AI Contract Review: 10 Tools Compared on Price and Playbooks (2026)

AI contract review is software that reads a contract someone sent you and flags the clauses that differ from a standard. The useful version checks against your own playbook: the positions your company accepts, prefers and refuses, written down once so the tool can hold every contract to them.

Here's the moment it's for. It's Friday afternoon, a supplier's agreement is in your inbox with a request to sign by Monday, and nobody on payroll is a lawyer. You can read every page yourself, pay outside counsel for an hour, or sign and hope.

Four of the ten tools on this page publish a price, from $0 to $400 a month for one person, as of October 2026. Five print no price at all. DocuSign, the tenth, lists its review feature only on a plan you have to call sales about.

On 9 October 2026, the three buyer's guides on Google's first page for this search and its "best tool" variants were all written by contract-review vendors, for legal departments and law firms, and none printed a list price. The four tools you can sign up for yourself today, Justee, Legly, Gavel Exec and goHeather, appear in none of them.

This is not legal advice. It's a buyer's guide to software, built from each vendor's own pages, and what a clause should say stays a question for your counsel. If you run a law firm, the AI legal assistant guide for small firms is written for you.

How I compared them

I read every pricing and product page cited here on 9 October 2026, in both billing states wherever a page had a monthly and annual toggle, except DocuSign's IAM page, where only the default annual view would load. Each tool got the same five questions:

• How do you use it? A website you upload a PDF to, a Word add-in, or a contract platform you already run. That decides where the redlines land.
• Whose standard does it check against? The vendor's library or your own playbook, and from which plan.
• What does a year cost for one reviewer, and for three? On the billing basis the vendor prints.
• What can you try free?
• What does the vendor say happens to your contract? Quoted as the vendor's claim, because I can't check it.

What I did not do: upload a contract, run a review, compare outputs or test accuracy. How good the redlines are on your own paper is yours to judge on a trial or in a demo.

Quick comparison

The ten tools sort into three groups by how you buy them: four publish a price and let you sign up yourself, five sell through a demo or a quote, and DocuSign puts review inside a platform you may already pay for. Copilot, Claude and ChatGPT get their own section and no row, since I read no contract review price for any of them.

Read on each vendor's own pages on 9 October 2026. US dollars as printed with "$"; Justee and Legly print no currency code, and Justee says its prices exclude tax.

What one reviewer, and then three, pays in a year

You'll keep this software for a year, so price the year. Published prices only, with the arithmetic and each vendor's billing basis showing. Three reviewers stands in for a small team, say a founder, an ops lead and a finance lead.

Published list prices only, in US dollars, as of October 2026, before tax or any discount negotiated in a sales call. DocuSign's review add-in and the five demo-only tools publish no price, so they have no row.

Read the units before the totals. Justee caps reviews per month, Legly Professional and goHeather say unlimited, and Gavel counts "completions", 1,000 a month on the paid plan. A Justee review and a Gavel completion measure different things. The output differs too: upload tools hand you a report, while Word add-ins redline inside the document.

Same category. Very different meters.

The billing basis matters as well. Gavel's annual price saves $180 per user a year against paying monthly ($1,920 minus $1,740), and goHeather's annual view halves its monthly rate, a 50% discount by its own FAQ.

So the cheapest published route to your own playbook, as of October 2026, is Gavel Exec at $1,740 per user a year, then goHeather Starter at $2,400 for one seat. Legly and Justee cost less, but neither publishes custom-playbook support on those plans.

1. Justee: the cheapest paid plan, and no playbook mentioned

Justee is an upload tool. You put a document into the web app and get back, in its words, "potential risk flags with legal citations and suggested clause fixes." It takes "Contracts, Agreements, Employment Documents, NDAs, Leases, IP, etc."

Every plan is billed monthly, per user, as of October 2026. One account is for one user, per its FAQ. Start is $19 for 10 reviews a month, up to 30 pages a document. Basic is $89 for 50 reviews, and Premium, marked "MOST POPULAR", is $189 for 100. Enterprise says "Coming soon". The free trial gives you 2 reviews in total, with no card.

