Looking for Messari alternatives for crypto fundraising data, the answer this test supports is NAUT for crypto rounds with named contacts, Apollo for general contact volume, and Preqin for private-markets fund data. NAUT holds 113 crypto and Web3 funding rounds closed in the 60 days to 29 October 2026, across 112 companies, with 3,944,900,000 USD disclosed across the 71 rounds that gave an amount, 307 named contacts attached to 83 of those rounds and a Telegram handle on 64 of them.
How this test was built, and who built it: NAUT published it, and NAUT is 1 of the 3 tools scored, so read the criteria first. The 4 criteria below were fixed on 29 October 2026 before any page was read. Every rival fact comes from that rival's own page, read on 29 October 2026, and is cited at the end. NAUT's own numbers come from its production database, read on the same day. A tool whose page would not load without a login, or whose answer sits behind a paywall, is marked "not tested" rather than guessed at. NAUT retests on 1 December 2026 and will update this page with the result.
Which Messari alternatives were tested, and which were not?
5 of the tools a buyer would shortlist are marked not tested, and no fact from any of their pages appears in the scoring below. Here is exactly what happened to each on 29 October 2026. messari.io's pricing page answered NAUT's automated fetch with a security checkpoint page instead of the pricing page. rootdata.com answered with a captcha shell instead of page content. pitchbook.com's products page returned HTTP 403 to NAUT's automated research fetch, so all 5 claims NAUT put to that page came back unconfirmed. The crunchbase.com and cryptorank.io homepages both loaded, and NAUT put no scoring claim to either page in this test. Scoring Messari competitors on pages NAUT could not confirm would need numbers NAUT never read, so each of the 5 is named once here and left out of the table.
That leaves 3 tools whose own pages carried confirmed facts: NAUT, Apollo and Preqin. Apollo is a general sales-intelligence database at apollo.io. Preqin is a private-markets data platform at preqin.com whose own page title carries the BlackRock name, "Alternative Assets Data, Solutions and Insights | Preqin | BlackRock". NAUT is a crypto funding database at naut.so.
How the 3 Messari alternatives scored on the 4 fixed criteria
| Criterion | NAUT | Apollo | Preqin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crypto a sector | Yes | No | No |
| Dataset scope | 113 rounds, 112 companies | All sectors, 240M contacts | 8 asset classes |
| Plan list | Not tested | Yes, 4 plans | Not tested |
| Round contacts | 307 on 83 rounds | Not tested | Not tested |
Read row by row, that is 1 tool scoped to crypto rounds and 2 scoped to something else. NAUT holds 113 rounds across 112 companies and 3.9B USD disclosed. Apollo's pricing page offers "240M contacts & 30M companies" across every sector, with no crypto or Web3 option among the roles and use cases it lists. Preqin's homepage lists 8 private-markets asset classes and no crypto one. On plans, only Apollo's page carried a list, 4 of them, the first described as "Free - Exploring Apollo or very light usage. Good for founders and early-stage teams."; Preqin's homepage carried no plan list and NAUT's own plans were not part of this test. On round-level contacts, Apollo's pricing page shows no round-level data and Preqin's homepage shows no round-level data, so both are marked not tested.
Criterion 1 is the one that decides most shortlists. Apollo's pricing page sorts its product by role (RevOps, sales leaders, sales reps, marketers, builders, developers) and by use case (outbound, inbound, enrichment, sales engagement), and names Intel, AT&T, Adobe, SAP and Shopify as the kind of enterprise it works with. Crypto is not 1 of those cuts. Preqin markets fundraising with the line "Raise more capital, faster - with deep investor data." and says its platform serves more than 200,000 professionals, across the 8 asset classes quoted above. Crypto is not 1 of them either.
1 more Apollo detail matters at buying time: its pricing FAQ says every seat on an account sits on the same plan, because "you can't have some users on Professional and others on Basic". A 2 person BD pod cannot put 1 seat on the cheap plan and 1 on the expensive one.
