Looking for a CB Insights alternative — or weighing CB Insights vs Company Dossier? Here's a fair, accurate read on what each tool does best, so you can pick the right one. Company Dossier is free, built from public sources, and every claim is sourced.
CB Insights is a market- and startup-intelligence platform built for analysts and strategy teams. It pairs structured data on private companies, funding and industries with analyst research, market maps and trend reports, helping organizations track emerging technologies and the startup landscape. It's a professional research platform used to inform strategy, and it's priced accordingly.
CB Insights is a paid, enterprise-priced research platform; its data, market maps and analyst research are sold by subscription to corporate strategy and investment teams. It's a strong tool for what it's built to do — and that focus is exactly what makes a comparison useful, because Company Dossier is built for a different job.
A general, honest comparison — no invented prices, no straw men.
| Company Dossier | CB Insights | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | CB Insights is a paid, enterprise-priced research platform; its data, market maps and analyst research are sold by subscription to corporate strategy and investment teams |
| Type | Public-source company research | market & startup-intelligence research platform |
| Data sources | Public web (job boards, filings, news, company sites, maps) | Curated market dataset + analyst research and market maps |
| Source attribution | ✓ every line linked | Varies |
| Single readable file | ✓ one dossier | Dashboard / database / API |
| Runs in editor, CLI & AI | ✓ web, VS Code, npm, ChatGPT, Claude | Mostly web / API |
| Best for | Fast, free first-pass company intelligence | Market trend analysis and startup-landscape intelligence |
Reach for CB Insights when its specialty — market trend analysis and startup-landscape intelligence — is the actual job:
For those jobs, a paid, purpose-built platform is the right call and Company Dossier is not a substitute. We'd rather tell you that than pretend otherwise.
Company Dossier is a fast first-pass intelligence file — free, public-source, fully attributed, and readable in one place. It fits better when:
It's not a contact database and not a replacement for curated paid datasets. It's the step you take first: open a free, sourced file on a company, read its whole story in minutes — overview, people, hiring, money, locations, tech, news, relationships and risk — and decide from there whether deeper paid tools are worth it. And it runs wherever you work: the web app, the VS Code extension, the npm CLI, and inside ChatGPT and Claude.
Yes, for a first pass on a single company. Company Dossier is free and compiles a sourced company profile from public sources. It is not a curated market-intelligence dataset and has no analyst research, so it doesn't replace CB Insights for market analysis — but it's a fast, free way to get oriented on a specific company.
No. It builds a single, sourced file on one company at a time. For market maps, analyst reports and trend intelligence across industries, a curated platform like CB Insights is purpose-built for that work.
When you need to understand a single company quickly and cheaply, with every claim verifiable, before deciding whether deeper, paid market research is warranted.
open a sourced file on any company in minutes.