ThoughtRiver vs. Gavel Exec: Contract Triage at Volume or Redlining in Word?

How do ThoughtRiver and Gavel Exec review a contract?

ThoughtRiver reviews each contract against a playbook and reports which provisions are met and unmet, with an explanation and an audit file. Lexible Assistant, its generative layer, then proposes redlines and answers questions about the contract. ThoughtRiver runs on its own legal language model, Lexible, combined with general-purpose models, and is built for pre-signature triage at volume: contracts arrive by email, drag and drop or the Word add-in, and the same review can run across a portfolio of signed contracts.

Gavel Exec works inside the document you are negotiating. It redlines the whole agreement in Word as priority-ranked tracked changes and margin comments, with a list of missing terms and the reasoning behind each change, based on your playbooks and precedent. You accept or reject each change in Word, as with a colleague’s markup, and you can ask Exec to draft or redraft clauses in the same pane.

Illustration: reviewing a supplier’s supply agreement for the buyer

You represent the buyer. The supplier’s draft lets it change prices on 30 days’ written notice. Your illustrative playbook fixes prices for the first 12 months and then allows one increase a year, capped at CPI, on 90 days’ notice. The expected redline replaces the 30-day price-change clause with that position and adds a comment explaining why. You decide whether to accept, edit or reject it, and check that the termination right still fits. Done by hand, this is a clause-by-clause read against your checklist. Both vendors document this playbook-to-redline workflow; this is an evaluation scenario, not a test either product ran.

Playbooks: pre-built, custom and market benchmarks

ThoughtRiver ships pre-built playbooks at three levels of risk tolerance: Core for the key issues, Standard for more depth on themes such as confidentiality, liability and warranties, and Comprehensive for the widest coverage. For custom playbooks, its team turns your form, precedent or internal rules into an AI-ready playbook, with white-glove help through implementation.

Gavel Exec includes built-in playbooks. You can add rules in plain language yourself, or generate them from your checklists, spreadsheet playbooks or signed agreements (.docx, PDF or .csv), then review and edit them before running. Exec also benchmarks each provision against market terms for the jurisdiction, industry and company size you choose and marks it on-market, off-market or missing. ThoughtRiver’s product pages describe analytics across your own contract portfolio and don’t list a market-benchmark view.

ThoughtRiver publishes accuracy figures from its own testing: an F1 score of 97%, with 96% precision and 97% recall, tested three times a week against 750,000 verified data points. These are vendor-reported figures, not an independent test, so run both products on contracts you know.

What do you need to run ThoughtRiver or Gavel Exec in Word?

ThoughtRiver’s Word add-in is included in its Professional and Enterprise plans. Its support guides cover installing it in Word on Windows desktop and in Word Online, and you sign in with credentials from ThoughtRiver’s welcome email. Word 2016 and some versions of Word 2019 display the add-in in Internet Explorer 11, so ThoughtRiver recommends Edge, Microsoft 365 or Word Online. Many organisations restrict add-ins from the Office Store, so IT may need to deploy it. ThoughtRiver also takes contracts by email and on the web, and says it works inside Outlook and Teams.

Gavel Exec needs an account at exec.gavel.io; the web app works without a download. To redline a specific document, add the Word add-in from Microsoft AppSource. It runs in Word for Windows, Word for Mac (2016 or later), Word on the web and Microsoft 365; if IT manages Microsoft 365 centrally, an admin may need to enable it.

Integrations: ThoughtRiver lists Microsoft 365, Power BI, HighQ and iManage, plus an open API. Gavel Exec works from the Word document and its web app, where source checks can draw on your precedent, uploaded matter files, SEC EDGAR filings and government sources.

Does ThoughtRiver work in Word for Mac?

ThoughtRiver’s support guides cover its Word add-in on Windows desktop and in Word Online and don’t mention Word for Mac, so ask ThoughtRiver before you rely on it. Gavel Exec runs in Word for Windows, Word for Mac (2016 or later) and Word on the web, plus its own browser app.

How much does ThoughtRiver cost vs. Gavel Exec?

ThoughtRiver prices by team, not by seat. Its pricing page lists Professional from £15,000 a year for SME legal teams that review under 50 contracts a month, and Enterprise from £30,000 a year for teams reviewing more. Both include unlimited users, a private database instance, the Word add-in and Lexible Assistant; single sign-on, dedicated customer success and professional services come with Enterprise.

Gavel Exec costs $160 per user per month, with an annual option and 1,000 completions per month, after 25 free queries per user with no credit card. Teams of 10 or more seats get team pricing.

Which costs less depends on team size. For a few lawyers, per-seat Exec pricing usually comes in under ThoughtRiver’s starting fee. For a large team reviewing a high volume of contracts, ThoughtRiver’s unlimited users can cost less per person. Compare at the current exchange rate, since ThoughtRiver prices in pounds.

How much does ThoughtRiver cost?

ThoughtRiver’s Professional plan starts from £15,000 a year for teams reviewing under 50 contracts a month, and its Enterprise plan from £30,000 a year for higher volumes; both include unlimited users. Gavel Exec is priced per user, with 25 free queries to start.

Does ThoughtRiver have a free trial?

Yes. ThoughtRiver advertises a free 28-day trial, which you request through its demo form; it doesn’t say whether a credit card is needed. Gavel Exec starts with 25 free queries per user and no credit card, and you sign up yourself.

Security and data use: ThoughtRiver vs. Gavel Exec

ThoughtRiver is ISO 27001 certified. Its security page says contract data is encrypted at rest with a key unique to your account and in transit with TLS, hosted in Microsoft Azure in a single specified region, and not passed to external processors. Sign-in runs through Auth0 with single sign-on and multi-factor authentication. ThoughtRiver’s FAQ says a patented system anonymizes sensitive information before any model processes it.

Gavel Exec is SOC 2 Type II certified and has Zero Data Retention agreements with the AI model providers it uses, including OpenAI. Where ThoughtRiver keeps each customer in one Azure region, Gavel hosts in the United States by default and offers European Union, Canada and Australia regions. Gavel security

Does ThoughtRiver use my contracts to train its AI?

ThoughtRiver’s data processing terms list ML training among the purposes of processing, and its published terms of use license anonymised contract text for use across its platform. It anonymizes sensitive information before any model processes it, and its Privacy and Security Policy says clients may opt in to ML training on their contracts, which then uses an isolated, private store. Check the data-use terms in your ThoughtRiver order before uploading client contracts.

Does Gavel Exec train AI models on my contracts?

No. Gavel doesn’t use customer data, prompts or documents to train AI models, and it has Zero Data Retention agreements with its AI providers.

Who makes ThoughtRiver and Gavel Exec?

ThoughtRiver Limited is registered in England and Wales and based at Cambridge Research Park, UK. It has sold AI contract review since 2016 and focuses on in-house teams and law firms that process over 200 agreements a year. Gavel is part of Relativity, which also offers e-discovery software. Its CEO and Founder, Dorna Moini, is a former Sidley Austin litigator who teaches the Legal Innovations Lab at USC Gould School of Law, and over 2,000 legal organizations in 28 countries use Gavel.

Who owns ThoughtRiver?

ThoughtRiver is an independent company, ThoughtRiver Limited, registered in England and Wales; its website names no parent company, and we found no announced acquisition. It raised a $10 million Series A led by Octopus Ventures in September 2020, according to TechCrunch.

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Method: Gavel editorial review. Checked against ThoughtRiver’s and Gavel’s public pages on November 14, 2026. Gavel publishes this comparison and sells Exec; Gavel has been part of Relativity since June 12, 2026. No hands-on comparative test of the two products was conducted.