The $tack Audit
Somebody is telling you their one tool replaces the six you pay for. Sometimes it does. Here is the arithmetic that decides.
Every all-in-one pitch is argued on a feature checklist, and a checklist always wins — a checkbox costs a vendor nothing. Two things it never shows you: how deep that feature actually goes next to the tool you would cancel, and whether the plan being sold carries a month of your real volume. Tick what you pay for below and the page runs both gates in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.
Having the feature is not replacing the tool.
Then every tool comes back CUT, PARTIAL or KEEP, with two savings numbers instead of one: what you save losing nothing, and what you save if you accept every downgrade. The gap between those two numbers is the honest size of the decision. One number is a sales pitch.
Audit your own stack.
Tick what you pay for, correct any price to what is actually on your card, and set your real monthly volume. Same engine we run internally — 500 scenarios · 3131 tool judgements · 19655 compared fields · 0 differences between the engine on this page and the one we run internally.
Default prices are the cheapest paid tier each vendor publishes, verified 2026-08-28 — they drift, so overwrite them with your own. Depth scores are ours, argued per job, and we publish the losses as loudly as the savings.
A founder posted that his product replaces nine tools.
A client sent us the post: “If you're paying for these nine tools… stop it. Just use ours. We've got all of it in 1.” The first thing worth knowing is that the man posting it is the platform's own co-founder and CEO, so it is an advertisement wearing the clothes of advice. The second is that it is partly right — and the audit says exactly which part.
The interesting failure is not the video tools — a bundle really can take a chunk of that work. It is the SEO layer. The bundle's “keyword research” answers what video should I make; it does not do backlinks, rank tracking, technical audits or competitor gap analysis. Those are different products wearing the same word, and a checklist cannot tell them apart. That is the entire reason this engine scores depth per job instead of counting features.
Straight answers.
Isn't consolidating tools usually the right call?
Often, yes — and the audit says so out loud when it is. Most stacks really do carry two tools doing one job, and cutting one of them is free money. What the audit refuses to do is let a checklist decide it. The question is never 'does the bundle have this feature', it is 'does the bundle do this job as well as the thing I am about to cancel, at the volume I actually work at'. Sometimes the answer is yes on all counts. Then cancel it.
Why score depth 0 to 3 instead of just ticking features?
Because 'keyword research' means four different products depending on who is selling it. In one tool it is a list of questions people ask so you know what video to film. In another it is a link graph, rank history, a site crawler and a competitor gap report. Both get one tick on a comparison table. A depth score forces the claim to be specific: a token version of a job is a 1, a best-in-class version is a 3, and swapping a 3 for a 1 is a downgrade you should get to see before you agree to it.
What is the quota gate and why does it break most of these claims?
Consolidation pitches are made at the entry tier, because that is where the price comparison looks best. Entry tiers are metered — credits, scheduled-post caps, one connected account. So the bundle can genuinely do the job and still not do it enough times in a month to replace the tool. The saving disappears the moment you upgrade to the tier that carries your actual volume, which is usually the point of the entry tier.
Why do you show two savings numbers?
Because a single number always hides which side of the trade it came from. The first number is what you save if nothing gets worse: only true like-for-like swaps. The second is what you save if you accept every downgrade the audit found. The real answer for most people sits between them, and it is your call, not ours — but you cannot make that call if only the bigger number was ever shown to you.
Do you upload my subscription list anywhere?
No. The engine on this page is JavaScript that runs inside your browser; the tools you tick and the prices you type never leave the tab and there is no request to log. That is also why you can correct every price — our defaults are list prices, and almost nobody pays list.
Where do the default prices come from?
Each vendor's own published pricing page, or a dated third-party teardown when the vendor hides its tiers, verified on the date printed under the tool list. Software pricing drifts monthly, so treat them as a starting point and overwrite them with the line items on your card. The verdicts do not depend on our prices — only the dollar totals do.
Can you run this on my actual stack?
Yes, free. Send the subscription list and we return the same three verdicts against your real numbers, plus what you would quietly lose on anything we tell you to cut. If the honest answer is 'keep paying for all of it', that is the answer you get — a consolidation you regret in month three costs more than the subscription did.
Want the audit run on your actual card statement?
Send us the subscription list. We come back with what to cancel tonight, what you would quietly lose if you cancelled it, and the one number in the middle. Free, and we will tell you when the answer is “keep paying” — that answer is worth more than the other one.
Text Rudy — audit my stack →