Bulk files or API? How to choose, and why we offer both.
Every dataset we sell can arrive as a file. Several can also be queried live. This page is the trade-off, in plain terms, for teams deciding how to consume property, people or B2B data.
Comparisons reflect publicly described product positioning as of September 2026. Vendors change offerings often; verify details with them before deciding.
| Dimension | API delivery | CompCurve |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Real-time lookups inside a product, per-record enrichment, low-volume or unpredictable access | Warehouses, models, campaigns, anything that touches the whole population |
| Cost shape | Per call or per key, with rate limits and metering | Per record or flat license; cheaper per record at volume |
| Freshness | Whatever the API's data snapshot is, instantly | As of delivery; daily signals for what changed |
| Engineering | Auth, retries, rate limits, pagination | Load a Parquet or CSV; schedule a pull |
| Scale | Thousands to millions of calls | Millions to hundreds of millions of rows |
| Our recommendation | License, valuation, comps and identity APIs for embedding | Bulk for everything else, with daily signal files layered on top |
Pick API delivery when your product needs an answer for one address, one person or one license while a user waits.
Pick CompCurve when your team needs the population. Most clients end up with bulk plus an API key for the edge cases.
Pick CompCurve when your team needs the population. Most clients end up with bulk plus an API key for the edge cases.
Want both? That is common.
Many clients keep a platform subscription for lookups and use us for the bulk pulls, the append passes and the niches the platform will not stock.