Specter vs SourceScrub

SourceScrub maps where a company's name shows up: roughly 17M listings connected to 290,000 conference rosters, award lists and directories, per its own site. Specter watches what happens inside 55M+ companies and 550M+ people, and flags the moment something moves.

A list is a starting point. A signal is a reason to call. Over 400 VC funds run their sourcing on Specter for exactly that reason: the deals, the people, and the context to reach a founder before the process starts.

Here are the main reasons VCs choose Specter over SourceScrub as their private market data platform:

Data coverage

SourceScrub

Roughly 17M company listings connected to 290,000 origin sources, per its own site, weighted toward founder-owned businesses in the lower middle market.

Specter

55M+ companies and 550M+ people, more than three times the listings SourceScrub reports, plus 330K+ investors and 1M+ transactions. Coverage runs from garage-stage and stealth through decacorn and public, so the next breakout is already in the data before it wins an award or shows up on a conference list.

Depth per record

SourceScrub

Company listings carry firmographics, contact details, growth metrics and the source lists where each name appears.

Specter

Every company comes with 250+ data points and every person with 60+: funding, hiring velocity, web and app traffic, app downloads and reviews, social reach, G2 and Trustpilot ratings, plus news distilled from 60,000+ verified sources.

Talent Signals

Only on Specter
SourceScrub

A company enters the platform when its name lands on a source: a conference roster, an award list, a review site, a buyer's guide.

Specter

On Specter a company can surface before it has a website. Around 1,000 talent signals a day catch new stealth founders, unicorn and Fortune-500 spinouts, and fresh YC founders and applicants. You can reach the founder months before a round exists.

Investor Interest

Only on Specter
SourceScrub

Nine validated essential data signals, plus custom rule-based scoring to rank companies against your strategy, per SourceScrub's site.

Specter

Predictive Investor Interest signals, 7,000+ a week, read observed engagement between partners and founders and flag likely funding or acquisition intent, confidence-scored, before anything reaches the press.

Revenue Signals

Only on Specter
SourceScrub

Surfaces growth and benchmark context on company profiles.

Specter

Reported revenue for companies that have disclosed it, a live feed of 500+ verified revenue and profitability signals a day from news, social, podcasts and filings, and a modeled monthly revenue estimate on every private company, not only the ones that disclose.

Valuations

Only on Specter
SourceScrub

Shows investment history and funding details on company profiles.

Specter

Reported valuations whenever a round makes one public, plus a valuation estimate that stays current between rounds: revenue is modeled first, then valuation stacks on funding history, investor quality and stage, re-anchored at every priced round and re-rated monthly, with a 90% confidence band.

Freshness

SourceScrub

An expert-in-the-loop pipeline works continuously across its sources, and conference lists can land within a couple of weeks of an event.

Specter

500+ revenue signals and roughly 1,000 talent signals arrive every day, plus 7,000+ investor-interest signals a week, with news drawn from 60,000+ verified sources. When something changes inside a company, the record changes with it.

AI Search & Agents

SourceScrub

SourcingGPT screens and analyzes companies with AI, on top of the rule-based custom scoring.

Specter

Agents, Specter's agentic AI chat, are built into the platform: simple to use, tunable with skills, and grounded in the full Specter database plus web search. Natural-language and semantic search cover all 55M+ companies. And Specter MCP plugs the dataset into Claude, Cursor, OpenAI, or any agent, so your agents work from the same live data as your analysts.

Delivery surface

SourceScrub

Web app, native CRM integrations with Salesforce, DealCloud, Affinity and Sugar, an API, Data Connect Cloud warehouse delivery, and a custom research service.

Specter

Web app, the market's most complete and best priced API, delivery straight into AWS, GCP and Snowflake, a Chrome extension, CRM sync across Salesforce, Affinity, Attio and Airtable, and Specter MCP. Wherever your team works, the data is already there.

What the API exposes

SourceScrub

An API plus Data Connect Cloud warehouse delivery ship alongside the app; SourceScrub describes both at a high level rather than in a published developer reference (per its site).

