--- title: "OKR checker or OKR software: which one do you need? — Outcomery" description: "An OKR checker reads one Key Result and hands back a verdict, the tell and a corrected spec. OKR software is another category. Which problem does each solve?" url: https://outcomery.com/okr-checker-vs-okr-software --- # OKR checker or OKR software: which one do you need? We built a bench that does exactly one thing: read a single Key Result and say what it is. Then people arrive looking for their quarterly dashboard, and we have to admit there isn't one and never was. So here's the honest comparison, including the parts where we're the smaller tool. ## The short version An OKR checker reads one Key Result and tells you whether it measures a change outside your team; Outcomery's bench does that, free, with no account. OKR software is a different category of purchase, the one people mean when they say Quantive or Perdoo, and we haven't tested those, so we won't rank them. If your Key Results are shipping dates with a percentage sign, tracking them harder won't help; if your problem is running goals across a company, a checker won't do that. ## What the bench does You give it one Key Result, up to 1,200 characters. It comes back with one of four verdicts: OUTPUT, OUTPUT IN DISGUISE, WEAK OUTCOME, TRUE OUTCOME. It names the tell that placed it there, and it writes a corrected spec. Sometimes it says no stamp fits. It's free and there's no account. An AI agent writes each verdict, so it can be wrong, and you should read it the way you'd read a colleague's comment in a doc: useful, sometimes off, yours to argue with. That's the whole product. One sentence in, one opinion out. ## What it isn't The bench has no dashboards, no check-ins, no team seats, no progress bars, no integrations, no view of your quarter. There's no account, so it doesn't know who you are. It doesn't know your objective, the other Key Results in your doc, what you sent it last month, or who else on your team wrote something similar. It reads the sentence in front of it and nothing else. If your company has already bought a tool for OKRs, keep it. We're not asking you to swap anything out, and we'd be a bad swap: a tool that reads one sentence can't run a company's goals, and we haven't tried to make it. ## Which problem do you actually have There are two different problems, and they wear the same label. The first is writing: the drafts in your doc are features with dates, and nobody can tell which of them is the goal. The second is running: goals exist, and people need somewhere to see them, update them and argue about them through the quarter. A checker only helps with the first. Software in the OKR category is what people buy for the second, and we can't tell you which one, because we haven't used them and won't pretend otherwise. If both problems are yours, they're still two problems. ## One draft, read twice Take an invented draft: "Move all accounts to the new billing plan by 31 March." Now ask the question that sorts most Key Results. Could the team call it done just by finishing its own work, while everyone outside the team carries on exactly as before? Yes. The migration finishes, the goal is green, and nobody outside has changed a thing. A version that answers the other question might read: "Cut the share of accounts that contact billing support in their first month on the new plan from 18% to 6% by 31 March." The migration still happens. It just stops being the finish line. ## If you're the only one asking this Most people who read a page like this aren't choosing a platform. They're the one PM in a roadmap-shaped company, rewriting a Key Result at 22:00 before a review, wondering whether they're being difficult. You're not. A better-written Key Result doesn't need a budget, a mandate or a new tool in the stack. It needs one more pass and a second reader who is willing to say "this is a shipping date." That's a smaller job than changing how your company plans, and it's the one you can do this week. ## Questions **Best tools for writing better OKRs** For the writing part, the tools that actually help are a fixed sentence format and a second reader. The format: raise or cut what someone outside the team does, from a baseline, to a target, by a date. The second reader can be a colleague, or the bench at outcomery.com, which reads one Key Result and returns a verdict, the tell and a corrected spec, free and without an account. Names like Quantive, Perdoo, tability.io and profit.co come up in this category too; we haven't tested them and won't rank them for you. **Outcomery vs Perdoo or Quantive: what's the difference between an OKR checker and OKR software?** An OKR checker judges one sentence; OKR software is a category of products for a company's goals, and Perdoo and Quantive are two names people mention in it. Outcomery's bench is the checker: paste one Key Result, get one of four verdicts, the tell that placed it, and a corrected spec. It has no account, no dashboard and no view of your quarter. We make no claims about the other products, because we haven't used them. They answer a different question than "is this sentence an outcome?" **Can the bench check a whole OKR set at once?** No. One Key Result at a time, up to 1,200 characters. Objectives, sets and quarterly plans are out of scope. That's partly a limit and partly on purpose: most of the damage happens inside a single sentence, and looking at one sentence is the only way to name the tell in it. **Will a checker fix output-driven goals at my company?** No, it fixes the sentence, not the room. A tool can tell you a Key Result is a delivery date wearing outcome words; it can't sit in the planning meeting for you or change who decides what ships. What a better sentence does is make the conversation shorter, because the disagreement becomes visible: someone has to say out loud whether we're promising to build a thing or to change something. Got one on your desk? Paste it into the bench. One Key Result, no account. [Inspect a Key Result](https://outcomery.com/) Written by Georges-Alexandre Hanin · [How to write a product outcome](https://outcomery.com/guide)