Best Sales Forecasting Software for 2026 (10 Tools Ranked)

Clari is the gold standard for enterprise pipeline forecasting. It ingests CRM data, email and calendar activity, and historical close patterns to produce AI-driven commit predictions at the deal, rep, segment, and company level. For enterprise sales organizations with 20+ AEs and complex multi-product pipelines, Clari's depth of pipeline analysis is unmatched.

The key differentiator: Clari captures activity signals (email opens, meeting frequency, response times) that Salesforce alone does not track — and uses those signals to predict deal velocity and risk. Clari's "Revenue Collaboration" module also enables real-time forecast reviews between sales managers and reps, replacing the manual Excel-based call process with an AI-assisted workflow.

The limitation to understand: Clari is excellent at predicting whether a deal closes and when. It does not model the revenue quality of what closes — margin, LTV, or expansion probability after the deal signs. For teams that need both forecasting and revenue intelligence, Clari and Fairview are often used together. See the Fairview vs Clari comparison for a detailed breakdown.

Salesforce Einstein Forecasting is included with Salesforce Enterprise and above — which makes it the zero-marginal-cost choice for existing Salesforce customers who want to move beyond manual pipeline roll-ups. Einstein applies ML to your historical close rate data by stage, rep, and deal size to produce AI-adjusted forecast predictions alongside the standard rep-submitted forecast.

The critical limitation: Einstein only knows what Salesforce knows. If your CRM data hygiene is poor — stages not updated, activities not logged, deal sizes not accurate — Einstein forecasts poorly. It also does not incorporate signals from outside Salesforce (email activity, call recordings, billing data). Teams that need higher accuracy typically layer Clari or Fairview on top of Einstein rather than relying on it alone.

Gong Forecast is the forecasting module within the Gong Revenue Intelligence platform. It uses call recording data — sentiment, topic coverage, next step commitment quality — as additional signals for deal scoring and pipeline risk. For teams already paying for Gong's call intelligence, the forecasting module is a natural extension that adds context that CRM activity data alone cannot capture.

The unique value: Gong can detect when pricing was not discussed in a final call (a strong close risk signal), when champions have gone silent, or when competitive mentions spiked. These conversation signals complement CRM stage data in ways that traditional pipeline tools cannot. However, Gong Forecast works only as part of the broader Gong platform — it is not available as a standalone forecasting tool.

HubSpot's built-in forecasting tool is included with all paid HubSpot Sales Hub plans and provides stage-weighted pipeline forecasting, rep-level forecast submissions, and basic forecast vs. goal tracking. For early-stage B2B teams using HubSpot as their CRM and operating with under 10 AEs, it is genuinely sufficient as a starting point — and the price (free with HubSpot) is hard to beat.

The limitations become apparent at scale: HubSpot Forecasting relies on manual rep-submitted probabilities and does not apply AI to detect pipeline risk or signal-based close probability. As teams grow past 15-20 AEs, the lack of AI-driven signal processing means forecast variance increases. Most HubSpot-first teams outgrow the native forecasting by Series A and add Fairview or Clari on top.

Prophix is a corporate performance management platform used by finance teams for budgeting, planning, and revenue forecasting. Unlike GTM-focused tools that forecast from the pipeline up, Prophix models revenue from the financial plan down — starting with headcount, capacity, and quota models to derive expected pipeline coverage and revenue outcomes.

For B2B companies where the CFO or FP&A team owns the revenue forecast (common at Series C and above), Prophix provides a finance-native interface that connects plan vs. actual across revenue, headcount, and operating expenses. It is not a replacement for pipeline-level forecasting tools — it is the financial model layer that sits above them.

Aviso is an AI-powered revenue intelligence platform that competes directly with Clari in the enterprise pipeline forecasting space. Its differentiator is the "WinScore" — a proprietary AI deal score that predicts close probability by analyzing CRM data, email and calendar activity, and historical outcomes. Aviso also offers team-level forecast roll-ups and a "Forecast Collaboration" workflow for weekly pipeline review calls.

Aviso is a credible Clari alternative, particularly for teams that find Clari's pricing out of reach. The product is less polished in the UX layer but comparable in AI accuracy for deal scoring. Best suited to enterprise sales organizations with 30+ reps and a dedicated RevOps function to manage the implementation.

People.ai focuses on automatically capturing rep activity data (emails, calls, meetings) from communication tools and syncing it into Salesforce — then using that activity data as a signal for pipeline health and forecast accuracy. The core insight: most Salesforce data is manually entered by reps (and therefore incomplete and biased); People.ai auto-populates activity records and uses them to correlate activity patterns with deal outcomes.

For enterprise sales organizations with high outbound volume and complex multi-touch deal cycles, People.ai produces more accurate forecasts than stage-weighted models because it accounts for actual rep behavior — not self-reported pipeline updates. The tool is less relevant for inside sales motions where activity volume is lower and relationship depth is the key deal driver.

Anaplan is the leading "connected planning" platform for large enterprises — it connects revenue planning, financial planning, supply chain, and workforce planning into a single modeling environment. For companies with $100M+ in ARR and complex multi-product, multi-region revenue structures, Anaplan can model scenarios that no spreadsheet or GTM-focused tool can handle.

The caveat: Anaplan is prohibitively expensive ($50,000-$500,000+/year) and requires significant implementation resources. It is built for enterprise planning teams, not RevOps practitioners. Most B2B companies under $50M ARR will find Anaplan massively over-engineered and should use Fairview or Prophix instead.

Spreadsheets are not a forecasting tool — they are a starting point. For teams with fewer than 5 AEs and a simple single-product pipeline, a well-designed Google Sheet with stage-weighted probability calculations and historical close rate lookups can produce reasonably accurate short-term forecasts. The real advantage is zero cost and zero implementation time.

The structural problems emerge at scale: spreadsheets require manual data entry (which reps resist), do not update in real time, cannot process multiple signals simultaneously, and produce point estimates rather than probability ranges. Most teams hit the ceiling of spreadsheet forecasting between 5 and 15 AEs. For a detailed comparison, read AI sales forecasting vs spreadsheets.