Data sourced from Dakota Marketplace, the global LP and GP intelligence platform trusted by thousands of investment professionals. Learn More | Book a Demo
ETF data is everywhere. Ticker pages, flow trackers and screeners tell you what a fund holds and how it performed. What most ETF sales teams actually need is the other side of the trade: who owns the fund, who owns the competitor’s fund, and who to call about it.
The SEC’s Form 13F data sets are published quarterly and go back to Q2 2013, so the raw ownership data is free. Platforms differ in what they do with it: how fast they process the filings, how cleanly they map them to firms, and whether a verified contact is attached to each position.
In this article, we’ll break down the top 10 ETF databases in 2026, plus the raw SEC data they all start from. We’ll cover what each one is built for, where each falls short, and how to pick the right one for your distribution team.
The Top 10 ETF Databases in 2026
Best for: ETF issuers and wholesalers who want ownership data tied directly to the decision-makers behind it.
Dakota Marketplace maps every 13F ETF position to the firm behind it and puts you in front of the people who make the call. It tracks 6,000+ ETFs across 13F filings, and positions update in real time as filings hit EDGAR, so new positions show up as soon as they are filed instead of weeks later.
ETF ownership doesn’t stop at RIAs, and neither does Dakota. Alongside 17,000+ RIA profiles, Dakota maps ETF holdings at family offices, banks, broker-dealers, investment firms and institutions. Across all of those accounts, it covers 140,000+ contacts at firms holding ETFs, with direct email and LinkedIn.
Dakota’s ETF Intelligence tools are built for distribution:
- ETF Peer Tracker: Track your own ETFs or a competitor’s and see every 13F filer that recently bought something similar, matched on asset class and sub-asset class. Each position is flagged New, Increased or Even Share, and you can export the full list in one click.
- ETF Wallet: Every account profile breaks down the firm’s ETF holdings by asset class, sub-asset class and ticker from its most recent filing, so you know where you fit and where the gaps are before the meeting.
- RIA ETF ownership: Total ETF AUM, active versus passive ETF AUM, and ETF share of firm AUM sit right next to Form ADV data like AUM, client accounts and HNW mix.
- Key contacts: CIOs, portfolio managers and research analysts with their asset class coverage, plus nearby accounts so you can plan your next trip.
You can filter every 13F holding by ticker, strategy, asset class, sub-asset class, product structure, fund balance and filing period, then export the results or push them into your CRM.
Watch out for: Dakota is built for distribution and fundraising, not for fund-level analytics like tracking error or factor exposure.
Best for: Analysts and individual investors tracking hedge fund and institutional 13F positions on a budget.
WhaleWisdom is one of the longest-running 13F trackers. Its free tier includes recent 13F data and email alerts, and its paid plans extend the history back much further. Pro users get a combined holdings report, an overlap matrix and a backtester. You can search any ETF ticker to see which 13F filers hold it, which makes WhaleWisdom a quick, cheap way to sanity-check ownership.
Watch out for: WhaleWisdom is an investment research tool, not a sales tool. There are no contacts, no allocator profiles and no CRM integration, so turning a list of filers into a call list is all manual work.
Best for: Product, research and strategy teams who need deep fund-level analytics.
Morningstar Direct combines Morningstar’s global fund dataset with portfolio construction, custom benchmarks, Python access and branded reporting through Presentation Studio. Morningstar categories are so widely used that other vendors, including AdvizorPro, build their ETF segmentation on top of them.
Watch out for: Direct tells you a lot about the fund and very little about who is buying it at the advisor level.
Best for: Fast, free ETF research and screening.
ETF.com offers a screener, fund flow tracker, side-by-side comparison tool and an ETF Stock Holdings lookup. It recently launched ETF Data AI, a conversational assistant that answers plain-English questions about funds using its long-running ETF database, drawing on FactSet’s data. It is a strong starting point for understanding a fund, a category or a competitor’s product.
Watch out for: ETF.com is a product database. It will tell you what SPY holds, not which RIAs hold SPY.
Best for: ETF issuers looking for indexing, content and digital distribution in one partner.
VettaFi brought ETF Trends, ETF Database, Alerian and S-Network Global Indexes together under one brand and is now part of TMX. It pairs ETF research tools with a large digital audience of U.S. financial advisors. VettaFi is most useful as a marketing and indexing partner. Its sponsored content, webcasts and index licensing put your ETF in front of advisors.
Watch out for: VettaFi helps advisors find you. It does not give you a firm-by-firm view of who already owns your fund or your competitor’s.
See who owns your ETFs, and who to call. Dakota Marketplace maps 13F ETF positions at RIAs, family offices, banks, broker-dealers and institutions to 140,000+ contacts, so your wholesalers can go from a ticker to a phone number in one search. Book a demo.
Best for: Wealth-channel prospecting across RIAs, broker-dealers and family offices.
