Magnetic Review (2026): Pricing, Features & Honest Verdict

TLDR

Magnetic is an AI tax preparation tool that automates 1040 return prep for CPA firms. It uses computer-use agents to read client documents and enter data straight into UltraTax, Drake, and ProConnect. We found it genuinely useful for firms buried in data entry, though it is early and priced by quote. Best for: CPA firms automating 1040 data entry. Price: Custom pricing, no free plan. Rating: 7.3/10.

What is Magnetic?

Magnetic is an AI agent that prepares individual tax returns for accounting firms. You upload a client’s documents, W-2s, 1099s, brokerage statements, handwritten notes, messy Excel sheets, and Magnetic reads them, extracts the numbers, and types the data directly into whatever tax software your firm already uses. It is built for the part of tax season that CPAs hate most: the hours of manual data entry that come before any real advisory work.

The company came out of Y Combinator’s S25 batch and is based in San Francisco. It is a tiny team. CEO Thomas was previously Head of Product at Keeper, another YC company, where he built an AI tax engine that powered thousands of automated returns. CTO Patrick was the first engineer at a mobile games studio that shipped to millions of users. Magnetic reached roughly $220K in annual recurring revenue by late 2025, which tells you it is past the demo stage but still small. It matters now because firms are facing a real accountant shortage, and the grunt work of 1040 prep is the easiest slice to hand to software.

What makes Magnetic different from the wave of tax chatbots is where it operates. Most AI tax tools sit next to your workflow: you ask a question, you get an answer, and you still type everything yourself. Magnetic sits inside the workflow and does the typing. That is a narrower promise, but it targets the single biggest time sink in a firm’s season, and it is the kind of task that is dull enough that automating it is an easy sell to overworked staff.

What Are Magnetic’s Key Features?

Computer-use data entry into your existing software

This is the core idea. Instead of exporting a file for you to import, Magnetic’s agent operates your tax software the way a junior preparer would, clicking through UltraTax, Drake, or ProConnect and entering fields directly. The benefit is that it preserves your file history, follows your formatting conventions, and produces a return that looks like your own team made it. You do not change tools or migrate data. Magnetic works inside the stack you already run.

Document reading with vision models plus OCR

Magnetic combines visual language models with OCR to handle the ugly reality of client paperwork. It reads IRS forms, brokerage PDFs, spreadsheets, and even handwritten notes. The company cites 90%-plus field-level accuracy on extraction, which is strong but not perfect, so a human still reviews the return. The point is not zero-touch filing. It is cutting the mechanical typing down to a review pass.

Reasoning over complex returns

Basic scanning tools choke on anything nuanced. Magnetic claims its agent can reason over harder scenarios, reference the tax code, and run calculations, for example allocating tax-exempt interest across states for apportionment. That is the kind of edge case that usually forces a preparer to stop and think. How well it holds up across every state and every oddball 1040 is the open question, and it is why review remains mandatory.

Accuracy guarantee

Magnetic launched an end-to-end tax agent with an accuracy guarantee attached to all returns. For a firm handing client work to software, that guarantee is doing a lot of trust-building. It signals the team is willing to stand behind the output rather than hide behind a beta label, which is more than most early AI tax tools offer.

How Much Does Magnetic Cost?

Magnetic does not publish pricing. There is no free plan, no self-serve tier, and no public price list, so you book a call and get a firm-specific quote. That is standard for B2B software aimed at accounting firms, where deals are usually sized to return volume rather than a flat monthly seat.

For context on the market, published automated-prep pricing tends to land in a band of roughly $20 to $40 per return. Competitors set very different anchors. TaxGPT, an AI research and review assistant, starts at $149 per user per month. CPA Pilot starts as low as $19 per month for solo preparers. Black Ore, the closest head-to-head competitor on 1040 automation, is enterprise-quoted only, just like Magnetic.

The honest takeaway: you cannot compare Magnetic on a sticker price, and that opacity is a real friction for smaller firms that want to know the number before a sales call. If your firm processes hundreds of 1040s a season, a quote is worth getting. If you file a few dozen, the math may not clear. The value case rests on labor. If Magnetic saves a preparer even twenty minutes per return across a few hundred returns, the hours add up fast, and that is the calculation the sales team will walk you through.

One more thing to weigh: because pricing scales with volume, Magnetic is easiest to justify for firms with a predictable, repeatable 1040 book. Seasonal spikes are exactly when the data-entry bottleneck bites hardest, so the tool is arguably most valuable in the crunch of February through April. Just go in knowing you will need to model your own return volume against the quote rather than reading a number off a page.

Who is Magnetic Best For?

Use Magnetic if you run a CPA firm that prepares a high volume of individual returns and you are losing billable hours to data entry. The direct-into-your-software approach means you keep UltraTax, Drake, or ProConnect and your existing process, which lowers the switching cost dramatically. Firms fighting the staffing crunch, where you cannot hire enough preparers, are the sweet spot.

Skip Magnetic if you are a solo preparer with a light 1040 load, since a quote-based enterprise tool will likely be overkill and a cheaper assistant like CPA Pilot fits better. Skip it too if you need heavy business-return automation beyond 1040s, or if you are not willing to keep a human in the review loop. This is a force multiplier for your team, not a replacement for a preparer’s judgment.

It also fits firms that are already comfortable with UltraTax, Drake, or ProConnect and have no appetite to rip out their software. Because Magnetic drives those tools rather than replacing them, adoption is mostly a training and trust exercise, not a migration project. Firms that have been burned by a big platform switch tend to appreciate that. If your staff can review a machine-drafted return the same way they review a junior’s work, you will get the most out of it.

Best Magnetic Alternatives

Black Ore

Black Ore is the most direct rival. It is an AI tax automation platform also focused on 1040 preparation for CPA firms, and like Magnetic it is enterprise-quoted with no public pricing. Black Ore is generally aimed at larger firms and is more established, so if you want a bigger vendor with a longer track record, it is the safer name. Magnetic’s pitch against it is the computer-use approach and the accuracy guarantee.

TaxGPT

TaxGPT solves a different slice of the problem. It is an AI research assistant that answers tax questions with sourced citations and reviews completed returns for errors and missed deductions, rather than doing the data entry itself. It starts at $149 per user per month. Pair it with a preparer for research and review, but do not expect it to type your returns for you the way Magnetic does.

CPA Pilot

CPA Pilot is the budget option, starting around $19 per month with rollover credits and team sharing. It is built for solo CPAs and small firms that want an affordable AI assistant for research and drafting. It does not automate full 1040 prep into your software, so it is a lighter, cheaper tool for practitioners who are not ready for a quote-based platform.

Final Verdict: Is Magnetic Worth It?

Magnetic is a sharp, focused product with a founding team that has clearly done this before. The computer-use approach is smart because it removes the biggest objection to AI tax software: nobody wants to change tools mid-season. Entering data straight into UltraTax, Drake, or ProConnect, backed by an accuracy guarantee, is exactly what a busy firm wants to hear. That is why it earns a 7.3.

The rating is not higher because Magnetic is still early. A two-person team, roughly $220K in revenue, and no public pricing mean you are betting on a young company, and the 90%-plus accuracy figure still requires a human review pass on every return. For high-volume CPA firms feeling the staffing squeeze, it is worth a demo and a quote. For solo preparers or anyone wanting a fixed price up front, wait or look at a cheaper assistant first.