A fund adding alternative data has to find datasets, judge them and clear them with compliance before any trial begins. Neudata sells research and software for that work. This guide sets out, from Neudata's own pages, what the service includes, how a fund moves through it from discovery to a trial, and what a scouting report leaves for the buyer to test. Every statement about Neudata was checked against the pages linked here on 4 October 2026.
Fokals is delivered direct, by REST API and as bulk files, which a fund loads itself, and the last section of this guide picks up there. How Neudata compares with the other major service is set out in Neudata vs Eagle Alpha, and that service has its own guide in Eagle Alpha for alternative data buyers.
What Neudata says it is
Neudata describes its work as research and advice about data sources and the ways they are used, across alternative and market data. Its April 2023 article on data compliance says it does not provide the data itself or act as a broker. Its home page says it keeps no share of what a vendor earns from sales made through its service, and a March 2021 press release said it delivers reports and advice for a fee and requires no revenue share or commission from the vendors it recommends.
The service has four parts, as its pages describe them. Scout is the software: buyers can compare data products, read analysts' reports, see which products are gaining traction and track risk and compliance events. The research services are the analysts, based in London, New York and Shanghai, whom the experienced buyer page describes as working for the buyer, not the vendors. Neudata also runs summits, and AltDating, a one-to-one matchmaking programme, runs virtually or at those summits. A news service tracks developments in the data industry.
How a fund uses it, step by step
- Search and compare. In Scout a buyer filters data products by the measures that bear on the question and reads analysts' dataset reports.
- Ask an analyst. Buyers can call the research team for opinions and trend updates, and read intelligence reports on use cases and literature reviews that set datasets against academic research.
- Check the vendor. Sentry, part of Scout, holds a risk profile for each vendor, a catalogue of due diligence questionnaires with answers flagged for follow-up, and alerts on litigation, regulation and news. Its compliance page describes all three.
- Test the price. The experienced buyer page says the platform provides pricing intelligence on data products, to inform a negotiation with a vendor.
- Meet the vendors. AltDating and the summits give one-to-one meetings, including with vendors new to the market and with vendors the buyer already uses.
- Trial and load, outside Neudata. Neudata supplies no data. The trial runs with the vendor, and a May 2026 Neudata article written for data providers describes trials as typically unpaid and lasting about three months. Your own team loads the files.
Four kinds of buyer, four uses
Neudata organises its buyer pages by starting point, with further pages for professional services and AI companies. Four of them show how a fund uses the service.
- New starters. The page speaks to teams that have heard vendor pitches that seem too good to be true, made early data purchases with disappointing results, or are unsure which diligence and compliance questions to ask a vendor. It offers analyst calls and how-to material.
- Experienced data users. The page poses two questions: how to raise the share of trials that convert, by prioritising datasets likely to generate alpha and avoiding those that waste time, and how to get more from existing data spend, by informing price negotiations and managing risk with current vendors.
- Compliance teams. The page divides the work into before, during and after a purchase: avoiding datasets that waste time, monitoring vendor news while deciding, and managing compliance and commercial risk with existing vendors.
- Private equity and venture capital. The page describes research done up front and held in a searchable catalogue, to shorten the interviewing and testing of providers, and it asks questions such as how to find companies growing faster than their peers.
How a dataset reaches the catalogue
A catalogue entry has more than one origin, and Neudata's pages describe both. Vendors can create a listing themselves: the provider page says self-listing is free and usually takes about 20 minutes, and that a vendor can also submit a questionnaire or risk check to answer buyers' compliance questions in advance. The same page says Neudata carries out the first stage of research and diligence on behalf of its buyer clients, and the July 2022 guide adds that scouting firms approach companies they believe hold interesting data. After an introduction, the provider page says, Neudata steps back and lets the vendor manage the relationship with the buyer. A buyer reading an entry can therefore ask which parts come from the vendor's own submission and which from Neudata's analysts, and how old each part is.
What a scouting report is built to answer
Neudata's guide to data scouting, published in July 2022, describes the work as finding data sources, checking that they are valid and reporting on what each dataset contains and where it is strong or weak. It says a scout needs to know how reliable the data is, how much value it adds and whether it is compliant, together with its frequency, history and price.
The guide lists the questions to put to a provider. What is the product, where does the data come from and how is it collected, is it cleaned and how, and how do raw inputs become outputs? Does the provider have permission to resell the data, and can it show the chain of consents? Which use cases does it serve? The guide adds that providers often call their sources proprietary, and argues that a buyer needs to know them both for compliance and to judge reliability.
