The 14 Best Commercial Real Estate Data Tools and Providers in 2026

U.S. commercial real estate traded $499 billion in 2025, up 22% from the year before (CBRE, February 2026). Every one of those deals was underwritten with data from a short list of commercial real estate data providers, and the list splits into three camps that get conflated constantly: marketplaces that show you what’s for sale, analytics platforms that tell you what assets are worth, and the growing layer of data that no vendor database sells at all.

Buy from the wrong camp and you pay CoStar money for a LoopNet problem. The pricing is opaque, the review coverage is thin, and the top-ranking comparison articles are mostly vendors ranking themselves first.

This guide compares the 14 best commercial real estate data tools of 2026 with two tables per provider: one for the core facts, one for verified review ratings with sample sizes printed. By the end you’ll have a shortlist matched to your asset class and workflow, plus realistic pricing expectations before any sales call.

Why Is Commercial Real Estate Data Its Own Problem?

Commercial real estate data is fragmented by design. Residential agents get an MLS; commercial teams get nothing equivalent. Sale prices in non-disclosure states never hit a public feed, lease terms sit inside confidential documents, and owners of record are routinely LLCs that exist to obscure the actual owner.

That fragmentation produced six distinct data families, and no vendor covers all of them well:

1. Listings: what is on the market right now (LoopNet, Crexi)
2. Comps: what sold or leased, and on what terms (CoStar, CompStak)
3. Ownership and debt: who owns it, who lent on it, when the loan matures (Reonomy, Trepp)
4. Market analytics: rents, vacancy, forecasts by submarket (Yardi Matrix, Moody’s CRE, MSCI RCA, Green Street)
5. Demand signals: foot traffic and trade areas (Placer.ai)
6. Parcel and environmental: boundaries, zoning, contamination risk (LightBox)

The vendors also disagree with each other on the same number. Moody’s put U.S. office vacancy at a record of roughly 21% across 79 markets in Q1 2026; CBRE’s read for the same quarter was 18.6% with positive net absorption. Neither is wrong. They track different building sets with different methodologies, which means whose data you buy quietly becomes whose market view you hold.

This article covers commercial-only tools. If your scope includes residential and general property data, our companion guide to the best real estate data providers covers that market.

How We Evaluated These CRE Data Tools

Six criteria, applied the same way to all 14 tools. No vendor paid for placement, and no ranking below is sponsored.

Criterion	What we looked at	Why it matters
Asset-class coverage	Office, industrial, retail, multifamily, hospitality depth	Coverage varies more by asset class than vendors admit
Data types	Listings, comps, ownership, debt, analytics, alt-data	Determines which questions the tool can answer
Delivery	Platform, API, bulk feeds, exports	API access separates analysis tools from data sources
Pricing transparency	Published rates vs. quote-only, sourced benchmarks	Quote-only pricing shifts negotiating power to the vendor
Verified reviews	Ratings from G2, Capterra, Trustpilot, with sample sizes	Small samples make star ratings unreliable on their own
Freshness	Update cadence, 2025-2026 product and ownership changes	Stale comps and stale ownership records cost real money

One criterion deserves the extra sentence. Review coverage for CRE data tools is remarkably thin: two category leaders have fewer than 10 G2 reviews, and one well-funded platform has zero. A 4.7 rating from 116 reviewers tells you something; a 4.0 from 4 reviewers tells you almost nothing. That is why every provider below gets a dedicated review table with the sample size (n) printed next to the rating, as of July 2026.

Getting this wrong is not a rounding error. Gartner’s oft-cited 2020 estimate puts the average cost of poor data quality at $12.9 million per organization per year. In a business where a single mispriced comp can move an offer by seven figures, the data budget is risk management.

Commercial Real Estate Data Tools at a Glance

Fourteen tools, six categories, one line each. The deep dives with both tables follow.

#	Tool	Category	Best for
1	Forage AI	Custom data extraction	CRE data the databases don’t sell, delivered as managed feeds
2	CoStar	Full-suite database	Verified comps and coverage at institutional scale
3	LoopNet	Listings marketplace	Marketing availabilities and surveying on-market inventory
4	Crexi	Marketplace + analytics	An affordable CoStar alternative for SMB and midmarket teams
5	Reonomy (Altus Group)	Ownership intelligence	Off-market prospecting and LLC-piercing owner lookup
6	CompStak	Lease and sale comps	Lease economics: starting rents, TI, concessions
7	Yardi Matrix	Market intelligence	Multifamily and self-storage supply pipeline data
8	Moody’s CRE	Market analytics	Submarket forecasts for lenders and risk teams
9	MSCI Real Capital Analytics	Capital markets data	Institutional transaction records and price indices
10	Trepp	Debt and CMBS	Securitized loan performance and distress signals
11	Cherre	Data integration	Unifying internal and vendor data into one warehouse
12	Placer.ai	Foot traffic	Retail site selection and demand-side signals
13	LightBox	Parcel + environmental	Due-diligence data: parcels, zoning, Phase I ESA records
14	Green Street	Research + indices	Institutional research, CPPI, REIT analytics

