Bloomberg Terminal Alternatives

AlphaSense

Best for: Comprehensive qualitative research and accurate data

AlphaSense is a G2-rated leader in both financial research and market intelligence. It’s built for organizations looking to implement a full-scale research strategy rooted in AI technology and smart automation capabilities.

The proof of AlphaSense’s value lies in its customer base: today, it’s used by 80% of the top consultancies, 75% of the top asset management firms, 85% of the S&P 100, and 20 of the largest pharmaceutical companies. 

Here’s how AlphaSense helps you extract insights and access both high-value internal and external content with the power of artificial intelligence—all in a single platform. 

Compare AlphaSense to Alternatives and Competitors.

Extensive Out-of-the-Box Content Library

AlphaSense comes equipped with an extensive collection of external market intelligence and research that comprises over 10,000+ private, public, premium, and proprietary data sources. This content is organized by the four key perspectives of research—company, journalist, analyst, and expert. Our platform is purpose-built to speed up your team’s access to information on all the relevant topics and companies driving your market.

Our external content sources include earnings transcripts, news wires, trade journals, and SEC and global filings. Besides that, AlphaSense also gives users access to two proprietary and premium content offerings. These are:

• Expert Insights – 35,000+ expert transcripts featuring one-on-one calls with competitors, customers, professionals, industry experts, and former and current executives. You can also request bespoke 1:1 expert calls for less.
• Wall Street Insights® – A collection of broker research from Wall Street’s leading firms, covering global sector themes, industries, and companies from 1,000+ sell-side and independent firms, available within the AlphaSense platform. Research professionals can even preview the contents of a broker report, saving them wasted time and money on potentially fruitless research.

In addition to these sources, AlphaSense enables you to upload, index, and search through your own content. That includes:

• Internal research, notes, and presentations
• Reports from industry and market intelligence providers
• Newsletters, web pages, and RSS feeds
• Meeting and conference notes

AI Search & Summarization Technology

AlphaSense comes with the following industry-leading AI capabilities:

Smart Synonyms™

Smart Synonyms™ is a proprietary AlphaSense feature that uses AI technology to recognize both the keyword and search intent behind any query. 

AlphaSense uses advanced algorithms to eliminate noise from your search (i.e., content with matching keywords but ultimately irrelevant to your search objective) and leverages variations in language to pinpoint the exact information you need.  

Sentiment Analysis

Sentiment analysis, a natural language processing (NLP)-based feature, parses through content and identifies nuances in the tone and subjective meaning of text. It then uses color coding to help readers identify the document’s positive, negative, and neutral sentiments.

This technology assigns each search term a numerical sentiment change score to help users track any slight change in market sentiments across time. Users can take advantage of it to make better-informed investment decisions and improve their risk management strategies. 

Generative AI

Unlike other consumer-grade generative AI (genAI) tools trained on publicly available data, AlphaSense takes an entirely different approach. Our industry-leading suite of generative AI tools is purpose-built to deliver business-grade insights and leans on 10+ years of AI tech development. Our proprietary AlphaSense Large Language Model (ASLLM)—trained specifically on business and financial data—matches or beats the leading third-party LLMs over 90% of the time. 

Our suite of tools currently includes:

• Smart Summaries – this feature allows you to glean instant earnings insights—reducing time spent on research during earnings season, quickly capture company outlook, and generate an expert-approved SWOT analysis straight from former competitors, partners, and employees.
• Enterprise Intelligence – a first-of-its-kind offering that delivers AlphaSense’s AI-powered search and summarization capabilities to customers’ internal organizational knowledge.
• AlphaSense Assistant (in beta) – a generative AI chat experience that transforms how users can extract insights from hundreds of millions of premium content sources. 

Integration Capabilities

Even the best companies fall victim to silos. But forward-thinking organizations know to avoid this pitfall by leveraging the advanced collaborative tools found in modern market intelligence platforms.

Seamlessly Integrate with Other Tools

AlphaSense works with the apps and tools you already use to help you be more productive with less effort. Connect with integrations to Box, Sharepoint, OneNote, or leverage our API suite to securely upload your proprietary content.

APIs

API capabilities provided by your market intelligence platform allow you to build your own tools to get maximum ROI from the content sources you can now access. For example, AlphaSense offers the following APIs for users to leverage our proprietary technology and content across other parts of their strategies:

• Alert Feed API: Real-time data feed based on saved searches & alerts.
• Search API: Solution that provides real-time, programmatic access to AlphaSense search infrastructure to query and filter the database of documents from a third party domain.
• Ingestion API: Integration, processing, and enrichment capabilities for internal or custom content sets.
• AI API: Enrichment capabilities that enable company recognition, sentiment, themes and KPI services for internal content.

