Agentic Index
Parachute vs Smokeball (2026)
Parachute and Smokeball put AI to work for small and mid size law firms, starting from opposite ends. That verdict is the Agentic Index coverage score, graded from each vendor's own published materials.
Smokeball is the practice management system, with Archie as an add on assistant that reads the whole matter, drafts in Word and Outlook, turns answers into tasks, memos and calendar events once the user confirms, and runs Archie Apps such as legal chronologies and bank statement analysis, on a model each user picks from OpenAI's GPT-5 line or Anthropic's Claude Opus and Sonnet. Parachute is an AI workspace that sits beside the practice system and works in Smokeball or Clio from chat, logging time, opening matters, running conflict checks and saving documents back, and it adds drafting from firm precedents and more than 100 templates, five stage contract review, a tabular review grid across many documents, a notetaker that files meeting notes to the matter, a daily briefing and one click expert verification by a lawyer. Firms that want the AI inside the system already running their matters and billing will lean to Smokeball. Firms that want a dedicated legal AI workspace, with lawyer sign off, on top of the practice system they keep will lean to Parachute.
This comparison is published by Agentic Index, an independent agentic AI vendor research platform. Parachute and Smokeball are each graded against the same 14 capability Agentic Index taxonomy, from the vendor's own public materials under the Agentic Index verification standard, alongside 1,006 researched vendors. No vendor pays for placement and no vendor has reviewed this page. How this evidence is graded
Choose Parachute if
- Drafting should start from your own precedents or more than 100 templates, with a citation behind every answer.
- Any document should go to a connected law firm or an expert pool for sign off, priced per request.
- You already run Smokeball or Clio and want the AI to log time, open matters and run conflict checks from chat.
- A notetaker should join booked calls under your firm's name and file the note and the time to the Smokeball matter.
- A public price of A$400 a month for the firm and first seat, then A$120 per seat, suits how you plan spend.
Choose Smokeball if
- You want matters, billing, trust accounting and AI in one system.
- Each user should pick the model, from GPT-5.2 to GPT-5.5 or Claude Opus and Sonnet.
- Ready made Archie Apps should build chronologies, analyze bank statements and summarize depositions.
- Data should stay in its home region in the US, Australia or the UK.
- Intake forms should be generated for a state and matter type, or converted from paper.
| Feature | P Parachute |
S Smokeball |
|---|---|---|
| Action & orchestration | ||
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Integrations & Tool Calling Ability to connect agents to real systems through native integrations, OAuth-authenticated actions, custom tools, APIs, webhooks, or MCP-compatible tools. |
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ParachuteIntegrations & Tool Calling From any chat, Parachute's AI works inside Clio Manage and Smokeball once a firm authorizes each connection. It searches and creates matters, runs conflict checks across every matter a person or company appears on, creates and updates contacts, logs billable time, adds notes, tasks and calendar events, and saves finished documents to the linked matter, and a meeting's notes and attendance time can be filed the same way. In InfoTrack, still in beta, it gathers the details for a title, company or insolvency search, asks the user to confirm and places the order on the firm's own account. NetDocuments and OneDrive feed matters, precedents and reviews and take finished work back. SourceParachute, help.goparachute.ai/integrations/clio and help.goparachute.ai/integrations/infotrackread 2026-10-12 |
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SmokeballIntegrations & Tool Calling In chat, Archie turns an answer into a Smokeball task, memo or calendar event, each prepared as a draft the user edits and saves. Archie Apps run specialist jobs on a matter's files with no extra login, some built by Smokeball, such as the Bank Statements Analyzer and Legal Chronology, and some by partners, with CaseMark, Novo AI and Supio producing deposition summaries, medical narratives and demand letters that save back to the matter as Word or PDF. LawY, included with Archie, answers legal questions from inside the matter. Around the AI, the Smokeball Marketplace connects the platform to services such as InfoTrack, and a public API lets a firm build its own connections, though Archie itself calls only the tools Smokeball provides. Sourcesupport.smokeball.com/hc/en-us/articles/32304670869399-archie-appsread 2026-10-12 |
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Workflow Orchestration Ability to sequence, branch, retry, route, and combine deterministic workflow nodes with autonomous agent steps. |
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ParachuteWorkflow Orchestration Deep analysis takes a contract through five stages in two to three minutes. It checks the document against standard requirements, extracts every party's obligations, tests it against the firm's knowledge base, rates each risk High, Medium or Low, and runs any custom stages the firm adds. Tabular review runs each column's question across every document in parallel, the AI makes large edits across a document in one pass or produces several documents from one precedent in a single request, and in chat it chains steps such as finding a Clio matter, asking which one is right and linking it. A firm cannot build multistep workflows of its own. SourceParachute, help.goparachute.ai/features/document-review and goparachute.ai/release-notes/smarter-document-editsread 2026-10-12 |
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SmokeballWorkflow Orchestration Archie works through a question step by step, pulling in matter details, documents, emails, tasks and invoices, checking its own answer and carrying on until the answer is complete, and Advanced thinking lists that process on complex prompts. Archie Apps run fixed multistep jobs, such as a chronology built from documents of up to 200 pages against the event types a user ticks, or an analysis of up to 25 bank statements against the spending a user is looking for, and Smokeball Workflows automate matter tasks on the higher plans. Archie handles one request at a time and cannot yet run a whole workflow end to end. Sourcesupport.smokeball.com/hc/en-us/articles/24407844681751-getting-started-with-archie-the-smokeball-ai-assistantread 2026-10-12 |
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Triggers & Channel Coverage How agents wake up and where they work: schedules, webhooks, message events, CRM events, inbox events, chat, email, voice, and collaboration tools. |
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ParachuteTriggers & Channel Coverage Work reaches Parachute without anyone opening the app. A notetaker booked ahead of a Teams, Meet or Zoom call joins on schedule, and when the meeting ends Parachute writes the file note and transcript into a new thread. An email forwarded from a firm address to a user's own Parachute inbox becomes a thread with up to 10 attachments, and the Today briefing, built when a lawyer first opens it each day, keeps adding new email that needs a reply. Lawyers also reach it from the web app, the Word add in, the desktop app and a Slack bot that answers when mentioned. Drafting and actions in practice systems still wait for a lawyer to ask. SourceParachute, help.goparachute.ai/features/meeting-notetaker and help.goparachute.ai/features/email-to-threadread 2026-10-12 |
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SmokeballTriggers & Channel Coverage Archie Suggestions read a matter's documents, emails, tasks and deadlines as the matter changes and offer next steps as tiles, such as a task, an event, a memo, an email draft, a ready made prompt or a relevant app, each with the reason behind it. Archie is reached from the matter view, the Word add in and the new Outlook add in, which summarizes long threads and offers quick replies drawn from the matter, and prompts can be spoken through voice dictation. Archie never starts work on its own, so each suggestion runs only when a user clicks it. Sourcesupport.smokeball.com/hc/en-us/articles/40283902464151-using-archie-suggestionsread 2026-10-12 |
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| Knowledge & context | ||
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Knowledge Grounding & RAG Ability to ground agent behavior in company data through document ingestion, retrieval, external knowledge APIs, semantic search, or RAG layers. |
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ParachuteKnowledge Grounding & RAG Every thread draws on two knowledge bases, the organization's own, with policies, playbooks, prior advice, contracts and structured company information uploaded as PDF, DOCX, TXT or URLs, and a global one of regulations and frameworks that Parachute curates, with the firm's content taking priority. A structured library of Acts and Regulations across all nine Australian jurisdictions opens section by section, and admins choose which Acts the AI may cite and whether it searches the web, with overrides per thread. Answers carry clickable citations back to the document, the section of the Act or the web page, and conflict detection checks new drafts against the firm's existing policies. SourceParachute, help.goparachute.ai/features/knowledge-base and help.goparachute.ai/features/legislation-search; help.goparachute.ai/features/search-configurationread 2026-10-12 |
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SmokeballKnowledge Grounding & RAG Once switched on, Archie indexes the firm's 50 most recent matters and ingests others on first use, covering matter details, parties, tasks, events, memos, invoices, emails and the full text of documents. Knowledge sources add firm wide reference documents in PDF, DOCX, TXT or Markdown, such as a statute or a tone guide, scoped by matter type and switched on for one user or for all staff. Each answer shows what Archie looked at and cites its source. Legal questions go to LawY, set to the matter's practice area across estate planning, probate, elder law, family law and real estate, with its sources and follow up questions under each answer. Images, image only PDFs and spreadsheets are outside what Archie can read. Sourcesupport.smokeball.com/hc/en-us/articles/33653315990423-upload-knowledge-sources-to-use-with-archieread 2026-10-12 |
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Memory & State Persistence Ability to persist context across a run, conversation, workflow, user, team, or longer-term memory layer. |
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ParachuteMemory & State Persistence Personal memory keeps each user's working preferences, such as a sign off, paragraph length or how advice is set apart, and applies them in chat, email drafting and documents. Parachute saves a preference when a user states one in chat and shows a notice with a link, and users can add memories, rewrite them with AI, delete them, or switch saving and applying off. Tone of voice settings hold up to three email tones and a document voice, and each matter carries standing instructions for every draft on it. Memory never holds client or matter facts, and each chat starts fresh, so earlier conversations are not recalled. SourceParachute, help.goparachute.ai/features/memory and help.goparachute.ai/features/tone-of-voiceread 2026-10-12 |
