confidential // case file // field intelligence // do not redistribute
compare — Clearbit

The free Clearbit alternative.

Looking for a Clearbit alternative — or weighing Clearbit 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.

first, fairly

What Clearbit is

Clearbit (now part of HubSpot's Breeze Intelligence) is a data-enrichment platform. It enriches records — companies and contacts — through APIs and integrations so marketing and sales systems can fill in firmographics and route leads. It's infrastructure that lives inside other tools rather than a research view you read.

Clearbit is a paid, enrichment-oriented product sold through plans and platform bundling, geared to go-to-market systems. 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.

side by side

Clearbit vs Company Dossier

A general, honest comparison — no invented prices, no straw men.

 Company DossierClearbit
PriceFreeClearbit is a paid, enrichment-oriented product sold through plans and platform bundling, geared to go-to-market systems
TypePublic-source company researchdata-enrichment & API platform
Data sourcesPublic web (job boards, filings, news, company sites, maps)Proprietary enrichment dataset delivered via API/integrations
Source attribution every line linkedVaries
Single readable file one dossierDashboard / database / API
Runs in editor, CLI & AI web, VS Code, npm, ChatGPT, ClaudeMostly web / API
Best forFast, free first-pass company intelligenceProgrammatic enrichment of CRM and marketing records
be honest

When to use Clearbit

Reach for Clearbit when its specialty — programmatic enrichment of crm and marketing records — is the actual job:

  • You need to enrich records automatically inside your CRM or marketing stack.
  • You want firmographic fields filled in at scale via API.
  • Your lead routing and scoring depend on enriched data fields.

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.

the other side

When Company Dossier fits better

Company Dossier is a fast first-pass intelligence file — free, public-source, fully attributed, and readable in one place. It fits better when:

  • You want to read a company's whole story, not enrich a database field.
  • You need a sourced narrative file — people, money, tech, news, risk — to act on.
  • You want a free, public-source briefing you can verify line by line.

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.

the fine print

Questions, answered

Q. Is there a free alternative to Clearbit?

Yes, for research. Company Dossier is free and produces a sourced, nine-section company profile from public data. It is not an enrichment API, so it won't fill CRM fields automatically — it gives you a readable, verifiable file instead.

Q. Does Company Dossier have an enrichment API?

It ships a CLI and library (buildDossier) you can script, which returns structured data including a dossier.json. That's useful for agents and pipelines, but it's a research tool, not a record-enrichment service like Clearbit.

Q. Why use Company Dossier instead of Clearbit?

When you want to understand a single company deeply and for free — with sources you can check — rather than enrich many records with firmographic fields.

Open me

A free first pass before Clearbit.

open a sourced file on any company in minutes.