Monitoring, Analysis, and Collaboration Tools

AlphaSense is designed to help users find insights faster. But finding insights is half the battle. We also understand that the real power in crucial insights is the ability to share them with teams and C-Suite leadership. In order to do that, we offer a number of tools that extend beyond search and summarization to help users accelerate research tasks.  

• Customizable Dashboards create a centralized information hub for monitoring key companies and themes, while tailored real-time alerts provide real-time updates.
• Smart Alerts monitor the most important themes, companies and market updates with weekly, daily, or real-time alerts.
• Notebook+ and commenting features increase collaboration and help teams manage and share insights more effectively. Notebook+ also includes templates that streamline the process of creating deliverables.
• Table Tools allow you to streamline your quantitative analysis by enabling you to export modeled time-series data on company financials.
• Image Search allows you to discover insights buried in charts to quickly capture data without reading through pages of documents.
• Snippet Explorer allows you to effortlessly look at any topic or theme and all its historical mentions in a single view.
• Our Black-lining feature allows you to automatically identify any QoQ changes in SEC filings
• Automated Monitoring allows you to set up real-time alerts that send instant updates on any relevant market movements, news, emerging trends, and competitor activities. We also generate snapshots of companies and topics regularly that keep you ahead of the curve with actionable insights.

For an even more in-depth comparison of AlphaSense and Bloomberg, check out our AlphaSense vs. Bloomberg page.

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FactSet

Best for: Unique data sets and quantitative screening

Like Bloomberg, FactSet is one of the longest-standing financial research tools on the market, serving clients since the 1970s and now holding a client base of 7000+ firms and 170K individual users. Known for its exceptional customer support and four decades of experience, FactSet is a dependable platform for financial advisors, asset owners, investment bankers, and traders.

FactSet’s hallmark features are its expansive data library, which includes 30 datasets (two dozen of them exclusive) and unique solutions to serve a wide range of financial subfields, including:

• Asset management
• Hedge funds
• Private equity and venture capital
• Corporations
• Wealth management

FactSet is also continuously improving its technology and acquiring smaller platforms, such as content providers, to keep its offering updated and high-quality. The main drawbacks of using FactSet as a Bloomberg Terminal alternative are that it’s also expensive at $12,000 per year, and its qualitative search function is not nearly as powerful or advanced as most of its rivals’.

Refinitiv Eikon

Best for: External collaboration and platform customization

Refinitiv Eikon is one of Bloomberg’s biggest competitors as far as market share, holding about 20% to Bloomberg’s nearly 33%, according to most industry sources. The two have quite similar features, too — like Bloomberg, Refinitiv Eikon delivers proprietary news and analysis (Thomson Reuters) as well as access to collaboration tools that connect users to a network of 30K+ firms in 180+ countries around the world.

Other notable Refinitiv Eikon features include:

• Data platform APIs so users can build customized solutions
• Advanced charting tools integrated with search and other core functionality
• Microsoft Excel integration capabilities
• Automated real-time alerts
• Easily customizable open platform

While they don’t list prices on their website, Investopedia reports that prices for Eikon’s full solution fall around $22,000 per year. They do offer a more affordable version at $3600 per year, albeit with heavily pared-down features.

Koyfin

Best for: Basic quantitative research on a budget

Koyfin is a solution built for investors at every experience level — professional, individual, and student. Known for its user-friendly features and in-depth qualitative data, the Koyfin platform makes investing more accessible without sacrificing the sophistication and accuracy needed by firms managing real client portfolios.

Here’s what Koyfin offers:

• A stock screener with 5900+ features for finding the right stocks
• Detailed and accessible company snapshots, financial statements, and valuation analysis
• Customizable dashboards for holistic snapshot views of trends
• Advanced graphic to create compelling visuals and customizable graphs
• Powerful visualization tools that provide a full picture of financial markets

Although not necessarily a drawback, Koyfin is more focused on managing investments than larger market research. If a market intelligence strategy is your goal, this tool may be too limited for you.

Koyfin comes at a much more affordable price than Bloomberg and many of the other tools on our list, starting with a free option that includes limited versions of the platform’s most important features. 

Beyond that is the Basic option ($15/month) which adds Market News and Snapshots to the available features, Plus ($35/month) for more unlimited features and export options, and Pro ($70/month) which adds advanced search capabilities and priority support.

Related Reading: Koyfin vs Bloomberg

Symphony

Best for: Secure data sharing

Symphony is a different kind of solution than the rest on our list, built not for direct research but rather collaboration between financial services teams, clients, and organizations.

Still, its impressive communication features make it an indirect competitor for Bloomberg — a powerful tool for organizations that need to work securely online with clients, partners, and other industry counterparts.

Symphony’s features include:

• Direct chat
• Digital workspaces (“Rooms”)
• Live video conferencing
• Screen sharing
• Global user directory
• Tagging capabilities

Most importantly, every Symphony message is encrypted as soon as it’s sent, meaning users can communicate with confidence and never be constrained by geographic distance or security concerns.