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SmokeballMemory & State Persistence Each Archie conversation sits inside one matter and reads that matter's own records afresh, so context carries over through the file, and Archie never mixes matters or firms. Knowledge sources hold reference documents for the whole firm, and prompt inputs ask for the facts a matter lacks before a saved prompt runs. Archie does not carry a user's preferences from one conversation to the next, and tone profiles that will apply a firm's writing rules by audience are still to come. Sourcesupport.smokeball.com/hc/en-us/articles/41226626717079-how-smokeball-ai-keeps-your-data-private-and-secureread 2026-10-12 |
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| Control & trust | ||
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Human Oversight & Guardrails Approval steps, consent checkpoints, escalation rules, structured guardrails, policy constraints, and pause/resume controls. |
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ParachuteHuman Oversight & Guardrails Any document can go to expert verification, legal or cybersecurity, priced per request. It routes to the business's connected law firm, whose lawyers claim it from a queue and review it in the editor with comments and suggestions the client sees live, or to a pool of verified professionals, and the client rates each review. AI suggestions in the editor land as tracked changes a person accepts or rejects one at a time, InfoTrack orders and Clio matter links wait for the user to confirm, and Today drafts replies that the lawyer sends from Outlook. SourceParachute, help.goparachute.ai/features/expert-verification and help.goparachute.ai/for-law-firms/verification-workflowread 2026-10-12 |
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SmokeballHuman Oversight & Guardrails Every task, memo and calendar event Archie prepares is a draft the user edits and then saves, and a suggestion produces output the user confirms or dismisses. In Word, Archie proposes targeted edits that are previewed before they apply, and in Outlook it drafts replies the user sends. Legal answers from LawY can go to a lawyer for verification, and settings make Archie ask follow up questions on vague prompts and confirm which file a prompt refers to. Sourcesupport.smokeball.com/hc/en-us/articles/39618100098967-creating-tasks-memos-and-events-with-archieread 2026-10-12 |
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Security, Identity & Governance RBAC, SSO, auditability, encryption, least-privilege tool access, compliance posture, and data handling policy. |
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ParachuteSecurity, Identity & Governance Compass Assurance Services certifies Parachute to ISO/IEC 27001:2022 under certificate 8818-4353-01, covering the SaaS platform for legal research, drafting and review, and security practices follow SOC 2 controls with no SOC 2 report. Members see their own threads, Admins manage people, settings and billing and can open all work, and an Expert role handles verification at law firms. Matters are private by default and shared per person as viewer or editor, removed members lose access at once, and the Enterprise plan adds SSO and SAML, while the Word add in signs in with Microsoft 365. Each organization's data is logically isolated and encrypted in transit and at rest. SourceParachute, goparachute.ai/security and help.goparachute.ai/account/team-managementread 2026-10-12 |
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SmokeballSecurity, Identity & Governance Smokeball holds ISO 27001:2022 certification, runs annual external penetration tests, encrypts data with AES 256 at rest and TLS 1.2 or later in transit, and makes two factor sign in compulsory. Firms can sign in through Microsoft Entra SSO over SAML, and firm owners set role based permissions per user, including one that switches Archie on or off for each person. Archie only works on matters a user can already open, never crosses firms or matters, and runs under zero data retention agreements with its model providers. Sourcesmokeball.com/securityread 2026-10-12 |
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Observability & Auditability Traces, logs, execution histories, metrics, audit events, and debugging detail for production agent behavior. |
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ParachuteObservability & Auditability Every change the AI makes to a document lands in a trace a user can scroll, and clicking an entry jumps to the block it changed. Each tabular review cell shows the reasoning behind its answer and a citation that opens the source with the quote highlighted, AI redlines carry Parachute's name as tracked changes, and documents keep every version. Admins can open every thread and document in the organization and see credit use broken down by mode. Firms get no workspace audit log of user and AI activity to review or export. SourceParachute, goparachute.ai/release-notes/smarter-document-edits and help.goparachute.ai/features/tabular-reviewread 2026-10-12 |
