Archway vs. Aleta: Which Platform Is Right for Your Family Office in 2026?

Last updated: August 6, 2026.

Quick Answer

Aleta is the better choice for family offices that want a verified total wealth view, AI-powered document processing, daily reconciled data, and an open platform ready for AI agents, live in 4 to 8 weeks from $1,000 per month. Archway is the better choice when the primary need is a purpose-built family office general ledger with an integrated outsourced accounting and bill-pay service. Offices deciding on investment reporting, usability, and openness typically land on Aleta, and a growing number run both, with Archway as the operational ledger and Aleta as the wealth intelligence layer on top.

Key Takeaways

• Archway is the accounting engine. A single general ledger serves as both the investment and accounting book of record, and Archway's own team can run bookkeeping, bill pay, and payments as an outsourced service.

• Aleta is the wealth intelligence platform. A dual-engine design gives the Principal a verified total wealth view and gives the CFO and analysts deep investment reporting, both drawn from one reconciled dataset.

• Archway is a closed suite, owned by Aquiline since a $120 million carve out from SEI became effective June 30, 2025. Aleta is open and AI-native, with an open API, an MCP layer, and the Data Cube.

• Archway has no native AI and relies on a partnership with Arch for alternatives document workflows. Aleta's AI Reader from its Aleta Intelligence suite books capital calls, distributions, and fund statements into the investment ledger automatically.

• Archway implementations commonly run 6 to 9 months on custom enterprise pricing, typically $80,000 to $150,000 or more per year (estimated). Aleta goes live in 4 to 8 weeks on transparent pricing from $1,000 per month.

Executive Summary: The Accounting Engine vs. the Wealth Intelligence Platform

Archway and Aleta both serve complex single and multi-family offices, but they solve different core problems: Archway runs the books, and Aleta runs the wealth picture.

Archway is the accounting engine. The platform grew outward from the general ledger, which acts as both the investment book of record and the accounting book of record, and it pairs that software with a services layer of accountants who can run the back office for the largest and most complex offices. The buyer is usually the CFO or Controller, and the question it answers is whether the books close accurately every month.

Aleta is the wealth intelligence platform. It starts from the question the Principal asks first, what is the family worth right now, and works down into the analytical depth the CIO, CFO, and analysts need. An award-winning interface sits on the surface, a full investment general ledger with open API and MCP access sits underneath, and both draw on the same verified data. Pricing starts at $1,000 per month.

The 2026 verdict: Choose Archway if your office is accounting-first and needs a robust general ledger with an integrated services layer. Choose Aleta if your priority is total wealth visibility, AI automation, an experience the Principal actually uses, and a platform ready for AI agents. If you already run Archway, the strongest 2026 move is often to keep it for operational accounting and add Aleta as the wealth intelligence layer.

The table below summarizes how Archway and Aleta compare across the dimensions family offices weigh most in 2026.

Archway Deep Dive: The Accounting Engine

Archway is a family office accounting and reporting platform built around a single general ledger that serves as both the investment book of record and the accounting book of record.

Founded in 2002 and acquired by SEI in 2017, the business returned to independent ownership when Aquiline acquired SEI's Family Office Services unit for $120 million in a transaction that closed on July 1, 2025, and relaunched it under the Archway name. Archway reports more than 550 families and over $850 billion in assets on the platform in 2026, including 10 of the 25 wealthiest families in America according to its own materials, which reference the Forbes ranking of America's richest families. For context, SEI reported $723 billion on the platform as of December 31, 2024, and $733 billion as of March 31, 2025, at closing.

Every position, journal entry, and entity in the family structure lives on that one ledger. Direct feeds pull position, trade, and cash detail from custodians and banks, look through reporting spans trusts, LLCs, partnerships, and funds, and a library of more than 200 report templates covers investment, financial, and cash reporting. Offices that want to hand over operations can have Archway's own accountants run bookkeeping, bill pay, payments, and reconciliation end to end.

Pros:

• Accounting-grade precision on one ledger: The investment book of record and the accounting book of record are the same book, which removes the reconciliation gap between the portfolio layer and the financials and supports partnership accounting and nested entity structures.

• A genuine outsourced back office: Archway's accountants can take bookkeeping, invoice intake, approval routing, payments, and reconciliation off the office's hands entirely.

• Broad aggregation with look-through reporting: Direct custodian and bank feeds flow into consolidated reporting across trusts, LLCs, and family partnerships.

• A long institutional track record: Archway has supported complex wealth since 2002 and, per its own figures, serves 10 of the 25 wealthiest families in America.

Cons:

• Built for the accounting team, not the Principal: The interface is institutional, designed for controllers and operations staff, and family members need training to navigate it.

• No native AI: Archway offers no AI document ingestion, automated capital call processing, or cash flow forecasting of its own, and relies on a partnership with Arch, a third-party alternatives platform, for private markets document workflows.

• Closed data architecture: Archway is not built as an open API platform, so feeding third-party BI tools, custom reporting layers, or AI agent infrastructure requires workarounds rather than native connectivity.

• Mobile is limited to a branded client portal: There is no modern consumer-grade mobile app of the kind Principals and next generation family members increasingly expect.

