Last updated August 2026.

PitchBook tells you what has already happened in private markets: who bought what, at what multiple, out of which fund. Inven works on the part of the market that hasn't happened yet, the private companies with no financing history and no deal record, and turns a plain-language brief into a target list and then into one-pagers or overview slides in your firm's template. These are different jobs. Most teams that buy Inven keep PitchBook, because a sourcing engine and a deal workbench don't compete for the same seat.

How do Inven and PitchBook compare?

The practical test is what you need to produce next. If the next output is a deal page, a fund return, or a comps file in Excel, that work lives in PitchBook. If the next output is a longlist of companies nobody has named yet, followed by a one-pager or a market landscape, that work lives in Inven. There is also a shorter side-by-side at Inven vs PitchBook if you want the condensed version.

Read the coverage numbers with the use case in mind. PitchBook's roughly 5.3 million companies skew toward businesses that have raised capital or traded, because that is what its research model is built to document. Inven's 28M+ skews the other way, toward companies that have done neither, because that is where sourcing work actually happens.

When should you keep PitchBook?

Keep PitchBook whenever the question is about the record. Founded in 2007 and acquired by Morningstar in 2016, it has spent nearly two decades documenting deals, valuations, investor track records, and fund performance, and it remains the reference for that material. If you are benchmarking a fund, pulling precedent transactions, checking who backed a competitor, or building a comps set in the Excel plugin, PitchBook is the right tool and Inven does not replace it.

Where PitchBook earns less of its keep is origination in founder-led, unfunded, or lower-middle-market segments. A company that has never raised a round or sold a stake has usually never entered a financing record, which means it has little reason to appear in a database organized around financings. That is a design choice, not a flaw, but it is the reason sourcing teams end up looking elsewhere for the front end of the funnel.

When should you choose Inven for deal sourcing?

Choose Inven when the market you are mapping is not already sitting in a deal database. A concrete pairing makes the split obvious: if the mandate is German automation companies under €50m in revenue that are still founder-owned, that population barely exists in a financing-based dataset, and Inven is built for exactly that search. If the mandate is every buyout a sponsor completed in 2024, that is documented deal history, and PitchBook answers it directly.

For the first kind of work, Inven pairs the search with 430M+ contacts so the list converts into outreach rather than stalling as a spreadsheet. More than 1,000 teams use it this way (Inven, August 2026), and a large share of them run PitchBook alongside it. One G2 reviewer, Kyle R., put the working experience simply: "It's like having a team of analysts working beneath you."

How does company coverage compare?

Inven's dataset covers 28M+ companies with a deliberate tilt toward private, lower-middle-market, and founder-led businesses. PitchBook's data covers roughly 5.3 million companies, concentrated where its analysts can verify deal and investor activity. The contact gap runs the same direction, 430M+ on Inven against 4M+ on PitchBook, as does conference coverage, with 50,000+ events tracked globally by Inven against 14,000+ across North America and Europe on PitchBook.

On financials, the trade-off is depth versus reach. PitchBook offers analyst-reviewed figures on the companies it covers. Inven added registry financials across 18 European markets in June 2026, including UK Companies House filings, which extends real revenue and profit data to companies no analyst has ever profiled. That is filed data at scale, not analyst-reviewed depth on every name, and it is worth knowing the difference before you cite a number in a memo.

The coverage gap is what G2 reviewers mention most. One investment banking customer wrote: "The best thing about Inven is its ability to find companies in niche areas that do not appear on platforms like PitchBook or with a general internet search. We also like the \"Intent to Sell\" feature."

What do Inven Workflows produce after the longlist?

PitchBook's output ends at a profile, a deal page, or an Excel export, and the analyst carries the material into PowerPoint by hand. Inven Workflows close that gap. You write the instructions once, attach your firm's PowerPoint template, and Inven generates one-pagers and overview slides directly from its own company data, along with target lists, comps tables, and market sizing. Because the underlying data is Inven's, the same workflow runs on any of the 28M+ companies in the platform, not just the ones a licensed feed happens to cover.

The scope is deliberately narrow. Inven will not write a CIM, a teaser, or a full pitch book; those documents carry judgment and positioning that belong to the deal team. What it removes is the formatting hours between a finished list and a presentable page. Thomas Archer at Lexar Partners described the effect after adopting Inven: "Within 30 minutes, we found and contacted multiple targets – that just wasn't achievable before."

How much do Inven and PitchBook cost?

Neither vendor publishes a list price, and both sell on a quote. PitchBook prices by seat license, and the number depends on your negotiation, team size, and modules. Inven packages by team size, with the CRM and the full contact database included rather than sold as add-ons, so the quote you get is closer to the price you pay.

Value for money comes up repeatedly in Inven's reviews. A Global Head of M&A wrote on G2: "Inven is perfect in that it has surprisingly fantastic depth, a very nice AI tool to refine your searches, and the right price point. Easy to use, and customer support was always there when I needed." The only way to compare real numbers is to get both quotes; you can book a demo to get Inven's.

Which other tools sit next to PitchBook?

If you are evaluating the sourcing category more broadly, Inven publishes the same comparison against Grata, which Datasite acquired in June 2025, against SourceScrub, updated August 2025, and against Gain.pro. For the workbench side of the stack, the best alternatives to PitchBook guide covers Capital IQ, FactSet, Valu8, Dealroom, and Crunchbase.

The fastest way to test whether Inven earns a place next to PitchBook is to run one live search on a market you know well. Book a demo and bring a real mandate.

Frequently asked questions

Is Inven a replacement for PitchBook?

No, and it is not positioned as one. Teams that cancel PitchBook after buying Inven are usually teams that were only using PitchBook for company discovery in the first place. If your firm relies on deal history, fund benchmarking, or the Excel plugin, keep both subscriptions and let each do its own job.

Does Inven license its data from PitchBook, Capital IQ, or FactSet?

No. Inven collects and owns its dataset natively. That matters for two reasons: coverage is not capped by what a third-party feed includes, and the slide and one-pager generation can draw on any company in the database without redistribution restrictions.

Can Inven write a CIM or a teaser?

No. Inven generates one-pagers, overview slides, target lists, comps, and market sizing, all in your firm's template. Marketing documents like CIMs, teasers, and full pitch books require deal-specific judgment and stay with the team.

How reliable are Inven's financials on small private companies?

For 18 European markets, including the UK via Companies House, Inven pulls figures straight from statutory registry filings, so the numbers are what the company filed rather than estimates. Filed accounts lag real time and are not analyst-adjusted, so treat them as a screening input and verify before they reach a committee paper.

What does Inven cost compared to PitchBook?

There is no published number on either side, so a direct comparison requires two quotes. The structural difference is what the quote includes: Inven bundles the CRM and 430M+ contacts into team-size packages, while PitchBook prices per seat with modules negotiated separately.

Who uses Inven alongside PitchBook?

Private equity funds, M&A advisors, and investment banks, more than 1,000 teams as of August 2026. The common pattern is Inven at the top of the funnel for building and contacting target lists, with PitchBook downstream for diligence, precedent transactions, and valuation work once a name is live.

Why does Inven surface companies that PitchBook doesn't have?

Because the two databases are built from different raw material. PitchBook documents companies through their financing and transaction events, so a business with neither tends to stay invisible to it. Inven builds profiles from the companies themselves, independent of deal activity, which is why founder-owned firms with no capital-markets history show up in its results.