Specter vs Crunchbase
400+ venture funds build on Specter as the data layer for private markets: 55M+ companies, 550M+ people and 1M+ transactions, growing with fresh signals every day.
Specter is built to put you first at the table: the deals, the people, and every piece of context around an opportunity. It's the reason more than 400 of the world's sharpest firms run their sourcing on Specter data.
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Here are the main reasons VCs choose Specter over Crunchbase as their private market data platform:
Data coverage
5M+ companies, per its own site. The best-known startup directory, spanning pre-seed through exit.
55M+ companies and 550M+ people, more than 10× Crunchbase's coverage, plus 330K+ investors and 1M+ transactions. With the richest industry taxonomy in private markets, that coverage surfaces the next breakout, including the bootstrapped, stealth and emerging long tail a directory hasn't catalogued yet.
Depth per record
Core firmographics, funding history, leadership and growth signals on each profile.
Every company carries 250+ data points, every person 60+: firmographics and funding, hiring activity, web and app traffic, app downloads and reviews, social reach, G2 and Trustpilot ratings, and news drawn from 60,000+ sources.
People & Talent
Only on SpecterExecutive and founder profiles attached to company records, with contact data available as an add-on.
A 550M-person talent graph with full career history, plus 1,000+ talent signals a day: stealth founders, spinouts from unicorns and the Fortune 500, fresh YC founders and out-of-stealth alerts, surfaced the day they're detected. You can reach a founder while the company is still dark.
Revenue Signals
Only on SpecterShows revenue ranges on company profiles, drawn from estimates and disclosures.
Reported revenue and exhaustive revenue signals from 500+ verified revenue and profitability data points, pulled from news, social, podcasts and filings. Plus a modeled revenue estimate refreshed monthly with confidence bands.
Valuations
Only on SpecterReports a valuation when a priced round or exit makes it public.
Reported valuation whenever available, and a valuation estimate that keeps moving between rounds, re-modeled every month with a confidence band and snapped to each priced round. The number follows the company instead of stopping at the last raise.
Predictions
AI Predictions score the likelihood of funding, acquisition, IPO and other events: 15M+ predictions refreshed weekly, with a published 84% hit rate on funding rounds.
Investor Interest signals grounded in observed engagement: who is actually engaging with which founders right now, confidence-scored, before it hits the headlines. The edge isn't the forecast, it's the live evidence behind the call, and it runs alongside the revenue and talent feeds so you see interest, revenue and hiring together.
AI Search & Agents
AI search answers natural-language queries in-app, and Crunchbase MCP brings its data and predictions into tools like Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini and Cursor.
Agents, Specter's agentic AI chat, run inside the platform: simple to use, tunable with skills, and backed by the full Specter database plus web search. Natural-language and semantic search over all 55M+ companies sits right next to them. And Specter MCP plugs the deeper dataset into any agent you already run: 250+ data points per company, all four live signal feeds, and modeled revenue and valuation, not just profiles and prediction scores.
Email Notifications
Email alerts on saved searches and the companies you follow.
Treat saved searches like an inbox. Fresh results land in your email on the cadence you choose (daily, weekly or monthly), and a single weekly digest wraps up every search you follow. Timezone-aware, with matching in-app notifications.
Delivery surface
Web app, CRM integrations and CSV export, with API, MCP and data licensing for programmatic access.
Web app, the best-priced API on the market, warehouse delivery to AWS, GCP and Snowflake, a Chrome extension, CRM sync with Salesforce, Affinity, Attio and Airtable, and Specter MCP. One dataset, wherever your team already works.
What the API exposes
A clean REST API for lookup, search and autocomplete. But full access requires an Enterprise or Applications license, searches cap at 1,000 results per request, and public display of the data requires attribution (per Crunchbase's docs).
Signal feeds ship as first-class API resources: Revenue, Talent, Investor-Interest and News each get their own endpoints, next to companies, people, investors and transactions. Whatever you watch in-app, you can pull programmatically.
Specter has data Crunchbase doesn't.
A quick sample of what lives on Specter but not on Crunchbase. For the full picture of what the platform covers, browse the platform page.
What you won't find on Crunchbase:
- 50M more companies
- A 550M-person talent graph
- Modeled revenue for every company
- Live valuations between rounds
- Predictive investor-interest signals
- Signals as API endpoints
- Team network tracking
- And more
A best-in-class private-markets API.
A REST API on OpenAPI 3.0 that reaches everything Specter holds: complete company, people, investor and transaction databases, all four signal feeds, and your team's network graph. Any list or saved search from the app doubles as a live API feed, and a single AI-search endpoint answers plain-English queries across every product.
More API for the money
One API covers everything: full data access, signal feeds and enrichment (the most popular job teams put it to), with no web-app seat required. Crunchbase reserves its full API, bulk export and data feeds for Enterprise and Applications licensees.
Signals are first-class endpoints
Dedicated endpoints for Revenue, Talent, Investor-Interest and News signals, each with confidence scoring, source attribution and date. Crunchbase's API exposes entities with scores and prediction fields, not a live multi-source signal feed.
