The quick version

If you’re an institutional investor managing a portfolio across private equity, real estate, infrastructure, and hedge funds, and crypto is 5% of your research, Preqin is probably fine. You’ll find some crypto fund profiles in their hedge fund data, and you won’t need to buy another tool.

If crypto is a meaningful part of your work, Preqin alone isn’t enough. Their crypto coverage tops out around 200-300 funds. We track 800+. They don’t build crypto-specific strategy indices. They don’t have BTC correlation metrics. And their pricing starts around $15,000-30,000 per year, which is hard to justify for crypto-only research when a dedicated crypto database costs a fraction of that.

Most of our customers who use Preqin use us alongside it, not instead of it. Different tools for different jobs.

Side-by-side comparison

What Preqin does well

We’re competitors, but we’re not going to pretend Preqin isn’t good at what it does. It is. If you need a single platform for all alternative asset classes, nothing else comes close.

Cross-asset coverage. Preqin covers 135,000+ funds across private equity, venture capital, hedge funds, real estate, infrastructure, natural resources, and private debt. With 67,000+ fund managers across 160+ countries, its the most comprehensive alternatives database in the world. If you’re running a multi-asset portfolio and need one tool for everything, Preqin is the obvious choice.

LP and investor data. Preqin tracks institutional investors, their allocation histories, and their preferences. This is something we don’t do. If you’re a fund manager trying to raise capital from institutional LPs, Preqin’s investor profiles are genuinely useful.

The platform. Preqin Pro is a well-built product with robust search, filtering, benchmarking, and reporting. They have an API. They also integrate with eFront (now part of BlackRock’s Aladdin platform since Preqin was acquired by BlackRock). The tech is institutional grade.

Research and reports. Their Global Reports series is widely read. The research team is large (500+ employees) and produces quality analysis across every alternative asset class.

Where Preqin falls short on crypto

Here’s the core issue: crypto is a tiny corner of Preqin’s 135,000-fund universe. It’s one strategy tag within their hedge fund data, not a first-class asset class. That means:

Coverage gaps

We estimate Preqin covers 200-300 crypto fund profiles. We cover 800+. That gap matters if you’re trying to map the full crypto fund landscape, not just the biggest names. Many smaller crypto hedge funds and crypto-native VC firms simply don’t show up in Preqin because they’re below the size threshold or haven’t been picked up by Preqin’s research team, which is focused primarily on traditional alternatives.

No crypto-native analytics

Preqin calculates standard hedge fund metrics: returns, Sharpe ratios, AUM, strategy classifications. What it doesnt do is anything crypto-specific. Our Performance Database calculates BTC correlation, crypto alpha (excess return over Bitcoin), crypto beta, and strategy sub-indices that separate quant from long-only from market-neutral within crypto. These metrics are what allocators actually need when evaluating whether a crypto fund is worth the fees versus just buying a Bitcoin ETF.

Strategy classification

Preqin classifies crypto funds within its broader hedge fund taxonomy. That taxonomy was built for traditional strategies and doesn’t map cleanly onto crypto. There’s no distinction between a quantitative crypto arb fund, a long-only Bitcoin fund, and a DeFi yield fund in Preqin’s system. In our database, those are three different strategy types with very different risk profiles.

Data freshness

This is a fair criticism that one of our competitors (Crypto Insights Group) has also made about us, so we’ll be honest. Keeping crypto fund data current is hard because the industry moves fast: funds launch, close, change strategies, and move jurisdictions constantly. Our advantage is that crypto is literally all we do. Preqin’s 500+ researchers cover the entire alternatives universe, and crypto is a small piece of their workload.

The pricing question

This is where the comparison gets uncomfortable for Preqin. Not because their pricing is wrong for what they offer, but because it’s wildly disproportionate if crypto is your primary use case.

Preqin doesn’t publish its pricing, so we’re estimating based on what customers have told us and what appears in industry forums. A single-seat Preqin Pro subscription runs somewhere in the $15,000-30,000+ per year range, depending on the modules and negotiation.

If you’re using Preqin for private equity, venture capital, real estate, infrastructure, AND a bit of crypto, that price makes sense. It’s a comprehensive platform and the cost is spread across your entire research workflow.

If you’re using Preqin primarily for crypto fund data, you’re paying 15-30x what our Performance Database costs for less crypto-specific coverage. At that point, our Fund List ($387 one-time) plus Performance Database ($977/year) gives you significantly more crypto data for about $1,364 in year one. That’s roughly a month of Preqin.

Who should use what

Use Preqin if:

You’re an institutional allocator or consultant covering multiple alternative asset classes. Crypto is part of your research but not the primary focus. You need LP data, deal data, and cross-asset benchmarking. Your firm already has a Preqin subscription for other reasons. In that case, use whatever crypto data Preqin provides and supplement with a crypto-specific source if you need more depth.

Use Crypto Fund Research if:

You work primarily in crypto or blockchain. You need a comprehensive directory for outreach (founders, service providers). You need performance data and risk metrics to evaluate crypto fund managers. You don’t need PE, real estate, or infrastructure data. Or your budget doesn’t stretch to $15K+ for Preqin.

Use both if:

This is what many of our customers do. Preqin for the cross-asset context, us for crypto depth. The two products are more complementary than competitive. Our Fund List covers crypto funds that Preqin doesn’t, and our Performance Database provides crypto-native metrics that Preqin doesn’t calculate. Preqin gives you the broader alternatives landscape and LP data that we don’t have.

Questions we hear from Preqin users

Can I export Preqin’s crypto data to Excel?

Preqin Pro is an online platform. Some data can be exported, but it’s not designed as a downloadable Excel product the way our Fund List is. If you need an Excel file with 800+ crypto funds and 40+ sortable columns for outreach or internal analysis, that’s our product.

Does Preqin have a crypto fund index?

Not a dedicated one. They have some crypto hedge fund performance data within their broader hedge fund benchmarks, but nothing equivalent to our six crypto strategy sub-indices or the more granular crypto-native indices from providers like NilssonHedge or HFR’s Blockchain Index.

Is Preqin’s crypto data more accurate than yours?

Accuracy is hard to compare because we cover different slices of the market. Preqin has 500+ researchers globally, which gives them tremendous reach. But crypto is a small part of their coverage, while it’s 100% of ours. For the funds we both cover, the data is likely similar. The difference is in how many funds we each cover and how deep the crypto-specific analytics go.

Should I cancel Preqin and switch to CFR?

Only if you’re using Preqin exclusively for crypto, which would be unusual. If you’re using it for PE, VC, real estate, or infrastructure too, keep it. Add our Fund List ($387) or Performance Database ($977/year) for crypto-specific depth. They work well together.

For a broader comparison of all crypto fund databases, see our full comparison article.