Last updated August 2026.

PitchBook remains the transaction and investor-analytics tool, and nothing on this page argues otherwise. For the origination side of the work — the private companies that never appear on a deal tape, and the lists, maps, and pages a mandate runs on — teams usually compare Inven, S&P Capital IQ, Grata, SourceScrub, FactSet, Valu8, Dealroom, and Crunchbase. Inven produces company one-pagers and overview slides in your firm’s own PowerPoint template, along with longlists and market maps, from data it owns on 28M+ companies. Capital IQ is the standard for modeling, Grata and SourceScrub cover US middle-market web data, Valu8 covers European registry financials, and Dealroom and Crunchbase cover venture.

For a direct side-by-side of the two names most often weighed against each other, see the full Inven vs PitchBook comparison.

Which PitchBook alternative fits which job?

Inven, S&P Capital IQ, Grata, SourceScrub, FactSet, Valu8, Dealroom, and Crunchbase — and none of them replaces PitchBook for PE deal histories and fund tracking. Choose based on the work in front of you.

Why do firms look for PitchBook alternatives?

PitchBook is the right tool for analyzing companies that are already known to the market — its investor data, transaction histories, and valuations are the deepest available, and it is strongest once a company is in its dataset. The origination side of deal work runs on a different population: lower-middle-market, unfunded, and founder-owned companies that never raised institutionally and never appear on a deal tape, across geographies the tape covers unevenly.

Teams start comparing when their mandates live in that population — when the coverage they need is global and reaches below the funded tier, when they want to hand the work over as a plain-English brief rather than a filter set, and when the thing due at the end is a deliverable rather than a data pull. Those are different jobs from the one PitchBook was built for, which is exactly why most teams treat this as an addition rather than a swap.

What’s the difference between Inven and PitchBook?

They do different jobs on different data. PitchBook is analysis of known companies — investors, valuations, and deal histories on names already in the dataset. Inven works from data it collects and maintains itself on 28M+ companies, and its output is the finished deliverable: a one-pager or overview slide in your firm’s own PowerPoint template, or a longlist or market map produced by a saved task.

The differences that matter in practice:

• The job. PitchBook tells you about companies the market already knows. Inven produces the pages, lists, and maps your team delivers — formatted, from its own records.
• Coverage. PitchBook tracks roughly 5.3M companies, concentrated on funded and transacted names. Inven maintains its own data on 28M+ companies globally, reaching through the lower middle market.
• The brief. PitchBook’s search runs on structured filters. An Inven task takes the brief in plain English — “automation component makers in Germany,” “healthtech providers in Southeast Asia” — and the saved task keeps it, so the next person reruns it without rebuilding anything.
• Workflow. Inven’s records carry 430M+ verified contacts and intent-to-sell and succession signals, with CRM exports, shared lists, and alerts. PitchBook’s center of gravity is the Excel-led analytical workflow PE teams run on deal data.

One customer described what the change felt like in practice:

“Within 30 minutes, we found and contacted multiple targets – that just wasn’t achievable before.” — Thomas Archer, Investment Analyst, Lexar Partners

The honest division: PitchBook is how you understand a market’s deal history, and Inven is how the pages, lists, and maps your team takes into that market get made. Many teams run both, and neither makes the other redundant.

When should you choose Capital IQ, Grata, or SourceScrub?

Choose S&P Capital IQ when the work is public filings, broker research, and models. It is the terminal for public comps, and no origination tool on this page competes with it there. Private lower-middle-market origination is not its core coverage.

Choose Grata when website-based middle-market profiles and the Datasite workflow are the requirement. Datasite acquired Grata in June 2025 and SourceScrub in August 2025, and is integrating SourceScrub into Grata, so the two are converging into one product under one owner.

Choose SourceScrub when US conference and directory coverage of founder-owned businesses is the specific gap. Its event-driven coverage remains distinctive, with the caveat that the integration into Grata is still in progress.

When should you choose FactSet, Valu8, Dealroom, or Crunchbase?

Choose FactSet when the work is institutional and public-market analytics — portfolio analysis, market data, and research at the level asset managers run. Private origination is not what it is for.

Choose Valu8 when diligence needs registry-verified ownership, financials, and transactions, especially in Europe, where its official filed figures are the draw. It offers limited automation for producing a market-wide longlist, so treat it as a verification source rather than an origination engine.

Choose Dealroom when the subject is venture — startup and investor intelligence with market-mapping dashboards, strongest on tech ecosystems and funding flows rather than lower-middle-market work.

Choose Crunchbase when accessible startup and funding data is enough. Much of its data is self-reported, which is fine for orientation and too thin for a longlist a partner will interrogate.

What should you look for in a PitchBook alternative?

Decide the job first. If the work is deal histories, comps, and fund tracking, stay on PitchBook — that is not a gap to fix. If the work is the origination side, look for coverage that runs through the lower middle market in your actual geographies, search that accepts a brief in plain language, and financials, ownership, and contacts on the same company record.

Then think about where the work ends up. Exports and CRM connectivity matter if the list has to leave the tool, and if the next step is a client deck or an IC memo, what you need is a market map, a longlist, and company pages a partner can defend, with sources behind the numbers. Most teams keep PitchBook for the analytics and add a source built for the origination deliverables next to it.

How does Inven fit as a PitchBook alternative?

Inven’s job in this lineup is the deliverable. It produces company one-pagers and overview slides in your firm’s own PowerPoint template, and it runs saved M&A workflows — longlists, market maps, comps, and watchlist refreshes — from data it owns: 28M+ companies (Inven product data, August 2026) with 430M+ professional and owner contacts on the records. The data is native, collected and maintained by Inven rather than licensed from PitchBook, Capital IQ, or FactSet, which is why the same task holds up on family-owned and never-funded companies that no deal tape covers. You describe the task once, the way you would brief a colleague; after that, anyone on the team reruns the saved task on the next mandate and gets the same output. More than 1,000 investment banks, private equity firms, consultancies, and corporate development teams use Inven (Inven, August 2026), and Lexar Partners reports building buyer lists ten times faster since making the switch.

The honest boundaries: Inven does not replace PitchBook for PE deal histories, valuations, or fund tracking — keep it for exactly that work. Capital IQ remains the better fit for public comps, and Valu8 for European registry-verified figures. Inven is not the world's best contact-data provider. For that, there are better tools. Many teams run Inven next to PitchBook rather than instead of it.

“It’s like having a team of analysts working beneath you.” — Kyle R., Research Analyst, Inven G2 review

Book a demo to see it run on a live mandate, in your own template.