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Not getting the contract review you want from Ivo? We review 5 alternatives to their AI contract review, including features, pricing, training data, and more.
Easy intake and document automation to auto-populate your templates.
If you're looking at Ivo alternatives, you probably already know what it does: AI-powered contract redlining with playbook-driven review, delivered inside Microsoft Word. Ivo has landed some big-name customers and raised significant funding, and the contract intelligence layer — analyzing your full portfolio for patterns and relationships — is a genuinely useful feature for teams with large contract libraries.
But Ivo has real limitations that become apparent once you dig in. Playbook creation is heavily dependent on Ivo's attorney team, which means you're on their timeline when positions need to change. The market data and benchmarking capabilities are solid but not as granular as what's available elsewhere. There's no document automation capability if your team also needs to generate contracts from templates. And the pricing — undisclosed, enterprise-oriented — can be hard to justify when other tools deliver comparable or better redline quality at a fraction of the cost.
This guide breaks down five alternatives to Ivo, comparing features, AI architecture, pricing, and practical fit — so you can find a tool that matches how your team actually works.
Best for: In-house legal teams and law firms that want precise, playbook-driven contract review with better market data, more control over playbook creation, and redlines that are actually ready to send to the other side.
Gavel Exec is an AI-powered contract review and drafting assistant that works directly inside Microsoft Word. It redlines contracts, applies custom playbooks, drafts new provisions, and benchmarks clause language against proprietary market data — all built in partnership with practicing deal lawyers. Over 2,000 legal organizations use Gavel, from solo practitioners to Am Law 100 firms and enterprise in-house departments.
Ivo and Gavel Exec share a core philosophy: playbooks should drive the review, and redlines should be precise enough to use without heavy cleanup. Where they differ — and where Gavel Exec pulls ahead — is in how you build and maintain those playbooks, the quality of the market data behind them, and how deeply the tool understands your specific context.
More ways to build playbooks — and you're never waiting on anyone. Ivo assigns its attorneys to build your playbooks during onboarding. That's a nice service — until you need to spin up a new playbook for a deal type you haven't covered, or update your indemnification position next quarter, and you're on someone else's timeline. Gavel Exec gives you three paths: pre-built playbooks for common contract types that are ready to use on day one, AI-powered playbook generation that can create structured playbooks from your existing documents and positions, and self-serve tools to build or customize playbooks yourself using a structured three-part format (requirement, how to identify issues, redline guidance). On top of that, Gavel's team will build custom playbooks for you at no additional cost as part of onboarding and ongoing support. So you get the white-glove service if you want it and the ability to move on your own when you need to. With Ivo, you only get one of those.
More granular market data. Both tools offer market benchmarking, but Gavel Exec maintains proprietary market intelligence across industries, jurisdictions, and company sizes for a variety of document types. When you want to know what's standard for a limitation of liability cap in a mid-market SaaS deal versus a large-cap manufacturing agreement, Gavel gives you data that's actually filtered and specific to your context — not just a benchmark against a broad pool.
Deeper context from your documents. Gavel Exec can pull from your repository of executed contracts, templates, and prior redlines to understand your team's negotiation patterns, preferred language, and fallback positions. It doesn't just apply playbook rules in a vacuum — it understands the way your team actually works and drafts in your voice. This is the difference between redlines that are technically correct and redlines that feel like your senior associate wrote them.
Works for law firms too. Ivo focuses primarily on in-house teams. If you're a firm that reviews contracts for clients, or a firm that wants to share AI-powered playbooks with corporate clients, Ivo isn't built for that. Gavel Exec serves both in-house teams and law firms. (For more on how transactional lawyers are using AI tools, see our guide.)
Transparent pricing. Ivo doesn't publish pricing, and quotes can be significant. Gavel Exec is $145/month per user annually, or $160/month with no lock-in — and that includes free playbook builds, onboarding, training, and unlimited support. You can also start with 25 free queries to test the platform before committing.
Gavel Exec uses frontier AI models combined with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), structured playbook data, proprietary market intelligence, and your organization's document context to ground every output. The three-layer approach — playbooks + market data + your documents and experience — gives the model explicit instructions, relevant benchmarks, and organizational memory working together. More context means more precision, which is why the redlines come back tighter and more usable. (For more on how AI and rules-based systems work together in legal, check out our guide on rules-based automation vs. generative AI.)