Pricing is unavailable on Symphony’s website, but they do offer separate sales services for small firms vs. large institutions, suggesting that separate pricing options exist for both.

YCharts

Best for: Creating compelling visuals

YCharts is an investment research platform originally built to make investing accessible for firm and individual investors alike. Its core features are its data visualization capabilities that make insights more compelling for analysts, investors, and other stakeholders, as well as its fund screener that allows you to filter mutual funds and ETFs by specific metrics. 

The YCharts solution is comprised of three main tools:

• Model Portfolios – Users can build and analyze portfolios using metrics visualizations, custom strategy comparison reports, and benchmark modeling. Pre-built customizable templates are also available and can fit with any model you create.
• Stock Screeners – Features 4000+ financial metrics users can filter to find stocks based on custom criteria and build custom analysis formulas
• Fundamental Charts – Charting tools that enable easy sharing of data visualizations, including the ability to embed them as images in other content (like blogs or emails)

YCharts offers a free 7-day trial and three pricing levels: Enterprise (for firms and advising teams), Professional (for individual investors and portfolio managers), and Standard (for students and beginner investors). Client-specific pricing for each level is available upon request from YCharts.

S&P Capital IQ

Best for: Sector-specific insight

S&P Capital IQ is built for large firms, professional corporate and financial researchers, and high-level business leaders. Like Bloomberg, S&P’s solution offers comprehensive financial research and market intelligence capabilities, with over 135 billion data points, including company profiles, financial data, and independent analyst reports. 

Capital IQ also offers tools, such as the web portal and mobile apps, that cover all complex investment structures and offer analysts up-to-date insights, performance comparisons, and fund strategies.

One of S&P’s strengths is that it combines fundamental data with sector-specific metrics and analysis for Financial Institutions, Insurance, Energy, Real Estate, Metals & Mining, and Technology, Media, and Telecoms. Other important features include:

• Easy integration with Microsoft Office (for pulling data to build models and charts)
• Maps visualization tool for a high-level view of global markets
• Custom dashboards for monitoring specific companies, industries, and topics
• Access to real-time data, financial modeling, and quantitative analysis through web-based and Excel-based applications

Pricing options are not available publicly for S&P Capital IQ but are available by request.

PitchBook

Best for: Venture capital

Pitchbook is a research and intelligent platform built for venture capital, private equity, and M&A investors. It provides financial data on public and private companies, deals made across public and private equity markets, investor track records, and specific funds.

Pitchbook’s features not only provide data insights but powerful deal sourcing, business development, and networking capabilities for active investors and firms in the space. For firms or investors specializing in VC, PE, or M&A, Pitchbook presents a more valuable alternative to Bloomberg in that it fits uniquely to their needs.

That said, Pitchbook is the most expensive solution on our list at $25,000 per year for three users, plus $7000 for every additional user (per TrustRadius).

Morningstar Premium

Best for: Expert portfolio analysis

Morningstar Premium covers a wide range of financial solutions, but those most relevant to audiences similar to Bloomberg’s are Morningstar Direct (built for professional investors and firms) and Morningstar Investor (built for individual investors).

Both solutions provide premium quality data and exclusive insights directly from Morningstar experts. On the Direct solution, those insights come in the form of stock and portfolio research and ratings, while the Investor solution offers analysis that helps users make smart investment decisions.

Other notable features of the Morningstar platforms include:

Morningstar Direct:

• Analytics lab for investment analysis
• Pre-built Morningstar datasets
• Custom investment scorecards and risk scenario analysis
• Sustainability-focused ratings

Morningstar Investor: 

• Simplified stock ratings
• Stock screeners and pre-filtered investment lists
• Morningstar® Portfolio X-Ray® for portfolio analysis

Morningstar Investor is $250 for an annual subscription. Morningstar Direct pricing is available by direct request only.

The Motley Fool

Best for: Investors and teams who want to learn while they invest

The Motley Fool’s investment research tool offers an exceptional range of features to meet the needs of both beginner and professional investors. Their mission — “to make the world smarter, happier, and richer” — is met by the many resources they provide in addition to their actual platform solution, including multiple podcasts, a blog, and discussion board.

The solution itself is comprehensive, with features built to inform investors while providing guidance around the right picks. Users get access to varying levels of expert advice depending on the subscription level they choose.

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor — their proprietary stock picking service and most popular tool — comes in at $199/year. For more comprehensive bundled services, users can choose The Epic Bundle (recommended for larger portfolios) which includes more frequent recommendations and closer advising services.

The main drawback of The Motley Fool as compared to Bloomberg is that it’s not built for doing independent research or larger market intelligence. But if you’re looking for ready-made expert insight or the ability to get granular about stock selection and analysis, this tool is a solid choice.