Guideline vs Alpaca
Side-by-side comparison of AI visibility scores, market position, and capabilities
Founded 2015; raised $356M; $1.15B valuation (2022); $120M ARR; $13B AUM; 50K+ business clients; acquired by Gusto ~$600M (Nov 2025).
About
Guideline is a technology-driven 401(k) plan provider founded in 2015 by Kevin Busque (co-founder of TaskRabbit), headquartered in San Mateo, CA. The company set out to democratize retirement savings by making professionally managed, low-cost 401(k) plans accessible to small and medium-sized businesses — a segment historically underserved by legacy providers like Fidelity and Vanguard due to high complexity and fees. Guideline's platform automates plan setup, payroll integration, compliance filing, and employee investment management, charging a transparent subscription fee ($49–$129/month plus $8/participant) and a low 0.08% annual AUM fee, compared to the industry-standard 1–2% charged by incumbents.
Alpaca is a self-clearing broker-dealer and global leader in brokerage infrastructure APIs for stocks, ETFs, options, and fixed income; raised $52M Series C in April 2025 totaling $170M;
About
Alpaca is a developer-first brokerage infrastructure company founded in 2015 and headquartered in San Mateo, California. It operates as a fully self-clearing broker-dealer with DTCC, Nasdaq, OCC, and FICC memberships — enabling it to provide end-to-end brokerage infrastructure for stocks, ETFs, options, fixed income, and cryptocurrency without requiring partners to manage their own clearing relationships. Alpaca's Broker API allows fintech companies, neobrokerages, robo-advisors, and wealth management platforms to embed multi-asset trading into their applications with a single integration.
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