1. [Home](/) 2. [Comparisons](/comparisons) 3. Iris vs Realm (2026) ComparisonsOctober 7, 2026 # Iris vs Realm (2026): pricing, features and verdict Iris: AI RFP drafting for presales and sales engineering. Realm: AI RFPs and sales deliverables for software vendors. ## Quick verdict Choose Iris for presales and SE teams that triage RFP fit and draft fast; choose Realm for software vendors selling to enterprise who want AI across RFPs and wider sales deliverables. Neither publishes a comparable starting price, so quote both on the same scope. In our capability model Iris leads on security questionnaires and answer library, while Realm leads on approval workflows and integrations. Both profiles reviewed Oct 2026 2 of 70 profiles, one scoring modelNo paid placement[Sources checked: 18](#source-registry) ## Choose Iris or Realm ### IR![Iris logo](https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=heyiris.ai&sz=128) Choose Iris when - Presales and SE teams that triage RFP fit and draft fast. - You need stronger security questionnaires and answer library than Realm offers. ### RE![Realm logo](https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=withrealm.com&sz=128) Choose Realm when - Software vendors selling to enterprise who want AI across RFPs and wider sales deliverables. - You need stronger approval workflows and integrations than Iris offers. ## Side-by-side comparison __Scores run 0 (not offered) to 3 (category-leading). Edge marks who leads the row; Match means the scores are the same. Confirm certifications on the vendor site before a security review.__ | Capability | Iris | Realm | Edge | | ----------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----- | | Best for | Presales and SE teams that triage RFP fit and draft fast. | Software vendors selling to enterprise who want AI across RFPs and wider sales deliverables. | \- | | Starting price | Custom | Custom | Match | | Free tier | No | No | Match | | RFPs | 3/3 | 3/3 | Match | | DDQs | 2/3 | 2/3 | Match | | Security questionnaires | 3/3 | 2/3 | Iris | | AI drafting | 3/3 | 3/3 | Match | | Answer library | 3/3 | 2/3 | Iris | | Source attribution | 3/3 | 3/3 | Match | | Workflow & approvals | 1/3 | 2/3 | Realm | | Integrations | 2/3 | 3/3 | Realm | | Self-serve onboarding | 0/3 | 0/3 | Match | | ISO 27001 | Not listed | ISO 27001 | \- | | SOC 2 | SOC 2 Type II | Not listed | \- | | US hosting | Not listed | Not listed | \- | | EU hosting | Not listed | Not listed | \- | | Slack | Slack | Slack | \- | | Microsoft Teams | Not listed | Microsoft Teams | \- | | AWS, Azure, GCP | Not listed | Not listed | \- | | Listed integrations | Salesforce, Slack | Slack, Notion, Jira, HubSpot, Salesforce, Microsoft Teams, Google Drive | \- | | Certifications | SOC 2 Type II | ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA | \- | ## What they look like ### IR![Iris logo](https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=heyiris.ai&sz=128) Iris ![Screenshot of the Iris website](/screenshots/iris.webp) ### RE![Realm logo](https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=withrealm.com&sz=128) Realm ![Screenshot of the Realm website](/screenshots/realm.webp) ## Security: ISO 27001, SOC 2, and regional hosting Put Iris and Realm through the same three questions a security reviewer will ask: ISO 27001, SOC 2, and whether you can keep the tenancy in the US or the EU. Cells say **Not listed** when we could not find the claim on a public vendor page. __Confirm certificates and residency on the vendor site or Trust Center before a formal review.__ | Check | Iris | Realm | | ---------- | ------------- | ---------- | | ISO 27001 | Not listed | ISO 27001 | | SOC 2 | SOC 2 Type II | Not listed | | US hosting | Not listed | Not listed | | EU hosting | Not listed | Not listed | ## Slack and Microsoft Teams During a live questionnaire, SMEs get pinged in Slack or Teams, not in a vendor portal. Here is what Iris and Realm publish for those two connections. __Native chat apps only. CRM, storage and identity connectors stay in the integrations list.__ | Connection | Iris | Realm | | --------------- | ---------- | --------------- | | Slack | Slack | Slack | | Microsoft Teams | Not listed | Microsoft Teams | ## Subprocessors: the big three clouds, then the niche names Compare Iris and Realm on AWS, Azure and GCP first. Then scan for niche processors a reviewer should pause on: third-party LLMs, session replay, or support that leaves the region you elected. __Cloud row lists the big three only. Niche names sit in the notes when the vendor published them.