Specter

Around 64 documented endpoint paths, with signal feeds as first-class resources: Revenue, Talent, Investor-Interest and News sit next to companies, people, investors and transactions. Whatever your team watches in the app, your pipeline can pull.

Specter has data SourceScrub doesn't.

Some of what Specter carries has no SourceScrub equivalent. For the full run-down of what the platform covers, take a look at the platform page.

30 minutes with a specialist
Live signals on your market
No pressure, no commitment

On Specter, not on SourceScrub:

  • 38M more companies
  • A people graph 550M strong
  • Stealth-founder detection
  • Modeled revenue on every private company
  • A valuation estimate between rounds
  • 7,000+ investor-interest signals a week
  • Signal feeds as API resources
  • And more

A best-in-class private-markets API.

REST on OpenAPI 3.0, reaching the whole platform: companies, people, investors and transactions, all four signal feeds, revenue and valuation estimates, and your team's network graph. Lists and saved searches from the app double as live feeds, and one AI-search endpoint turns plain English into full record objects. SourceScrub ships an API and warehouse delivery too; the difference is what travels through it.

Signal feeds ship as endpoints

Revenue, Talent, Investor-Interest and News each get dedicated endpoints, with confidence scores, source attribution and dates attached. A pipeline can subscribe to the same events your analysts see in the app.

The most complete, best priced API

One API carries the whole platform: companies, people, investors, transactions, estimates, all four signal feeds and enrichment, the job most teams put it on first. It's the most complete and best priced API on the market.

Estimates travel over the wire

GET /v1/companies/{domain}/estimates returns modeled revenue and valuation with the median, the P10/P90 band, a confidence tier and the disclosures the model anchors to. A defensible number, not a range.

Plain English in, full records out

A single AI-search endpoint covers eight products: companies, people, investors, talent signals, interest signals, funding rounds, acquisitions and IPOs. Describe the target in a sentence and Specter converts it into filters and returns complete record objects.

Saved searches double as live feeds

Anything assembled in the app, a search or a list, is readable over the API, with new matches subscribable as they land. Creating and managing them is free; credits are only spent on the data you pull.

The team network, queryable

Network endpoints map everyone your team knows on LinkedIn, deduplicated across teammates: who has a path into a target company, in which role, and whose intro would be warmest.

Unmatched lookups cost nothing

Enrichment resolves companies, people and investors from a domain, LinkedIn URL or email, and only matched results are charged. A record Specter doesn't hold yet gets gathered on demand, so a retry can succeed.

Throughput built for backfills

Pages carry up to 5,000 records at 15 requests per second, with bulk by-id endpoints for companies, people and talent. Rate and credit limits surface in response headers, so pipelines back off cleanly instead of failing.

Specter API vs SourceScrub API

Specter figures come from its published API docs. SourceScrub offers an API, Data Connect Cloud warehouse delivery and native CRM integrations, but no detailed public reference, so "Not published" marks anything its site doesn't state.

CapabilitySourceScrub
Specter
What's included
Programmatic access
Yes
Yes
Company & people databases
Companies + contact data
55M+ companies, 550M+ people
Funding rounds / transactions
Investment history on profiles
1M+ transactions
Modeled revenue & valuation
Confidence-banded, every company
Signal feeds as endpoints
Revenue, Talent, Interest, News
Team network graph
Relationship tools in-app
Dedicated endpoints
Verified email retrieval
Contact data included
Per-person + bulk
Querying & workflows
API protocol
Not published
REST (OpenAPI 3.0)
Plain-English search endpoint
SourcingGPT in-app
One endpoint, all eight products
Saved searches as live feeds
Not published
Lists + searches, subscribable
Native CRM integrations
Salesforce, DealCloud, Affinity, Sugar
Salesforce, HubSpot, Attio, Airtable
Lookups that find no match
Not published
No credit spent, fetched on demand
Scale & freshness
Max page size
Not published
Up to 5,000
Rate limit
Not published
15 requests/sec
Bulk / warehouse delivery
Data Connect Cloud
AWS, GCP, Snowflake · CSV/Parquet
Docs & agents
LLM / agent-native docs
Not published
llms.txt, llms-full.txt + Markdown
Runs inside AI agents
Not published
Specter MCP + four signal feeds

The trusted private market data platform for VCs.