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SmokeballObservability & Auditability Authorized users can review a log of the questions staff put to Archie, which shows how the firm prompts it. Advanced thinking lists Archie's reasoning while it works on a complex prompt, each answer shows the files Archie read, and the tasks, memos, events and app outputs it produces land in the matter once saved. Beyond the question log and those saved items, a firm cannot replay what Archie did on a request. Sourcesupport.smokeball.com/hc/en-us/articles/41226626717079-how-smokeball-ai-keeps-your-data-private-and-secureread 2026-10-12 |
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Deployment & Data Residency Deployment modes and options, including SaaS, dedicated cloud, VPC, on-prem, hybrid, local runtime, and self-hosting. |
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ParachuteDeployment & Data Residency Customer data is stored in Sydney, and storage in other regions is on the roadmap, so a firm in the UK, US or Canada keeps its data in Australia for now. AI inference runs in the United States by default. Firms that need inference to stay in Australia can have their instance switched to Australian region infrastructure on Amazon Bedrock and Google Vertex AI in Sydney, at some cost in speed or model choice, and knowledge base embeddings already run in Sydney on Azure OpenAI. Parachute runs only as its own hosted service. SourceParachute, goparachute.ai/privacy-policy and goparachute.ai/release-notes/onshore-airead 2026-10-12 |
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SmokeballDeployment & Data Residency Smokeball runs separate stacks in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, each with its own sign in and API hosts, on AWS across several availability zones. Data stays in the firm's home region, Australian data in Australia, UK data in the UK and US data in the US, and the cloud and AI providers work under data processing agreements that cover any international transfer. Smokeball runs only as its own hosted service. Sourcedocs.smokeball.com/docs/api-docs/z2q8vla6b77g8-base-urlsread 2026-10-12 |
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| Solution readiness | ||
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Prebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs Ready-made workflows, packaged employees, templates, blueprints, industry solutions, and role-specific agents that reduce time-to-value. |
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ParachutePrebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs Drafting can start from more than 100 prebuilt templates whose conditional logic adapts the document to the organization's industry, size and jurisdictions, and a tabular review can start from a prebuilt column pack such as a standard contract review. Firms add their own Word templates and precedents beside them, keep saved prompts in a library that is private to one user or shared across the workspace, and choose built in or firm file note formats for meeting notes. Workstreams come preset as Business, Regulatory, HR and Corporate Affairs. SourceParachute, goparachute.ai/platform and help.goparachute.ai/features/tabular-reviewread 2026-10-12 |
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SmokeballPrebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs Archie Apps is a marketplace of ready made tools a firm runs on a matter, from Smokeball's Bank Statements Analyzer, Legal Chronology and audio transcription to partner apps from CaseMark, Novo AI and Supio for deposition summaries, medical narratives and demand letters, some at extra cost. A prompt library carries out of the box prompts by practice area, such as an estate plan summary or a response to a dissolution petition, with prompt inputs that collect missing facts before a prompt runs, and the Word add in offers review playbooks built by the Smokeball team beside the firm's own. Smokeball AI also generates an intake form for a chosen state and matter type, or converts a paper form. Sourcesupport.smokeball.com/hc/en-us/articles/32304670869399-archie-appsread 2026-10-12 |
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| Platform extensibility | ||
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Model Flexibility & Routing Ability to work across multiple foundation models, route tasks to different models, or let buyers bring their own providers and keys. |
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ParachuteModel Flexibility & Routing Parachute runs on large language models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google and decides which model handles each request. Users choose a depth instead, Paralegal at 1 credit for quick questions and light drafting, Lawyer at 3 for detailed review and research, or Senior Associate at 15 for complex analysis, or let Auto pick the mode, and the Enterprise plan adds priority model access at busy times. Users and admins choose depth, never the model, and cannot bring their own provider account. SourceParachute, goparachute.ai/privacy-policy and help.goparachute.ai/features/ai-modesread 2026-10-12 |
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SmokeballModel Flexibility & Routing In Archie's settings a user picks the model for their own work, from OpenAI's GPT-5.2, the default, through GPT-5.3, GPT-5.4 and GPT-5.5, with thinking versions of GPT-5.2 and GPT-5.5, to Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.6, 4.7 and 4.8 and Claude Sonnet 5. A model joins the list only after Smokeball's own privacy and security review, under agreements that stop the provider storing or training on firm data. Firms cannot connect their own provider account. Sourcesupport.smokeball.com/hc/en-us/articles/35181898764951-configure-archie-settingsread 2026-10-12 |