__ | Layer | Iris | Realm | | --------------- | ------------------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------ | | AWS, Azure, GCP | Not listed | Not listed | | Watch-outs | No niche processors flagged in our sourced list. | No niche processors flagged in our sourced list. | [Iris](/iris) and [Realm](/realm) were both founded in 2023, both draft questionnaire answers with a citation attached, and both send you to a demo before you see a price. That is roughly where the overlap stops. Iris, based in Brooklyn, is a response workspace for presales and sales engineers: qualify the RFP, draft it, get it signed off, and push it back into the buyer’s file or portal. Realm, based in Helsinki, is an AI workspace for whole revenue teams that includes a serious RFP module, plus chat, search, custom agents and a Slack app that keep answering reps long after the bid is submitted. So the useful question is not which one writes nicer answers. It is whether you are buying a tool for the person who owns the questionnaire queue, or a knowledge layer for everyone who talks to buyers. Below we walk through the work itself, the money, the stack, and the sourced problems we found on each side. Prices and product details are as of October 2026; review ratings are as of July 2026. ## Key takeaways - **Different buyers inside the same company:** Iris is built around presales and sales engineering, with Go/No-Go scoring, a war-room brief and cited drafts. Realm also serves sales, customer success, support and marketing through chat, search, agents and a Slack app. - **Both cite, both score:** Iris attaches a source and a high, medium or low confidence rating to each answer and flags “insufficient context” when it has nothing to go on. Realm shows an answer quality score on a four-level scale and marks partial answers that skip part of a question. - **Portals favor Iris:** Iris documents a Chrome and Edge extension that reads portal questionnaires and fills high-confidence answers in place. Realm’s documented browser extension is for searching and chatting with company knowledge. - **Opaque pricing on both:** Iris charges per active user with unlimited RFPs and questionnaires but publishes no seat price. Realm removed its price list in mid-2026 (it had shown RFP Starter at €850/mo for 50 RFPs a year) and now quotes through a demo. - **Data residency favors Realm:** Realm is ISO 27001 certified and can keep customer data on Google Cloud in Finland and the Netherlands. Iris lists SOC 2 Type II and GDPR. - **Limitations:** Neither offers a free trial today. G2 reviewers report Iris output that sometimes mixes up information, and Realm runs a mix of US and EU language models unless you ask for EU-only. ## What each one is for ### Iris: a questionnaire desk for presales Iris pitches itself to teams whose sales engineers keep getting pulled off demos to answer spreadsheets. The product follows a bid from intake to submission: a Go/No-Go score against your win history, prospect research, a structured war-room brief, cited first drafts, collaboration and export. Security questionnaires get their own flow covering CAIQ, SIG, SIG Lite and custom buyer Excel sheets, with evidence such as SOC 2 reports and policy PDFs attached to the answers that need them. Its customer list leans toward venture-backed software and services firms: BuildOps, Corelight, MedRisk, Ashby, Beehiiv, Cresta and Swimlane all appear on its site. Iris raised a $3 million seed round led by Florida Funders. Users rate it highly: 4.9 out of 5 on G2 across 66 reviews and 4.9 on Gartner Peer Insights across 17, both as of July 2026. ### Realm: an AI workspace where RFPs are one module Realm calls itself the AI workspace for revenue teams. Its documentation splits the product into Chat, Agents, Search, RFPs, a Slack app, a browser extension, an API and an MCP server. The RFP module stands up on its own: project workspaces, Go/No-Go analysis with dimensions you define, questionnaire filling, narrative “document responses” with a section-by-section plan, and a checklist of everything the tender asks you to hand in. The rest of the product is what you are really adopting. Agents can run on schedules, events or webhooks, take actions in external tools, and sit in Slack channels to answer questions. Realm’s named customers, including