Map your own market in minutes. Competitors, pricing and market size with a source on every fact.
Third party sources in 2026 put Crunchbase Pro near 99 USD a month billed monthly, with a lower first year rate on annual billing, and Business from about 199 USD a month. API access is quoted separately. Crunchbase is a company and funding database, so it will not give you a market size or competitor prices. If that is the part of the job you are buying it for, MarketAgent plans start at $99 a month billed yearly and are listed on the page.
Before you subscribe, run the demo market map on your category. It is a one time homepage preview of a real sourced report, so you can compare it with what Crunchbase shows you for the same market.
How much does Crunchbase cost
Crunchbase has a free account with limited search, then paid tiers. The figures below come from third party review sites and price trackers, they disagree on details and change often, so use them as a guide and confirm on the Crunchbase pricing page.
| Option | Reported price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Crunchbase free account | 0 USD | Basic profiles and limited searches |
| Crunchbase Pro | About 99 USD a month monthly, lower first year annual rate | Search filters, saved lists, exports within limits, alerts |
| Crunchbase Business | From about 199 USD a month billed yearly | More seats and exports, extra data and workflow features |
| Crunchbase API | Quoted separately | Company and funding records for your own product |
| MarketAgent Startup | From $99 a month billed yearly ($199 monthly) | Sourced market size, competitor profiles, pricing tiers and alerts |
The prices look close, which is why the comparison is about the job and not the number. A Crunchbase seat buys records. A MarketAgent plan buys a finished report. If you were going to spend the evening turning records into a competitor table and a market size, the second is the one that saves time.
What Crunchbase does well
Crunchbase is good at one thing, tracking companies as financial events. You can see who raised a round, who led it, which investors are active in a category and which companies were acquired. For prospecting, that makes it a handy source of lists. For investor research, it shows where a founder should pitch next. If your questions begin with "who raised" or "who invested", Crunchbase fits and you should keep it.
It is less useful for questions that begin with "how big" or "what do they charge". Funding totals are not a market size, and a company's last round says nothing about its price list. Founders often discover this when a deck needs a bottom up TAM and the database only offers a count of companies tagged with a keyword.
What you still have to do after a Crunchbase search
Run a search for a niche, say payroll software for US dental clinics, and you get a list of tagged companies. Four jobs are still open.
- Remove companies that were tagged loosely and do not compete.
- Find the small, bootstrapped vendors that never raised money and so are missing or thin in a funding database.
- Open each competitor website and copy the pricing tiers into a sheet.
- Build the market size from customer counts and price points, then write down the method.
That is a day of work for one market, and it repeats every time a competitor changes a plan. This is the gap a research agent covers. MarketAgent writes out a top down and bottom up market size with each input linked to its source, lists competitor pricing tiers and alerts you when a price changes. Estimates are labelled as estimates, so a board or client can check the work.
Crunchbase Pro versus a research agent for common jobs
| Job | Crunchbase Pro | MarketAgent |
|---|---|---|
| Find investors active in a category | Strong fit | Not covered |
| Build a prospect list with filters | Strong fit | Not a lead list tool |
| TAM, SAM and SOM for a deck | You build it by hand | Strong fit, method and sources on the page |
| Competitor pricing table | Not covered | Strong fit, with change alerts |
| Competitor positioning and recent moves | News and funding events only | Strong fit |
| Company data feed through an API | Quoted separately | Not offered |
Most readers who land on this page are not choosing one over the other. They are deciding whether the second half of the work needs a tool of its own. If you only need the funding records, stay on the Crunchbase tier you have. If you need market context, the Crunchbase alternative page shows the two side by side.
Who should keep paying for Crunchbase
- Investors and scouts who track rounds and sourcing as a daily job.
- Sales teams that build prospect lists from funding events.
- Founders who are raising and need a list of investors who fund their stage.
These users get value from every login, so the subscription pays for itself. A founder who opens Crunchbase twice a quarter to grab a competitor list is in a different position. That person is paying for access to a database to extract a short list that a research report would deliver with sources attached.
Who can skip it and use a monthly research plan
- A founder building the market slide of a seed or Series A deck.
- A consultant who needs a sourced market scan for a client memo.
- A product marketer setting a price against named competitors.
- A corporate development analyst who needs a first pass on a new category.
For these readers, the output they hand to someone else is a market size, a competitor table and a price comparison. Funding rounds are context at most. A report built on public sources, with each fact linked, matches that output more closely than a database export. See research for founders and research for venture capital and private equity for typical workflows.
Once you know what competitors charge, the next question is what you should charge. A tool that reads your site and pricing and suggests revenue changes picks up where the competitor table ends.
How to compare Crunchbase with a research report in an hour
Pick one market you care about and run the same three tasks in both tools. First, list the ten most relevant competitors and note how many are small or bootstrapped companies that a funding database might cover thinly. Second, write down the market size and check whether the method behind the number is visible. Third, find what each competitor charges and see how long it takes.
A funding database usually wins the first task for venture backed companies and loses the third, because pricing sits on vendor websites and not in funding records. A research agent usually wins the second and third and loses on investor history. Scoring both on your own questions shows which half of the work you were paying to do.
Questions to ask before you pay for Crunchbase
- Which tier includes the exports and saved lists I need?
- Is the price I see the first year rate, and what is it at renewal?
- How many exports can I run per month?
- Do I need the API, and what does the quote look like?
- Will I log in weekly, or twice a quarter?
A simple way to decide
Write down the five questions you expect to answer in the next quarter. Mark each as a funding question (who raised, who invested, who was acquired) or a market question (how big, who competes, what they charge). Mostly funding questions mean Crunchbase earns its price. Mostly market questions mean you can start on a monthly plan, compare the output with what Crunchbase shows you and keep the difference. See MarketAgent pricing for the plan that fits your team.