LienDeadline vs SunRay
Pick SunRay if you need documents actually prepared, mailed and tracked to recipients, and you want a service desk doing it. Pick LienDeadline if the sending is already handled and what you need is the dates, attached to your invoices, monitored automatically.
Choose SunRay
You need notices to physically go out. SunRay prepares and serves notice to owner, preliminary notices and bond claims, with USPS tracking on what it sends. If your problem is execution rather than knowing the date, that is the purchase.
Choose LienDeadline
Your documents already go out reliably, through your own process or your counsel. The gap is upstream: knowing which of several hundred live invoices is approaching a notice window, without anyone rekeying invoice data to find out.
Side by side
| Capability | LienDeadline | SunRay |
|---|---|---|
| Free deadline calculator | YesFree calculations covering all 50 states plus DC. | YesSunRay publishes a free 50-state deadline calculator on its own subdomain. |
| Prepares and mails notices to recipients | NoGenerates documents. Sending and serving is yours. | YesNotice to owner, preliminary notices and bond claims are prepared and served for you. |
| Proof of delivery on what was sent | NoNot a mailing service, so there is nothing to track. | YesSunRay advertises live USPS tracking on documents it sends. |
| Deadlines attached to invoices and monitored | YesProtected items, saved projects, deadline history and email reminders. | PartialOrdering and reporting exist around jobs sent through the service. |
| Automatic accounting sync on every plan | YesQuickBooks sync on Free Connected and above; Procore and API on Automation. | PartialSunRay advertises API integration and Excel order upload rather than a free accounting sync. |
| Published subscription price | Yes$0, $49 and $149 per month, listed publicly. | NoPricing is not published as a subscription; it is quoted per service. |
| Best for | YesCredit desks tracking many invoices where sending is already solved. | YesCompanies that need notices actually served, with proof, across states. |
Where SunRay is stronger
SunRay does the sending, and does it at scale. Notice to owner, preliminary notices and bond claims are prepared and served, with live USPS tracking on what goes out. If your risk is that a notice never physically left the building, a calculator does not fix that and a service does.
It is built around volume order entry. SunRay advertises Excel order upload rather than form-by-form data entry, plus API integration and custom reporting, which suits a company pushing large batches of notices through a single desk.
The free deadline calculator is a genuine public tool covering all 50 states, not a lead-capture stub, and it is a reasonable thing to use whether or not you buy anything.
There is also a track record to point at. SunRay advertises more than a million notices sent through its system, which is the kind of operational scale a small software tool cannot claim.
Where LienDeadline is different
LienDeadline has no mailing desk, deliberately. It calculates deadlines and generates documents; serving them stays with you or your counsel. That makes it the wrong product if your problem is execution, and the right one if execution is already handled and visibility is not.
The monitoring runs against your live receivables rather than against jobs you have already decided to act on. Invoices sync automatically from QuickBooks on every plan, deadlines are calculated on them, and reminders fire before the window closes. The invoice you never sent to a service is exactly the one that lapses.
Pricing is flat, published and per workspace: $0, $49 or $149 a month, with annual rates lower and five internal users on the Automation plan. Service pricing is necessarily quoted per document and per state, which is appropriate for a service and harder to budget against as a fixed monthly line.
Results are dated calculated estimates from a quarterly-reviewed rule set, and the product says so plainly. It is not legal advice and it is not a substitute for counsel on a contested claim.
The economics also differ by shape. A notice service is priced per document and per state, so the cost scales with how much you send. LienDeadline is priced per workspace: 100 active protected items and 1,000 import, API and Zapier events a month on the Automation plan, shared across five internal users. Those are limits on how much you can watch, not on how much you can send, because sending is not part of it.
You can run a deadline calculation without an account, or read the state lien guides for all 51 jurisdictions.
Pricing, as published
LienDeadline
- Free Connected: $0/month. Automatic QuickBooks sync, 3 protected items per month, no sync-back or API key access.
- Tracker: $49/month, or $39/month billed annually. 10 protected items per month, saved projects, email reminders, 2 internal users.
- Automation: $149/month, or $129/month billed annually. QuickBooks and Procore sync, sync-back, API access, 100 active protected items, 1,000 events per month, 5 internal users.
- Enterprise: custom, contact sales.
SunRay
- SunRay does not publish a subscription price on its homepage.
- Services are quoted per document and per state; the site directs you to its pricing and contact pages.
- The 50-state deadline calculator is free to use.
Questions people actually ask
- Does LienDeadline send notices for me?
- No. LienDeadline calculates deadlines, tracks them against invoices and generates documents. Serving and filing stay with you or your counsel. If you need documents mailed and tracked, a notice service such as SunRay is doing something LienDeadline does not.
- Can I use both?
- Yes, and some teams do. Deadlines are calculated and monitored in LienDeadline, and when a notice actually needs to go out it is sent through a service that handles delivery and proof.
- Is SunRay's calculator as good as yours?
- Both are free and both cover all 50 states. The difference is not the single calculation, it is what happens afterwards: LienDeadline stores the result against an invoice, syncs invoices from accounting automatically, and sends reminders before the deadline.
- What happens when I have hundreds of open invoices?
- That is the case LienDeadline is built for. Invoices sync automatically from QuickBooks on every plan, deadlines are calculated against them without anyone rekeying data, and reminders fire before a window closes. A service model asks you to decide which jobs to send in; a monitoring model watches everything already on your ledger.
- Is any of this legal advice?
- No. LienDeadline provides calculated deadline estimates from published state rules, reviewed quarterly. Statutes change and facts vary. Verify critical deadlines with counsel.
Facts checked 18 August 2026. SunRay’s features and pricing come from their public site, sunraynotice.com, and may have changed since. SunRay is a trademark of its owner and is named here for identification only.
LienDeadline provides calculated deadline estimates and document tooling. It is not legal advice and not a law firm. Statutes change and facts vary between projects. Verify critical deadlines with counsel before relying on them.