PitchBook alternatives: how aVenture compares

What is the best PitchBook alternative?

It depends on what you need. For venture-backed startups, aVenture fits: as of October 2026 it tracks over 110,000 companies, each linked to its products, competitors, investors, people, and news. For fund raising and benchmarking across alternative assets, Preqin Pro fits. For a large company list at a lower price, Crunchbase Pro fits. PitchBook is the better choice when you analyze fund performance, cover LPs, or build deal comps in Excel. It has decades of deal and fund history, LP commitment data, and an Excel plugin.

What PitchBook is

PitchBook Platform comes from PitchBook Data, founded in 2007 in Seattle. It sells private capital market data, research, and analytics for private equity, venture capital, and M&A. Subscribers look up company profiles, deal histories, fund performance, investor activity, and limited partner commitments. They export results to Excel, build comparable tables, and benchmark against peer groups.

PitchBook adds its own models: PitchBook Valuation Estimates and the Morningstar PitchBook Private Market Indexes. A global research team maintains the data, drawing on public filings, regulatory disclosures, and news. Its customers are mostly institutions: private fund managers, investment banks, corporate development teams, law firms, and academic researchers. It is sold as an enterprise subscription priced by quote, and the price is usually not published.

• Fund performance, investor activity, and limited partner commitments make it the stronger tool for fund raising benchmarks and LP coverage.
• The Excel plugin, Word integration, and API let analysts who work in Office export comps.
• Decades of deal and fund records cover older companies and non-US markets more broadly.

aVenture vs PitchBook

Counts and prices are as of October 2026.

Dimension	aVenture	PitchBook
Core focus	Venture-backed startup research	Private capital markets (PE, VC, M&A)
Best question	"Who funds and competes with this startup?"	"How did this fund perform against peers?"
Coverage	Over 110,000 companies, mostly venture-backed and US-based	Companies, deals, funds, investors, LPs
Fund performance and LPs	Funding rounds and investor participation	Main feature
Products and competitors	Own records, with side-by-side comparison tables	Comparable tables built by the analyst
News	Articles linked to the companies and products they mention	News as a data input
Pricing	Free plan; paid plans from $49 a month	Enterprise subscription, by quote
Access	Website, apps, API, CLI, and MCP server	Web, Excel plugin, API, and Word
Typical buyer	Individual researchers and investors	Fund managers, banks, corporate development

• PitchBook wins on fund performance, LP commitments, and benchmarks.
• PitchBook wins for analysts who build comps in Excel and Word.
• PitchBook wins on older companies and non-US markets, where its history runs deeper.
• aVenture wins when you need a startup's funding rounds, founder career timelines, products, and competing products on one profile.
• aVenture wins on price for an individual: it has a free plan and paid plans one researcher can buy.

Other PitchBook alternatives

Figures are as of October 2026.

Preqin Pro comes from Preqin, founded in 2003 in London, which covers fund performance, benchmarks, and investor and LP profiles across private equity, venture, hedge funds, real estate, and infrastructure. It suits fund raising, allocation, and benchmarking. It is sold as an enterprise subscription priced by quote.

Crunchbase Pro comes from Crunchbase, founded in 2007 in San Francisco, which searches more than 4 million private companies with input from more than 80 million community contributors. Pro includes saved searches, alerts, and 2,000 exported rows a month. It suits prospecting, recruiting, and quick lookups.

The CB Insights Tech Intelligence Platform comes from CB Insights, founded in 2010 in New York, which covers 11M+ companies with health scores, market maps, and AI agents that draft memos and scouting reports. Enterprise tiers often exceed $60,000 a year. It suits corporate strategy and innovation teams.

Harmonic, founded in 2020 in San Francisco, covers 35M+ companies and 195M+ professional profiles with real-time signals, the Scout AI agent, a Chrome extension, and REST and GraphQL APIs. It suits funds that look for startups matching their thesis.

How to switch from PitchBook to aVenture

1. Collect your company list. Export the names and websites of the private companies you follow.
2. Match each company by website. aventure entities lookup-exact get --url https://stripe.com finds a company by its website and works on every plan, including the free one.
3. Match a long list in one job. On AI Plus or AI Pro, a bulk lookup job identifies up to 2,000 names from a list or from one web page. Each name comes back MATCHED, NEEDS_REVIEW with ranked candidates, or NO_MATCH. For a company that comes back NO_MATCH, request coverage with its website.
4. Save the companies you track. AI Plus and AI Pro include saved lists and views across companies and people.
5. Refresh thin records. Each match shows when its record last changed. Send incomplete or outdated records for a research update.
6. Connect your tools. The MCP server and CLI bring the same data into Claude, ChatGPT, and your terminal with the same sign-in.

As of October 2026, Essential is free. AI Plus costs $49 a month or $490 a year. AI Pro costs $199 a month or $1,999 a year, and new AI Pro subscribers can pay $588 for their first year on the annual plan. Expert is priced per engagement. See pricing and plans explained.

What does not carry over: aVenture has no fund performance benchmarks, LP commitment data, or Excel plugin, so that work stays in PitchBook or Preqin Pro. Older companies, non-venture-backed businesses, and non-US companies have thinner records today, and that coverage is growing.

Frequently asked questions

Is aVenture a replacement for PitchBook?

For research on venture-backed startups, aVenture covers funding rounds, investors, founders, products, and competing products on one linked profile. For fund performance, LP data, and comps built in Excel, PitchBook remains the better tool.

How much does aVenture cost compared with PitchBook?

PitchBook is an enterprise subscription priced by quote, and its price is usually not published. As of October 2026, aVenture has a free Essential plan, AI Plus at $49 a month, and AI Pro at $199 a month.

Does aVenture have PitchBook's deal history?

aVenture focuses on current venture-backed companies, mostly in the US. PitchBook holds decades of deal and fund history, so it covers older companies and non-US markets more broadly.