Gavel Exec is $145/month per user on an annual plan, or $160/month with no lock-in. Includes free playbook builds, onboarding, training, and unlimited support. Start with 25 free queries to test the platform. Start your free trial →
Best for: Firms already invested in the Thomson Reuters ecosystem that want AI layered on top of Westlaw and Practical Law research.
CoCounsel is Thomson Reuters' AI legal assistant. It recently hit one million professionals with access across 107 countries — though that figure reflects anyone whose Thomson Reuters subscription includes CoCounsel, not necessarily active contract review users.
As an Ivo alternative, CoCounsel offers something different: deep legal research integration. If your work requires frequent case law lookups alongside contract review, having both in one platform has advantages. The next-generation version entering beta in 2026 promises agentic workflows where you describe a task and CoCounsel handles the multi-step execution.
But CoCounsel's contract review capabilities — playbooks, redlining, clause-level analysis — are less developed than Ivo's or Gavel Exec's. The platform operates through its own portal rather than natively in Word, creating more friction in the review process. And the pricing reflects the full Thomson Reuters stack — you're typically paying for Westlaw and Practical Law bundled in, which makes this one of the more expensive options for teams that primarily need contract work. If you don't need legal research built in, you're paying for a lot you won't use.
Best for: Teams that want pre-built playbooks out of the box and need a usable tool on day one without extensive configuration.
LegalOn serves over 6,000 customers globally, is backed by SoftBank, and recently raised a $50M Series E. Its core value proposition is speed to value: 50+ attorney-built playbooks covering common contract types, ready to use immediately.
As an Ivo alternative, LegalOn is easier to get started with. You don't need a multi-week onboarding — the pre-built playbooks let you run reviews immediately. The platform also includes matter management and AI agents, making it broader than Ivo's contract-focused offering.
The limitation is depth. LegalOn's pre-built playbooks are generic by nature — they represent LegalOn's attorneys' view of what's standard, not your organization's actual positions. Customization tools exist but don't go as deep as what Gavel Exec or Ivo offer. There's no AI playbook generation and no ability to learn from your document repository the way Gavel Exec does. And some users report that the risk flagging is noisy — a high volume of flags that aren't all actionable — which can create its own cleanup problem. LegalOn's pricing (starting around $3,500/user/year for individuals) is more accessible than Ivo but still above Gavel Exec.
Best for: Solo practitioners and small firms that need both litigation and contract tools in one affordable subscription.
StrongSuit rebranded from Callidus Legal AI in late 2025 and is the most budget-friendly option on this list. It covers litigation and transactional workflows with a proprietary database of over 11 million US cases, automated case validation, and contract review — starting at $149/month.
As an Ivo alternative, StrongSuit is at the opposite end of the spectrum. Where Ivo focuses on deep playbook infrastructure, StrongSuit is broad and affordable with lighter contract capabilities. If you're a litigator who also handles contracts, or a small firm that can't justify separate tools for research and contract review, the all-in-one approach has appeal.
But StrongSuit is fundamentally a litigation platform that added contract review. The playbook infrastructure is underdeveloped compared to Gavel Exec, Ivo, or LegalOn. There's no proprietary market data for benchmarking. No ability to pull from your document repository. The contract redlines are functional but lack the precision of tools built specifically for transactional work. If contract review quality is what drove you to look beyond Ivo, StrongSuit is unlikely to be an upgrade on that front.
Best for: Teams focused on commercial contract review that want a Word-native experience with anonymized market benchmarking data.
Spellbook is an AI contract review tool used by over 4,000 legal teams, with a focus on transactional work. It operates inside Microsoft Word and offers drafting, redlining, and a "Compare to Market" feature that benchmarks your clauses against anonymized data from its user base.
As an Ivo alternative, Spellbook is a step down in playbook sophistication but more accessible. It doesn't require hands-on onboarding, and it's available to both firms and in-house teams. The "Compare to Market" feature lets you see how your clauses stack up against thousands of similar agreements filtered by jurisdiction and deal type.