LeadDesk, Sievo, Sympa and Hostaway, are mostly software companies selling to larger buyers. It raised a $4.5 million seed round in April 2026 led by Frontline Ventures, and holds 4.8 out of 5 on G2 across 18 reviews as of July 2026. ## How they handle the actual job ### Deciding whether to bid Both will tell you whether an RFP deserves your weekend, by different routes. Iris scores the opportunity against your historical wins and losses and pairs that with prospect research. Realm reads every file in the project, sorts each extracted requirement into qualification, capability, commercial term or procedural, and checks the first two types against your knowledge base. If an admin sets up analysis dimensions (legal fit, commercial fit, buyer relationship, whatever your bid committee actually argues about), Realm returns a 1 to 5 score for each with blockers, strengths and open questions, then records the decision your team makes. If you run a formal bid/no-bid meeting, Realm’s dimension model maps onto it cleanly. If go/no-go is one sales engineer and a gut check, Iris’s win-history score is lighter to live with. ### Drafting questionnaires This is the core job for both, and they are closer here than anywhere else. Each drafts from connected knowledge rather than a hand-kept question bank, cites a source per answer, and tells you where to look first. The differences sit in the controls. Realm lets you define answer profiles (concise or detailed, plus free-form instructions) at the organization, RFP and section level, and test a profile against a real past question before saving it. Its quality score weighs how trustworthy the sources are (a verified past RFP outranks a Slack thread) and how sensitive the topic is, so pricing and security questions get flagged for a human. Iris enforces custom instructions per questionnaire type, surfaces contradictions between sources, and says “insufficient context” when its knowledge map cannot support an answer. Realm also handles language in a way European teams will notice. A French questionnaire inside an English project is translated once for working, and the export still defaults to the original document language. ### Narrative and long-form sections Realm has the deeper documented tooling for prose. Its document responses read the RFP, propose an outline, plan each section with its requirements, emphasis and a word budget, and draft section by section in a shared editor. Iris covers proposals and narrative RFP sections too, but its public material centers on questionnaires and RFP drafts rather than a section planner. If a third of your bids are method statements and technical approaches, push a real one through Realm’s editor during the trial-by-demo. ### Review, approval and export Iris’s security questionnaire flow supports a single reviewer, several reviewers, or sequential review-then-approve steps, and Iris says nothing exports until every step signs off. The completed file goes back in the buyer’s own format. Realm assigns questions and sections to subject-matter experts, lets each row carry a reviewer who approves it, and has an organization setting that blocks export until every row is explicitly approved. Assigned members get deadline reminders three days before, one day before and on the day. Both are workable for a team of five to fifteen contributors. Neither publishes the kind of multi-gate legal and compliance routing that heavily regulated proposal shops buy specialist tools for, so if that is your world, bring your real approval chart to both demos. ### Portals Iris has a clear, documented edge here. Its extension, for Chrome and Edge, extracts questions from a portal page (page by page if needed), turns them into a new or existing project, and has a Quick-answer mode that reads radio buttons, dropdowns, checkboxes and text fields. High-confidence answers fill automatically; lower-confidence ones appear as review cards with the draft, the reasoning and the source, and you choose to apply, copy, locate or skip. Realm’s extension runs on Chromium browsers and is documented for searching and chatting with your knowledge from any webpage. We found no Realm documentation describing portal autofill, so if your security reviews arrive as OneTrust or ProcessUnity links, ask Realm to show it on a live portal before assuming it. ## Pricing and total cost Neither vendor gives a number without a call, so the honest comparison is about