1. Forage AI: Best for Custom CRE Data Extraction at Scale

What it is. Forage AI is not another database subscription. It is a managed Web Data Extraction service: you define the commercial real estate data you need from public web sources, and Forage AI builds and operates the extraction pipelines, applies AI-powered parsing with human QA, and delivers clean structured data to your API, warehouse, or files. The service draws on extraction infrastructure spanning 500M+ websites. Every tool below sells you their fixed dataset; this model builds yours.

Core facts	Detail
Coverage	Any public web source: listing portals, tenant and franchise sites, county permit and zoning pages, distress notices, marketplace inventories
Data types	Listings and rents, tenant rosters, franchise footprints, permits, ownership signals, listing-velocity and vacancy proxies
Delivery	API, structured feeds (CSV/JSON), direct-to-warehouse; fully managed pipelines
Pricing model	Custom by scope; no per-seat licensing. From sign-off to first dataset in 1-2 weeks
Best for	Data and analytics teams at investors, lenders, and proptechs building proprietary CRE datasets

Best for. Teams whose question is not “what did it trade for” but “what is happening on the ground that the databases can’t see”: which tenants are expanding, where permits are being filed, how fast listings move across marketplaces, what competitors are charging in rent. Proptech product teams also use this model to source the raw data behind their own analytics. Not for: anyone who needs a sale-comps database tomorrow; that is CoStar’s and CompStak’s territory, and Forage AI does not pretend otherwise.

Reviews (as of July 2026)	Detail
G2	Not listed
Capterra	Not listed

What customers say. Forage AI is a managed service rather than self-serve software, so it does not accumulate marketplace reviews the way SaaS tools do; there is no G2 or Capterra listing to cite, and we won’t invent one. Client engagements run through scoped projects with a 3x QA team on every delivery.

The other thirteen tools on this list sell the databases themselves. The place to start is the one that defines the category.

2. CoStar: Best Overall CRE Database (If Budget Allows)

What it is. CoStar is the category incumbent: a research-verified database covering 6M+ property records, 11M+ sale and lease comps, and 3,000+ markets and submarkets across every major commercial asset class. The scale of the moat shows up in the parent company’s accounts: CoStar Group booked $3.2 billion in revenue in 2025, up 19% year over year, with record Q4 net new bookings of $308 million. The company closed its $1.6 billion acquisition of Matterport in February 2025, folding 3D building capture into the platform.

Core facts	Detail
Coverage	6M+ property records, 11M+ comps, 3,000+ markets; office, industrial, retail, multifamily, hospitality, land
Data types	Verified sale/lease comps, listings, vacancy, rents, tenants, ownership, forecasts, analytics
Delivery	CoStar Suite platform + mobile; enterprise data licensing; no self-serve API for standard seats
Pricing model	Quote-only, long-term contracts. Vendr median: ~$40,000/yr for one license (up to 3 users), vs. ~$71,000 list. Entry seats commonly reported at $300-485+/user/mo
Best for	Institutional investors, large brokerages, and lenders that need verified comps at scale

Best for. Teams that touch multiple asset classes and markets and can absorb five-figure annual pricing. If your underwriting depends on analyst-verified comps rather than crowdsourced or public-record data, CoStar remains the reference standard. Watch out for the contract structure: multi-year terms and opaque, negotiated pricing are standard, and the modules you actually need drive the real price. One legal footnote worth knowing: CoStar and Crexi remain in active litigation, with a 2025 appeals-court ruling reviving Crexi’s antitrust counterclaims and a CoStar copyright win over image copying; CoStar petitioned the Supreme Court in December 2025. Both sides’ claims are unresolved as of July 2026.