Funds compare the field, then build on Specter.

Customer logoCustomer logoCustomer logoCustomer logoCustomer logoCustomer logoCustomer logoCustomer logoCustomer logoCustomer logo

Specter will become table stakes for any fund that wants to be in the top quartile.

Richard Dulude

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

Gideon Hayden

Partner, Leaders Fund

We've already found one of our investments through Specter. Its value extends well beyond pure sourcing.

Pietro Invernizzi

Pietro Invernizzi

Founder, firedrop

Join the 400+ venture firms sourcing on Specter's private market data.

Give us 30 minutes and we'll run your target market through Specter, live.

Book a demo

Frequently Asked Questions

For venture-stage sourcing, yes. SourceScrub is a sources-first platform built mainly for PE, M&A and investment banking teams working the lower and middle market, and it does that job well. Specter is built for investors who need to know what is happening inside 55M+ companies right now: founders going stealth, revenue moving, investors circling. If your edge depends on reaching a founder before a process starts, Specter is the stronger fit, and plenty of firms run both platforms side by side.

One platform, the whole private market.

Over 400 VC funds make Specter their data layer for private markets: 55M+ companies, 550M+ people and 1M+ transactions, with a fresh wave of signals arriving daily.

The app investors live in.

Search 55M+ companies, follow the signal feeds, and see your team's warmest path into every deal.

Feeds for revenue, talent and investor interest
Lists, saved searches and email digests
Network mapping across your team
Book a demo
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Vendra
Vendra provides AI vendor and project management for hardware teams.Pre-seed / SeedSan Francisco, US9+80%12,795+6,670%$500K
Beyond Reach Labs (YC W26)
Beyond Reach Labs develops deployable high-expansion structures.Pre-seed / SeedNew York City, US11+450%7,910+80%$10.5M
Phoebe
Phoebe schedules care providers automatically, reducing burnout.Pre-seed / SeedNew York City, US27+145%16,121+70%$9.5M
Autosana (YC S25)
Autosana automates mobile app end-to-end testing using AI.Pre-seed / SeedSan Francisco, US7+75%12,077+101%$3.2M
Vignetim
Vignetim simplifies European vignette and toll purchases.Pre-seed / SeedAlmere Stad, NL11+57%5,765+619%
BLINQ App
BLINQ provides digital business cards for instant contact sharing.Pre-seed / SeedMountain View, US1,340,752+14%$100K
Amity Robotics
Amity Robotics provides AI-powered robotic platforms.Pre-seed / SeedBangkok, TH19+36%19,273+4,893%$7M
GojiberryAI
GojiberryAI finds high-intent leads for B2B companies.Pre-seed / SeedParis, FR14+56%264,904+15%$500K
Dialogue AI
Dialogue AI conducts AI-assisted customer interviews at scale.Pre-seed / SeedLos Angeles, US16+14%121,897+208%$6M
Fort
Fort is a wearable for strength training and rehabilitation.Pre-seed / SeedSan Francisco, US6+20%28,705+155%$500K
Complir
Complir automates retail product compliance with AI.Pre-seed / SeedCopenhagen, DK19+19%10,585+510%$2.6M
Carrot Credit
Carrot Credit offers asset-backed lines of credit.Pre-seed / SeedSuleja, NG16+14%15,250+336%$4.2M
Ultra
Ultra builds intelligent warehouse robots for e-commerce.Pre-seed / SeedNew York City, US26+63%11,605+211%$500K
Palmier
Palmier provides autonomous AI coding agents.Pre-seed / SeedSan Francisco, US20%202,717+2,209%$500K