Last updated August 2026.

SourceScrub is built around US conferences, trade directories, and founder-owned company lists. Datasite acquired it in August 2025 and is folding it into Grata, so it now lives inside the Datasite stack. Inven starts from the other end: you write a brief describing the kind of company you want, it screens a global universe of 28M+ private companies, and it turns the resulting list into one-pagers and slides. One is a coverage tool for a specific slice of the US market; the other is a screening and materials tool for whatever market the mandate points at. That framing, not the logo on the invoice, should drive the decision.

Two different routes to a target list

Both platforms exist to surface private companies you would not find on your own. The similarity ends there.

SourceScrub earns its keep through sources: it scrapes conference attendee lists, trade show exhibitors, association directories, and awards lists, then has humans verify the records. If you upload your own conference list, it processes it within 24 hours. The result is a well-verified picture of US founder-owned companies, roughly 17 million profiles deep, that skews toward businesses that show up at events.

Inven does not start from a source list. You describe the target in plain language, for example "family-owned industrial valve distributors in DACH with 20 to 200 employees," and it reads company websites and filings across its own data on 28M+ companies (Inven product data, August 2026) to build the longlist. That data is native, collected and owned by Inven rather than licensed from PitchBook, CIQ, or FactSet. From the longlist, saved workflows carry the work through to formatted output.

A standalone version of this table lives on the compare table page.

When should you keep SourceScrub?

Keep it when US conference and directory coverage is the actual job. If your sourcing motion is "who exhibited at the last three industry trade shows, and which of them are founder-owned," SourceScrub was built for exactly that question, and the human verification behind its records is genuinely useful there. If your firm already runs Datasite for data rooms, the integration into Grata means that coverage will sit next to your deal execution tools rather than in a separate login.

Where it fits less well is as a global or cross-border screen. Its sources are US events and US directories, so a European or Asian mandate leaves you searching a database that was never pointed at those markets. It also stops at the verified list: what happens to that list, the profiles, the tiering, the partner deck, is your analyst's problem in PowerPoint.

Users who work across both tools tend to notice the difference in daily handling too. As one reviewer put it: "Ease of use in Inven is definitely there compared to Grata and Sourcescrub."

What does Inven produce after the longlist?

This is the part of the comparison that has nothing to do with database size. Once Inven has screened a longlist, its Workflows take over: saved, repeatable M&A processes for enriching, tiering, and profiling the companies on the list. From there, company materials generation produces one-pagers, target lists, comp sets, and market maps as PowerPoint files in your firm's own template, so the output goes to a partner rather than back to an analyst for reformatting.

Be clear about the ceiling: Inven will not write a CIM, a teaser, or a full pitch book. It produces the screening and profiling layers of those documents, and the narrative sections remain your team's work.

A Director of Strategy reviewing on G2 described the search experience this way: "The Inven AI prompts make it feel like I'm working with a colleague rather than a database."

How do coverage and search compare?

The headline numbers are 17 million profiles for SourceScrub against 28M+ companies and 430M+ contacts for Inven, but the raw counts are the least interesting part. What matters is where each dataset looks and how you query it.

SourceScrub's coverage follows its sources, so it is deepest where US companies attend events and appear in directories. Inven's coverage follows registries and the open web, and since June 2026 it draws on official registry data in eighteen European markets, including UK Companies House. For a UK or continental buy-and-build, that means finding the companies that never exhibit anywhere.

Search works differently too. In SourceScrub you filter: source list, keyword, location, size. In Inven you write the brief and the system interprets it against what companies actually do. The Founder and CEO of Augusta Advisors described the practical effect: "Compared to other platforms, Inven has added at least 30% more targets for me. It provides a more thorough search experience, almost like scrubbing the entire internet. I consistently see at least 30% more results within my targeted search criteria."

An investment banker on G2 made a similar point about narrow theses: "[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."

How does Datasite's acquisition change the choice?

Datasite acquired Grata in June 2025 and then SourceScrub in August 2025, and it is integrating SourceScrub into Grata. So SourceScrub as a standalone product is winding toward a combined Datasite sourcing offer, which we have written about separately in our Inven vs Grata comparison.

For a current SourceScrub customer, this cuts two ways. If you value the Datasite relationship, the consolidation is a reason to stay: your virtual data room and your US event coverage end up under one vendor, and the event-list DNA is not going away. If you bought SourceScrub purely as a sourcing database, you should expect the product to change shape as it merges into Grata, and it is worth knowing what you are migrating into before renewal.

Neither outcome forces a rip-and-replace. Plenty of teams keep the Datasite stack for execution and US event coverage and run Inven beside it for global screens and materials. The two subscriptions answer different questions, so they do not fight over the same seat.

How should you choose between Inven and SourceScrub?

Choose based on the work in front of you this quarter. If the mandate is US-centric and your best leads come from conferences and directories, keep SourceScrub, particularly if Datasite already holds your data rooms. If the mandate crosses borders, starts from a thesis rather than an event calendar, or needs to end in slides rather than a spreadsheet, that is Inven's job. Running both is a legitimate answer, not a failure to decide.

It is also worth naming what neither tool is best at. For deal histories and transaction comps, PitchBook is the closer fit, and we compare it directly in Inven vs PitchBook. For analyst-verified financials on European private companies, Gain.pro is the specialist, covered in Inven vs Gain.pro. A broader survey of the field is in our best alternatives to SourceScrub roundup.

Both platforms price by quote, so the real comparison happens in a trial on your own thesis. Thomas Archer at Lexar Partners described what that first session looked like for his team: "Within 30 minutes, we found and contacted multiple targets – that just wasn't achievable before."

If you want to run that test on a live mandate, book a demo and bring the brief you are working on now.