the shape of the bill. Iris prices per active user. Each seat comes with unlimited RFPs, proposals, DDQs and security questionnaires, no usage caps or overages, plus SSO/SAML/SCIM, a dedicated customer success manager, implementation support and MCP access. Seat prices are not published, and there is no free plan or trial. That model rewards a small, busy desk: three sales engineers answering sixty questionnaires a year pay for three people, not sixty projects. It penalizes sprawl, because every subject-matter expert you add as an active user adds to the bill. Realm has no public pricing at the moment. Its pricing page returns a 404, the free-trial signup is offline, and buying runs through a demo. Until mid-2026 it published Starter at €600/mo (10 users, RFPs not included), RFP Starter at €850/mo (10 users, 50 RFPs a year), and custom Scale (100 RFPs a year) and Enterprise (100+) tiers. Treat those as a historical anchor rather than a quote. They do show how the model was built: RFP volume bands plus seats, with the chat and search workspace sold separately from RFP automation. Questions worth asking both: - What counts as a billable user, and do occasional reviewers count? - For Realm, which RFP volume band you fall into and what happens if you cross it mid-term. - Whether implementation is included or quoted separately (Iris lists implementation support in its plan). - Contract length and renewal terms, since neither publishes them. ## Integrations and stack fit Iris connects to the systems a presales team draws on: Salesforce and HubSpot for the deal, Slack and Microsoft Teams for collaboration, and SharePoint, Google Drive, Confluence, Notion, Highspot, Seismic and Drata as knowledge sources that resync when the source changes. Its MCP server lets people pull cited answers into ChatGPT or Claude, and a GovSpend connection brings agency budgets and contract data into go/no-go for public-sector bids. Realm’s connector list is longer and reaches further into engineering and support: Slack, Notion, Jira, Confluence, HubSpot, Linear, GitHub, Salesforce, Microsoft Teams and Google Drive, plus documented connectors for Zendesk, Freshdesk, Intercom, Gong and more. For Slack, Google Drive and SharePoint it mirrors the full permission structure, so people only see what they could see in the source system. Projects link to Salesforce opportunities and HubSpot deals and stay in sync both ways. The fit test is quick. If your answers live in sales collateral and security documentation, Iris’s list covers it. If the real answer to “does the product do X” lives in a Jira epic or a GitHub issue, Realm can read it, and Iris’s published list cannot. ## Known issues and watch-outs We only list problems we could tie to a dated source. Vendor claims about time saved or accuracy are left out on both sides because neither publishes a method we could check. ### Iris - **No price or trial before a sales call.** The pricing page says “Contact sales for pricing” and offers no free trial or free plan ([Iris pricing](https://heyiris.ai/pricing), checked October 2026). - **Per-user billing.** Full platform access is “priced per active user”, so cost tracks the number of people on the platform rather than volume ([Iris pricing](https://heyiris.ai/pricing), October 2026). - **Output quality complaints.** G2’s review summary, dated May 2026, says reviewers saw output “occasionally getting confused and mixing up information” and some found responses “overly robotic” ([G2 summary for Iris](https://ai.g2.com/product/heyiris-ai-iris)). Run a messy, multi-part question through it during evaluation. ### Realm - **Pricing went dark.** withrealm.com/pricing returns a 404 and the trial is offline; the last published tiers date from June 2026 ([archived Realm pricing](https://web.archive.org/web/20260614192606/https://www.withrealm.com/pricing)). - **Where the model runs by default.** Realm “uses a mix of US and EU based large language models” by default and sets up EU-only models on request ([Realm security docs](https://docs.withrealm.com/admin/security), October 2026). EU storage does not automatically mean EU-only inference. - **Uneven permission mirroring.** HubSpot and Notion use user-level access checks rather than document-level permissions “due to API limitations” (same page, October 2026). - **Session policy by ticket.