The tradeoff is precision. Spellbook relies on "preference learning" and anonymized market data rather than structured playbooks grounded in your positions. Many teams find the redlines feel generic and need significant cleanup before they're ready to send. There's no AI playbook generation, no ability to pull from your document repository, and the market data is aggregated rather than filtered by industry and company size. At approximately $300–350/month per user with minimum contract terms, it's also the most expensive option on this list relative to what you get — more than double the cost of Gavel Exec for output that's less precise.
If Ivo isn't the right fit, narrowing down the right alternative comes down to what specifically isn't working for you. Here's how to think about it.
Ivo's white-glove playbook onboarding is convenient initially, but it creates a dependency. When your positions change — and they always change — how quickly can you update? Gavel Exec gives you pre-built playbooks, AI-powered playbook generation, self-serve tools, and free custom playbook builds from Gavel's team. You always have options — and you're never stuck waiting.
Market benchmarking is only useful if it's specific enough to matter. Broad benchmarks across all deal types are interesting but rarely actionable. Gavel Exec's proprietary market data is filtered by industry, jurisdiction, and company size — so when you benchmark, you're comparing against deals that actually look like yours.
This is a real differentiator. Some tools only apply playbook rules. Gavel Exec goes further by pulling from your document repository — your executed contracts, templates, and prior redlines — so the AI understands how your team actually negotiates. That context is what produces redlines that feel like yours, not a generic output.
The whole point of an AI contract review tool is producing output you can use. If you're spending 30 minutes per contract cleaning up suggestions, the tool is adding work. Gavel Exec's combination of playbook precision, curated market data, and document context produces surgical redlines that look like they came from a senior associate who knows your team.
Ivo doesn't publish pricing. LegalOn starts around $3,500/user/year. Spellbook runs $300–350/month. Gavel Exec is $145/month annually or $160/month with no commitment — including free playbook builds and unlimited support. The output quality competes with tools that cost two to three times more.
Gavel Exec gives you pre-built playbooks, AI playbook generation, proprietary market data, and AI that learns from your documents — producing surgical redlines in your voice, directly in Word. For in-house teams and law firms alike.
Start with 25 free queries. No credit card required.
Both tools are playbook-driven and produce practice-ready redlines. The differences are speed, control, and cost. Gavel Exec gives you pre-built playbooks, AI-powered playbook generation, self-serve building tools, and free custom playbook builds from Gavel's team — so you're never dependent on a single path. It also has more granular proprietary market data and can pull from your document repository to learn your negotiation patterns. Gavel serves both in-house teams and law firms, and costs a fraction of Ivo's enterprise pricing.
Yes. Gavel is used by over 2,000 legal organizations, including Am Law 100 firms and large in-house departments. Enterprise features like SSO, role-based access, and SOC 2 Type II compliance are standard. Gavel Exec scales from small teams to large departments without requiring a different pricing tier or product.
Gavel's team can work with you to migrate or rebuild your playbooks at no extra cost. The structured three-part format (requirement, how to identify issues, redline guidance) maps well to existing playbook content. You can also use Gavel Exec's AI playbook generation to accelerate the process using your existing documents and positions.
Yes. Gavel Exec can pull from your repository of executed contracts, templates, and prior redlines to understand your team's voice, positions, and negotiation patterns. The more context you provide, the more precise the output.
Gavel Exec is $145/month per user annually, or $160/month with no lock-in. Ivo doesn't publish pricing, but enterprise quotes are typically well above this. Gavel includes free playbook builds, onboarding, training, and unlimited support in every plan.
LegalOn's pre-built playbooks get you started fast, but the redlines often need heavy cleanup. This guide compares 5 LegalOn alternatives for 2026 — including Gavel Exec, CoCounsel, Ivo, StrongSuit, and Spellbook — by features, AI architecture, pricing, and redline quality.
Frustrated with Spellbook? We review the top Spellbook alternatives legal professionals are using, as we compare their accuracy, features, pricing, and how to switch easily.
Contract AI for renewable energy lawyers accelerates review of PPAs, EPC contracts, interconnection agreements, and project finance documents. Energy-focused AI like Gavel Exec helps identify bankability issues, flag non-standard risk allocation, and produce clean redlines and negotiation memos without replacing legal judgment.