Justee's FAQ lists the law it covers on every plan

Its FAQ covers U.S. federal law, all 50 states, D.C., the five U.S. territories, and England and Wales on every plan. Justee says paid plans add zero-access encryption and that your content "is never used to train AI models." Neither the pricing page nor the review page says anything about custom standards.

2. Legly: unlimited reviews for $39, against Legly's guidelines

Legly calls itself "AI contract review and contract intelligence" and promises to show "what's risky, what's missing and what to act on." It pitches growing companies as well as enterprise legal teams, and reads PDFs, scanned PDFs and Word files.

Legly's Freemium plan is $0 per user as of October 2026, with "Up to 2 reviews per 90 days" and a "Starter guideline set", no credit card needed. Professional is $39 per user a month for "Unlimited reviews" and the "Full guideline library", cancel any time. Enterprise says "Request a quote".

Your own guidelines arrive only on the Enterprise plan

"Custom guidelines / playbooks" sit under Enterprise, next to portfolio analytics, pre-signature review workflows and optional SSO. On Professional, Legly checks your contract against its own guideline library. For a founder with no written positions yet, that may be plenty. For a team that has them, it's a gap.

3. Gavel Exec: your own playbook in Word, from $1,740 a year

Gavel Exec reviews contracts inside Microsoft Word. Gavel calls it "Precedent-based AI contract review in Word" and has a page pitching it to in-house counsel. The paid plan lists full-agreement redlines, clause drafting and market benchmarks, plus the line that matters here: "Run playbooks automatically".

As of October 2026, the card prints "$160/mo per user" and "$1740/user billed annually" side by side, with 1,000 completions a month and team pricing for 10 or more seats. To start, you get 25 free queries per user during the free trial, with no credit card.

That makes it the lowest published price on this page for your own playbook. Gavel doesn't say whether playbooks run during the free queries, so ask before you plan a trial around one. A banner on two of its pages also reads: "Gavel has been acquired by Relativity, a leading legal data intelligence company."

Gavel's pricing page opens on a different product

If you go to gavel.io/pricing directly, switch to the Exec tab before you read a number. The default tab prices Gavel's document automation product, a separate product with its own plans.

4. goHeather: one seat, every feature, $2,400 a year

goHeather pitches business teams directly, with role pages for "Founders & Owners", "Procurement" and "In-House Counsel", and a pricing page that says "Every plan includes every feature and unlimited use of the latest, best AI models." You work in a Word add-in or a web contract editor.

Starter costs $400 USD a month on the default monthly view as of October 2026, or $2,400 USD a year on the annual view, which the toggle labels "50% OFF". It includes "Customizable Playbooks", one-click redlines and "Training and workflow creation with a commercial lawyer". No plan has a monthly document limit, per the FAQ.

Starter covers one person, and a second seat means a quote

Starter is "1 seat". The Team plan, for "2 seats or more" with team playbooks, says "Contact Us" and prints no price. So goHeather is the clean answer for one reviewer and an open question for two.

Best for

One person who reviews most of the company's contracts and wants a commercial lawyer to help set up the playbook.

On your data

goHeather says it does not train AI models on your data, "and neither do our AI providers."

5. Spellbook: the in-house card books a demo

Spellbook's core is a Word add-in covering "Review, Draft, Ask, Benchmarks, Playbooks", plus a "Multi-document agent" called Associate. Its playbook definition is the plainest I read: "Save and reuse specific instructions for how you want Spellbook to review a document."

The pricing page has two cards. The In-House Teams card is the one for a business buyer, pitched as "Free up your time to focus on key in-house work, without relying on outside counsel," with team training, a "Playbook Build Service" and dedicated support for teams over 10. Its button says "Book a Demo". "Start Free Trial" sits on the Law Firms card.

The trial exists, but the in-house route runs through sales

The FAQ says "Lawyers and legal teams can try Spellbook free for 7 days." It doesn't say whether an ops lead outside the legal team can start that trial, so ask. Pricing "is determined by the number of team members on a license," and no figure appears on the page as of October 2026.

