If you work in government affairs, you've probably been pitched FiscalNote, Quorum, or both. They're the two biggest names in legislative tracking software, and they've spent years competing for the same enterprise customers.
But here's what nobody tells you upfront: neither one publishes its pricing. You have to book a demo, sit through a sales call, and negotiate a contract before you find out whether you can even afford it. For most organizations, the answer is no.
This guide breaks down what each tool actually does, what it costs (to the extent that's knowable), and what alternatives exist for teams that need legislative tracking without an enterprise budget. No affiliate links, no sponsored rankings. Just an honest comparison.
The enterprise tier: FiscalNote and Quorum
FiscalNote
FiscalNote is the largest player in the legislative tracking space. It's publicly traded (ticker: NOTE), employs around 400-500 people, and serves over 5,000 clients worldwide. Through a series of acquisitions, FiscalNote now bundles legislative tracking with advocacy tools (VoterVoice), news monitoring (CQ Roll Call), and regulatory intelligence into a single platform.
What it does well:
- Tracks federal and all 50 state legislatures, plus international jurisdictions
- Integrates legislative tracking with stakeholder management and advocacy
- Deep regulatory monitoring alongside legislation
- Dedicated account managers and support teams
- Mobile app for on-the-go tracking
Where it falls short:
- Pricing is completely opaque. Industry estimates range from $10,000 to $200,000+ per year depending on modules and seat count. Multiple review sites note users find it expensive.
- The platform has grown through acquisitions, and some users report integration between components feels disjointed
- No public API available
- Several reviewers mention lag time between legislative events and reporting
- The company has been under financial pressure: its stock price has dropped from over $130 to around $1-2, and it reported a loss of $1.73 per share in its most recent quarter
Best for: Large organizations with dedicated government affairs teams and budgets north of $20,000/year who need a comprehensive platform covering legislation, regulation, advocacy, and stakeholder management.
Quorum
Quorum is the other major enterprise player. Backed by private equity (Serent Capital), Quorum has grown through acquisitions of its own, including Capitol Canary (formerly Phone2Action). It offers nine different product plans spanning federal, state, local, grassroots, PAC, school board, stakeholder, international, and professional services.
What it does well:
- Tracks federal, all 50 states, and local jurisdictions
- Strong grassroots advocacy and campaign tools
- AI-powered bill summaries and legislative scoring
- Collaborative team features with shared workspaces
- Has an API (though some users note documentation could be stronger)
- Responsive customer support, consistently praised in reviews
Where it falls short:
- Pricing is also completely hidden behind a sales process. Industry estimates put it in a similar range to FiscalNote: $10,000-$100,000+ per year
- Multiple product plans create complexity in figuring out what you actually need
- Some users report the platform has a learning curve, especially for less frequent users
- State-level staff contact data has gaps, with some users expressing frustration about missing information
- The grassroots tools absorbed from Capitol Canary have drawn complaints about migration quality
Best for: Organizations that need legislative tracking combined with grassroots advocacy, stakeholder engagement, and team collaboration. Particularly strong for trade associations and nonprofits with active advocacy programs.
The enterprise pricing problem
The fundamental issue with both FiscalNote and Quorum is the same: you can't find out what they cost without entering a sales process. This isn't accidental. Enterprise pricing allows them to charge based on perceived value and organization size rather than a fixed rate.
For a Fortune 500 company or a major trade association, $50,000/year for a comprehensive platform is a rounding error. For a three-person lobbying shop, a nonprofit policy team, or a solo government affairs consultant, it's the entire annual tool budget.
This creates a gap in the market. There's a huge population of policy professionals who need real legislative tracking tools but can't justify enterprise pricing. That's where the alternatives come in.
The mid-tier: Plural Policy and LegiScan
Plural Policy
Plural Policy (formerly Enview) is the closest thing to a self-serve middle ground between free tools and enterprise platforms. It offers tiered pricing that's actually published on its website.