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APIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility Composability layer: stable APIs, SDKs, MCP tool consumption/serving, custom tools, and integration into internal systems. |
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ParachuteAPIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility Parachute is used through its web app, the Word add in on Windows, Mac and the web, which admins can roll out across a Microsoft 365 tenant, the Windows and macOS desktop app, a Slack bot and a per user email inbox. Every connection comes from Parachute's own integration catalog, which grows on customer request, and developers have no public API, SDK or MCP server for building on Parachute or calling it from other tools. SourceParachute, help.goparachute.ai and goparachute.ai/integrationsread 2026-10-12 |
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SmokeballAPIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility Smokeball's public API covers matters, contacts, events, documents and other practice data, with OAuth through the authorization code or client credentials grant, separate base URLs for the US, Australia and the UK, rate limits, webhooks and a Client SDK. A firm can build apps for its own use straight in production through the Developer Console, while partners go through staging and a security review before listing in the marketplace. The API reaches the practice management platform, and Archie has no API or MCP server of its own. Sourcedocs.smokeball.com/homeread 2026-10-12 |
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Testing, Debugging & Optimization Testing, debugging, scoring, retries, fallbacks, quality gates, and optimization loops for improving agent workflows before and after deployment. |
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ParachuteTesting, Debugging & Optimization Expert verification and deep analysis check the documents Parachute produces, a tabular review cell or a whole column can be run again when an answer looks wrong, and clients rate each expert review so the network keeps its quality. Firms cannot run their own test questions against the AI before changing a template, the knowledge base or a mode. SourceParachute, help.goparachute.ai/features/document-review and help.goparachute.ai/features/expert-verificationread 2026-10-12 |
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SmokeballTesting, Debugging & Optimization Playbooks run a firm's review checklist over a document rule by rule and offer an action where they can, and users rate Archie's answers with a thumbs up or down. A firm can rate answers but cannot run test questions against Archie before rolling out a new model or knowledge source to staff. Sourcesupport.smokeball.com/hc/en-us/articles/43694624466455-using-archie-playbooks-to-review-documentsread 2026-10-12 |
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| Specialist automation | ||
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Browser & Computer Use Browser, desktop, or remote/local computer control for workflows that cannot be handled through stable APIs alone. |
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ParachuteBrowser & Computer Use The notetaker joins Teams, Meet and Zoom calls as a bot under the firm's own name and logo, or records on the lawyer's computer without joining, and the Windows and macOS desktop app also captures in person meetings through the microphone with a live transcript. For a jurisdiction outside the five it supports, Parachute can search the web. The AI does not operate websites or other applications for the user. SourceParachute, goparachute.ai/notetaker and help.goparachute.ai/features/meeting-notetakerread 2026-10-12 |
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SmokeballBrowser & Computer Use Inside Smokeball, Word and Outlook, Archie works through Smokeball's own add ins, and an Archie App transcribes uploaded audio. AutoTime records time from activity in Smokeball's desktop app, and Smokeball AI writes descriptions for those entries from the user's last 100 description edits. Archie does not operate websites or other applications for the user. Sourcesupport.smokeball.com/hc/en-us/articles/24407844681751-getting-started-with-archie-the-smokeball-ai-assistantread 2026-10-12 |
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Pricing snapshot
Sourced from the Index pricing dataset · open each vendor's profile for full detail.
| Pricing | P Parachute |
S Smokeball |
|---|---|---|
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Entry price Lowest public entry point |
From A$400 a month (instance and first seat) | From A$59 per user a month on Bill in Australia. Archie is an add on to Boost and above, priced on request. |
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Pricing confidence How public the numbers are |
Public, exact | Public, partial |
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Billing Primary billing axis |
seats plus credits | Per user per month by plan, plus add ons for Archie, Intake and AutoTime. |
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Variable cost Workload / overage exposure |
Medium variable cost | Low variable cost |
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Free tier / trial Try before you buy |
No free tierTrial
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No free tierTrial
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Buying motion Self-serve vs sales call |
Self-serve | Mixed |
Smokeball sells Archie as an add on to its Boost, Grow and Prosper+ plans, priced on request. Parachute connects to Smokeball, so a firm can run both.
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