The core difference lies in the source of truth. Crunchbase relies on a "Wikipedia-style" model where founders, investors, and community members submit data. This results in massive coverage (4M+ entities) but significant noise—outdated founders, dead startups, and inflated employee counts. It is excellent for volume. If you are building a broad outreach campaign, you should use our
Crunchbase Search Strategy 2026 to filter out the junk.
Dealroom.co operates closer to a surveillance agency. They partner with
local governments and 100+ tech ecosystems (e.g., Tech Nation in the UK, La French Tech in France) to access official business registries. This means if a startup exists legally in Europe, Dealroom knows about it before it even has a website. However, this level of intelligence comes with an "institutional" price tag, making it inaccessible for most early-stage founders compared to
alternatives like Pitchbook.
Probably not. Data is just fuel; your offer is the engine. You can have the most accurate, verified data on every pre-seed startup in Berlin via Dealroom, but if your outreach script is generic, you will fail. Use Crunchbase if you need volume in the US; use Dealroom if you are an investor needing truth in Europe. Just don't expect either to solve a lack of product-market fit.