Comparison
Deal origination firms compared.
DealSource Systems wrote this comparison and DealSource Systems appears in it. That is worth knowing before you read a word of the rest. Every published comparison of deal origination firms we could find was written by a firm that ranks itself somewhere in its own list, and almost none of them say so. The criteria here are set out in the open so you can test them against your own mandate instead of taking the conclusion on trust.
This page is the overview. For a firm-by-firm breakdown, with every claim quoted from that firm's own site and a section on where each one beats us, see the comparison hub, which also covers Grata, PitchBook, Axial, Sourcescrub and CT Acquisitions.
Two different things are being sold under the same words
The most expensive mistake a fund makes in this category is treating these as one market. They are two.
Data and software platforms give your team a searchable universe of private companies and a workflow to track them. Grata, PitchBook, Sourcescrub and Affinity are the names that come up most. Your associates still build the list, write the approach, chase the replies and qualify the owner. You are buying leverage for people you already employ.
Done-for-you origination firms supply the people doing that work. The deliverable is a qualified conversation with an owner, not a record in a database. That is the category this page compares, and it is why a platform is not an alternative to it. A database does not make calls. We wrote about that distinction in more depth in deal sourcing software versus done-for-you origination.
If you are still deciding which of the two you need, start with the five deal sourcing options compared instead of this page.
The comparison
| Firm | Best fit | How it works | Published pricing | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CAPTARGET | Volume against a defined buy box. Search funds, independent sponsors, corp dev | Off-market outreach, owner calling and on-market broker coverage. States 1,500 clients served since 2009, and a 90 day onboarding | None published. States no fees on originated deals | Now owned by SourceCo. Volume-led, so qualification work can land back on your team |
| SourceCo | Buyers wanting matched, pre-screened founder-led targets from 2m to 200m | Proprietary matching across a stated 4,000 vetted buyers, using their own software for collection, enrichment and outreach. Explicitly not a product you log into | Sellers pay nothing. Buy-side terms not published | Marketplace dynamics mean the same opportunity can reach several buyers |
| OutSearched | Funds buying 1m to 10m EBITDA who want a BD function without hiring one | Three models: a trained rep branded as your firm, fractional BD under their brand, or buy-side advisory through to LOI. States a deal team ready in 21 days | None published. Cites 150k as the internal-hire comparison | States first qualified owner conversation at roughly 60 days, slower than the category norm |
| Kiya | Independent sponsors and small platforms where seniority in the first call beats volume | Founder-led outreach by an operator who has bought and sold companies. Deliberately small team | None published | Small by design, so capacity is the constraint. Not built for high-volume coverage |
| TruSight | Funds wanting broad intermediary coverage alongside proprietary search | Weekly curated deals from a stated 13,000 intermediaries, plus retained buy-side search. Over a decade operating | None published | Intermediary coverage is by definition intermediated. The retained search is the proprietary half |
| DealSource Systems | PE funds, M&A advisors and boutique banks wanting founder conversations before a broker or an auction | AI maps the market, scores readiness signals and drafts. Operators with deal experience review every message before an owner sees it, and handle the replies | From 4,000 a month. Dedicated multi-thesis mandates run to 8,000 and above. No success fee | We are the newest here. Our published proof is one documented engagement, not a decade of them |
Every figure above is taken from each firm's own published material, checked on 18 September 2026. Where a firm publishes no pricing, this page says so rather than guessing at it.
The consolidation that changes this list
SourceCo has acquired CAPTARGET. Both firms state it on their own sites. If you are working from a comparison written before that, you are treating one company as two independent options, and a competitive process built on that assumption is not actually competitive.
It also makes the combined business the largest done-for-you originator in the category by a distance. That cuts both ways: they have the broadest coverage available, and you will be one of a great many mandates inside it.
How to choose, in the order that actually matters
Decide whether you are buying coverage or conversations
Coverage means breadth. Every company in a defined universe gets approached and your team sorts the replies. Conversations means depth: fewer approaches, senior handling, and an opportunity that arrives already qualified. Both are routes to the same destination, which is proprietary deal flow, but they cost different things and they fail in different ways.
CAPTARGET and TruSight sell coverage. Kiya and DealSource Systems sell conversations. OutSearched sells either, depending on which of its three models you buy. Choosing the wrong one is the single most common reason these engagements disappoint, and it is usually discovered in month three rather than in the sales process.
Find out who actually speaks to the owner
This is the largest quality difference between deal origination firms and the hardest thing to see from a website, because every firm's marketing implies seniority.
Ask directly: is the first approach written and sent by someone who has done a deal, or by a junior researcher working from a script? Then ask to see a real outreach message and a real reply thread, redacted. A firm that cannot show you one is telling you something.
Get the fee model in writing before the pilot
Retainer only, retainer plus success fee, and pure success fee are three different incentive structures, and they produce three different behaviours over a twelve month mandate. A pure success fee sounds risk-free and quietly pushes a firm toward whichever deal closes fastest rather than the one that fits your thesis. We set out the trade-offs in retainer versus success fee in deal origination.
Ask what happens to the list when you leave
Who owns the sourced company list, the research notes and the contact records at the end of an engagement is rarely addressed on anyone's website, and it is worth more than the first month's fee. Ask before you sign. There are more questions worth asking in the questions to ask a deal origination partner.
Where we are genuinely weaker
We are the newest firm on this page, and it is not close. CAPTARGET has been doing this since 2009 and TruSight for more than a decade.
Our public proof is one fully documented engagement: a healthcare investment bank where the system produced 14 qualified founder conversations in the first three weeks and 133 inside 90 days. That is a real number from a real mandate, published in full at the Merritt Healthcare Advisors engagement. It is also one mandate. If a decade of case studies is your bar, we do not clear it, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
What we would argue we do better is the part that decides whether an origination engagement works at all. An operator with deal experience reads every message before an owner sees it, and the same operator handles the reply. That is also precisely why we do not sell coverage at volume: the model does not scale the way a pure outreach shop's does, and we would rather say that than sell you something we are not built to deliver. The trade-off is set out honestly in outsourced deal origination versus in-house.
Where each firm genuinely wins
If you want the honest one-line version:
- Highest volume coverage: the combined SourceCo and CAPTARGET business, by some distance
- Best for a search fund on a single buy box: CAPTARGET, on cost and breadth
- Best for an independent sponsor who needs credibility in the first call: Kiya
- Best if you want a BD function that looks like your own team: OutSearched's internal model
- Best for intermediary coverage alongside proprietary search: TruSight
- Best for a boutique bank chasing sell-side mandates: us, and we set out why in deal origination for boutique investment banks
There is no firm on this list that is the right answer for every mandate, including ours. A comparison that concluded otherwise would not be worth publishing.