How Arqeliva compares

Search is free everywhere, so search is not the product. The differences that matter are who pays for the platform, whether the application is actually executed, and whether the human review is something you can inspect. This page states all three — including where we are behind.

Where Arqeliva is weaker, stated plainly. Our catalogue is 23 sample institutions; Studyportals lists over 245,000 programmes and ApplyBoard covers more than 1,500 institutions. We do not have an agent network, and we do not claim institutional partnerships. Arqeliva is a working execution product with a small demo catalogue, not a global index.

The comparison

Compared on 24 September 2026 from each provider's own published material. Where a provider does not publish a figure, that is stated rather than estimated.
	ApplyBoard	Studyportals	Cialfo	Common App	Paid consultancies (Yocket / Leap / Edvoy)	Arqeliva
How the student pays	Free to search; the student pays each institution's application fee (and some applicants a processing deposit).	Free. Funded by universities via advertising and enrolment commission.	Not paid by the student — the school subscribes (~US$30/student/year).	Free to the student; the college's own fee applies.	Paid counseling: Yocket Premium ~INR 89,999; Leap packages ~INR 7,999-17,499; paid consultants INR 30,000-1.5 lakh end to end.	Free to search; US$149-699 one-time for execution. Published on the pricing page.
Who the product answers to	Institution and recruiter commissions.	Universities (advertising and enrolments).	The subscribing school or district.	Member colleges.	The student — but free consultancies are often funded by university commissions, so recommendations can lean toward partner institutions.	The student only. No university pays Arqeliva for a place in the catalogue.
Catalogue scale	1,500+ institutions, ~150,000 programs, 6 destinations.	245,000+ programs worldwide.	Thousands of programs via Direct Apply.	1,100+ colleges, US-centric.	Varies by consultancy.	23 sample institutions. This is our clearest weakness — it is a product preview, not a global index.
Does it execute the application?	Yes — document verification and official submission.	No. Discovery and comparison only.	Yes, via a single application form for counselors.	Transfers the application to member colleges.	Yes, human counselors prepare and submit.	Yes — preparation, an approval step, then submission or a prepared handoff.
Human review of your file	Documents verified for submission; no published review workflow.	Not applicable — no application handling.	Counselor support inside a school.	Not applicable.	Yes — but there is no published assignment, escalation or quality-control process.	Yes, and it is auditable: assigned reviewer, notes, a reason on every rejection, a second reviewer for reversals, and a timeline you can see.
Explainability of matching	Recommendations with program search.	Program search and filters.	Counselor judgement.	Member-college search.	Counsellor judgement.	Every match is labelled STRONG / POSSIBLE / NOT ELIGIBLE against stated thresholds.
Price transparency	Dependent on institution fees; not a single published figure.	Free to students.	Not publicised.	Free to students.	Quoted case by case.	Four published tiers with quantities, limits, response targets and refund terms.
Approval before submission	Student consents by paying.	Not applicable.	Counselor-mediated.	Student submits.	Usually counselor-mediated.	Nothing is submitted without your explicit approval — enforced in the product, not just promised.

The three things that are actually different

You pay, so the advice is not for sale

Studyportals is funded by universities. Cialfo is funded by schools. ApplyBoard earns from institutions and recruiter commissions. Free counseling is frequently funded by university commissions, which is why the guidance can lean toward partner institutions. Arqeliva is paid by the student, and no university pays for placement in the catalogue.

The price is on a page, not in a quote

ApplyBoard's cost to a student depends on each institution's fees. Cialfo publishes no price. Consultancies quote case by case. Arqeliva publishes four tiers with the number of applications, the document and human review included, the response target, the refund position and the limitations.

Human review you can inspect

Where human review is part of a plan, it runs as a workflow: a reviewer is assigned from a queue, reads your documents and records notes, and either approves, asks you for changes, or explains a rejection. A rejection must be confirmed by a different reviewer, and every step is timestamped on a timeline you can see. No competitor publishes this.

Sources

All figures above come from the providers' own published material or from the linked reporting, read on 24 September 2026. Competitor pricing and features change; verify before relying on any row.

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