Revenue & valuation, queryable
Modeled monthly revenue and valuation estimates for every company, each with a confidence band, ship inside the API. A directory shows a revenue range; Specter returns a defensible number that re-rates as signals move.
One endpoint takes plain-English queries
One AI-search endpoint spans all eight products: companies, people, investors, talent signals, interest signals, funding rounds, acquisitions and IPOs. Say what you're after in plain English; Specter translates it into the right filters and hands back full record objects.
Saved searches become live feeds
Assemble a search or list in the app, then read every result over the API and subscribe to new matches as they land. Building and managing searches and lists costs nothing; credits only burn when you pull data.
Your team's network, queryable
The network endpoints surface everyone your team collectively knows on LinkedIn, deduplicated across teammates: who knows whom at a target company, in what role, and which teammate has the warmest way in.
Misses never cost a credit
Enrichment matches a company, person or investor from a domain, LinkedIn URL or email, and you're only charged when a match comes back. Records Specter doesn't hold yet get gathered on demand, so a later call can hit.
Bigger pages, fewer round-trips
Pages return up to 5,000 records at 15 requests per second. Crunchbase searches return 50 by default and cap at 1,000 results per request. For warehouse-scale pulls, a materially faster path.
Specter API vs Crunchbase API
Specter figures come from the API docs; Crunchbase figures from its published docs and pricing. "Not published" means Crunchbase doesn't state the figure publicly.
The trusted private market data platform for VCs.
Funds that trial everything end up on Specter.
“Specter will become table stakes for any fund that wants to be in the top quartile.”
Richard Dulude
Partner, Underscore VC
“In a short period of time, Specter has become an integral part of how we ensure we have 100% coverage of the markets we operate in.”
Gideon Hayden
Partner, Leaders Fund
“We've already found one of our investments through Specter. Its value extends well beyond pure sourcing.”
Pietro Invernizzi
Founder, firedrop
Find out why 400+ venture firms run on Specter's private market data.
Grab 30 minutes with us and we'll walk your own watchlist through Specter, live.
Book a demoFrequently Asked Questions
Everything private markets, in one platform.
More than 400 venture firms run Specter as the data layer behind their sourcing: 55M+ companies, 550M+ people and 1M+ transactions, refreshed with new signals every day.
The app investors live in.
Search 55M+ companies, follow the signal feeds, and see your team's warmest path into every deal.
Companies
People
Investors
Transactions
Company | Tagline | Growth Stage | HQ Location | Employee Count | 3m | Web Visits | 3m | Total Funding Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Vendra | Vendra provides AI vendor and project management for hardware teams. | Pre-seed / Seed | San Francisco, US | 9 | +80% | 12,795 | +6,670% | $500K |
 Beyond Reach Labs (YC W26) | Beyond Reach Labs develops deployable high-expansion structures. | Pre-seed / Seed | New York City, US | 11 | +450% | 7,910 | +80% | $10.5M |
 Phoebe | Phoebe schedules care providers automatically, reducing burnout. | Pre-seed / Seed | New York City, US | 27 | +145% | 16,121 | +70% | $9.5M |
 Autosana (YC S25) | Autosana automates mobile app end-to-end testing using AI. | Pre-seed / Seed | San Francisco, US | 7 | +75% | 12,077 | +101% | $3.2M |
 Vignetim | Vignetim simplifies European vignette and toll purchases. | Pre-seed / Seed | Almere Stad, NL | 11 | +57% | 5,765 | +619% | — |
 BLINQ App | BLINQ provides digital business cards for instant contact sharing. | Pre-seed / Seed | Mountain View, US | — | — | 1,340,752 | +14% | $100K |
 Amity Robotics | Amity Robotics provides AI-powered robotic platforms. | Pre-seed / Seed | Bangkok, TH | 19 | +36% | 19,273 | +4,893% | $7M |
 GojiberryAI | GojiberryAI finds high-intent leads for B2B companies. | Pre-seed / Seed | Paris, FR | 14 | +56% | 264,904 | +15% | $500K |
 Dialogue AI | Dialogue AI conducts AI-assisted customer interviews at scale. | Pre-seed / Seed | Los Angeles, US | 16 | +14% | 121,897 | +208% | $6M |
 Fort | Fort is a wearable for strength training and rehabilitation. | Pre-seed / Seed | San Francisco, US | 6 | +20% | 28,705 | +155% | $500K |
 Complir | Complir automates retail product compliance with AI. | Pre-seed / Seed | Copenhagen, DK | 19 | +19% | 10,585 | +510% | $2.6M |
 Carrot Credit | Carrot Credit offers asset-backed lines of credit. | Pre-seed / Seed | Suleja, NG | 16 | +14% | 15,250 | +336% | $4.2M |
 Ultra | Ultra builds intelligent warehouse robots for e-commerce. | Pre-seed / Seed | New York City, US | 26 | +63% | 11,605 | +211% | $500K |
 Palmier | Palmier provides autonomous AI coding agents. | Pre-seed / Seed | San Francisco, US | 2 | 0% | 202,717 | +2,209% | $500K |