Crunchbase vs PitchBook (vs CB Insights, Dealroom and Tracxn): Startup Databases Compared for Founders in 2026

Pricing, plan details and policies below were checked in July 2026 against each company's published pages, which are linked in the sources at the end. These offerings change over time, so see each provider's site for current details.

Subscription research databases are the reference layer of the startup world. When someone asks who led a round, which funds are active in climate, or what a firm has funded since January, the answer almost always comes from one of five platforms: Crunchbase, PitchBook, CB Insights, Dealroom or Tracxn. This guide compares them on the dimensions founders ask us about most: what each is best at, what it costs, how contact data works, and what the export policies mean for a fundraise. At the end we cover a second tier of founder-priced subscription databases, and explain where a one-time data file fits alongside any of them.

One framing note before the details: per the published plans linked below, as of July 2026, every platform here meters exports and contact access in some form. That is a coherent choice, the subscription is the product and the meters protect it, and it funds the continuous updating that makes these platforms valuable. We flag the meters because they matter to one specific reader: a founder whose next step is sending hundreds of emails rather than reading hundreds of profiles.

Crunchbase: the founder-accessible standard

Crunchbase is where most founders start, for good reason. It tracks millions of company profiles, indexes new funding rounds remarkably fast, and its investor discovery filters (stage, location, investor type, recent activity) are among the best available at any price. As a research tool it is superb, and many of our own customers keep a subscription running alongside our database.

Pricing, as of July 2026: a free tier for basic lookups; Pro at $49 per user per month billed annually ($588 per year) or $99 per month on the month-to-month plan; Business at about $199 per user per month billed annually (crunchbase.com pricing pages and published tier comparisons).

Contact data works as a metered add-on on the Business tier: 10 free contacts per month, then packages of 100 contacts for $29 per month, 250 for $59 per month, or 500 for $99 per month, unlocked 10 at a time (source: Crunchbase help center, "How do I get contact data"). Crunchbase assigns its contacts machine-learning confidence scores, and its documentation states that Crunchbase "is not ultimately responsible or liable for the accuracy of contact information" (source: Crunchbase help center, Contact Level Data). That is a reasonable disclaimer for a contact layer scored by machine-learning confidence models at their scale, and it tells a founder the right thing to do: treat those contacts as leads to confirm rather than a send-ready list. Contact verification is the part of the stack we chose to build our whole product around, with the methodology published in full.

Exports: Pro allows roughly 2,000 rows per month (1,000 per single export) and Business 5,000 per month, with contact exports limited to contacts you have unlocked (source: Crunchbase help center, Export to CSV).

Choose Crunchbase if you want the strongest research-per-dollar in the market: funding news, discovery, and company intelligence at a price a founder can expense without a board conversation.

PitchBook: the institutional benchmark

PitchBook is what research desks at funds, banks and corporate development teams run, and it earns that position. Coverage depth on deals, funds, LPs and valuations goes far beyond what founder-priced tools attempt, and its 450,000+ investor profiles include contact information (pitchbook.com, as of July 2026).

Pricing is quoted through sales on annual contracts. PitchBook does not publish rates; third-party benchmark estimates place typical single-seat contracts between $12,000 and $40,000 per year, with a commonly cited median around $30,000 (easyvc.ai and costbench.com, as of July 2026). These are estimates; actual pricing is quoted by PitchBook and varies.

Choose PitchBook if you need institutional-grade depth, your organization will use it beyond a single raise, and the contract size fits your budget. For a founder raising one round, it is more platform than the job requires, which is a statement about fit rather than quality.

CB Insights: intelligence for strategy teams

CB Insights specializes in market intelligence: technology landscapes, competitive maps, and research briefs that strategy and corporate innovation teams rely on. Its analyst-style outputs are a different product category from a raw database, and teams that need them tend to love them.

Pricing is quote-only; third-party benchmark estimates place entry contracts around $40,000 to $60,000 per year with a median near $47,000 (easyvc.ai and costbench.com, as of July 2026; actual pricing is quoted by CB Insights and varies), and its published standard terms include a 90-day cancellation notice period (cbinsights.com terms, as of July 2026; individual contracts may differ). Executive contact data exists on some plans; it is a secondary feature rather than the product's center of gravity.

Choose CB Insights if the job is market strategy and technology scouting at an organization with an enterprise research budget.