• Implementation drag: Between general ledger configuration and services scoping, implementations commonly run 6 to 9 months before the platform is fully operational.

• Opaque cost: Pricing is custom, typically $80,000 to $150,000 or more per year (estimated), it is not published, and there are no verified G2 or Capterra ratings to check it against.

The Verdict

Archway is the right choice for an accounting-first office that wants a battle-tested general ledger with an integrated services layer and is comfortable with a services dependent model, a 6-to-9-month implementation, and enterprise pricing. It is the wrong choice for an office that wants AI automation, a modern experience for the Principal, or an open platform to build on.

Aleta Deep Dive: The Wealth Intelligence Platform

Aleta is an AI-native wealth intelligence platform that gives the Principal a verified total wealth view and gives the professional team deep investment reporting, both from one reconciled dataset.

Born inside a family office and built on more than 15 years of wealth reporting expertise, Aleta is headquartered in New York with operations in Europe and Asia. The platform monitors more than $100 billion in assets, processes over one million transactions a year, and connects to 100+ custodians and banks alongside AI document ingestion. The typical client is a single or multifamily office with $50 million to $5 billion or more in assets.

The design is dual-engine. On the surface sits an award-winning dashboard a family member can read in under 60 seconds on any device without training. Underneath sits a full analytical layer with time weighted returns, IRR, MOIC, manager analytics, and private markets reporting, held to transaction level accuracy by a built-in double-entry investment general ledger that spans entities, currencies, and every asset class from public equities to real estate, art, and aircraft. Aleta is SOC 2 Type II certified.

Pros:

• Award-winning experience for every user. Aleta won Best Consolidated Reporting at the WealthBriefing Awards 2026 and Best Data Provider at the Family Wealth Report Awards 2026, and the mobile app delivers the full consolidated reporting picture on any device with zero training.

• AI Reader removes manual document work. Capital call notices, distribution memos, NAV statements, K-1s, and fund administrator reports are read, mapped to the right entities, and booked into the investment ledger automatically, removing 10 to 20 staff hours in a typical month.

• Daily reconciled data. A dedicated Data Management Team catches incomplete bank feeds and custodian gaps before the client sees them, so the Principal's balance sheet is verified every morning. See data reconciliation for how the process works.

• A built-in investment general ledger. Double-entry accounting covers all investment accounts across entities, currencies, and asset classes, producing an accounting ready data foundation for the full portfolio.

• Private markets forecasting. Aleta projects future capital calls, distributions, and liquidity events from existing commitments, giving the CFO and Principal a 12-to-24-month forward liquidity view rather than a purely historical ledger. See private markets forecasting for the full capability.

• Open architecture built for agents. The open API and MCP layer together with the Data Cube give the office full ownership of clean, structured data, feed BI and tax tools without manual exports, and let the office run its own AI agents on its own wealth data.

• Speed and transparent cost. Most clients go live in 4 to 8 weeks, and pricing starts at $1,000 per month.

Cons:

• Operational accounting outside investments sits elsewhere. Aleta's built-in ledger covers the full investment portfolio, while payroll, accounts payable, vendor payments, and business entity bookkeeping connect through a dedicated operational ledger such as Archway or SumIt, as covered in the best-of-breed section below.

• Focused on financial wealth. Offices that also want lifestyle management tooling, such as household staff payroll or property operations, pair Aleta with a specialist solution for that layer.

The Verdict

Aleta is the stronger platform for family offices that want total wealth intelligence, AI automation, and an experience that works for the Principal on day one and for the CFO building custom workflows. Its built-in investment ledger covers the accounting complexity of the full portfolio, and offices that also need operational accounting simply pair it with an operational ledger.

Five Key Battlegrounds

Five dimensions separate the two platforms most clearly: accounting depth, back-office model, AI, openness, and user experience.

1. Accounting Depth vs. Investment Reporting Depth

Archway wins on operational accounting depth, while Aleta wins on investment reporting depth and the total wealth view.

Archway's approach: a single general ledger that is both the investment and accounting book of record, with partnership accounting, bill pay, cash and expense management, and a library of 200+ report templates. The depth lives in the accounting and operations.

Aleta's approach: TWR, IRR, MOIC, and manager analytics live natively in the platform rather than being pulled out of a ledger, and the Data Cube connects the office's own BI tool for unlimited custom reporting with no API work required. The built-in double entry investment ledger keeps every figure accurate to the transaction.

Winner: split. Archway for offices that want one enterprise system for full in-house accounting and operations. Aleta where investment reporting and the total wealth view lead, with its investment ledger keeping the accounting aligned.

2. Outsourced Back Office vs. Automation and Data Ownership

Archway solves the back office with people, while Aleta solves it with automation the office owns.

Archway's approach: a people-powered service. Archway's own accountants run bookkeeping, invoice intake, approval routing, payment creation, and reconciliation end to end, which suits an office that prefers to hand operations to a vendor.

Aleta's approach: automation plus ownership. AI document ingestion and the Data Management Team automate data capture and reconciliation, and the family office keeps clean, structured data it owns outright, with no dependency on a vendor's back-office team for daily operations.

Winner: Archway for offices that want to hand the entire back office to a vendor's accountants. Aleta for offices that want to automate operations and own their data.

3. AI and Automation

A family office with meaningful alternatives exposure receives 50 to 100 documents a month, and the two platforms handle them in fundamentally different ways.

Archway's approach: staff receive the documents, extract the figures, and key them into the system. The platform is built for accounting accuracy once data is entered, but it has no native AI to automate the ingestion itself, and the Arch partnership adds third-party alternatives document tooling rather than built-in intelligence.

Aleta's approach: the AI Reader from the Aleta Intelligence suite extracts capital call amounts, distribution notices, NAV figures, and fund administrator data from unstructured PDFs, maps them to the correct entities, and books the transactions without human involvement. The read, re-key, reconcile loop that consumes 10 to 20 staff hours a month disappears, and forward-looking forecasting is layered on top.

Winner: Aleta. Manual document processing is the single largest operational drag in an alternatives-heavy office, and automating it is an operational necessity.

4. Open Architecture and AI Agent Readiness

AI agents need clean, structured, accessible data, and only one of the two platforms is built to provide it.

Archway's approach: a closed suite. Accounting, reporting, and portal delivery run inside the platform, the data stays within it, and connecting BI tools or agent infrastructure means workarounds rather than native access.

Aleta's approach: the open API, the MCP layer, and the Data Cube expose data that is already reconciled and normalized. On that foundation an office can run agents that watch portfolio thresholds, draft investment committee material from live data, and answer the Principal's questions in natural language.

Winner: Aleta, for open data ownership and an agent-ready foundation rather than data locked in a closed suite.

5. User Experience and Time to Value

The Principal should be able to see total net worth, understand the allocation, and drill into what matters within 60 seconds of first opening the platform.

Archway's approach: a structured reporting environment appropriate for a Controller producing monthly outputs. For a Principal it feels institutional and requires training, and the office waits 6 to 9 months for full value.

Aleta's approach: a zero-training dashboard and an award-winning mobile app for the Principal, full analytical depth for the power user, and a white glove data team that reconciles and imports history across a 4-to-8-week onboarding.

Winner: Aleta, for Principal adoption and time to value. A platform the Principal finds confusing is expensive software collecting dust.

The Best of Breed Case: Running Archway and Aleta Together

Archway and Aleta are complementary in a best-of-breed stack, with Archway as the operational general ledger and Aleta as the wealth intelligence layer and investment general ledger on top.

Aleta's built-in double-entry general ledger covers all investment accounts, handling multi-entity consolidation and multi-currency positions and producing accounting-grade output for the full investment portfolio, which is where the real accounting complexity lives for most family offices. Archway becomes relevant for operational accounting outside investments: payroll, accounts payable, vendor payments, and business-entity bookkeeping.

Connected through Aleta's open API, the two systems exchange clean, normalized data automatically. The Data Management Team reconciles and normalizes at the source, so the operational ledger and the investment ledger stay current without manual reentry. The result is investment accounting precision and total wealth intelligence from Aleta, with Archway covering the operational ledger where an office needs it.

The No Migration Path

A family office does not need to replace Archway to get a modern experience: Aleta deploys as a layer on top, live in 4 to 8 weeks, while Archway continues untouched as the operational book of record.

For offices with a running Archway contract, a trained accounting team, or simply no bandwidth for a replatforming project, the overlay path removes the risk that usually stalls modernization. There is no data migration, no retraining of the accounting team, and no disruption to the monthly close or year-end reporting. Aleta connects through data feeds and its open API, the Data Management Team builds and maintains the connection, and data flows one way, so there is no double maintenance, and Archway remains the book of record throughout.

The economics work as an overlay too. Starting at $1,000 per month, Aleta adds a marginal cost on top of a typical Archway spend of $80,000 to $150,000 per year (estimated) and pays for itself in the 10 to 20 staff hours a month the AI Reader removes. And when the Archway contract next comes up for renewal, the office can make the consolidation decision from a position of strength, because the team already works in Aleta every day and the built-in investment general ledger is already running.

If you already run Archway as your general ledger and are evaluating a wealth intelligence layer, the answer is almost certainly Aleta. The two systems are complementary by design.

Choose Archway If

• Your office is accounting-first and the general ledger is the center of the technology decision.

• You want a combined software and services model with dedicated accounting support, including outsourced bookkeeping and bill pay.

• You are comfortable with a 6-to-9-month implementation and custom enterprise pricing.

• You do not have significant private markets exposure that requires automated document processing.

Choose Aleta If

• You want a verified total wealth view for the Principal, every morning, on any device.

• Your office holds significant private equity, real estate, or alternatives and needs AI-powered document ingestion.

• You want an experience that requires zero training for the Principal, the CFO, and the next generation.

• You want a best-of-breed stack with Aleta as the hub, connected to your operational ledger, CRM, and BI tools through the open API and MCP layer.

• You want to go live in 4 to 8 weeks on transparent pricing from $1,000 per month.

• You are planning AI agents for the office and need a data architecture that makes them possible.

• You already run Archway as your ledger and need a modern wealth intelligence layer on top.