What is a vesting cliff?

A cliff is an initial period during which no shares vest at all. If you leave before the cliff date, you keep nothing; on the cliff date a lump of shares vests at once, after which vesting continues on the regular interval.

How does a standard 4-year, 1-year cliff schedule work?

Over 48 months, nothing vests for the first 12 months, then 25 percent vests on the one-year cliff date. The remaining 75 percent vests in equal monthly increments over the following 36 months.

What is acceleration?

Acceleration speeds up vesting on a trigger event. Single-trigger vests on a change of control alone; double-trigger requires both a change of control and an involuntary termination, which is the more founder- and acquirer-friendly standard.

How are the monthly vesting amounts calculated?

After the cliff vests its share, the remaining unvested shares are divided evenly across the remaining vesting periods. The builder rounds each period and pushes any rounding remainder into the final period so the totals add up exactly.

Does this tool give legal or tax advice?

No. It produces a clear schedule for discussion and documentation only. Actual grants should be reviewed by a lawyer and accountant, since vesting interacts with 83(b) elections, option exercise, and local tax rules.

Equity Vesting Schedule Builder

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A clear vesting schedule from the grant terms

Equity grants are easy to describe in words and easy to get wrong in numbers. This builder takes the total shares, vesting length, cliff, and interval and produces both a plain summary and a month-by-month table that shows precisely how many shares vest at each milestone, so the totals always reconcile to the full grant.

How it works

The grant has a total share count vesting over a number of months, with an initial cliff. On the cliff date, the fraction of time elapsed at the cliff vests in a single block — for a 12-month cliff on a 48-month grant that is 12/48, or 25 percent. After the cliff, the remaining shares are split evenly across the remaining vesting periods (monthly, quarterly, or annually). Because integer share counts rarely divide evenly, each period is rounded and the leftover remainder is added to the final period, guaranteeing the column sums exactly to the total grant. Acceleration clauses are recorded in the summary so the document captures what happens on a change of control.

Tips and example

The market-standard founder and early-employee schedule is 4 years, 1-year cliff, monthly — try those defaults first.
A cliff longer than the total vesting length makes no sense; keep the cliff shorter than the term.
Double-trigger acceleration is the more common and acquirer-friendly choice; single-trigger can complicate fundraising.
Always reconcile the final cumulative figure against the total grant — this tool guarantees they match.