BizNexus vs Grata
Side by Side
| Attribute | BizNexus | Grata |
|---|---|---|
| What It Is | Deal-flow platform for lower-middle-market M&A that combines a vetted marketplace of broker listings, private submissions, and pre-CIM teasers with a paid off-market origination service (OmniSource) and buyer-broker matching. Buyers apply for membership; both sides are screened before getting access. Re-read August 2026: the front page now leads on AI-native infrastructure and on mandate-driven origination run for the buyer, rather than on the marketplace, so the self-serve half has moved further behind the service. | Searchable database of 21M-plus private companies with revenue/employee estimates, website-keyword search, and verified executive contacts, used to build off-market target lists, assemble comparable sets and market maps, and run outreach with CRM integrations. Owned by Datasite since June 2025, which is merging competitor Sourcescrub's data into the platform. |
| Category | Deal Aggregators | Off-Market Data & Outreach |
| Pricing Model | Custom Pricing | Custom Pricing |
| What It Costs | Pricing not published. The tiered membership page that carried the plan names is gone as of Aug 2026, and the access page that replaced it publishes no figures either. It offers a free community tier as the front door, an acquirer route where you "bring a mandate" and see what coverage looks like across off-market, pre-market and on-market, and an advisor route billed as buyer-paid with no cost to the advisor. All numbers are demo-gated, the OmniSource FAQ says only "fees are plan-specific, with a success-based component," and the vendor warns packages and pricing "routinely" change. Third-party guides historically described the marketplace as a small monthly fee, but no current figure appears on any vendor page. | Pricing not published. grata.com/pricing shows three demo-gated tiers with no dollar figures: Growth (aimed at family offices and independent sponsors), Scale (buy/sell-side advisors, mid-market PE, corp dev), and Alpha (investment banks and mega funds), plus API and data-warehouse add-ons. All are sales-quoted subscription contracts via "Book a demo" / "Talk to a specialist", contract term length is not stated on the site. The only numbers on Grata's own site are on its referral page, whose worked examples use $20,000 and $30,000 contract values, a signal of typical deal size. No free trial or self-serve option. |
| Best For | Well-capitalized, financing-ready buyers (funded searchers, holdcos, PE/family offices) who want aggregated broker deal flow plus outsourced off-market origination under one roof and don't mind a sales call and qualification process. Not for early-stage self-funded searchers who want cheap, transparent, self-serve listing search. | Funded searchers, or self-funded searchers whose investors/sponsor cover a five-figure data budget, running proprietary outreach in a definable niche toward the upper end of the SMB range; lean self-funded buyers of sub-$2M Main Street businesses will find a DIY stack (Clay/Apollo/scraping) more proportionate. |
| Where It Fits | Source & Screen Deals | Define & Test Your Thesis, Source & Screen Deals |
| Our Verdict | A legitimate, still-active deal-flow aggregator that has drifted upmarket and behind a sales process. Worth a demo if you're financing-ready and want off-market origination bundled with marketplace access, but self-funded searchers wanting transparent pricing and self-serve browsing should start elsewhere. | The best off-market company data for thesis-driven sourcing if someone else is paying its ~$20k+ sales-quoted contracts. Most self-funded searchers under $5M get better ROI from a cheap DIY stack; Grata's estimates and contacts are weakest at exactly Main Street size. |
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Both rows were read at source: BizNexus ↗ and Grata ↗.
Our take
Choose BizNexus to outsource the origination: vetted broker listings, private submissions and pre-CIM teasers alongside OmniSource, a paid service that runs mandate-driven outreach for you, with buyer-broker matching in the same place. Three caveats, and the first is the reason to go in with your eyes open. No tier has a dollar figure anywhere on the site, and the tiered page that once described a success-fee component is gone, so the model itself has to be asked for. It has also moved upmarket toward funds and family offices, so an early self-funded searcher may not clear the qualification. Independent reviews are close to nonexistent.
Choose Grata to own the machinery instead of the outcome: a searchable database of 21M-plus private companies with contacts and CRM sync, where you build the lists, write the outreach and keep everything you learn. It suits a funded searcher with a niche thesis and a five-figure data line. Neither of these publishes a price, so compare them on model rather than on cost: one bills for a service on terms it no longer publishes, the other for a seat, and the vendor's own referral examples imply $20,000 to $30,000. Grata is also mid-integration under new ownership, so what you demo may be repackaged inside a one-year term.
Looking wider than these two: alternatives to BizNexus, each with a line on when it is the better pick.