Reviews (as of July 2026)	Detail
G2 (CoStar Group, seller-level, all products)	3.7/5 (n=203)
G2 (CoStar Investment Analysis)	4.5/5 (n=10)
G2 (CoStar Brokerage Applications)	3.7/5 (n=27)
Capterra	Listed; no verifiable rating at research time

What customers say. Reviewers on G2 consistently praise the depth and verification of the comp database and the quality of market reports; the recurring complaints are price, contract inflexibility, and a steep learning curve. The seller-level 3.7/5 across 203 reviews blends products, which cuts both ways: it is the largest sample in this category and also the least product-specific.

3. LoopNet: Best for Marketing and Surveying On-Market Listings

What it is. LoopNet, owned by CoStar Group, is the largest public-facing commercial listings marketplace. It answers one question well: what is on the market right now. It is not a comps database and does not try to be one; the data exhaust is marketing content, photos, and basic property facts.

Core facts	Detail
Coverage	U.S.-wide for-sale and for-lease commercial listings, all major property types
Data types	Active listings, marketing media, basic property facts, market-trend content
Delivery	Web marketplace; advertiser dashboard
Pricing model	Published per-listing tiers: Silver $89, Gold $649, Platinum $1,249, Diamond $2,499 per listing/mo (LoopNet ad-package pages; third-party trackers report slightly different entry pricing, so treat tiers as directional)
Best for	Brokers marketing availabilities; buyers and tenants surveying on-market inventory

Best for. Listing agents who need exposure, and any buyer or tenant doing a first-pass survey of what is publicly available. The structural catch: Basic (free) listings are visible only to CoStar subscribers, not the general public. If you list free, most of your intended audience never sees it, which is the quiet mechanism that converts free listers into paying advertisers.

Reviews (as of July 2026)	Detail
G2	3.5/5 (review count not verifiable at research time)
Capterra	Listed; no verifiable rating at research time
Trustpilot	Listed; no verifiable score at research time

What customers say. Praise centers on reach and ease of use; complaints center on the cost of premium tiers (G2 pricing data flags LoopNet at roughly 44% above category average) and on listing staleness, since expired or stale listings are a known marketplace-wide issue. The visibility rules for free listings are the most common surprise cited by first-time users.

4. Crexi: Best Affordable CoStar Alternative

What it is. Crexi is a commercial marketplace with an analytics layer, Crexi Intelligence, layered on top: sales comps, property records, and demographics with strong retail and industrial coverage. It has grown into the default first stop for SMB and midmarket teams priced out of the incumbent.

Core facts	Detail
Coverage	National marketplace; comps and records depth strongest in primary and secondary markets
Data types	Listings, auctions, sales comps, property records, demographics, deal-management tools
Delivery	Web platform; PRO tier; auction platform
Pricing model	Free basic listings; Crexi Intelligence from $299/mo; PRO quote-based
Best for	SMB-to-midmarket brokers and investors wanting a modern, affordable platform

Best for. Teams that need listings plus workable sales comps at a published price point. At $299 per month for Intelligence, Crexi costs roughly what a single CoStar seat costs per week under commonly reported entry pricing. Not for institutional underwriting that depends on deep historical comps or verified lease data; reviewers and the coverage record both point to thinner tertiary-market depth than the incumbent.

Reviews (as of July 2026)	Detail
G2	4.7/5 (n=116)
Capterra (Crexi PRO)	4.0/5 (n=1)
Trustpilot	4.5/5 (n=3,126)

What customers say. Crexi holds the strongest verified review profile of any tool on this list: 4.7/5 across 116 G2 reviews plus 4.5/5 across 3,126 Trustpilot reviews, samples large enough to mean something. Users praise the modern interface, lead-engagement analytics, and support responsiveness. Recurring complaints: comps depth and historical data are thinner than CoStar’s, with coverage gaps in smaller markets.

5. Reonomy (Altus Group): Best for Ownership Intelligence and Off-Market Prospecting

What it is. Reonomy is the ownership-intelligence platform: 55M+ commercial properties with entity resolution that pierces LLC structures to surface actual owners and their contact details. Altus Group acquired it for US$201.5M in 2021, and as of May 27, 2026 Reonomy sells subscriptions fully online with published pricing, a rarity in this category.

Core facts	Detail
Coverage	55M+ U.S. commercial properties
Data types	Ownership records, LLC-piercing entity resolution, owner contacts, sales, debt, tenant signals
Delivery	Web app; API; bulk data feeds (10,000+ records) priced on request
Pricing model	Published: from $500/user/mo monthly, from $400/user/mo billed annually; Plus tier $575/user/mo with 1,000 exports/mo
Best for	Acquisitions teams, debt originators, and brokers doing off-market outreach

Best for. Anyone whose deal flow depends on reaching owners before a listing exists. The LLC-piercing workflow is the differentiator: from parcel to person in one search. Watch out: contact-data hit rates are the recurring complaint, and at $400 to $575 per user per month the tool needs to convert prospecting into deals to pay for itself at a small shop.