A report answers those questions once for many readers. It cannot answer the questions that depend on the companies you track and your process.
What stays with the buyer
Neudata's April 2023 article says a buyer's compliance team should be involved at every stage of acquiring and implementing alternative data, and argues for diligence triggered by events as well as at signature and renewal. The other tests are yours too, and a scouting report is where they start, not where they end.
| Stage | What Neudata describes | What you check on the data |
|---|---|---|
| Discover | Comparison of data products; analysts' reports | That the vendor covers the companies you track: join its sample to your identifiers |
| Assess | Calls with analysts, intelligence reports, literature reviews | That the history is usable: first date, gaps, whether corrections overwrite the original |
| Diligence | Risk profiles, a catalogue of questionnaires, alerts | That the answers hold: open a sample of records at their stated sources, and read the answers again when the vendor's methodology version changes |
| Price | Pricing intelligence on data products | That the licence covers your use: internal use, embedding in a product or redistribution |
| Load | Not provided, because Neudata supplies no data | The delivery route, the schedule and the incremental sync |
The first test takes one query. With the vendor's sample loaded and your own list in my_companies, count how many of your names the sample covers on one closed day. The query uses the Fokals Hiring Activity table, company_hiring_daily; the shape is the same for any company-level file with an isin column.
select count(*) as total,
count(v.isin) as covered,
round(100.0 * count(v.isin) / count(*), 1) as covered_pct
from my_companies u
left join (
select distinct isin
from company_hiring_daily
where day = date '2026-10-01' and isin is not null
) v on v.isin = u.isin;A low figure is not a verdict on the vendor. It tells you whether the dataset suits this list, which is what a trial is for. The longer list of checks is in what alternative data scouts look for, and the questionnaires that a scout's catalogue holds are covered in alternative data due diligence questionnaires, question by question.
Where company-level data fits
If you do not yet know which kinds of data to test, a scouting service is a sound start: Neudata's pages describe discovery across data types, vendor risk monitoring and analyst time. If you already know that you want company-level signals mapped to securities, the vendor's own documents answer the questions about that dataset directly.
For Fokals those documents are public. The data dictionary names every table and column, and the methodology sets out how each dataset is produced and labelled. Fokals data is firmographic, technographic, hiring and intent data on public and private companies worldwide, refreshed daily, delivered by REST API and as bulk files and licensed by written agreement. Every listed company carries its ticker, MIC, ISIN, LEI and share-class FIGI, so a fund joins it to a security master directly. On request, Fokals sends sample data for your own list of companies together with both documents. The hiring dataset is the one the query above reads.
Frequently asked questions
What is Neudata?
Neudata describes its work as research and advice about data sources and how they are used. Its service includes software called Scout for comparing data products, analysts who write reports and take calls, summits and a one-to-one matchmaking programme called AltDating. It says it does not provide the data itself or act as a broker.
What does a data scouting service do?
A scouting service finds datasets, checks that they are valid and reports to a buyer on each one's attributes, strengths and weaknesses, which is how Neudata's 2022 guide describes the work. The buyer gets a shortlist and a view on reliability, value, compliance, frequency, history and price before spending time on a vendor's trial. It does not replace the trial.
Does Neudata take a commission from data vendors?
Neudata's home page says it keeps no share of what a vendor earns from sales made through its service, and its pages say a vendor can create a listing in its catalogue for free. A March 2021 press release said Neudata delivers reports and advice for a fee and requires no revenue share or commission from the vendors it recommends.
What is Neudata Sentry?
Sentry is the legal and compliance part of Scout. Neudata's pages describe a risk profile for each vendor, a catalogue of due diligence questionnaires with answers flagged for follow-up, and daily monitoring of vendors for litigation, regulation and news. A March 2021 press release announced it.
What is AltDating?
AltDating is Neudata's one-to-one matchmaking programme for data buyers and vendors. Its pages say matches are tailored to the buyer's goals, that buyers can meet vendors new to the market and hear about product updates from vendors they already use, and that meetings take place virtually or in person at a Neudata summit.
How does a fund test company-level data after a scouting report?
Load the vendor's sample, join it to your own list on ISIN, ticker or LEI, and count how many of your names it covers on one closed day. Then check that each record carries its observation date and that past periods stay as published. Fokals delivers every listed company with ticker, MIC, ISIN, LEI and share-class FIGI, and sends sample data for the companies you track on request.
The queries and code on this page are examples to adapt. Test them in your own environment before you rely on them.
What this page says about the products it names was checked against their public documentation on 4 October 2026. Product and company names are trademarks of their owners. Fokals is not affiliated with them or endorsed by them.