On data, Spellbook says it has "Zero Data Retention agreements, preventing data use for training" and is "SOC 2 Type II Compliant". Its homepage says contracts can be "pulled in automatically from email and Slack with a full first-pass review run against your standards".

6. LegalOn: pre-built playbooks first, your own from the second plan

LegalOn says its AI "redlines each contract against your playbooks, flags risk with citations, and suggests precise edits in seconds, right inside Word." It also runs on the web. The pricing page shows three plans, every button says "Book a Demo", and there is no figure on it as of October 2026:

• Core Review, "for solo attorneys and fractional GCs": unlimited review and redlining with "135+ pre-built playbooks for common agreements".
• Contracting Suite, "for in-house legal teams": adds a contract repository and SSO, and it's the first plan with "My Playbooks for custom playbooks that guide AI review".
• Productivity Suite: adds matter management and intake, plus a "Triage Agent to approve standard agreements and flag nonstandard terms".

LegalOn's own blog prints an estimate its pricing page leaves out

LegalOn's post on the best contract review tools, last updated 11 September 2026, says in its own entry: "Custom pricing only (typically $3,000 to $8,000/year for small teams)." It adds that LegalOn "May not be the right fit for teams reviewing fewer than five contracts per month." That's LegalOn's estimate of itself, not a list price.

Best for

An in-house lawyer or fractional GC who wants pre-built playbooks now and custom ones later.

On your data

LegalOn says "Your data is never used to train third-party foundational models."

7. Juro: a contract platform for business teams, priced by volume

Juro is a contract platform, and its FAQ says it's built for legal and business teams alike, with sales, HR, procurement and finance named. Its AI "can review & redline contracts in Word, based on the playbooks you control," and approvals run through automated approval workflows.

Juro prints no price, as of October 2026. The pricing page asks "How many contracts does your business process per month?", offers bands from less than 20 to more than 1,000, and says "We'll create a custom plan". Every plan has unlimited users, workflows and templates, and deeper integrations "such as Salesforce, HubSpot and Workday, will incur additional cost."

Juro's FAQ also has the line I'd carry into every demo on this list: "As with any AI, the quality of the output depends on your playbook and other inputs."

8. Ironclad: a review agent inside an AI CLM

Ironclad sells "AI Contract Lifecycle Management", and review is one agent inside it: "Contract Review Agent, formerly called Ironclad Jurist". It will "Redline entire agreements against your company's playbooks, including preferred positions and fallbacks," in Ironclad and in Microsoft Word.

Ironclad shows no price as of October 2026, only a "Get a Custom Quote" form, and the pricing page FAQ says some integrations are add-ons. Its review page offers a 7-day free trial of the agent, scheduled through sales.

Ironclad says the final call stays with your reviewer

The review page says the agent "helps reviewers quickly focus on what matters, while keeping the final decision in their hands." The pricing page adds that "Ironclad is not a law firm" and that information on its site "does not constitute or contain legal advice".

9. Luminance: enterprise contract intelligence, demo only

Luminance calls itself "the single source of contract intelligence delivered to everyone, everywhere," and promises to "Apply playbooks and precedent to every review." Its homepage says it is trusted by more than 1,000 enterprises worldwide. That's Luminance's claim, and I have no way to check it.

The homepage shows no price and no pricing link as of October 2026, and every button reads "Request a demo". Luminance positions itself for enterprises, so it belongs on the shortlist of a company that size.

10. DocuSign AI-Assisted Review: check your plan before you buy anything

If your company already sends contracts through DocuSign, start here. The review feature is AI-Assisted Review, part of DocuSign Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM), and it runs as a Word add-in.

DocuSign describes a Word add-in that checks your playbooks

DocuSign's post says you can "Review agreement against your organization's pre-approved playbooks with help from AI" and "get markup suggestions to bring terms back into compliance." It adds: "This feature is available now to Docusign CLM and CLM+ customers globally, and in select Docusign IAM plans in the United States."