Dealroom: the European view

Dealroom.co is the strongest European lens in the group, widely used by EU governments and ecosystems, with transparent pricing that starts around EUR 12,600 to 17,000 per year on a three-seat minimum (dealroom.co pricing page, as of July 2026). Business email access is credit-metered by plan, with 3,000 credits on Premium Plus (knowledge.dealroom.co, as of July 2026).

Choose Dealroom if your raise or your market is Europe-centered and you want ecosystem-level data with published pricing.

Tracxn: the budget research option

Tracxn offers a free tier and a premium plan that third-party listings place around $500 per month (saasworthy.com and getapp.com, as of July 2026; Tracxn quotes pricing directly), making it the least expensive curated research platform in this tier. It states that personal emails are available "in many cases" (their published materials, as of July 2026). Tracxn appears among the startup-research resources listed in Stanford's library research guide (libguides.stanford.edu, as of July 2026), which says something about its research value per dollar.

Choose Tracxn if you want curated company research meaningfully below Crunchbase Business pricing.

The founder-priced sub-tier: Angel Match and InvestorHunt

Below the research platforms sits a group of founder-priced subscription contact databases. Angel Match ($59 to $349 per month, angelmatch.io pricing page as of July 2026) advertises 125,000+ angels and VCs with 99,000+ verified emails; its plans cap exports at between 100 and 1,200 rows per month. InvestorHunt ($57 to $297 per month, investorhunt.co as of July 2026) advertises 110,000+ investors with verified badges. Both describe their emails as verified; as of July 2026 we did not find a published methodology on either site describing how that verification is performed. We publish ours in full, and we would welcome the same from every vendor in the market, because it would make founders' choices easier everywhere.

These tools are priced for founders and organized around investor data specifically, which the big research platforms are only partly built for. If a monthly subscription with a rolling export allowance matches how you work, they are worth evaluating directly against their published plans.

What this category means for a fundraise

A pattern runs through every tool above: research access is generous, contact access is metered. Plan-level export caps, per-contact unlock packages, credit systems and daily limits all serve the same sensible goal of protecting a subscription business. For research, that model is invisible. For outreach at fundraise scale, contacting hundreds of firms over a quarter, the meters become the main constraint, and the practical workflow most founders land on is: research on a subscription platform, then source and verify the contact layer separately.

That second step is the job a one-time data file exists for. Our file covers active US VC firms with named decision-makers and personal work emails that passed SMTP verification with catch-all domains excluded, plus a second pass with an independent verification tool, delivered as a single Excel file you own outright for $497. The full methodology is published on our verification page. Research platforms answer "who should I talk to"; an owned, verified contact file answers "how do I reach them, starting this morning."

The short version

Choose Crunchbase for the best founder-priced research platform. Choose PitchBook or CB Insights when institutional depth justifies an enterprise contract. Choose Dealroom for a European center of gravity, and Tracxn for curated research on a smaller budget. Evaluate Angel Match or InvestorHunt if a monthly contact subscription with export allowances fits your workflow.

The bottom line for a founder raising now

Every platform in this guide will help you understand the market. The raise itself is won in inboxes, and the contact layer is the one part of the stack that every subscription in this guide meters, per their published plans. That is why, for a founder actively raising, the strongest setup on this page is whichever research tool fits your budget plus the contact file you own outright: every US firm with a named decision-maker and a personal work email that passed SMTP verification with catch-all domains excluded and a second independent check, $497 once, yours forever. See the database and read the full verification methodology. Research tells you who to talk to; our file lets you start the conversation this morning.

Sources: crunchbase.com pricing pages; support.crunchbase.com (Contact Level Data; How do I get contact data; Export to CSV; Investors Filters); pitchbook.com; easyvc.ai and costbench.com pricing benchmarks (PitchBook, CB Insights); cbinsights.com; dealroom.co pricing; knowledge.dealroom.co (business emails); saasworthy.com and getapp.com (Tracxn); libguides.stanford.edu (Tracxn); angelmatch.io pricing; investorhunt.co pricing. All checked July 2026. Offerings change over time; see each provider's site for current details.

More in this series: Investor Databases for Startups in 2026: The 5 Types Explained (and How to Pick One) · The 10 Best Investor Databases for Startup Founders in 2026 (Honestly Compared) · The Best Crunchbase Alternative for Fundraising: InvestorLists.vc vs Crunchbase (2026) · A Cheaper PitchBook Alternative for Founders: InvestorLists.vc vs PitchBook (2026) · An Angel Match Alternative Without the Subscription: InvestorLists.vc vs Angel Match (2026).

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