Steelray Delay Analyzer vs Nodes & Links

• Delay method: Steelray identifies every change between successive updates, applies the progress-related changes to the schedule at the start of the period and records each one's effect on the finish date, then applies the schedule revisions and records theirs; it says it calculates concurrent and but-for delays. Nodes & Links' Delay Navigator inspects a chosen activity and tracks back through its predecessors to the start delay, shows the impact on later activities (including added timespan and non-working days) and filters by activity codes to rank which suppliers, activities or contractors contribute most delay. The Nodes & Links pages we read do not name an AACE method; its homepage says answers are grounded in auditable models compatible with P6 principles.
• Inputs: Steelray runs on any number of P6 XER update exports, analysed to the project finish or any activity or milestone you select. Nodes & Links says schedule versions and key project documents are pulled in and kept in sync through APIs and integrations without manual uploads, and its education hub has a video on uploading schedules.
• Outputs: Steelray lists an Overview Report of delays and accelerations per period split into progress and revisions, Period Detail Reports with a day-by-day impact graph, schedule revision summaries with float before and after, a contemporaneous critical path for each window, a progress-only schedule export, longest-path change analysis, a near-critical threshold, an Excel export, a 3D Gantt you can drag through time hour by hour with delay overlays, a timeline view and a network diagram. Nodes & Links lists side-by-side critical-path comparisons in an interactive Gantt that can be exported, Schedule Integrity with 14 DCMA metrics plus 29 proprietary checks, QSRA risk analysis it says learns from historical performance, EVM and resources, portfolio views, AI reports and an AI agent that answers in text, graphs or tables.
• Schedule quality checks: Nodes & Links includes them in the platform. Steelray sells them separately in Analyzer for P6 (Steelray and DCMA checks) and Project Analyzer for MS Project.
• Where it runs: Steelray Delay Analyzer is desktop software. Nodes & Links is a web platform; its Security FAQ says it runs on AWS with logical tenant isolation, hosts data by default in the USA, EU, UK or Australia, holds ISO 27001 and UK Cyber Essentials and encrypts data at rest with AES-256, and the homepage says customer data never touches public LLMs (vendor statements).
• Who it is pitched at: Steelray names scheduling professionals and says delay experts and expert witnesses in claims disputes choose it (vendor claim). Nodes & Links names schedulers and planners, project controls, project managers and executives at general contractors, owners and operators, PMOs and consultancies, and pitches the Delay Navigator at planners and consultants, including gathering evidence for disputes.
• AI tags: Steelray stays Not AI-first (its pages do not describe AI). Nodes & Links stays AI-first.
• Pricing (checked Oct 20, 2026): Steelray publishes $3,990 per user per year or $390 per user per month, both auto-renewing, with unlimited projects, tech support and updates included. Nodes & Links publishes no prices; /pricing redirects to the homepage, whose calls to action are Talk to your project, Get a Demo and See it on my project.
• Not used here: Nodes & Links' case-study return, hours-saved and speed figures, its no-hallucination claims, star-rated customer quotes and "trusted by" line, and Steelray's "gold standard" and time-saved claims. Neither tool has been tested by Means & Methods Lab.

Paraphrased from the sources listed above. Vendor claims are reported as claims.