The alternative data market has hundreds of vendors. The range runs from billion-dollar incumbents to small specialist providers with a single dataset. Evaluating them is time-consuming, and the cost of a bad decision is high: data that does not integrate cleanly, signals that do not hold up, or sourcing that creates compliance exposure.
This post provides a practical framework for evaluating alternative data vendors, whether you are buying your first dataset or expanding an existing program.
Start with the use case, not the vendor
The most common mistake in vendor evaluation is starting with