Arphie vs Steerlab (2026): pricing, features and verdict

Short answer: Pick Steerlab if you want to put one real RFP or security questionnaire through the product before anyone quotes you, and you want the data-residency answer in writing: AWS regions in Europe, with Ireland named in the terms. Pick Arphie if the draft has to come from live sales-engineering sources, especially Seismic, Highspot, and Vanta, and you can start with a contact form because Arphie does not publish a trial. Both companies were founded in 2023. Both show sources and a confidence signal on drafted answers. The buying mechanics and the hosting story are what separate them.

Arphie is headquartered in San Francisco. Its homepage, recorded in this guide in October 2026, describes a $2.9 million seed round led by General Catalyst. The customer names on the record are Navan, Front, Contentful, Qualys, Recorded Future, Braze, commercetools, and Cyberhaven. The product is aimed at presales and sales-engineering teams.

Steerlab is headquartered in Paris. Its about page is the source for a 2023 founding. Tech.eu, in a story dated 4 September 2024, reported a EUR 1.7 million pre-seed, about $1.9 million, led by Dreamcraft Ventures, with Heartfelt_, Lumiere AI Ventures, Station F, and more than 20 angel investors. Customers named on Steerlab’s own site in this record are Playable, beqom, Staffbase, Gladia, and Mantra. The audience is B2B software presales, proposal teams, and security teams, with a particular nod to EU buyers who want data in Europe.

A young company can still be the right buy. The funding figures tell you the stage. Rank the products on the draft, the hosting page, and the quote. Arphie’s seed and Steerlab’s pre-seed are both small by enterprise-software standards. Ask both the same questions about who answers the support ticket and what the roadmap depends on.

Key takeaways

• Try it, or talk first: Steerlab’s free trial covers your first RFP or questionnaire and does not ask for a credit card. Arphie has no free tier and no self-serve plan.
• Still no price list: https://www.steerlab.ai/pricing returns a 404, and paid plans are quoted after a demo. Arphie quotes through the contact form. A number you heard on a call is not a public list until it is in a quote.
• Hosting: Steerlab publishes European AWS regions and names Ireland in its terms. Arphie publishes SOC 2 Type 2 and does not publish a region.
• Certificates: Arphie names SOC 2 Type 2. Steerlab says it is SOC 2 and was assessed against Security, Availability, Processing Integrity, Confidentiality, and Privacy. It does not say Type I or Type II. ISO 27001 is unlisted for Steerlab in this record, and it is also unlisted for Arphie.
• A Steerlab strength: the Go/No-Go agent, with win-probability and competitor-bias signals, plus an auto-managed library that the vendor says classifies content, removes duplicates and conflicts, and flags stale responses.
• An Arphie strength: citation-forward drafts from live connections, including enablement platforms and Vanta, with a browser agent for portals.

Two 2023 drafting tools, two maintenance stories

Arphie’s summary says it drafts from live connections to Google Drive, SharePoint, Confluence, and similar sources, and that this cuts down on answer-library upkeep. The library is still there. Facts recorded from the site describe automated clustering, Smart Merge for duplicates, and content health scores. The idea is that the document in the drive stays the source, and the library is kept from rotting on top of it.

Steerlab’s summary says it pairs drafting with a content library that cleans itself up. The responsive-alternative page, cited in the facts file as of October 2026, is the vendor’s own description: the auto-managed library classifies content, removes duplicates and conflicts, flags outdated responses, and learns from each submission. Steerlab also says it can take a structured migration of a Q&A library and then clean it, or you can skip the import and connect drives and CRM directly. That migration line is specifically about moving off a library you already have. It is a real on-ramp if you are leaving a suite, and it is Steerlab’s claim about its own importer, which you should test with an export file.

Both stories attack the same chore, the librarian shift nobody staffed. They do not attack it with the same motion. Arphie reaches into the live file at draft time and shows you that file. Steerlab wants the library to dedupe and age-out in the background, and it still links source documents on the answer. In a trial, the tell is a duplicate policy. Arphie should show you which file it used. Steerlab should flag the conflict, on its own description, before a person merges anything.

What the draft is willing to admit

Arphie shows the underlying source files and a confidence level. That is the check a reviewer can do without trusting a percentage. The platform page evidence also lists deadlines and approvals, and a browser agent for portals.

Steerlab’s security-teams page, as recorded in October 2026, says sourced security-questionnaire answers carry a confidence score, and that the tool flags unknowns. The profile’s strength line uses the vendor’s wording: it flags unknowns and does not invent an answer. Hold the product to that sentence. Bring one question your corpus cannot support, a product you do not sell or a control you have not implemented, and see whether the draft is handed back as unknown. A fluent paragraph on that question is a failed test, whoever the vendor is.