Reviews (as of July 2026)	Detail
G2	4.0/5 (n=4)
Capterra	Listed; no verifiable rating at research time

What customers say. The G2 sample is four reviews: three five-star, one two-star. That is too thin to validate a platform this widely used, which is itself the takeaway: treat Reonomy’s rating as anecdote, not evidence, and lean on a trial instead. The positive reviews single out owner-contact discovery speed; the negative one cites data accuracy, mirroring the hit-rate complaint that shows up in practitioner forums.

6. CompStak: Best for Lease Comps

What it is. CompStak runs a crowdsourced comps exchange: brokers and appraisers trade lease and sale comps for credits, CompStak’s analysts review the submissions, and the cleaned dataset (4M+ comps, 1.7M+ properties) is sold to enterprises. It is the only tool on this list where the lease economics themselves, starting rent, tenant improvements, free rent, effective rent, are the core product.

Core facts	Detail
Coverage	4M+ comps across 1.7M+ U.S. properties; deepest in major metros
Data types	Analyst-reviewed lease comps (rents, TI, concessions, effective rents), sales comps, loan data
Delivery	CompStak Exchange (free for contributing brokers/appraisers), CompStak Enterprise (platform + API + feeds), Prospect
Pricing model	Exchange free-in-kind for producers; Enterprise quote-based, no public pricing
Best for	Appraisers, landlords, and institutional teams that live on lease economics

Best for. Appraisers and landlords negotiating against asking rents with actual effective-rent data, and acquisitions teams underwriting rent rolls. The Exchange model means producers get the data free by contributing. Watch out: coverage follows the crowd, so major metros are deep and tertiary markets are sparse, and comp recency depends on submission activity in your market.

Reviews (as of July 2026)	Detail
G2 (CompStak Exchange)	Insufficient reviews to rate
G2 (CompStak Enterprise)	No reviews (n=0)
Capterra	Not listed

What customers say. There is no meaningful review-platform footprint despite a large broker user base, a common pattern for exchange-model tools whose users get the product free. Practitioner sentiment praises the concession-level lease detail unavailable anywhere else; the recurring gripe is metro concentration. With no usable star rating, judge CompStak on a sample pull for your specific market.

7. Yardi Matrix: Best for Multifamily and Supply-Pipeline Data

What it is. Yardi Matrix is the market-intelligence arm of property-management giant Yardi, covering 183 U.S. markets with particular depth in multifamily (92,000+ properties, 18M+ units), industrial (45 markets, 9B+ sq ft), office, retail, self storage, and student housing. Its supply-pipeline and loan-maturity data are the reasons underwriters keep it in the stack.

Core facts	Detail
Coverage	183 U.S. markets; 92K+ multifamily properties / 18M+ units; industrial 9B+ sq ft
Data types	Property-level rents, occupancy, loan maturities, ownership contacts, new-supply pipeline, forecasts
Delivery	Platform subscription; research bulletins; data licensing
Pricing model	Quote-based, sized by markets, users, and property types; no public price list
Best for	Multifamily and self-storage investors and lenders underwriting supply risk

Best for. Multifamily underwriting. If your model breaks when 3,000 new units deliver next year in your submarket, Matrix’s pipeline data is the tool built to catch it. The research team’s market bulletins are widely circulated and respected. Not for office- or retail-first teams: reviewers and practitioners consistently describe those modules as thinner than the multifamily core.

Reviews (as of July 2026)	Detail
G2	Listed; no verifiable rating at research time
Capterra	Not listed

What customers say. No verifiable review base exists for Matrix itself. Practitioner praise concentrates on the supply pipeline and loan-maturity data; complaints mention a dated interface and quote-only pricing.

8. Moody’s CRE: Best for Market Forecasts and Risk Teams

What it is. Moody’s CRE is the evolution of Reis, the submarket-analytics firm Moody’s acquired for $278M in 2018. The legacy Reis engine tracks rents, vacancy, cap rates, and construction across roughly 275 metros with time series running back decades, now wired into Moody’s broader risk and CMBS ecosystem with tenant and climate-risk layers.