Pricing (published):
- AI Policy Analyzer: $29/month (AI summaries only, limited functionality)
- Essential: $59/month per user (bill tracking across Congress and all 50 states, no AI features)
- Basic: $3,500/year (1 state or federal, 2 users, collaboration tools)
- Premium: starts at $10,000/year (unlimited users, multi-state, AI tools, premium data, customer support)
What it does well:
- Transparent pricing at lower tiers
- Covers federal and all 50 state legislatures
- AI-powered bill summaries and analysis
- Clean interface praised by users
- Free account option for basic bill search
- Used by recognizable organizations (Google, Common Cause)
Where it falls short:
- The $59/month Essential plan is per-user with no AI features, making it limited for professional use
- Full AI capabilities only unlock at the $3,500+ tier
- Smaller company with less comprehensive data than FiscalNote or Quorum
- No built-in advocacy or stakeholder management tools
- Premium tier pricing approaches enterprise territory
Best for: Small to mid-size policy teams that specifically need bill tracking and AI analysis without the advocacy and CRM features bundled into enterprise platforms. The $59/month plan works for individual policy professionals, though it's limited without AI.
LegiScan
LegiScan has been in the legislative data business for over two decades. It takes a different approach: rather than building a flashy platform with advocacy tools, it focuses entirely on legislative data, tracking, and reporting.
Pricing (published, annual, varies by state count):
- OneVote: Free (basic monitoring, one state + Congress, limited features)
- OneVote+: Paid upgrade (enhanced features for single state)
- GAITS Pro: Professional tier (multi-state tracking, reports, maps, embeddable widgets)
- API access: Separate pricing for developers
- Nonprofit discounts available for 501(c) organizations
LegiScan's pricing is based on the number of states you track, with Congress counting as one "state." Exact per-state pricing requires downloading their price list PDF, but industry estimates put GAITS Pro in the $1,000-$5,000/year range depending on coverage.
What it does well:
- Tracks all 50 states and Congress (179,000+ bills in current biennium)
- Two decades of reliable legislative data
- Customizable reports and interactive maps
- Embeddable widgets for external websites
- API access for custom integrations
- Nonpartisan and data-focused
Where it falls short:
- No AI summaries or analysis
- Interface feels dated compared to newer platforms
- No advocacy, stakeholder, or CRM tools
- Pricing structure (per-state annual fees) can add up for multi-state tracking
- No executive order or regulatory tracking
Best for: Organizations that need reliable, data-focused legislative tracking across multiple states without the bells and whistles. Particularly useful for teams that need API access or embeddable legislative data for their own websites.
The free tier: Congress.gov, GovTrack, and BillTrack50
Congress.gov
Congress.gov is the official source for federal legislative information, maintained by the Library of Congress.
What it does: Full text of every federal bill, resolution, and amendment. Voting records, committee information, member profiles, Congressional Record. Free API access.
The catch: Federal only. No state legislation. No summaries. No alerts worth using. No AI. The search functionality is functional but not intuitive. You're reading raw bill text with no plain-English explanation of what anything means. There's no way to track topics or get notified when something relevant happens. It's a reference library, not a tracking tool.
Best for: Occasional federal bill lookups when you already know the bill number. Not a daily tracking tool.
GovTrack
GovTrack launched in 2004 and was the first website to make comprehensive Congressional data freely available. It's run by a small team as an independent project funded by advertising and crowdfunding.
What it does: Tracks all federal bills and resolutions, voting records, legislator profiles, and statistical analysis. Offers email alerts and bill tracking. Recently added White House tracking (executive orders, memoranda, proclamations). Free to use.
The catch: Federal only. No state tracking. No AI summaries. Limited team means slower feature development. Relies on the same data sources (Congress.gov API, GPO) as everyone else. No regulatory tracking. Interface is functional but basic.
Best for: Individuals and small organizations that need free federal legislative tracking with email alerts. Excellent for students and civic engagement.
BillTrack50
BillTrack50 (by LegiNation) offers free federal and state bill search and tracking.
What it does: Search and track legislation across all 50 states and Congress. Free basic accounts with keyword tracking and alerts.
The catch: The free tier is limited. More advanced features require a paid subscription. No AI analysis. The platform is more of an entry point to LegiNation's paid services.
Best for: Quick lookups of state legislation when you need to find a specific bill.
What's missing from all of them
Every tool in this comparison has the same gap: none of them connect legislation, executive orders, and federal regulations in one place at an affordable price point.
Executive orders are reshaping policy just as much as legislation. The current administration has issued 243 executive orders, 129 proclamations, and dozens of memoranda. These interact with and sometimes override legislative activity. Federal agencies are simultaneously issuing regulations, opening comment periods, and changing enforcement priorities.
