September 24, 2025
When limited partners (LPs) evaluate private equity, venture capital, credit, or real asset funds, one of the most important steps is benchmarking fund performance. LPs want to understand how a fund compares to its peers by vintage year, strategy, and geography, and increasingly, against public market equivalents (PMEs) like the S&P 500 or MSCI World.
The challenge is that reliable private fund benchmarking data is hard to come by. Many of the established databases come with a heavy price tag, and each tends to focus on just one angle of the market… whether it’s fund-level returns, allocator behavior, or underlying portfolio company data. This fragmented landscape makes it difficult for LPs and fund managers to get a full picture.
That’s where dakota marketplace comes in. By combining LP and GP data, private company data, public company data, and fund performance insights, dakota offers an all-in-one solution that allows investors to benchmark performance while also understanding the allocator trends and deal activity driving those results.
In this article, we’ll review 10 of the top databases for benchmarking private funds. By the end of this, you’ll have a better understanding of what each has to offer and which may best serve your team.
Cambridge Associates is perhaps the most widely cited source of private market benchmarks. Their quarterly reports cover strategies and vintages across private equity, venture capital, private credit, and real assets. Because the data is based on LP-reported fund performance, it is considered among the most credible and trusted sources for fund due diligence.
Preqin provides coverage spanning private equity, venture capital, private credit, infrastructure, and real assets. They publish vintage year quartiles and benchmarks by strategy and geography, making them a go-to for market reports and broad comparisons across private capital.
Unlike the others, dakota marketplace is not solely a fund benchmark provider. Instead, it serves as a comprehensive intelligence platform that combines LP and GP data, allocator insights, private company information, public company coverage, and private fund performance.
Dakota has been collecting performance data on funds for years, and now provides the ability to benchmark not just private equity, but other asset classes you’re interested in. What makes dakota unique is the way it ties benchmarks to company-level and transaction-level intelligence, giving LPs a complete picture: fund results + underlying deal flow and allocator activity.
This all-in-one approach allows LPs, fund managers, and fundraising teams to see both how funds perform and why they perform that way, by connecting allocator behavior and transaction data to the outcomes reflected in benchmarks.
PitchBook combines fund performance benchmarks with its well-known deal-level database, which makes it particularly valuable for connecting fund outcomes to underlying transactions. This blend of performance and deal data creates a unique perspective that is often used by analysts and deal teams.
Burgiss has become a gold standard among institutional investors thanks to its data sourced directly from GPs and LPs. Integrated into many portfolio monitoring systems, Burgiss provides validated, consistent performance data that is highly trusted by LPs for benchmarking and ongoing portfolio analysis.
Through its Cobalt LP platform, Hamilton Lane delivers benchmarking and portfolio analytics for institutional investors. Their platform includes peer quartiles and PME-style comparisons, making it a practical solution for LPs that want a clear view of fund performance relative to peers.
eVestment provides benchmarks for private equity, and is widely known for their hedge fund analytics. Their data is built from GP submissions and is integrated into institutional portfolio analysis, giving investors the ability to evaluate private equity alongside other alternative strategies.
StepStone leverages its position as one of the largest private markets allocators to publish SPI (StepStone Private Markets Intelligence) reports. These proprietary reports provide benchmarking across private equity strategies, offering unique insights derived from StepStone’s global client base and investment activity.
(Previously Thomson Reuters Venture Economics)
Although not a database, Refinitiv has long been a fixture in academia and industry research. While it is less prominent in institutional workflows today, it remains valuable for its legacy depth and historical perspective on private fund performance.
10. Private Capital Research Institute (PCRI, Harvard)
The Private Capital Research Institute (PCRI) is a nonprofit academic initiative led by Harvard faculty that provides anonymous private fund data for research and policy studies. While not designed as a commercial tool, it brings academic rigor and independent analysis to the study of private markets.
Benchmarking private fund performance is essential for LPs and GPs, but reliable data is often fragmented and expensive. Traditional providers like Cambridge Associates, Preqin, Burgiss, and Hamilton Lane remain core resources, while academic and legacy datasets add depth. Still, these tools often show only part of the picture.
Dakota Marketplace fills that gap by combining LP and GP data, allocator insights, company intelligence, and fund performance into one platform. This all-in-one approach helps investors understand not just how funds perform, but why… connecting benchmarks to allocator behavior and deal flow.
In a competitive market, having both performance data and its underlying drivers is critical. dakota marketplace delivers that complete view.
To explore private fund performance and benchmarks, book a demo of dakota marketplace.
Morgan Holycross is a Marketing Manager at Dakota.
