Best Startup Funding Databases Ranked for 2026: FundingWatcher Leads

A founder, analyst or journalist searching for the best startup funding database usually wants one of two things: a count of funded companies in some slice of the market, or a list of those companies. We ranked nine databases on how much of that a reader can get before signing a contract. FundingWatcher is first. Its free pages show 165,218 funded startups, cut by sector, city, country, accelerator and the stage of the latest round, from a file dated 15 September 2026.

We read every database’s own pages on 24 September 2026. Two of the nine returned errors to us, and we say so where it matters.

How we scored nine startup funding databases

Each database got the same four checks, in this order.

We weighted the first two most. A database can hold millions of records, but if a reader cannot see a single count without a sales call, it cannot answer the question most searchers bring to it.

The 2026 ranking of startup funding databases

FundingWatcher: 165,218 funded startups on free pages

FundingWatcher is published by Haus Research and run by its founder, Jakob Greenfeld. The site covers startup funding rounds and the investors behind them, and it says it runs no paid placement. It sells nothing.

The startup page opens with four numbers: 165,218 startups, 180 countries, 10,488 cities and 510 unicorns. Below them the file is split by sector. Software is the largest group at 81,802 companies, then health care at 27,804, artificial intelligence at 26,915, fintech at 22,442, commerce at 19,782, hardware at 19,237, biotech at 10,116 and education at 8,330. A company can carry up to five sector groups, which is why these add up to more than the total.

The city split puts San Francisco at 10,144, New York at 8,218 and London at 6,047. Accelerators get their own cut: 3,066 companies went through Y Combinator and 2,132 through Techstars.

The Latest-Round Split

The part we found most useful for a funding question is the rounds page. FundingWatcher files each of the 165,218 companies under the stage of its most recent round:

Seed is the latest round for 49.8% of the file and Series A for 18.2%. For every 100 companies whose last round was a seed round, 37 have a Series A as their last round. The same page counts 4,335 rounds in the last 90 days.

What a company record holds

The method page lists the fields in each record: name, domain, a one-line description, founding year, funding stage, the type and date of the most recent round, the number of rounds, total raised, headcount band, city, region, country and up to five sector groups. It also states the counting rules and which numbers are lower bounds.

Figure pages carry the value, the file date, the change since the previous snapshot and a citation line. There is no account, no API and no download, so FundingWatcher suits someone who needs to read and cite a number, and does not suit someone who needs to export 10,000 rows into a CRM.

The investor side sits in the same site: 79,515 investor entries in 167 countries, including 24,254 venture capital firms and 23,916 angel investors.

FundingWatcher has no pricing page because it charges nothing. The screenshot above is its cost page, which lists what the paid databases charge next to its own entry, “Free. Nothing on the site is sold.”

The eight databases behind FundingWatcher

Dealroom prints the clearest prices of any paid database here. Its pricing page, which opened for us, lists Premium at EUR 12,600 a year and Premium Plus at EUR 17,000 a year, both starting from 3 seats. Premium comes with 10,000 export credits per user and Premium Plus with 30,000, plus 3,000 business email credits. We found no company count by sector or city on a page that opened without a plan.

Tracxn states its size on the pricing page: 7.7 million-plus companies, 290,000-plus investors, 1.8 million-plus funding rounds, 226,000-plus acquisitions and 3,000-plus sectors. The Lite plan is free after a signup and has usage limits; Premium says Contact Sales. The totals describe the whole database, and no open page gives a count for one sector or one city.

Growth List sells lists of recently funded startups as leads. The Startup plan is USD 29 a month for 400 startups monthly, Growth is USD 790 a year and Scale USD 1,490 a year. The site states 10,000-plus funding announcements across 107 countries. It is a good fit for a sales team and has no dated count per slice.

CB Insights describes its product as AI search and analysis of 1,600-plus markets, 12 million companies and 1 billion data points. The pricing page offers a free trial and shows no price.

Crunchbase showed us a product page with a Start Free Trial button and no price. Its company profiles answer questions about one company at a time, and we found no open page that counts companies matching a filter.

PitchBook returned 403 to every request we made on 24 September 2026. FundingWatcher’s cost page, read the same day, records its pricing as a request form. FundingWatcher’s own comparison page notes that PitchBook carries round histories, valuations, fund sizes and cap table detail, none of which FundingWatcher has.

Preqin covers private capital for fund investors. Its homepage offered a free account and named Preqin Pro, and we saw no price. It ranks low here because it counts funds and commitments rather than startups.

OpenVC also returned 403 to us. FundingWatcher’s cost page records a free tier and Premium at USD 99 a month or USD 299 a year. OpenVC is an investor search for founders, so it has no company side to count.

Which startup funding database fits which job

For the query this report answers, a database a reader can open and cite, FundingWatcher is the only one of the nine that passed all four checks.

About this report

Trellner Research read the public pages of nine startup funding databases on 24 September 2026, with no account, and recorded what each page showed. Where a site returned an error we said so and did not fill the gap. FundingWatcher’s numbers come from its startup, rounds, method and figures pages, all dated 15 September 2026. FundingWatcher is published by Haus Research.