If you're tracking a healthcare bill in Congress, you also need to know about the executive order that changed enforcement of the relevant statute, and the agency rulemaking that's implementing the previous version of the law. That full picture doesn't exist in any single tool at the mid-tier or free level.
Enterprise platforms like FiscalNote and Bloomberg Government come closest, but at price points that exclude most of the market.
A different approach: AI-native tracking
The tools listed above were mostly built in an era before AI could reliably summarize legal text, predict legislative outcomes, or answer natural language questions about policy. They've been retrofitting AI features onto existing platforms.
Sporos takes a different approach. Built from the ground up as an AI-native platform, it tracks 13,700+ federal bills, 460+ executive orders, 470+ federal agencies, and every congressional vote, with AI-powered summaries, passage probability scores, interactive bill chat, and customizable email digests.
Pricing (published):
- Free: 20 tracked items, 3 AI summaries/month
- Pro: $29/month (unlimited tracking, unlimited AI summaries, email digests)
- Premium: $49/month (everything in Pro plus advanced AI chat, priority features)
What it does differently:
- AI chat lets you ask questions about any bill and get answers grounded in the bill text
- Passage probability scores tell you how likely a bill is to advance, so you can prioritize
- Plain-English AI summaries for every bill and executive order
- Executive orders, bills, and agency data in one platform
- Transparent, published pricing with no sales calls required
- Sign up and start tracking in under 60 seconds
Current limitations (being transparent):
- Federal only. State legislation is on the roadmap but not yet available.
- No grassroots advocacy or stakeholder CRM tools. This is a tracking and intelligence platform, not an advocacy suite.
- Smaller company, earlier stage than the enterprise players.
- No mobile app (responsive web works on mobile, but no dedicated app).
Best for: Government affairs professionals, policy analysts, lobbyists, and compliance teams who need comprehensive federal tracking with AI analysis at a fraction of enterprise pricing. Particularly strong for small teams, solo practitioners, and organizations that have been priced out of FiscalNote and Quorum.
Comparison at a glance
FiscalNote — $10K-$200K/year — Federal + 50 states + international — Legislation, regulation, advocacy, stakeholder CRM — Best for large enterprise teams
Quorum — $10K-$100K+/year — Federal + 50 states + local — Legislation, grassroots advocacy, PAC, stakeholder engagement — Best for organizations running active advocacy campaigns
Bloomberg Government — Custom enterprise pricing — Federal + 50 states — Legislation, regulation, contracting, news — Best for teams that also need procurement and contracting intelligence
Plural Policy — $29-$10,000+/year — Federal + 50 states — Bill tracking, AI analysis, collaboration — Best for mid-size teams needing multi-state coverage
LegiScan — ~$1K-$5K/year — Federal + 50 states — Bill tracking, reports, API — Best for data-focused teams needing API access
GovTrack — Free — Federal only — Bill tracking, voting records, alerts — Best for individuals and civic engagement
Congress.gov — Free — Federal only — Official bill text, voting records — Best for occasional lookups
Sporos — Free-$49/month — Federal only — AI summaries, passage probability, bill chat, executive orders, email digests — Best for professionals needing affordable AI-powered federal tracking
How to choose
If you have an enterprise budget ($10K+/year) and need multi-state coverage with advocacy tools: Quorum or FiscalNote. They're the market leaders for a reason. Book demos with both and compare.
If you need multi-state tracking without advocacy tools and have a moderate budget: Plural Policy's Basic plan at $3,500/year, or LegiScan's GAITS Pro for data-focused tracking.
If you need comprehensive federal tracking with AI at an accessible price: Sporos. You get AI summaries, passage probability, executive order tracking, and bill chat for $29-49/month. No sales call, no contract negotiation, no waiting.
If you need free federal tracking and don't mind limited features: GovTrack for ongoing monitoring with alerts. Congress.gov for official text lookups.
The real answer for most policy professionals is that you'll probably use more than one. Congress.gov for official records, GovTrack or Sporos for daily tracking, and eventually an enterprise platform if your organization's budget and needs grow to justify it.
The days of having only two options (free government websites or $20K+ enterprise platforms) are over. The market has finally started filling the gap in between.
Sporos
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Track bills, executive orders, and regulations in one dashboard. Get AI summaries, daily digests, and team collaboration — free to start.