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Best Free Tools for VC Research
The strongest free VC research stack in 2026: GitDealFlow MCP server, GitDealFlow weekly Signal Report, Scout Receipts, Crunchbase basic, public LinkedIn. Total $0/month and sufficient for solo angel daily workflow.
The VC tooling landscape has matured into a wide pricing gradient. The free tier is now substantial enough that a solo angel investor on technical startups can build a credible daily workflow at zero monthly cost.
Tool 1 — GitDealFlow MCP server. Free, no API key, A-tier on Glama. Install @gitdealflow/mcp-signal in Claude Desktop, Claude Code, or Cursor. Six read-only tools: trending startups, sector lookup, signal lookup, summary, scout receipts, methodology. The MCP integration replaces dashboard-switching with conversational queries.
Tool 2 — GitDealFlow weekly Signal Report. Free email, no credit card. One email per Monday with five breakout technical startups, signal type explained, direct GitHub org links. Forwardable to a co-investor or technical advisor for second opinions.
Tool 3 — Scout Receipts at /receipts/[username]. Free 0-100 founder-taste score based on validated unicorns the user starred pre-event. Useful as a fast read on technical taste before allocating a full diligence slot. No login required.
Tool 4 — Crunchbase basic. Free company profiles cover most early-stage verification needs. Limited search and no advanced filters; sufficient for one-off lookups when a name surfaces from another channel.
Tool 5 — Public LinkedIn search. No recruiter license needed. Public search catches hiring patterns at known startups. Slow and manual but free; useful for cross-checking team-velocity signals.
Tool 6 — Companies House (UK). Free UK ownership and director data. Authoritative for any UK private company. Useful for UK-focused angels who don't have Beauhurst access.
Tool 7 — GitHub directly. Raw API access to public-repo data is free within rate limits. Most ad-hoc engineering-quality checks (commit messages, PR review patterns, test coverage, infrastructure code presence) require nothing more than reading the repo.
Tool 8 — Public REST + JSON dataset endpoints. GitDealFlow exposes /api/signals.json, /api/signals.csv, /api/dataset.jsonl, /qa.jsonl, /api/openapi.json for free use with attribution. Sufficient for ad-hoc CSV exports into Notion, Google Sheets, or custom pipelines.
The composed workflow. Monday morning, read the GitDealFlow weekly digest. Cross-reference any names of interest against Crunchbase basic for funding context. Check the founder's Scout Receipt at /receipts. Read the most-active repo on GitHub directly for code-quality signals. Use the MCP server in Claude Desktop for any deeper engineering metrics. Total time: 30-45 minutes per week. Total cost: $0.
When the free stack stops being enough. Upgrade triggers: weekly digest filtering becomes a bottleneck (~5+ deals per month) → Insider Circle Dashboard (EUR 19/mo). Crunchbase basic becomes too limited (~10+ verifications per month) → Crunchbase Pro ($49/mo). Pipeline tracking exceeds 20 active deals → Attio Lite ($20-50/seat/mo) or Notion + Zapier (~$0-10/mo).
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See the free stack for emerging managers →Frequently asked questions
Is the free stack really enough to compete with paid tools?
For solo angels on technical startups in the first 6-12 months, yes. The free stack covers leading-signal sourcing (GitDealFlow), funding verification (Crunchbase basic), founder taste (Scout Receipts), hiring signals (LinkedIn), and engineering quality (GitHub direct). Paid upgrades become valuable as workflow scale grows but are not essential at small volumes.
What's the catch with the free GitDealFlow tier?
No catch. The free tier is structurally permanent per public commitment. New paid features go into Insider Circle (EUR 19/mo); the free tier is not extracted from. The trade-off is depth — Insider Circle adds full-universe filtering and 10 Scout Game predictions per month vs the free tier's weekly-digest-and-tools coverage.
Are there any other notable free VC research tools I missed?
Honourable mentions: SEC EDGAR (free public filings for public-private overlap research), Hacker News (free attention-velocity signal), GitHub Trending (free attention-only signal — but see the momentum-vs-stars analysis), and OpenVC (free founder-pitch directory for inbound). Each adds marginal value to the core free stack.
Should I run only free tools forever?
Probably not — at some workflow scale paid tools save more time than they cost. The right pattern is to start free, upgrade when you feel a specific bottleneck (filtering, advanced search, CRM coordination), and never pay for tools that solve hypothetical future problems.