buffers.ai vs Lokad
buffers.ai
buffers.aiLokad
lokad.comSide by side
| Figure | buffers.ai | Lokad |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $25/mo | — |
| Free plan | — | — |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 8 | 1 |
| Spec score · Inventory Optimization Software | 7.6 (#7) | 7.4 (#12) |
| Spec score · Supply Chain Planning Software | 7.6 (#15) | 7.4 (#20) |
| Company history | The maker says buffers.ai began as a consulting practice in 2015 and names Pini Usha as its founder. | Lokad says it was created in Paris in 2008. |
| Founded | 2015 | 2008 |
| Product | buffers.ai automates demand forecasting, purchase planning, and inventory replenishment for retail and manufacturing enterprises. | Lokad provides predictive analytics and optimization to produce supply chain decisions such as purchasing, allocation, pricing, and prioritization. |
| Support | The maker describes personal support via WhatsApp without a ticket queue and says the same people who integrate a client’s system support it afterward. | For a typical managed subscription, Lokad assigns one or more Supply Chain Scientists who provide end-to-end support; support tiers are not differentiated. |
Plans
buffers.ai
- Replenishment — stores 61+$25 a month
- Replenishment — stores 31–60$75 a month
- Replenishment — stores 11–30$125 a month
- Replenishment — stores 1–10$175 a month
- Purchasing — up to 1,000 SKUs$2,000 a month
- Purchasing — up to 6,000 SKUs$3,000 a month
- Implementation/setup$5,000, paid once
- Purchasing — more than 6,000 SKUs$10,000 a month
In their own words
buffers.ai
buffers.ai is a web service for retail and manufacturing enterprises that automates demand forecasting, purchase planning, and inventory replenishment. Forecasting backtests TimesFM, LightGBM, Prophet, Exponential Smoothing, and Moving Average over a rolling six-month window, selecting a champion model for each SKU. Buy Plan creates a 12-month purchasing plan by category and month, in units and dollars, from a buying budget, including when sales history is absent. Replenishment recalculates each product’s target stock at every store daily and supports assortment, launches, promotions, and allocation across online, store, and wholesale channels. Production integrations use recurring batch feeds configured for a customer’s stack; CSV or XLSX uploads can support a benchmark without ERP work. The service uses HTTPS/TLS for the product and benchmark flow. Pricing starts at $25 a month for the 61+ store marginal plan, while other plans and possible setup fees vary by scope and scale.
Lokad
Lokad is a supply chain decision platform that uses predictive analytics and optimization to guide purchasing, allocation, pricing and prioritization. Its probabilistic forecasts represent possible future scenarios, and it links recommendations to financial impact and business objectives. Lokad automates routine calculations such as reorder quantities, multi-echelon allocations, lead-time adjustments and repair schedules. Users can build decision-generating applications in Envision, Lokad’s supply-chain-focused programming language. The recommended data exchange is file transfer by FTPS or SFTP, with options to push or pull files; native integrations with third-party apps are being phased out. Lokad serves industries including retail, aerospace, automotive, fashion, oil and gas, and manufacturing. The platform runs on the web, and a managed subscription typically includes end-to-end support from one or more Supply Chain Scientists. Pricing is on request. A free trial can be requested by email, and the reduced Envision Playground is available without registration. Lokad was founded in Paris in 2008.