Core facts	Detail
Coverage	~275 U.S. metros, submarket-level; decades-long time series
Data types	Submarket rents, vacancy, cap rates, forecasts, new construction, loan analytics, climate risk
Delivery	Platform, data feeds, API; integrates with Moody’s risk products
Pricing model	Quote-based; no public pricing
Best for	Lenders, institutional research teams, and risk management

Best for. Credit and risk workflows. When a lender needs a defensible submarket forecast for a credit memo, Moody’s name on the data is part of what is being bought. Its office-vacancy series is the one that made headlines at a record ~21% in Q1 2026. Not for brokers who need property-level comps and a fast UI; the platform is built for analysts, and property-level granularity sits below CoStar’s.

Reviews (as of July 2026)	Detail
G2 (Moody’s, seller-level, all products)	4.2/5 (n=85)
G2 / Capterra (CRE product-specific)	None found

What customers say. The 4.2/5 across 85 reviews covers Moody’s entire product family, not the CRE platform specifically; no CRE-specific review base exists. Practitioner sentiment credits the forecast rigor and submarket depth, while noting an enterprise sales process and a workflow aimed at research desks rather than deal teams.

9. MSCI Real Capital Analytics: Best for Capital-Markets Transaction Data

What it is. Real Capital Analytics, acquired by MSCI in 2021, is the institutional record of commercial property transactions: a global database built from US$42 trillion of transactions with insights spanning US$50T+ in CRE data, covering sales, recapitalizations, financings, defaults, and construction. Its price indices (RCA CPPI) and buyer/seller league tables are industry references.

Core facts	Detail
Coverage	Global transaction coverage; deepest institutional record of deal flow
Data types	Transaction comps, league tables, cap-rate trends, CPPI indices, mortgage-debt intelligence
Delivery	Platform, data feeds; Capital Trends research reports
Pricing model	Enterprise quote-based; no public pricing
Best for	Institutional investors, capital-markets brokers, cross-border allocators

Best for. Institutional capital-markets work: tracking who is buying what, at what cap rates, across borders. If your questions are about deal flow and pricing trends rather than individual property operations, this is the canonical source. Not for leasing or operational workflows, and small-balance deals are under-represented by design.

Reviews (as of July 2026)	Detail
G2	Not listed
Capterra	Not listed

What customers say. Effectively no review-platform footprint, which is typical for enterprise data products sold to institutions rather than self-serve users. Market sentiment treats RCA data and the CPPI as reference-grade; the recurring practitioner note is that transaction focus means you still need a separate tool for leasing and operations.

10. Trepp: Best for CRE Debt and CMBS Data

What it is. Trepp, founded in 1979, maintains the largest commercially available database of securitized commercial mortgages and powers the Trepp-CREFC collateral performance database, an industry standard for CMBS. Loan-level performance, delinquency, special-servicing, and bank CRE-exposure analytics are the core product. In April 2026 Fitch Group agreed to acquire Trepp (reported around $1B); the deal was pending completion as of this writing.

Core facts	Detail
Coverage	U.S. CMBS universe; CRE loan and maturity data; bank exposure
Data types	Loan-level CMBS performance, delinquency and special-servicing feeds, maturities, distress signals
Delivery	Platform, data feeds, API; TreppTalk research
Pricing model	Quote-based; no public pricing
Best for	Debt investors, banks, special servicers, and distress hunters

Best for. Anyone working the debt side. Watchlist and special-servicing feeds surface distress quarters before it hits the news, which is why banks and opportunistic buyers keep Trepp on even lean budgets. Not for equity-side teams that never touch securitized debt; the fixed-income vocabulary is a real learning curve.

Reviews (as of July 2026)	Detail
G2	Insufficient reviews to rate
Capterra	Not listed

What customers say. No usable review base exists. Practitioner sentiment is consistent: unmatched CMBS depth and a strong research desk, offset by enterprise pricing and a product built for fixed-income fluency.

11. Cherre: Best for Unifying Multiple CRE Data Sources

What it is. Cherre does not sell property data; it sells the pipes. The platform connects internal systems and third-party vendors (including MSCI) into a single resolved data warehouse with a GraphQL API, and reports powering clients representing $3T+ in assets under management. Buying more data tools eventually creates the problem Cherre exists to fix.

Core facts	Detail
Coverage	Integration layer: your vendors + public records + internal systems
Data types	Entity-resolved, unified CRE data graph; BI-ready warehouse
Delivery	Managed pipelines, GraphQL API, warehouse delivery
Pricing model	Custom annual contracts, typically ~$150K-$500K/yr; implementation extra in year one
Best for	Institutional owners and managers with multiple data sources and a data team

Best for. Organizations already paying for three or more of the tools on this list and losing analyst hours reconciling them. Not for small teams: this is a six-figure infrastructure decision with a real implementation project attached, not a subscription you trial on a card.

