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Epoch SRA vs @RISK: same math, different machine

By the Epoch SRA team·Published 5 August 2026·Corrections: contact@epochsra.com

Capabilities as of August 2026, based on published documentation. Corrections welcome at contact@epochsra.com.

Monte Carlo is the easy part. The schedule is the hard part. This comparison exists because the question "can't I just do this in @RISK?" is reasonable – and the answer depends entirely on which part of the problem you have.

What @RISK is

Lumivero's @RISK is a general-purpose Monte Carlo engine for Excel, and at that job it is excellent: 35 years of development, 90+ distributions, correlation and copula modeling, distribution fitting, stress testing. If your uncertainty problem is a financial model, a trade study, a cost estimate without a network – @RISK is the better tool, full stop. We will not pretend otherwise.

What it is not

@RISK has no concept of a project schedule. No tasks, no dependency network, no critical path, no calendars, no float, no merge points. To answer "what is my P80 launch date," an @RISK user must hand-build the scheduling engine in spreadsheet formulas – every finish as a max over predecessors, working days by hand – then wire risks in manually, then maintain that construction every time the plan changes. Skilled analysts genuinely do this. It takes days, it is fragile, and it starts over when the schedule does.

What Epoch SRA is

The machine built around the schedule. MS Project XML imports with an honest report of anything that could not be translated. The dependency network is the native object: CPM per iteration, merge bias captured structurally, DCMA-style quality checks before you trust a single percentile. Your risk register maps onto tasks from the sheet you already keep. Priors are field-calibrated against historical program actuals, and every percentile is labelled with its provenance. When the plan changes, you re-import – task identities and risk mappings survive. And everything computes locally, with no cloud component – which is what lets export-controlled and competitively sensitive programs adopt it at all.

Pricing

Lumivero does not publish @RISK prices – as of August 2026 its shop lists Professional and Industrial tiers with quotes on request. Epoch SRA is €119/month, €990/year, or €1,300 perpetual plus €350/year maintenance – with a 7-day trial, no signup.

How to decide

If you need a general simulator, buy @RISK. If you need this quarter's P80 from this quarter's schedule, and again next quarter when the plan moves – that is the hard part we built. Export your XML and see the import report; it takes minutes and tells the truth.