Capital IQ vs FactSet: Cost per Seat for Small Firms (2026)

Neither S&P nor FactSet publishes a price, so a firm with two to ten seats deciding between Capital IQ and FactSet is usually working from figures somebody else copied. Here is the short version, with every number traced to where it came from. On procurement data, a Capital IQ contract is about twice a FactSet contract: Vendr's live median for S&P Global is $51,672 a year across 56 purchases, against $25,160 for FactSet. Per seat at boutique size the gap is smaller and it overlaps. The five real Capital IQ contracts that are public work out between $7,875 and $18,750 per user at firms with four to eight seats, and FactSet's own SEC filings cap its company-wide average at $10,027 of subscription value per user, with its small-end contracts landing in the low tens of thousands for a whole deal.

The deeper difference is not the price. It is that only one of these two prices can be checked. Both vendors are owned by listed companies, but FactSet reports its subscription value and user count every quarter and S&P Global reports Capital IQ inside a segment line with no user count at all. That decides how much weight each figure below deserves.

How much does Capital IQ cost compared with FactSet?

Every figure in this table was read at source, the Capital IQ figures on September 10, 2026 and the FactSet figures on September 11, 2026, and the fourth column is the one that decides how much to trust the third.

Why only one of these two prices can be checked

This is the part no comparison covers, and it matters because it tells you which figures you can argue with in a negotiation.

FactSet Research Systems is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and every quarter it reports Annual Subscription Value, which it defines as the forward-looking revenues for the next 12 months from all subscription services currently supplied to clients, together with its client count and its user count. At May 31, 2026 those were $2,484.3 million, 9,130 clients and 247,766 users. Divide the first by the third and the average FactSet user accounts for $10,027 a year. That is a ceiling rather than a seat price, because ASV also includes data feeds, CUSIP Global Services and enterprise solutions that sit behind no named user, so the true average workstation is lower. Run it back and the average is falling, from $11,447 in fiscal 2023 to $10,027 now, because users grew 12.4% in the year to May 2026 while subscription value grew 6.4%, and FactSet names wealth management as the driver. The period-by-period arithmetic is on our FactSet cost page.

S&P Global is also listed, and its 10-Q for the same quarter is 266,000 characters long. Capital IQ appears in it as one product inside Data, Analytics and Insights, which is one business line inside the Market Intelligence segment, which reported $1,290 million of revenue and $1,076 million of subscription revenue for the quarter ended June 30, 2026. The filing does not break the business line out in dollars and it does not report a user count for anything. So there is no denominator, and the only per-user evidence for Capital IQ is the handful of real contracts that a competitor chose to publish. Those five contracts are the best public data there is, and they are five data points from one source.

The practical consequence: a FactSet sales quote can be tested against an audited average. A Capital IQ quote can only be tested against other quotes. We worked through the same asymmetry between FactSet and a vendor that files nothing at all in FactSet vs Bloomberg cost per seat, and Capital IQ sits between the two: a listed parent, but no seat-level disclosure.

Capital IQ vs FactSet cost per seat at small firm sizes

Procurement medians describe whole contracts. A firm with a handful of seats needs the per-user number, and for Capital IQ the only public ones are the five contracts below, published by TagniFi in September 2025. The per-user column is arithmetic on the published contract value and seat count.

Two things stand out for a small buyer. The first is that the four-seat private equity firm pays about 70% more per user than the five-seat investment bank, on nearly the same headcount, which tells you firm type moves a Capital IQ quote as much as seat count does. Private company and transaction data is what a PE or valuation shop opens every day and it is priced accordingly. The second is that the three smallest contracts, at $7,875 to $18,750 per user, straddle FactSet's $10,027 average rather than sitting above it. At boutique size the two platforms are not a cheap option and an expensive one. They are two negotiated prices in the same band, and which one comes out lower depends on the configuration you ask for.

Where they separate is at the very low end. Vendr's smallest FactSet contract is $4,200 a year for a whole deal, and its smallest S&P Global contract is $13,500. If the budget is a single stripped seat, FactSet has a floor that Capital IQ does not appear to have.

What does a small firm actually get for the difference?

The platforms are strong in different places, and for most boutiques the work decides the vendor before the price does.

Read the first two rows and the fourth together. A deal team is buying private company and transaction coverage, and Capital IQ wins that on depth. A research or portfolio team is buying analytics and a data pipeline, and FactSet wins that. Firms that need both usually end up holding both, which is how a ten-person shop comes to carry a six-figure data budget.

One honest note on coverage. Both databases thin out below institutional size. Capital IQ's private company records are built from filings, press and disclosed transactions, so a software business doing $2 million of revenue with no outside capital is often a name and an address. Boutiques that buy at that size find their targets on an M&A marketplace with verified metrics rather than in either database, and use the terminal for the comparables once a target is in hand.

Which should a small firm buy?

Work from what your people open every day rather than from the brand.