Steerlab’s features page says it auto-generates 80% or more of a document in minutes. That sentence is the vendor’s, sourced in the facts file as of October 2026. The page, as captured here, does not define the corpus, the denominator, or the review rule. This comparison does not use 80% as a result. The mechanism next to it, linked sources and a confidence score, is the part you can verify on your file.

Arphie’s record includes a similar class of marketing figure about how often customers accept a first draft. It is omitted here for the same reason. Count your own edits.

Go/No-Go is a named Steerlab feature

Most response tools assume you have already decided to bid. Steerlab’s profile lists a Go/No-Go agent with win probability and competitor bias detection as a key feature and as a strength. Bid triage is the cheapest hour in a proposal week, and it is unusual to see it named beside the drafting engine in a company this young. That is a genuine product strength. It is also a vendor-described model. Ask what “win probability” is computed from, which fields you have to fill before the number appears, and whether competitor-bias detection is looking at your draft’s wording or at a list you maintain. If the agent only restates the pursuit call you already had, it is a checklist. If it surfaces a gap in the pursuit notes, it is the feature the homepage is selling.

Arphie does not list a Go/No-Go agent in this guide. Its collaboration tools are deadlines, approvals, tasks, and comments. The decision to pursue still happens in email or in the CRM. That is a perfectly normal split. Do not mark Arphie down for declining to automate a decision your pursuit lead wants to keep. Do mark the shortlist: if the pain is bad bids accepted too early, Steerlab wrote a feature for that pain, and Arphie wrote features for the draft that follows.

Security, law, and where the bytes sit

Read this section before you enjoy the drafting demo.

	Arphie	Steerlab
SOC 2	Type 2, named as Type 2	SOC 2 against five Trust Services Criteria. Type I or Type II is not stated. Ask for the report
ISO 27001	Not listed in this record	Not listed. Status in the profile is unlisted
Hosting	No region published in the profile or facts	AWS regions in Europe, replicated across several European regions. Terms say the services are hosted in Ireland
Subprocessors	Not published as a named list in this record	AWS is named. A full subprocessor list, including model providers, is not on the site. Ask for it
Identity	SAML 2.0 and Google SSO described as an Enterprise-customer feature	Okta, Google SSO, Auth0, and Microsoft Entra ID on the integrations page. MFA and roles such as Contributor and Proposal Manager are described on the security materials in the profile
Contract law	Not stated in this record	French law. Disputes go to arbitration seated in Paris

For an EU buyer, Steerlab’s residency paragraph is the strongest public sentence in this matchup. For a buyer who needs a United States region on paper, Steerlab’s record is the wrong default, and Arphie’s silence means you still have to ask. Neither profile lets you skip the question.

Steerlab’s terms detail belongs in procurement’s first email. French law and Paris-seated arbitration are facts from the terms page, checked October 2026. Many enterprises will sign a negotiated DPA anyway. If you intended to buy on click-through terms, read them.

Arphie’s SOC 2 line is more specific about type. That specificity is a real strength when your questionnaire template asks “Type I or Type II?” and you would like the website to match the report. The Enterprise wording on SAML is the offsetting fact: identity may be a tier conversation.

Seventeen connectors, and a different seventeen

Steerlab’s integrations page lists 17 connectors, recorded individually in the facts file as of October 2026: Google Drive, SharePoint, OneDrive, Dropbox, Box, Slack, Microsoft Teams, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Salesforce, Google Chrome, Confluence, Notion, Okta, Google SSO, Auth0, and Microsoft Entra ID. Dynamics 365 next to Salesforce is worth underlining, because a lot of response tools stop at Salesforce. The Chrome extension is the portal path. Slack and Teams are both named, so experts can be asked in either chat tool.

Arphie’s recorded connectors are Google Drive, SharePoint, Confluence, Notion, Seismic, Highspot, Salesforce, Slack, Vanta, Box, Dropbox, and Egnyte, with a Slack bot, a browser agent, and an MCP server on the profile. No Microsoft Teams app is named. No Dynamics, HubSpot, Okta, or Entra entry is in the Arphie list this guide holds.

Shared ground: Salesforce, Slack, Google Drive, SharePoint, Confluence, Notion, Box, Dropbox. Steerlab adds Teams, HubSpot, Dynamics 365, OneDrive, Chrome, and the SSO providers. Arphie adds Seismic, Highspot, Vanta, Egnyte, and the MCP server. A European team on Dynamics and Entra is looking at Steerlab’s grid. A US presales team on Highspot and Vanta is looking at Arphie’s. Count the names you actually use. A logo you do not use is not coverage.