The $45, $50 and $80 IAM plans leave it out

On DocuSign's US plan page, as of October 2026, with the default annual commitment billed monthly, IAM Starter is $45 per user a month ($540 a year). IAM Standard is $50 per user a month ($1,800 a year at the three-user minimum), and IAM Professional is $80 ($2,880 a year at that minimum). The compare table marks AI-Assisted Review "Does Not Include" on all three. Only IAM for Enterprise, priced through "Contact Sales", lists it.

So the AI in a self-serve IAM plan means search, analysis and data extraction. I couldn't read the month-to-month prices, so they aren't here. If your DocuSign problem is envelopes waiting for signatures, that's a separate job: see the AI agent for DocuSign contract tracking guide.

General assistants: Copilot in Word, Claude and ChatGPT

Three general assistants will look at a contract, and each owner says plainly how far to trust the output. I read no contract review price for any of them.

Microsoft documents contract prompts for Copilot in Word

Microsoft's page "Review contracts and legal agreements faster with Copilot in Word" offers a sample prompt: "Review this contract to help identify potential risks or any unusual clauses used in the payment terms section." It says Copilot can "compare contracts against internal standards to highlight differences", then draws the line itself: "It helps prepare documents for review, but final validation remains a manual step."

Anthropic's legal plugin for Claude reads a playbook you write

Anthropic's legal plugin for Claude is aimed at in-house legal teams and built mainly for Cowork, Anthropic's desktop app, though it also runs in Claude Code. It will "Review a contract against your organization's negotiation playbook", and you write that playbook yourself in a local settings file. Its default examples "reflect U.S. legal positions and jurisdictions (Delaware, New York, California)".

The README carries the clearest disclaimer I read for this guide: "This plugin assists with legal workflows but does not provide legal advice. Always verify conclusions with qualified legal professionals. AI-generated analysis should be reviewed by licensed attorneys before being relied upon for legal decisions."

OpenAI's terms say not to rely on ChatGPT alone

ChatGPT will read a contract you paste in. OpenAI's Terms of Use, effective 1 January 2026, say: "Output may not always be accurate. You should not rely on Output from our Services as a sole source of truth or factual information, or as a substitute for professional advice." On this route you supply your positions yourself, in the prompt.

Which one should you choose?

Start with two questions: do you have written positions, and how many people will review? Prices are as of October 2026.

A solo founder with a few NDAs a month: start on Legly Freemium or Justee's two free reviews. If one earns its keep, Justee Start is $19 a month for 10 reviews and Legly Professional is $39 for unlimited. Neither publishes support for your own playbook on those plans, which is fine until you write yours down. The best AI agents for small business cover the rest of the kit.

An ops or procurement lead with a playbook: Gavel Exec or goHeather Starter, the only two published prices that include your own playbook. goHeather's Team plan needs a quote. Renewals and the rest of procurement's post-signature work are in AI agents for procurement teams.

A team already on DocuSign or a CLM: check your plan name before buying anything. On Enterprise IAM or DocuSign CLM, AI-Assisted Review may already be in your contract. If you're choosing a platform anyway, Juro and Ironclad both pair playbook review with the system that routes the contract.

An in-house lawyer at a mid-size company: book demos with LegalOn, where custom playbooks start on Contracting Suite, and Spellbook, whose in-house card includes a Playbook Build Service. LegalOn's pricing page shows no price; its own blog estimates "typically $3,000 to $8,000/year for small teams", a figure worth checking on the call.

A business with a lawyer on retainer: let the tool read the routine paper, NDAs and standard vendor agreements, and have your lawyer decide anything non-standard. Ask that lawyer to help write the playbook (somebody has to). AI agents for lawyers covers the relationship from their side.

If the slow part is routing, not reading: the contract review workflow guide covers triage, routing and approvals.

Two more names are left out of the table; I read both on 9 October 2026. Ivo describes review against your playbooks in Word or Google Docs, but its homepage offers only a demo, and its pricing page returned a "Page not found" error. Robin AI's site offers a demo and no pricing, and its news page listed nothing newer than 22 July 2025.

FAQ

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