** Organization-wide session expiry and idle timeouts are configured on request through support, and single-tenant deployment is reserved for enterprise customers (same page, October 2026). ## Who should pick Iris Iris fits if most of these describe you: - Your questionnaire queue belongs to a handful of sales engineers or presales staff, not a proposal department. - Security reviews often arrive as portal links and you want an extension that fills them in place. - You want go/no-go scored against your own win history before anyone starts writing. - Your knowledge lives in SharePoint, Drive, Confluence, Notion, Highspot, Seismic or Drata. - SOC 2 Type II satisfies your buyers and EU-only inference is not a requirement. ## Who should pick Realm Realm fits if most of these describe you: - You sell software to larger organizations and the RFP is one of many places reps need fast, sourced answers. - Product truth lives in Jira, GitHub, Linear or support tickets, and you want answers drawn from there. - You want custom agents and a Slack assistant for the wider revenue team, with RFPs in the same workspace. - You need ISO 27001, a HIPAA business associate agreement, or EU data residency on Google Cloud in Finland and the Netherlands. - Your bid committee scores opportunities on several named dimensions and wants that on record. ## Verdict Choose by the size of the circle you are buying for. For a presales desk that wants to qualify, draft, approve and push answers into portals with minimal ceremony, Iris is the tighter fit, and its review scores suggest the people living in it are happy. For a software company that wants one knowledge layer across sales, support and product, with RFP response as a strong module inside it, Realm is the better bet, especially for European teams that care where their data sits. Both share the same weakness from a buyer’s chair: no trial and no price until you talk to sales. Bring a real questionnaire, a live portal link and your actual approval chain to each demo, and the answer tends to show up on its own. Read the full [Iris review](/iris) or [Realm review](/realm), or browse [all RFP & DDQ software](/). ## Frequently asked questions What is the difference between Iris and Realm? Iris: AI RFP drafting for presales and sales engineering. Realm: AI RFPs and sales deliverables for software vendors. Iris is best for presales and SE teams that triage RFP fit and draft fast. Realm is best for software vendors selling to enterprise who want AI across RFPs and wider sales deliverables. Which is cheaper, Iris or Realm? Neither publishes a comparable starting price, so request quotes for the same scope before comparing cost. Is Iris or Realm better for DDQs and security questionnaires? Iris scores higher on DDQ and security-questionnaire handling in our capability model, though both support them. Do Iris and Realm both handle RFPs? Iris: yes, a core strength. Realm: yes, a core strength. Which should you choose, Iris or Realm? Iris is the pick for presales and SE teams that triage RFP fit and draft fast. Realm is the pick for software vendors selling to enterprise who want AI across RFPs and wider sales deliverables. Are there alternatives to Iris and Realm? Yes. Browse the full directory of RFP, DDQ, and security-questionnaire platforms for more options and side-by-side comparisons. Do Iris and Realm list ISO 27001, SOC 2, and US or EU hosting? Iris: ISO 27001 Not listed, SOC 2 SOC 2 Type II, US Not listed, EU Not listed, Slack Slack, Teams Not listed, clouds Not listed. Realm: ISO 27001 ISO 27001, SOC 2 Not listed, US Not listed, EU Not listed, Slack Slack, Teams Microsoft Teams, clouds Not listed. Confirm both on the vendor sites. ## Source registry Every page we read for these profiles, with the month it was last checked. Anything without a source is shown as not publicly disclosed. Spot an outdated fact? Send it from the [corrections page](/corrections). ### [Iris](/iris) Pricing - [heyiris.ai/pricing](https://heyiris.ai/pricing)Checked Oct 2026 · Pricing model · Starting price · Free tier · Pricing note · Limitation · RFPs score · Self-serve onboarding score Security and compliance - No security source URL recorded. Treat certifications and hosting as not publicly disclosed. Product and integrations - [heyiris.ai/use-case/security-questionnaires](https://heyiris.ai/use-case/security-questionnaires)Checked Oct 2026 · Security questionnaires score - [heyiris.ai/knowledge-management](https://heyiris.ai/knowledge-management)Checked Oct 2026 · Answer library score - [heyiris.ai/response-generation](https://heyiris.ai/response-generation)Checked Oct 2026 · Source attribution score - [heyiris.ai/blog/inside-iriss-3m-seed-to-transform-rfp-automation](https://heyiris.ai/blog/inside-iriss-3m-seed-to-transform-rfp-automation)Checked Oct 2026 · Funding - [heyiris.ai/privacy](https://heyiris.ai/privacy)Checked Oct 2026 · Parent company Third-party reviews - [g2.com/products/heyiris-ai-iris/reviews](https://www.g2.com/products/heyiris-ai-iris/reviews)Checked Jul 2026 · G2 rating - [gartner.com/reviews/product/iris-ai-952936189](https://www.gartner.com/reviews/product/iris-ai-952936189)Checked Jul 2026 · Gartner rating - [ai.g2.com/product/heyiris-ai-iris](https://ai.g2.com/product/heyiris-ai-iris)Checked Oct 2026 · Reviewer-reported limitation ### [Realm](/realm) Pricing - [withrealm.com/pricing](https://www.withrealm.com/pricing)Checked Oct 2026 · Pricing model · Starting price - [web.archive.org/web/20260614192606/https://www.withrealm.com/pr…](https://web.archive.org/web/20260614192606/https://www.withrealm.com/pricing)Checked Oct 2026 · Free tier · Plan tiers · Pricing note Security and compliance - No security source URL recorded. Treat certifications and hosting as not publicly disclosed. Product and integrations - [withrealm.com/frequently-asked-questions](https://www.withrealm.com/frequently-asked-questions)Checked Oct 2026 · Security questionnaires score - [docs.withrealm.com/knowledge/curations](https://docs.withrealm.com/knowledge/curations)Checked Oct 2026 · Answer library score - [docs.withrealm.com/rfp/filling-rfps](https://docs.withrealm.com/rfp/filling-rfps)Checked Oct 2026 · Source attribution score · Workflow & approvals score - [withrealm.com/book-a-demo](https://www.withrealm.com/book-a-demo)Checked Oct 2026 · Self-serve onboarding score · Limitation - [pulse2.com/realm-4-5-million-seed-funding-raised-to-transform-e…](https://pulse2.com/realm-4-5-million-seed-funding-raised-to-transform-enterprise-sales-with-ai-automation/)Checked Oct 2026 · Funding - [docs.withrealm.com/admin/security](https://docs.withrealm.com/admin/security)Checked Oct 2026 · Limitation Third-party reviews - [g2.com/sellers/realm](https://www.g2.com/sellers/realm)Checked Jul 2026 · G2 rating Table of Contents - [Choose Iris or Realm](#choose-iris-or-realm) - [Side-by-side comparison](#side-by-side-comparison) - [What they look like](#what-they-look-like) - [Security: ISO 27001, SOC 2, and regional hosting](#security-iso-27001-soc-2-and-regional-hosting) - [Slack and Microsoft Teams](#slack-and-microsoft-teams) - [Subprocessors: the big three clouds, then the niche names](#subprocessors-the-big-three-clouds-then-the-niche-names) - [Key takeaways](#key-takeaways) - [What each one is for](#what-each-one-is-for) - [How they handle the actual job](#how-they-handle-the-actual-job) - [Pricing and total cost](#pricing-and-total-cost) - [Integrations and stack fit](#integrations-and-stack-fit) - [Known issues and watch-outs](#known-issues-and-watch-outs) - [Who should pick Iris](#who-should-pick-iris) - [Who should pick Realm](#who-should-pick-realm) - [Verdict](#verdict) - [Frequently asked questions](#frequently-asked-questions) - [Source registry](#source-registry) [Summarize with ChatGPT](https://chatgpt.com/?q=Summarize%20this%20article%3A%20https%3A%2F%2Frfp-software-tools.com%2Fcomparisons%2Firis-vs-realm-2026)[Summarize with Claude](https://claude.ai/new?q=Summarize%20this%20article%3A%20https%3A%2F%2Frfp-software-tools.com%2Fcomparisons%2Firis-vs-realm-2026)[Summarize with Perplexity](https://www.perplexity.ai/?q=Summarize%20this%20article%3A%20https%3A%2F%2Frfp-software-tools.com%2Fcomparisons%2Firis-vs-realm-2026) Share this article ## Related articles [**Arphie vs Iris (2026)**A side-by-side look at Arphie and Iris: pricing, capabilities, and who each is best for.RFP Software Tools · October 9, 2026](/comparisons/arphie-vs-iris-2026)[**Iris vs Tribble (2026)**A side-by-side look at Iris and Tribble: pricing, capabilities, and who each is best for.RFP Software Tools · October 7, 2026](/comparisons/iris-vs-tribble-2026)[**Iris vs Tenderbolt (2026)**A side-by-side look at Iris and Tenderbolt: pricing, capabilities, and who each is best for.RFP Software Tools](/comparisons/iris-vs-tenderbolt-2026)[**1up vs Arphie (2026)**A side-by-side look at 1up and Arphie: pricing, capabilities, and who each is best for.RFP Software Tools · October 8, 2026](/comparisons/1up-vs-arphie-2026)