Reviews, customers, and how thin the public sample is

Neither vendor brings a large review sample that this guide has stored side by side. Steerlab’s Capterra entry, as of October 2026, is 5.0 out of 5 from 1 review, at https://www.capterra.ca/software/1072065/Steerlab. One perfect score is a single opinion. It is not a market. Arphie’s facts file does not store a G2 average or a review count. What it does store is a dated note: reviewers from June to September 2026 say AI answer generation takes a while to finish on a project, sourced to G2’s Arphie reviews.

The Capterra note on Steerlab, May 2026, is also one reviewer. The facts file records that they asked for more ready-to-use templates for banking and fintech security questionnaires, and said some RFPs still need setup work before use. Quote that request as a request. It does not prove the product cannot answer a bank. It proves a reviewer wanted templates the product did not hand them, and wanted less setup on some RFPs. If you are a fintech security team, put a SIG or a CAIQ in the free trial and see whether you are doing that setup yourself.

Customer logos are not case studies. Arphie’s list is longer and more familiar to US software buyers. Steerlab’s list is shorter and European-leaning. Logos show who agreed to be named. They do not show outcome.

Known issues and limitations

Arphie

• Quote only: no public price, no free tier, buying through the contact form (checked October 2026).
• SSO wording: SAML 2.0 and Google SSO are described on the security page as features for Enterprise customers (checked October 2026).
• Generation time, reviewers’ summary: G2, as recorded October 2026, has reviewers from June to September 2026 saying AI answer generation takes a while to finish on a project.
• Region unpublished: SOC 2 Type 2 is listed. A hosting region is not.

Steerlab

• No public price: steerlab.ai/pricing returns a 404. Paid plans are quoted after a demo (checked October 2026). The free start covers the first RFP or questionnaire, with no credit card. That is not a published paid tier.
• EU hosting by default: the security page stores data in AWS regions in Europe. The terms say the service is hosted in Ireland (checked October 2026). Confirm it if you need a US region.
• SOC 2 type unstated, ISO unlisted: five Trust Services Criteria are named. Type I or Type II is not. Ask for the report.
• One public review, and a template request: Capterra shows 1 review at 5.0 as of October 2026. That May 2026 review asked for more ready-made templates for banking and fintech security questionnaires and said some RFPs still need setup work.
• French law: disputes go to arbitration seated in Paris, per the terms.

Choose Arphie when

• Presales or sales engineering owns the queue, and the good answer already lives in Seismic, Highspot, Drive, or Confluence.
• Vanta is the compliance source you want the draft to read.
• You want the source file and a confidence level, a Slack bot, and a browser agent for the portal.
• SOC 2 Type 2, stated as Type 2, is the certificate wording your template expects, and you will ask separately about region.
• A contact-form quote is an acceptable start, because you do not need a no-card trial to get internal attention.
• DDQs that map to live policies are in scope, and you do not need a Go/No-Go agent inside the product.

Choose Steerlab when

• You can learn more from one real questionnaire than from a slide, and the no-card first RFP is how you want to start.
• The company is in Europe, or the contract requires European hosting, and Ireland-in-the-terms is a feature.
• Microsoft Teams, Dynamics 365, HubSpot, Okta, or Entra ID are the stack you already run.
• Someone should look at win probability and competitor-bias signals before the team spends a week drafting.
• You want the library to flag duplicates, conflicts, and stale answers, and you will test that claim with two versions of the same policy.
• You are a B2B software presales team. Investor DDQs are outside the core workflow this record describes. You will get the SOC 2 type and the subprocessor list before signature.

Verdict

Arphie and Steerlab are peers in age and in ambition, and they are not peers in how you start. Arphie asks for a conversation, then drafts from the live presales stack, with Type 2 named and the region left for the security call. Steerlab lets you spend a real document first, quotes the paid plan after a demo because the pricing page 404s, and has already written down European hosting, a self-cleaning library, and a Go/No-Go agent.

Choose Arphie when Vanta and the enablement tools are the system of record. Choose Steerlab when the trial document and the EU region are the system of record. In either case, click the sources on the draft, and get the price and the SOC 2 report in the same email thread as the redlines.

Read the full Arphie review or Steerlab review, or browse all RFP & DDQ software.

Sources checked

• Arphie homepage (seed round) (checked October 2026)
• Arphie contact page (checked October 2026)
• Arphie security page (checked October 2026)
• Arphie platform page (checked October 2026)
• Arphie reviews on G2 (checked October 2026)
• Steerlab homepage (checked October 2026)
• Steerlab pricing URL (checked October 2026)
• Steerlab free start (checked October 2026)
• Steerlab about page (checked October 2026)
• Steerlab security page (checked October 2026)
• Steerlab terms and conditions (checked October 2026)
• Steerlab integrations page (checked October 2026)
• Steerlab features page (checked October 2026)
• Steerlab security teams page (checked October 2026)
• Tech.eu on Steerlab's pre-seed round (checked October 2026)
• Steerlab on Capterra (checked October 2026)