Resources›Comparisons›Epoch SRA vs @RISK ScheduleRiskAnalysis: an honest comparison
Epoch SRA vs @RISK ScheduleRiskAnalysis: an honest comparison
Capabilities as of August 2026, based on published documentation. Corrections welcome at contact@epochsra.com.
Corrected 2026-08-06: an earlier version of this page understated @RISK's schedule capabilities, claiming it "has no concept of a project schedule" and that users must hand-build CPM in formulas. That was wrong. Lumivero's ScheduleRiskAnalysis (SRA) toolset imports Microsoft Project and Primavera P6 schedules into Excel for Monte Carlo analysis, with probabilistic Gantt views. This page now reflects that, and we are leaving this note up.
What @RISK ScheduleRiskAnalysis is
Lumivero's @RISK is a general-purpose Monte Carlo engine for Excel with 35+ years of development behind it: 90+ distributions, correlation and copula modeling, distribution fitting, stress testing. Its ScheduleRiskAnalysis (SRA) toolset – shipped as part of the DecisionTools Suite – reads Microsoft Project and Primavera P6 files into Excel, runs Monte Carlo on the schedule, and reports results as standard and probabilistic Gantt charts with critical-path indices and a schedule audit report. If your programs live in Primavera P6 today, that P6 path exists now, and it is a real capability we do not match (our P6 support is not built). All of that is credit where due.
Where the tools genuinely differ
Same math on both sides – the differences are in provenance, fidelity, and how you buy it.
Where your results live. Epoch SRA writes its analysis to ordinary sheets in your workbook. Lumivero publishes no data-locality or activation statement for @RISK that we could find; the engine computes in desktop Excel on Windows.
Where the percentiles come from. Epoch SRA's impact priors are field-calibrated against replayed historical space-program actuals, and every percentile is labelled with its provenance – field-calibrated or model estimate. @RISK gives you 90+ distributions and fitting tools to build your own model; we could find no published calibration-provenance claim.
What the import refuses to guess. Epoch SRA's MSPDI import is refuse-and-report: every construct it cannot faithfully translate – a percent lag, an elapsed-time lag, a summary link it re-anchored – is named in the import report, never silently approximated, and the file's own calendar drives the arithmetic. Lumivero documents that SRA imports MSP and P6 files; its published pages do not describe how untranslatable constructs are handled.
Schedule health before percentiles. Every Epoch SRA Compute runs schedule quality checks aligned with the DCMA 14-Point Assessment (8 of 14 points, each named; the rest reported not-applicable). SRA's schedule audit report also flags modeling issues – both tools take hygiene seriously; ours names its framework and its gaps.
How you buy it. Epoch SRA publishes per-seat prices: €119/month, €990/year, or €1,300 perpetual plus €350/year maintenance. @RISK and the DecisionTools Suite are subscription-licensed and quote-based – as of August 2026 the Lumivero shop lists tiers and terms without public prices. Epoch SRA's 7-day trial starts in the add-in with no signup, no card, and no sales contact; Lumivero's 15-day trial is self-serve after a registration form.
How to decide
If your uncertainty problems span financial models, trade studies, and cost estimates as well as schedules – or your plans live in Primavera P6 – the DecisionTools Suite is a mature, capable platform and SRA covers the schedule side of it. If your problem is one program's P80 date, priced by calibrated priors, computed on your machine, at a published per-seat price – that is the narrower machine we built. Export your XML and read the import report; it takes minutes and tells the truth.
Epoch SRA costs €119/month, €990/year, or €1,300 perpetual + €350/year maintenance.
The 7-day trial is full-featured and starts in the add-in: no signup, no card, no sales call.
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