Buy Capital IQ if the firm is a private equity shop, a boutique investment bank, a valuation practice or a CPA firm doing purchase price allocations and fairness work. The private company and transaction data is the job, the Excel plug-in is where the models live, and the published contracts put a four-to-eight seat deal between $55,000 and $75,000 a year. Expect the per-user price to fall sharply as seats rise, and expect a private equity configuration to cost more per seat than a banking one.

Buy FactSet if the firm runs money or writes research on public companies: an RIA with an in-house analyst, a small asset manager, a family office with a research function. Portfolio analytics, risk models and the API into your own models are what the seat is for, and the small end of FactSet's book is priced in the low tens of thousands for a whole multi-seat deal. Anchor to Vendr's $25,160 median rather than to FactSet's average client, which holds $272,103 of subscription value across about 27 users and has nothing to do with a boutique.

Buy neither yet if the actual question is whether a specific idea has worked. Neither platform tests a stated rule against two decades of adjusted daily history and tells you whether it beat buy and hold after costs. That is a different tool at a different price, covered below.

Three things to settle before either sales call

Seats or data. Both vendors also sell feeds and API access priced against data sets and permitted uses rather than against people, and a two-person shop can spend more on a feed than a twenty-person shop spends on seats. Ask for the two quotes separately, and be explicit about whether anything will be redistributed to clients, because that clause moves the price more than most line items.

The term and the uplift. Vendr reports 2 to 6% multi-year uplifts on S&P Global contracts. FactSet's filings say most client contracts run one year and that enterprise renewals extended in length by 30% on average in the latest quarter, so both sales teams are pushing multi-year. Price the flexibility you give up, and ask for the year-two and year-three rates in writing.

The professional data line. Real-time exchange data on either platform carries exchange fees that follow the professional and non-professional distinction every market data vendor applies, and a registered firm pays the professional rate. It is set by the exchanges rather than by S&P or FactSet, and it is the one line item both quotes leave until you ask. If the terminal question is really a research terminal question, investment research software sorts the whole category by what each vendor will tell you before a call, and Morningstar Direct cost covers the third institutional vendor whose average can be bounded from its own filings.

What the two terminals leave to a different tool

A Capital IQ or FactSet seat tells you what is true about a company now and what the estimates say. It does not tell you whether a rule you want to follow has held up. That gap is what AgentTrading covers, and it is worth being precise about what it is and is not. You state a thesis in plain English, it restates that as an explicit rule and shows you the rule before anything runs, then tests it across 20-plus years of split and dividend adjusted daily data with a 0.1% cost per trade charged by default, plots the result against buy and hold, and stamps a verdict that includes UNDERPERFORMED when the idea loses. Starter is $19 a month, Analyst $49 and Pro $129, every plan is on the pricing page, and it starts online. It is not a market data terminal: no private company database, no deal comps, no estimates, no portfolio analytics, no Excel plug-in. Research and analysis only: no execution, no brokerage connection, no personalized advice. If the reason you are pricing a terminal is to test ideas rather than to cover companies, run the idea first and see whether the seat is still needed.

Frequently asked questions

Is Capital IQ cheaper than FactSet?

Not on procurement data. Vendr's live median contract for S&P Global is $51,672 a year against $25,160 for FactSet, about twice as much. Per seat at small firms the two overlap: the public Capital IQ contracts work out at $7,875 to $18,750 per user for firms with four to eight seats, and FactSet's own filings put its average user at $10,027 of subscription value. Which one quotes lower for your firm depends on the configuration, not the brand.

How much does Capital IQ cost per user?

S&P publishes no rate. The five real contracts that are public work out at $18,750 per user for a four-seat private equity firm, $11,000 for a five-seat investment bank, $7,875 for an eight-seat CPA firm, $5,000 at 25 seats and $1,500 at 400 seats. The per-user price falls 12.5 times across that range, and firm type moves it as much as seat count does. The full breakdown is on Capital IQ cost.

How much does FactSet cost for a small firm?

Plan on the low tens of thousands a year for a multi-seat deal. Vendr's median FactSet contract is $25,160 with a range of $4,200 to $28,179, and CostBench reports a median of $27,500 from six verified purchases. FactSet's own filings put its company-wide average at $10,027 of subscription value per user, which is a ceiling on the average seat rather than a quote.

Does S&P Global disclose Capital IQ revenue or users?

No. Its 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026 reports $1,290 million of Market Intelligence segment revenue and describes Capital IQ as part of the Data, Analytics and Insights business line, but it does not break that line out in dollars and it reports no user count. That is why a Capital IQ per-seat figure cannot be checked against an audited number the way a FactSet figure can.

Can a small firm negotiate Capital IQ or FactSet pricing?

Yes, and the data says both move. Vendr reports an 8% average saving on S&P Global contracts and one buyer negotiating 36% off the API. On FactSet, the spread between Vendr's $4,200 floor and $28,179 ceiling is mostly configuration, so the lever is what you leave out of the quote rather than a discount on the whole. Ask for the per-user rate at your exact seat count, the rate if you add one seat, and the renewal uplift in writing.