Reviews (as of July 2026)	Detail
G2	No reviews (n=0)
TrustRadius	Listed; no verifiable score at research time

What customers say. Zero G2 reviews despite institutional adoption, the most extreme example of this category’s review gap. Public case studies and press coverage emphasize entity resolution quality and the relief of a single source of truth; procurement-side commentary flags the price of entry and multi-quarter implementations.

12. Placer.ai: Best for Foot Traffic and Retail Site Selection

What it is. Placer.ai models foot traffic from a large mobile-location panel: 1.5B+ monthly visits modeled from roughly 20M devices across 13M+ venues. For retail and mixed-use CRE it answers the demand-side question the other tools can’t: how many people actually show up, where do they come from, and where else do they shop. Green Street integrated Placer.ai data into its U.S. platform in March 2026, a signal of foot traffic moving from novelty to standard input.

Core facts	Detail
Coverage	U.S. venues and chains; 13M+ venues modeled
Data types	Visit trends, trade areas, visitor demographics, cross-shopping, chain rankings, void analysis
Delivery	Platform; API; limited free tier
Pricing model	Custom; reported ranges ~$12K-$50K+/yr enterprise; verified government contracts $8K-$27K/yr
Best for	Retail and mixed-use investors, site-selection teams, municipalities

Best for. Retail site selection and leasing narratives: proving a corridor’s traffic to a tenant, or catching a center’s decline before the rent roll shows it. The honesty line: panel-based foot traffic is a modeled estimate, not ground truth. Accuracy is debated for low-traffic sites, so treat small-venue readings as directional.

Reviews (as of July 2026)	Detail
G2	4.3/5 (n=10)
Capterra	No verified reviews

What customers say. The G2 sample is ten reviews, thin for a platform this visible. Users praise the intuitive interface and benchmarking; the recurring caution, echoed in independent provider comparisons, is estimate accuracy at low-traffic locations. “Understanding granular, site-level footfall is critical to making confident real estate decisions,” as Green Street’s Chief Analytics Officer Andrew McCulloch put it when announcing the integration.

13. LightBox: Best for Parcel and Environmental Due-Diligence Data

What it is. LightBox is a roll-up of due-diligence data assets: SmartParcels (nationwide parcel fabric with 300+ property and tax attributes), EDR (the standard environmental-records source behind Phase I ESAs), RCM (the capital-markets deal platform claiming 84,000+ pre-qualified investors), and LightBox Vision mapping (formerly LandVision). In June 2025 it added UrbanFootprint’s climate and infrastructure layers.

Core facts	Detail
Coverage	Nationwide U.S. parcel fabric; environmental records; deal-marketing data
Data types	Parcels and boundaries, zoning, environmental risk, building footprints, ownership
Delivery	Platform modules, bulk data licensing, API
Pricing model	Quote-based, modular by product; no public pricing
Best for	Environmental consultants, lender due-diligence teams, GIS and data teams

Best for. The diligence phase: parcel boundaries, zoning, and environmental risk in one stack, with bulk licensing for GIS teams that want the parcel fabric itself. Not for comps or market analytics; LightBox sits upstream of the transaction, not inside it. Post-merger product fragmentation is the recurring practitioner complaint.

Reviews (as of July 2026)	Detail
G2	None found
Capterra	None found

What customers say. Negligible review-platform footprint. Practitioner sentiment treats EDR as the default for environmental records and praises the parcel data’s geospatial delivery options, while noting quote-only pricing and a product suite still being stitched together from acquisitions.

14. Green Street: Best for Institutional Research and Price Indices

What it is. Green Street is the institutional research house of the group: U.S. and European market research, the Green Street Commercial Property Price Index (CPPI), and REIT analytics. With the March 2026 Placer.ai integration, its platform now blends research-grade indices with foot-traffic signals.

Core facts	Detail
Coverage	U.S. + Europe institutional markets; REIT universe
Data types	Research, market forecasts, CPPI price indices, REIT analytics, foot-traffic overlay
Delivery	Research portal, data feeds
Pricing model	Quote-based; no public pricing
Best for	Institutional allocators and REIT investors

Best for. Allocators and public-market investors who need independent research and a price index with a long track record. Not for deal-level work: no comps, no listings, no property-level operations data.

