Quit one day before your vesting cliff and you walk away with zero equity. Quit one day after and 25% lands in your pocket. The whole gap is a single calendar date, and almost nothing in your life is set up to remind you of it.
Done in seconds. No sign-up required.
One day's difference. A four-year difference in outcome.
of your equity vests if you leave the day before your cliff
Standard 4-year / 1-year cliff schedule
of the full grant vests at once on the cliff date itself
Industry standard since the early 2000s
is the canonical schedule at startups: 4-year vest, 1-year cliff
Carta equity benchmarking data
The dollar value depends on your grant and the company's stage. A 0.1% grant at a $500M valuation puts $125,000 on the cliff. A senior hire's grant can put several times that. Either way, the question is whether you remember the date.
Almost every other career milestone has a system attached. Pay day fires automatically. Benefits renew on a calendar. Performance reviews land in your inbox. The vesting cliff is one of the few financial dates where you are the only system tracking it.
It is also a long-range date. A 1-year cliff means tracking something for 365 days from the day you signed an offer letter you have probably not opened since. By the time the date is close, the original document is buried in your email and the date has drifted out of memory.
And nobody else is incentivized to remind you. Your employer does not gain from you crossing the cliff. Your HR system does not flag it. Your calendar only knows what you put into it. If you didn't add it on day one, it isn't there.
A good cliff reminder fires well before the date itself. You want time to look at your situation, not a notification on the morning of. Email the day before is too late for any of the decisions a cliff might trigger.
Open your offer letter or grant agreement. Look for "vesting commencement date" and the cliff length. Add them together. Full date-calculation guide.
Enter the cliff date and your email. You'll get advance notice 7, 3, and 1 day before — plus a same-day email so you can plan around it.
If the cliff date passes and you haven't marked it done, you get a few short follow-up emails. Quiet but persistent. The date is too important to disappear after one ping.
Read these before you make any career move around your cliff.
If your last day of employment lands before the cliff, you forfeit the entire first chunk. Even one day matters. Notice periods complicate the math.
What you actually lose →"4 years with a 1-year cliff" is the canonical phrase, but the mechanics matter. 25% at the cliff, then monthly or quarterly after — which one you have changes how your remaining grant unlocks.
How the schedule works →Cliff dates are calculated from your vesting commencement date — which may not be your hire date. Off-by-one mistakes are common around weekends, Feb 29, and grant amendments.
How to calculate yours →The full set of related guides — start with the one closest to your situation.
A vesting cliff is the minimum length of time you must stay at a company before any of your equity grant vests. The most common version is a 1-year cliff on a 4-year grant: if you leave before the 1-year mark, you get zero. If you stay one day past it, 25% vests at once.
Your cliff date is your vesting commencement date plus the cliff length. The vesting commencement date is usually your hire date or grant date, whichever the offer letter specifies. For a 1-year cliff starting June 15, 2025, your cliff lands on June 15, 2026.
Nothing reminds you. The date is buried in an offer letter you signed months or years ago. Your employer has no incentive to flag it. It does not appear in your inbox, your calendar, or your HR dashboard. You have to track it yourself or it slips by.
You forfeit the entire grant. Standard cliff vesting is all-or-nothing for that first chunk. Quitting on the cliff date itself usually still counts as vested, but quitting one day before it walks back everything you would have earned at the cliff. See the full breakdown on the consequences page.
Set it at least 30 days before the date so you have time to negotiate a counter-offer, time a job change, or simply make sure your final day of employment falls on the right side of the cliff. A reminder one week out is too late for most planning.
Yes. You set whatever date you need. The cliff length and grant structure are between you and your employer — the reminder fires on the date you choose. Some 401(k) plans use 3-year cliffs, some startup grants use 6-month or 18-month cliffs. All of them work the same way for reminder purposes.
It depends on whether your last day of employment falls before or after the cliff. If you give notice 14 days before your cliff, your last day lands on the cliff itself — generally vested. If you give notice 15 days before, your last day is one day short. Confirm the math with your offer letter and HR before you submit notice.
Free vesting cliff reminder by email. No account, no app. You'll get notified before your cliff date, with follow-ups if you don't act on it.
Set My Vesting Cliff ReminderLast modified: