the same purchase, here's what CostRift and the tools people actually compare it to do — and don't do — based on what each one states on its own site.
The short answer
For CSV/XLSX files you want compared without anything being uploaded, CostRift and SupplyDiff both process files in your browser — CostRift covers both a single supplier's price changes over time and multiple suppliers' quotes for the same purchase, plus margin impact; SupplyDiff currently covers the single-supplier, price-change case only. If your suppliers send PDFs, emails, or photos instead of clean spreadsheets, Quotal reads those formats by extracting the data on its servers. For an occasional comparison, a spreadsheet with the right formulas still works — CostRift has a guide for that too.
Side by side
| CostRift | Quotal | SupplyDiff | Spreadsheet | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Structured CSV/XLSX input | Yes | Excel (explicit); CSV listed only as a Pro-tier export | Yes — CSV, TSV, XLSX | Yes, natively |
| PDF / email / photo extraction | No | Yes — PDF, email forwarding, pasted text, photo | No | No — manual entry |
| Where files are processed | In your browser | Uploaded — third-party AI extraction, cloud-hosted | In your browser (their own claim) | Local, your own file |
| Old-vs-new price comparison (one supplier over time) | Yes | Yes — price history over time | Yes — this is its core function | Possible, with formulas you build |
| Multi-supplier quote comparison | Yes | Yes — core feature | Not verified | Possible, with formulas you build |
| Margin impact / target selling price | Yes | Not verified | Not verified | Possible, if you build it yourself |
| Saved comparison history | Yes, signed in | Yes | Not verified | Only if you keep each version yourself |
| Account required to try it | No | No, for an initial comparison | No | No |
| Pricing (checked October 2026) | Free to try; paid plans add history, more suppliers, team workspace | Free / €9 per month / €29 per month | Free public beta; optional C$29 contribution, no extra features | Free, if you already have the software |
| Primary workflow | General B2B purchasing — SKU-matched file comparison | Trades, construction, restaurants, retail — quotes sent as PDF/email/photo | Purchasing and margin-protection teams; agencies managing client catalogs | Anyone, but formulas and matching logic get rebuilt each round |
Not verified means the product's own site made no claim either way at the time this was checked — it is not a guess at what's missing, and it is not evidence the feature doesn't exist, only that it wasn't stated publicly.
CostRift
Compares a supplier's previous and current price list (Price Change), or quotes from several suppliers for the same purchase (Supplier Comparison). Files are read and compared in your browser rather than uploaded to run the comparison. Add your selling price and either mode also shows the margin impact and the selling price needed to hold your previous margin. No account is required to try it.
Verified adjacent alternatives
Quotal advertises reading quotes sent as PDF, email, pasted text, or a photo, and extracting the data with AI. Its own privacy policy states uploaded documents are processed using a third-party AI service (Anthropic Claude) and stored via its hosting providers — this is cloud processing, not local processing. It compares multiple suppliers' quotes, flags fees it detects as hidden (such as delivery charges or minimum-order surcharges), and saves a price history over time. Its own pricing, checked October 2026: free (2 projects, 3 quotes each), €9/month Plus (10 projects, 10 quotes each), €29/month Pro (unlimited). It names construction, restaurants, cafés, and retail as its primary audience.
SupplyDiff compares a current catalog against a supplier's new price file — CSV, TSV, or XLSX, up to 25,000 rows — and states that files are parsed and compared on your device and are not uploaded or stored. It separates real unit-cost increases from pack-size or unit-of-measure changes and keeps ambiguous rows flagged for review rather than resolving them automatically. At the time of checking it is a free public beta with no account required, and covers only the single-supplier, old-versus-new comparison — it makes no claim of comparing multiple suppliers' quotes against each other.
The spreadsheet option
For an occasional comparison, Excel or Google Sheets still works — XLOOKUP/VLOOKUP for an old-versus-new comparison, or MIN and INDEX/MATCH across supplier columns for a multi-supplier comparison. The tradeoff is that the formulas, the SKU matching, and the edge cases (duplicate codes, currency differences, a supplier that didn't quote every item) get rebuilt by hand every round. CostRift has guides for both methods: comparing two supplier price lists and comparing supplier quotes in Excel.
Which should you choose?
Your files are already CSV/XLSX, and you want both modes covered
CostRift — one supplier over time, or several suppliers at once, plus margin impact, with nothing uploaded to run the comparison.
You only need to catch what changed in one supplier's updated catalog
SupplyDiff is built specifically for that, also processes files locally, and is currently a free public beta — worth trying, with the caveat that an early beta can change quickly.
Your suppliers send PDFs, emails, or photos instead of clean files
Quotal is built for that specific problem, at the cost of uploading the documents for AI extraction rather than keeping them local.
You compare quotes rarely, or already have a working spreadsheet
A spreadsheet is still a reasonable choice — see the guides above for the exact formulas.
What CostRift doesn't do
For the same reason the table above only states what each tool verifiably does, it's worth being equally explicit about CostRift. It does not currently:
- Parse PDFs or scanned documents
- Ingest quote emails automatically
- Integrate with an ERP
- Send automated supplier-price alerts
- Provide weighted vendor scoring or total-cost-of-ownership (TCO) calculations
If any of those is the actual thing you need, the tools above that offer it are more likely to fit than CostRift is.
Methodology
Every claim about Quotal and SupplyDiff above comes from that product's own homepage, pricing page, or privacy policy, checked October 2026 — not from reviews, marketing from CostRift, or assumptions. Competitor features and prices change; check their sites directly before relying on this for a purchase decision.
Two other products came up during this research and were left out of the comparison, not because they're low quality, but because they don't do the same job: one is a broader supplier-discovery and business-networking platform where most features sit behind a signup; the other is a managed manufacturer-matching service that introduces you to a single vetted shop rather than software you use to compare multiple quotes yourself. Neither is a direct comparison point for what this page is about.