FINTRX parses 13F filings at the position level and rolls ETF assets up by issuer across RIA and broker-dealer firms. Features include quarter-over-quarter change flags, reverse search by ticker, active versus passive breakdowns and natural-language search. It also carries registered rep and wealth team data.
Watch out for: Holdings are refreshed quarterly rather than as filings arrive. FINTRX’s center of gravity is also the wealth channel, so teams selling into pensions, endowments, consultants or private markets will find thinner coverage there.
Best for: ETF sales teams focused purely on the RIA channel.
AdvizorPro’s ETF Holdings Intelligence is built specifically for ETF sales and marketing teams. It uses normalized RIA 13F filings, segments holdings by Morningstar category (ESG, income, thematic, active) and tracks quarterly shifts by issuer and theme. Holdings sync into Salesforce, HubSpot or Microsoft Dynamics, with alerts on new category exposure.
Watch out for: Updates are quarterly, and coverage centers on RIAs. If your ETF distribution plan includes institutions, AdvizorPro will cover only part of the map.
Best for: Rep-level data on broker-dealers and RIAs at scale.
Discovery Data covers FINRA- and SEC-registered firms and professionals. Its data includes firm AUM, product and asset allocation (including ETFs), custodial assets, rep movement and advisor intent signals. Now part of ISS Market Intelligence, it serves clients across asset management, insurance and fintech.
Watch out for: Discovery Data’s ETF view is a product-allocation field at the firm level, not a ticker-by-ticker holdings history. It is strongest for rep-level contact data and territory planning.
Best for: Large ETF and mutual fund issuers that need sales reporting and market share analytics.
Broadridge’s U.S. Distribution Intelligence covers 95%+ of intermediary-sold mutual fund and ETF assets. The suite includes:
- Sales Analytics for transaction and position reporting
- Market Analytics for share and flow benchmarking
- Opportunity Hunter for AI-assisted prospecting
- Advisor Scoring and AdvisorTarget for segmentation and intent
Watch out for: Broadridge is an enterprise build. It works best for issuers with existing sales data feeds, a data team to manage them and the budget to match. Its focus is the intermediary channel, not institutional allocators.
Best for: Global ownership research and quant-ready data feeds.
FactSet Ownership covers institutional, fund and insider ownership worldwide, with deep equity history and stakes data across dozens of countries. Most funds in North America, Europe, the Pacific and Latin America are collected monthly, which is faster than relying on 13F alone.
Watch out for: FactSet is a research and data-feed platform built for analysts and quants. Turning ownership into outreach still requires a separate contact source and CRM workflow.
Best for: Data teams that want the source files and have the engineering time to clean them.
Every platform above that tracks institutional ETF ownership starts here. The SEC publishes Form 13F data sets as quarterly ZIP files, flattened from the XML portion of each filing, with history back to Q2 2013. It is free, complete for what it covers, and the closest thing to ground truth.
Watch out for: The SEC notes it cannot guarantee the accuracy of the data. Filer names are inconsistent, there are no contacts or firm profiles, and the data sets post quarterly. You will spend more time cleaning and mapping than selling.
How to Choose the Right ETF Database
ETF databases fall into two camps. Product databases describe the funds themselves: holdings, expense ratios, flows and performance. Ownership databases describe the buyers: which RIAs, family offices, pensions and banks hold which ETFs, and how those positions change each quarter.
Start with the question your team is trying to answer. If it is “how does our fund stack up,” a product database like Morningstar Direct or ETF.com will do the job. If it is “who should our wholesalers call this week,” you need ownership data tied to people, and that is where pipeline comes from.
Before you sign a contract, test any ownership platform on four questions:
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How fast is 13F data processed? Filings land up to 45 days after quarter-end. A platform that takes another few weeks to load them is selling you stale positions.
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Are holdings mapped to real firms and people? A CIK number is not a prospect. Look for holdings linked to verified contacts with titles, emails and phone numbers.
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Can you filter by asset class and sub-asset class? Knowing a firm holds “ETFs” is useless. Knowing it added three international small cap ETFs last quarter is a reason to call.
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Does it push into your CRM? If the data lives in a separate tab, your reps will not use it.
The ETF buyer base is also wider than most sales teams plan for. Who buys ETFs today includes RIAs, family offices, pensions, endowments, banks and insurers, and each group uses ETFs differently. A platform limited to one channel will leave money on the table.
Finally, remember that data does not close deals; people do. The best ETF database is the one that makes your next cold call sharper: you know what the firm holds, what it added last quarter and who makes the decision.
Turn 13F Filings Into Conversations
Dakota Marketplace tracks 6,000+ ETFs across 13F filings and connects them to 140,000+ contacts at the RIAs, family offices, banks, broker-dealers and institutions that hold them.
Use the ETF Peer Tracker to find firms buying ETFs like yours, open any account’s ETF Wallet before the meeting, and push the list into your CRM. See the ETFs RIAs hold most and who to call about them.
Book a demo of Dakota Marketplace to access holdings and ETFs.