Reviews (as of July 2026)	Detail
G2	None found
Capterra	None found

What customers say. No review-platform presence; Green Street sells research subscriptions to institutions, not self-serve software. Its reputation rests on the analyst desk’s track record, and the CPPI is cited across the industry as a benchmark alongside RCA’s.

Master Comparison: All 14 CRE Data Tools Side by Side

Fourteen deep dives later, the per-tool tables have answered “what is each one.” This table answers “how do they differ at a glance.” Ratings repeat the sample-size rule: no n, no weight.

Tool	Category	Coverage signal	Pricing signal (as of Jul 2026)	Best-known rating (n)	Best for
Forage AI	Custom extraction	Any public web source	Custom by scope	Not listed (service)	Proprietary CRE datasets
CoStar	Full-suite database	6M+ properties, 11M+ comps	~$40K/yr Vendr median	3.7/5 G2 (n=203, seller-level)	Verified comps at scale
LoopNet	Marketplace	Largest public listings pool	$89-$2,499/listing/mo	3.5/5 G2 (n unverified)	Marketing listings
Crexi	Marketplace + analytics	National, modern platform	Intelligence from $299/mo	4.7/5 G2 (n=116)	Affordable alternative
Reonomy	Ownership intelligence	55M+ properties	$400-575/user/mo	4.0/5 G2 (n=4)	Off-market prospecting
CompStak	Comps	4M+ comps, 1.7M+ properties	Free exchange / quote	Insufficient reviews	Lease economics
Yardi Matrix	Market intelligence	183 markets, 18M+ MF units	Quote-based	No verified reviews	Multifamily pipeline
Moody’s CRE	Market analytics	~275 metros, decades of data	Quote-based	4.2/5 G2 (n=85, all Moody’s)	Forecasts, risk
MSCI RCA	Capital markets	$42T transactions	Quote-based	Not listed	Institutional deal data
Trepp	Debt / CMBS	Largest securitized-loan DB	Quote-based	Insufficient reviews	Debt and distress
Cherre	Integration	Vendor-agnostic warehouse	~$150K-500K/yr	No reviews (n=0)	Unifying sources
Placer.ai	Foot traffic	13M+ venues modeled	~$8K-50K/yr reported	4.3/5 G2 (n=10)	Retail site selection
LightBox	Parcel + environmental	Nationwide parcel fabric	Quote-based	None found	Due diligence
Green Street	Research + indices	US + Europe institutional	Quote-based	None found	Allocator research

How Do You Choose a Commercial Real Estate Data Tool?

The decision compresses to three questions asked in order: what do you own, what do you do with the data, and what will the stack cost.

Match the tool to your asset class

The conditional logic most articles refuse to give:

• Multifamily: Yardi Matrix first; CoStar if you also need office/retail comps
• Retail and mixed-use: Placer.ai for demand signals, plus CoStar or Crexi for comps
• Office at institutional scale: CoStar plus Moody’s CRE for the forecast layer
• Industrial: CoStar or Crexi for comps; Yardi Matrix covers 45 industrial markets
• Debt, CMBS, distress: Trepp, with MSCI RCA for transaction context
• Off-market acquisitions in any class: Reonomy
• Appraisal and lease negotiation: CompStak
• Land, development, environmental diligence: LightBox

Match the tool to your workflow

Prospecting teams live in ownership data (Reonomy). Underwriters live in comps and pipeline data (CoStar, CompStak, Yardi Matrix). Marketing and leasing live in the marketplaces (LoopNet, Crexi). Risk and research desks live in analytics (Moody’s, MSCI, Green Street, Trepp). The tools are not interchangeable across those rows, which is why 2 to 3 subscriptions per team is the norm rather than a failure of discipline.

The pricing reality

As of July 2026, the verifiable numbers: CoStar Suite transacts around a $40,000 annual median per Vendr’s benchmark data (list ~$71,000), with entry seats commonly reported at $300 to $485+ per user per month. Reonomy publishes $400 to $575 per user per month. Crexi Intelligence starts at $299 per month. LoopNet’s ad tiers run $89 to $2,499 per listing per month. Cherre contracts typically land between $150K and $500K annually. Everything else on this list is quote-only, and quote-only pricing is a negotiation, so benchmark before the call.

The incumbent’s accounts show what all that spending adds up to: CoStar Group collected $3.2 billion in 2025 while reporting net income of just $7 million, the gap driven by acquisition spending (Matterport, Domain) to widen the moat. The category is consolidating faster than it is commoditizing, and prices reflect it.