Which crypto rounds did NAUT use to test the Messari alternatives?
All 113 of them, closed in the 60 days to 29 October 2026. 71 disclosed an amount, 36 name a lead investor, 106 carry the company's own domain and all 113 carry the company's X handle. These are the 10 largest rounds by disclosed amount.
| Company | Round | Amount | Contacts |
|---|---|---|---|
 Polymarket |
Undisclosed | $1,000M | 14 |
 Strive |
Post-IPO | $630M | 0 |
 Tazapay |
M&A | $400M | 3 |
 Whop |
Series D | $200M | 1 |
 Felix Pago |
Debt | $113M | 8 |
 Jeeves |
Series C | $110M | 1 |
 Circle |
PIPE | $100M | 19 |
 Payward |
Strategic | $100M | 1 |
 Nous Research |
Series B | $90M | 5 |
 Spiko |
Series B | $90M | 5 |
Felix Pago's round is a debt financing, and the amount column is in USD millions. 6 of these 10 rounds carry a Telegram handle.
Strive appears once in this table and holds a second post-IPO round of 208,000,000 USD inside the same window, which is why the table lists 10 rounds across 10 companies while the full window holds 113 rounds across 112 companies.
How much did the 10 largest rounds raise?
These 10 rounds carry 2,833,000,000 USD of the 3,944,900,000 USD disclosed across all 71 rounds that gave an amount, so the other 61 disclosed rounds hold the remaining 1,111,900,000 USD.
What this tells a BD team
- 83 of the 113 rounds already carry at least 1 named NAUT contact, so 73% of a 60 day pipeline needs no enrichment pass before the first message goes out.
- 73 rounds carry a decision maker, 112 decision-maker contacts in total, which is the list to work first when a BD team has capacity for 20 or 30 conversations a week.
- 64 rounds carry a Telegram handle. In crypto that is usually the channel that gets answered, and it is the field a general contact database is least likely to hold.
- Circle with 19 contacts and Polymarket with 14 are the deepest 2 of the 10 largest rounds, so a team selling infrastructure or compliance has several routes in rather than 1.
- Sort by contact depthStart with Circle at 19 contacts and Polymarket at 14, the 2 deepest of the 10 largest rounds.
- Filter to decision makers73 of the 113 rounds carry 1, with 112 decision-maker contacts across them.
- Pick the channel64 of the 113 rounds carry a Telegram handle, so the opener can go where it gets read.
- Open on the roundEach company page carries the round size, so the first line can name the raise instead of guessing at it.
What this tells a founder raising now
- 36 of the 113 rounds name their lead investor on NAUT, so a founder can see which firms are writing cheques at a given size right now.
- Round type shapes the buyer set. The window holds a Series B at 90,000,000 USD for Spiko, a debt financing at 113,000,000 USD for Felix Pago and a strategic round at 100,000,000 USD for Payward, which are 3 different raises with 3 different buyer sets.
- 106 of the 113 rounds carry the company's own domain and all 113 carry its X handle, so a founder checking who a prospective backer already funded can get to the company itself in 1 click.
- Tools without a crypto cut will not show this. Apollo sorts by sales role and Preqin by private-markets asset class, and neither lists crypto as a covered sector on the pages read on 29 October 2026.
- Match the round typeFind the rounds closest to yours among the 113, from a Series B to a debt financing.
- Read who led36 of the 113 rounds name a lead investor on their NAUT page.
- Find the human307 named contacts sit across 83 of these rounds, with 112 of them decision makers.
- Ask for the introNAUT shows who in your network can make the introduction before you send a cold message.
How to reach the decision makers
Every company in the table above has its own NAUT page, and each page holds the team NAUT has resolved for it, the round, the backers and the contact routes. 8 of the 10 rows in the table carry a decision-maker contact: Tazapay, Nous Research and Spiko with 3 each, Felix Pago and Circle with 2 each, and Polymarket, Whop and Jeeves with 1 each. Across the whole 113 round window there are 112 decision-maker contacts on 73 rounds.
