Comparison · Bureau van Dijk (Orbis)

Bureau van Dijk (Orbis) Alternative

A leaner, API-first alternative to BvD Orbis for multi-country company data. Public pricing from €9.99/month, no annual contract, sanctions screening (beta) included on Pro.

TL;DR

Orbis (Bureau van Dijk, now part of Moody’s) is the enterprise-grade reference for global private-company data: 400+ million entities, financial statements, group ownership trees, country reports. Heavy-iron procurement contract; six-figure budgets at the high end. If your job is multi-country KYB and counterparty verification — and you do not need financial statements beyond GB, FR, DK, SE, NO and SEC filers in the United States (plus digitally filed statements for Finland, about one filer in twenty, and listed companies in ES, PL, HR and BE), or 400-country coverage — Prometiam delivers the registry + corporate-event + sanctions (beta) surface at €9.99-€29.99/month with no procurement cycle.

Why teams look for an Orbis alternative

1. Cost. Moody’s does not publish Orbis pricing — it is quoted per seat and per module after a sales process. That opacity is itself the problem if you only need a narrow data surface and want to model the cost before committing.
2. Procurement timeline. Quote → demo → security review → contract → onboarding typically takes 2-4 months. Painful for product teams iterating.
3. Bundling. You pay for financial statements, group ownership trees, and country reports even if you don’t use them.
4. API maturity is mixed. Orbis API and Catalyst products work, but feel built for batch/desktop users; modern REST patterns and predictable pagination aren’t always first-class.
5. Sanctions are a separate add-on. Compliance Catalyst is priced and contracted separately from Orbis.

Prometiam in one paragraph

A REST API over official company-registry data across Europe, with daily updates (every working day for Finland, Belgium, Denmark, Croatia, Estonia, Slovakia, Switzerland, Latvia, Lithuania, Canada, Japan, Israel, Taiwan, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands; weekly for Sweden, Australia, Ukraine and the United States; monthly for Cyprus, Romania, Singapore, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Serbia, Ecuador and Chile), sanctions (beta) and US export-control screening (EU + UN + OFAC + UK + Australia (DFAT) + FR gels, plus the US Consolidated Screening List), and corporate-event monitoring. Officers are served for Spain, France, the United Kingdom, Norway, Poland and the Czech Republic (Polish natural persons are masked by the register itself; Czech natural persons are the name and the month and year of birth only); Ireland, Finland, Sweden, Croatia, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Slovakia, Switzerland, Latvia, Cyprus, Romania, Lithuania, Canada, Australia, Japan, Israel, Singapore, Colombia, Taiwan, Germany, Ukraine, Serbia, Ecuador, Chile, Mexico, the Netherlands, Brazil and the United States are company records only. €9.99/month entry, 14-day free trial, EU data residency in Frankfurt. No financial statements, no group-ownership tree.

At a glance

Who should still pick Orbis

• You need financial statements (balance sheet, P&L) at scale, normalised across countries
• You map group ownership trees and beneficial-owner chains across jurisdictions
• Your portfolio is genuinely global (not just the countries Prometiam covers)
• Procurement requires a Moody’s-affiliated incumbent and you have the budget
• You build risk models against bureau-grade datasets

Who should pick Prometiam

• Your scope is the 36 countries Prometiam covers
• You need registry data, corporate events, director networks, and sanctions (beta) in one API
• You don’t need financial statements or group ownership
• You want monthly pricing and no procurement cycle
• Your team is building a product, not procuring data

Cost example

For a fintech doing 100 KYB lookups/day across ES, FR, and GB counterparties: Orbis is quoted per seat and per module and Moody’s does not publish a rate card, so we won’t print a number we cannot source — but it is an enterprise annual contract with a procurement cycle, not a card-swipe. The same workflow on Prometiam Professional: €359.88/year, sanctions screening (beta) included. The savings reflect narrower scope (financial statements only from the Scale plan, no global coverage) — not a trick.

Beyond the registry record

Two derived signals, neither of them a rating. Both are dated facts carrying the source they came from, so whoever reviews your file can check them.

• Companies that stopped filing. A company that quietly stops trading rarely dissolves; the register notices first. The registry_compliance flag returns that state in one shape for Spain (provisional closure of the registry sheet), the United Kingdom (a strike-off proposal, or annual accounts overdue), Ireland (the strike-off list) and Norway (compulsory liquidation). Read it on GET /companies/{id}?include=risk_flags, or list those companies with risk_flag_type=registry_compliance. It is a compliance signal, not an insolvency: read it together with status.
• Public contracts, and the buyer behind them. GET /procurement/awards returns public-contract awards from Spain, France, the UK, Ireland, Poland and Norway by supplier, buyer, identifier, CPV code and date, linked to the supplier’s registry record where the identifier resolves. GET /procurement/buyer/{id} scores the contracting body itself: the probability that its next award draws a single bid, and the probability that a supplier it awards to enters insolvency within two years.

Both are ordinary REST calls on the published price and included in the 14-day trial. Procurement awards cover Spain, France, the UK, Ireland, Poland and Norway (Ireland, Poland and Norway above the EU thresholds only), the buyer scores are Spain and France and in beta, and a score is a prompt to look, never a finding of wrongdoing.

FAQ

Is Prometiam really cheaper than Orbis?
Yes — typically 95-99% cheaper. The savings reflect narrower scope (no statements, no group trees, no global coverage).

Does Prometiam have financial statements like Orbis?
Only for GB, FR, DK, SE, NO and SEC filers in the United States (plus digitally filed statements for Finland, about one filer in twenty, and listed companies in ES, PL, HR and BE), from the Scale plan. If your workflow needs them elsewhere, Orbis is the right tool.

What does Prometiam cover that Orbis does not?
REST-first integration, public pricing, monthly contracts, daily-fresh official registry data, sanctions screening (beta) — no procurement engagement.

Is Orbis the same as Moody’s Analytics?
Orbis is the flagship product of Bureau van Dijk, owned by Moody’s Analytics.

See other comparisons

• Creditsafe alternative
• Iberinform alternative
• Einforma alternative
• Pappers alternative
• Infoempresa alternative
• Infonif alternative
• Axesor alternative
• OpenCorporates alternative
• Companies House API alternative