When you need more than one

Deloitte’s 2026 CRE Outlook survey (n=850+ executives) found 83% expecting revenue improvement and nearly 75% planning to increase real estate investment over the next 12 to 18 months. Growing books mean growing data stacks, and stacks create the reconciliation problem: the same building spelled three ways across three vendors. That is the point at which an integration layer like Cherre, or a purpose-built real estate analytics pipeline, stops being a luxury.

When Is Off-the-Shelf CRE Data Not Enough?

Every tool above sells data someone already collected. The signals that increasingly move CRE decisions were never collected in the first place: tenant rosters and franchise footprints scattered across brand websites, permits and zoning agendas sitting on county pages, distress notices in legal filings, listing velocity across marketplaces, competitors’ advertised rents.

The demand side of that shift is measurable. Alternative-data adoption reached 90% of institutional-investor respondents in Lowenstein Sandler’s 2025 survey (n=107, across institutional investing broadly, published February 2026). Green Street folding Placer.ai foot traffic into its platform is the same trend from the supply side: alt-data moving from edge to default.

When the data you need lives on the open web rather than in a vendor database, the options are building an in-house scraping operation, with the maintenance burden that tracking web data at scale actually carries, or using a managed service. Forage AI delivers the data, not just the pipeline: custom Web Data Extraction with AI-powered parsing and human QA, from sign-off to first dataset in 1-2 weeks, delivered as feeds your analysts can use immediately. For CRE teams, that means listing and rent monitoring, tenant and location data, and permit tracking that no packaged tool carries.

FAQ

What is the best source of commercial real estate data?

It depends on the question you are asking the data. CoStar is the broadest verified database; Crexi is the best-reviewed affordable platform (4.7/5 on G2, n=116); Yardi Matrix leads multifamily; Trepp leads debt; CompStak leads lease comps. Teams typically combine 2 to 3 sources because no single vendor covers listings, comps, ownership, analytics, and demand signals at once.

How much does CoStar cost?

CoStar does not publish pricing. As of July 2026, Vendr’s transaction benchmarks put the median CoStar Suite contract around $40,000 per year for one license covering up to three users, against a list price near $71,000; third-party trackers commonly report entry seats at $300 to $485+ per user per month. Multi-year contracts are standard, so the negotiated first-year number sets the baseline for years two and three.

Are there free commercial real estate databases?

Partially. LoopNet and Crexi offer free listing search, CompStak Exchange gives brokers and appraisers comps free in exchange for contributing their own, and county assessor and recorder sites expose ownership and transaction records at no cost. The catch is coverage and labor: free sources answer single-property questions but do not scale to portfolio screening, which is what the paid tools and custom extraction actually sell.

What is the difference between CoStar and LoopNet?

Same parent company, different jobs. CoStar is the research database: verified comps, analytics, and market data for subscribers. LoopNet is the public marketing marketplace where listings are advertised. A common misconception is that a free LoopNet listing reaches everyone; Basic listings are visible only to CoStar subscribers, which is precisely what the paid tiers ($89 to $2,499 per listing per month) exist to fix.

Why do lenders use commercial real estate data and analytics?

Because loan performance depends on market variables the borrower’s pro forma doesn’t control: submarket vacancy, new supply, rent trajectories, and loan maturities. Lenders lean on Moody’s CRE for submarket forecasts, Trepp for securitized-loan performance and early distress signals, and increasingly on real estate data APIs to pull those feeds into internal credit models.

How accurate is foot traffic data?

Foot-traffic platforms model visits from mobile-device panels, so every number is an estimate, not a count. Placer.ai models 1.5B+ monthly visits from roughly 20M devices; accuracy is strongest for high-traffic venues and debated for low-traffic sites. Treat readings as directional, validate against a known property in your own portfolio, and be cautious with small venues.

The Stack Is the Product

The habit this market needs to break is asking “which CRE database should we buy” as if the answer were one name. The 2021-2026 consolidation wave already answered differently: CoStar bought Matterport and the marketplaces, Altus bought Reonomy, Moody’s bought Reis, MSCI bought RCA, Fitch is buying Trepp. The vendors themselves are assembling stacks.

Buyers should do the same. Pick the comps engine your asset class demands, add the workflow tool your team actually opens daily, price the pair honestly, and route the signals no database sells through custom extraction. A $499 billion transaction market is not underwritten on one subscription, and the teams that outperform stopped pretending it could be.

Ready to build the dataset your vendors don’t sell? Talk to Forage AI about custom CRE data extraction.

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