Start from the company page, where the round and contacts sit. Payward carries a contact without a decision maker yet, which is still a warm first touch inside the company rather than a form on its website.
Can you pull this data through the NAUT API?
Yes. Every company in this article is in NAUT's developer API as JSON, the same records the pages show. GET https://api.naut.so/v1/projects/polymarket returns that company with its team, in the same shape as every other company named here, for 5 credits a call. A key with no credits gets clearly marked sample data, so you can build against it first. Plans start at $49 a month for 3,000 credits (pricing), and the API docs list every endpoint. Verified Telegram, email and LinkedIn for the people on NAUT unlock on any paid plan: start a 7-day trial.
Messari alternatives FAQ
What is the best alternative to Messari for crypto fundraising data?
Of the 3 tools whose own pages NAUT could read on 29 October 2026, NAUT is the only 1 that names crypto as its covered sector, with 113 crypto and Web3 rounds closed in the 60 days to 29 October 2026 across 112 companies and 3,944,900,000 USD disclosed. Apollo and Preqin both hold far larger general datasets with no crypto cut on the pages read.
Why is Messari itself not scored in this comparison?
messari.io's pricing page answered NAUT's automated fetch with a security checkpoint page on 29 October 2026, so no fact from a Messari page appears here and Messari is marked not tested. 4 more tools are also unscored: rootdata.com answered with a captcha shell, pitchbook.com's products page returned HTTP 403 to the research fetch, and the crunchbase.com and cryptorank.io homepages loaded but had no scoring claim put to them.
How many crypto funding rounds does NAUT hold with named contacts?
83 of the 113 crypto and Web3 rounds closed in the 60 days to 29 October 2026 carry at least 1 named NAUT contact, 307 contacts in total. 73 of those rounds carry a decision maker, with 112 decision-maker contacts across them, and 64 carry a Telegram handle.
Does Apollo cover crypto and Web3 companies?
Apollo's pricing page, read on 29 October 2026, offers "240M contacts & 30M companies" and sorts its product by sales role and by outbound use case, with no crypto or Web3 option among them. It is a general contact database, so a crypto round and its lead investor are not fields it publishes on that page.
Does Preqin cover crypto as an asset class?
Preqin's homepage, read on 29 October 2026, lists 8 asset classes: "Private Equity, Hedge Funds, Venture Capital, Real Estate, Private Credit, Infrastructure, Secondaries, Natural Resources". Crypto is not among them. Preqin markets fundraising with the line "Raise more capital, faster - with deep investor data.", and its own page title carries the BlackRock name.
When will this comparison be retested?
NAUT retests on 1 December 2026, and will try messari.io, cryptorank.io, crunchbase.com, rootdata.com and pitchbook.com again then. Any tool whose page answers on that date gets scored on the same 4 criteria fixed on 29 October 2026.
Sources
- NAUT production database, read 29 October 2026: 113 crypto and Web3 rounds, 112 companies, 71 with a disclosed amount, 36 with a named lead, 83 with at least 1 contact, 73 with a decision maker, 64 with a Telegram handle, 307 contacts and 112 decision-maker contacts in total. Contact counts are the team count each company's own NAUT page displays.
- Apollo pricing page, read 29 October 2026: apollo.io/pricing. Plan list, "240M contacts & 30M companies", the same-plan seat rule, the role and use-case lists, and the Intel, AT&T, Adobe, SAP and Shopify reference.
- Preqin homepage, read 29 October 2026: preqin.com. The 8 asset classes, the fundraising line, the 200,000 professionals figure and the page title carrying the BlackRock name.
- Not tested on 29 October 2026: messari.io (pricing page served a security checkpoint), rootdata.com (captcha shell), pitchbook.com products page (HTTP 403 to the research fetch), crunchbase.com and cryptorank.io (homepages loaded, no scoring claim put to either).