As of February 2026, the AI applications and go-to-market strategies that define modern business can no longer afford to run on stale data. For an AI agent tasked with identifying promising sales leads or a recruiter searching for top talent, acting on information that is even a day old can mean the difference between success and failure.
This is where real-time data providers come in. Platforms like Crustdata have become essential tools by offering an API-first stream of live B2B data. Yet, as AI becomes more sophisticated, the need for more specialized data is growing. Many developers and business leaders are now seeking Crustdata alternatives because they need to move beyond tracking what is happening at a company and start understanding the people driving those changes.
What is Crustdata? Strengths and Limitations
Crustdata is a well-regarded, Y Combinator-backed B2B data broker known for its ability to deliver live updates on companies and professionals directly into applications.
Strengths
Crustdata’s primary strength lies in providing a real-time “firehose” of company-centric events. It excels at:
- Live Event Tracking: Its API delivers immediate notifications for key business triggers like new hires, employee promotions, and company funding rounds.
- Broad Data Scale: By aggregating information from over 16 sources, the platform covers more than 60 million companies and 1 billion people, offering wide-ranging data points [2].
- Developer-First Approach: It is designed from the ground up for API-based integration, allowing developers to easily pipe B2B data into their products and workflows.
Potential Limitations
While powerful for tracking company milestones, Crustdata’s specific focus is also why many users seek alternatives. The platform is excellent for what it does, but teams with different needs may require more, such as:
- Deeper People Enrichment: Going beyond a job title to understand a person’s skills, interests, and public activities.
- Person-Level Intent Signals: Identifying actionable intent from an individual’s online behavior, like engaging with a competitor’s post on social media or asking technical questions in a developer forum.
- Unified Identity: Needing a single, cohesive profile of a person that connects their social media accounts, professional history, personal projects, and relationship network.
How to Evaluate Crustdata Alternatives
Choosing the right data provider requires looking past headline numbers like the size of a database. A better approach is to evaluate platforms based on how useful their data is for your specific goal.
Here are the key criteria to consider:
- Data Freshness: Is the data truly real-time, or is it updated on a schedule? Data latency is a common complaint in the industry, and for time-sensitive tasks, even a day’s delay can be too long [3].
- Data Focus (People vs. Company): Does the platform specialize in company data (firmographics) or person-level data (demographics and behavior)? The best tools usually excel at one or the other.
- Signal Granularity: What kind of “signals” can it detect? Some platforms only track major events like funding rounds, while others can capture nuanced behaviors like a person showing interest in a new software category.
- AI-Readiness & API: Is the data structured for easy use by AI models? Look for a clean REST API, clear documentation, and helpful features like confidence scores on data points.
- Accuracy and Verification: How does the provider ensure its data is accurate? Transparent verification methods are essential for building automated systems you can trust [1].
The Best Crustdata Alternatives for Real‑Time People Enrichment
Using the framework above, here are the top Crustdata alternatives, each tailored for a different primary use case.
1. Nyne.ai
Nyne.ai is the ideal alternative for teams that need deep, real-time people intelligence to power their AI applications. It’s designed to uncover the “who” and “why” behind the business events that company-focused data providers report on.
While Crustdata tells you what is happening at a company, Nyne.ai tells you who is driving that change and why they are motivated.
- Focus on Person-Level Intent: Nyne.ai is purpose-built to transform fragmented online activity—from social media, forums, and review sites—into actionable intent signals at the individual level.
- AI-Native Architecture: The platform provides a complete identity graph, detects life events in real-time, and adds confidence scores to every data point. This structure is specifically designed for AI agents and automated workflows. Just as new platforms like Ornn are creating specialized financial tools for the AI compute economy, Nyne.ai is building the specialized data layer for AI applications.
- Unique Data Sources: By analyzing unstructured public data, Nyne.ai finds signals that traditional B2B providers miss. This allows teams to feed rich, contextual data into advanced tools, like an AI Excel Analyst from Crunched, to uncover deeper insights.
2. People Data Labs (PDL)
People Data Labs is a well-known data provider with a massive database of person and company profiles, making it a common choice for enriching records in bulk.
However, PDL comes with a critical trade-off for real-time applications. According to industry analyses, its data is often refreshed on a monthly schedule [4]. This latency makes it unsuitable for use cases that depend on immediate notifications, which is a primary reason users choose Crustdata in the first place.
3. Coresignal
Coresignal is another strong, API-first data provider that often comes up in community discussions as a capable alternative [3]. It offers a wide range of raw public data on companies and professionals and is known for having better data refresh rates than some legacy platforms.
For teams that need API access to a broad set of B2B data and have the internal resources to process and unify it, Coresignal is a solid choice. Its model is similar to Crustdata’s but offers different areas of data coverage and depth.
Feature Comparison: Crustdata vs. Alternatives
This table gives you a quick summary of the key differences to help guide your decision.
| Feature | Crustdata | Nyne.ai | People Data Labs (PDL) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary Focus | Real-time company events (funding, hiring) | Real-time people intent & life events | Large-scale person & company profiles |
| Best For | AI agents tracking company triggers | AI agents needing person-level signals | High-volume, bulk enrichment |
| Key Differentiator | Real-time company event firehose | Person-level intent from social/forums | Massive database size |
| Data Freshness | Real-Time | Real-Time | Monthly Refresh |
Conclusion: Choose the Right Data for Your AI
In today’s competitive market, regularly evaluating your tools and seeking better alternatives is key to innovation. When it comes to data, the best choice depends entirely on the problem you need to solve.
If your primary goal is to react to high-level company events like funding announcements or hiring surges, Crustdata is a powerful and effective solution.
However, the future of AI-powered sales, marketing, and recruiting lies in a deeper, more human-centric understanding of individuals. To build next-generation applications that can identify and engage people based on their unique motivations and real-time behaviors, a people-centric data platform is not just an alternative—it is a necessity.
To power your applications with real-time, person-level intent data, explore the Nyne.ai | Real-Time People & Business Intent Data Platform.