Cause IQ alternatives in 2026
Nonprofit rows from 5¢, free to export.
Cause IQ Core costs $349 a month for one user and charges $0.50 for each record you export, so 250 organizations cost $125. Pro costs $5,988 a year for three users, with exports included at 3,000 records each.
SpecStream is the live web data engine. Describe the nonprofits you sell to or research in plain words, and each comes back as a row with revenue, assets and the contact you name. 1,000 nonprofits with 5 facts cost $50.
New accounts get $10 of credit, no card.
SpecStream and Cause IQ side by side
| SpecStream | Cause IQ | |
|---|---|---|
| What you send | The nonprofits you want in plain words, with the conditions every row must meet: the cause, the state, the revenue, the people to reach | Over 400 filters on Core and Pro, including grants made, vendors used and expenditure. 8 filters on the free account |
| What you get back | Structured rows, one record per nonprofit, with facts from its filings and its own site joined: revenue, assets, officers and contacts. Source URL and read time on every value | Profiles in its Nonprofit Database. Through the API, an organization profile returns the 20 most commonly used fields by default |
| Data already held | 1,983,169 US nonprofits registered with the IRS, read from the IRS file updated on November 9, 2026, at specstream.ai/data/nonprofits. 1,205 federal funding opportunities open or forecast on Grants.gov, read each morning, at specstream.ai/data/grants. Ask for your own cut of either | Its Nonprofit Database, with no data from resellers or private third parties |
| What it costs | A delivered row: 5¢, 15¢ or $1 by how much the row needs, plus 5¢ for an email and 15¢ for a phone. The same rate on every plan. 1,000 nonprofits with 5 facts each cost $50 | Core $349 a month for one user, or $1,999 paid upfront for a year. Pro $5,988 a year for three users. 501(c)(3) nonprofits pay $199 a month or $4,488 a year. Enterprise priced on request for five or more users |
| Records you can take out | Every row you paid for is yours. Exporting and sharing cost nothing | Core charges $0.50 for each exported record, again each time the same record is exported. Pro includes exports. Every export stops at 3,000 records |
| A list you already have | Import a CSV, Excel file, Google Sheet or Airtable base of up to 20,000 rows. SpecStream fills in or checks each row and matches it to one identity, with any namesakes shown alongside their evidence. Import is free. A row that matches pays its rate, and a row that does not costs 5¢ | A CSV list matching and augmentation tool on Pro |
| Contract | Pay as you go from a balance, or a plan at $19, $99 or $499 a month that turns its whole price into credit | Core renews automatically. Pro runs a year and cannot be canceled before the contract ends. Payments are non-refundable |
| How to start | $10 of credit, no card. Pro $19, Scale $99 and Team $499 a month, all spent as credit at the same row rates. A yearly plan adds 20% more credit | A free account with 8 search filters and no bulk exports |
| API and agents | MCP server, REST API, Python and TypeScript SDKs, a CLI and A2A on every account. An agent can buy one request with no account, by card or in USDC | On Pro and Enterprise only, at 240 requests a minute and 25,000 records a day, 3,000 records deep per search |
| Reruns and where the data goes | Hourly to yearly. Each row comes back labeled changed, unchanged or no longer matching. A changed or new row costs half its rate, an unchanged row 1¢. Rows go to Google Sheets, Excel, Airtable, Notion, monday.com, HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Attio, Slack, Teams, Zapier, Make, n8n and signed webhooks | Exports to a spreadsheet inside the 3,000 record cap, and the API on Pro |
Why Cause IQ buyers move to SpecStream
Your market is the request
A company that sells to nonprofits knows which ones buy: the cause, the size, the region, the role that signs. On SpecStream you write it as you would say it: "nonprofit hospitals in Ohio with revenue above $50 million, with the CFO and their email", or "private colleges in New England with an endowment above $100 million", or "food banks in Texas that grew revenue last year". SpecStream reads the request back as parts you can edit, the conditions every row must meet and the facts to bring back, then returns one row per nonprofit that meets all of them.
Exporting costs nothing
On Cause IQ Core, each record you export costs $0.50, and the same record costs $0.50 again the next time you export it, so a spreadsheet of 250 organizations costs $125. On SpecStream you pay for the row once: 5¢ for up to 5 facts, 15¢ for up to 15 facts and one set of related records, and $1 for a deep row with no limit, plus 5¢ for an email. Exporting and sharing cost nothing, and rows you already own are never charged again.
Every US nonprofit, read every morning
SpecStream holds 1,983,169 US nonprofits registered with the IRS, 1,657,622 of them 501(c)(3) charities, read from the IRS Exempt Organizations Business Master File as updated by the IRS on November 9, 2026 and rebuilt every morning: specstream.ai/data/nonprofits. Each comes with its revenue and assets from its latest filing. Ask for your own cut, and add the facts no filing prints, such as the decision maker and their email.
The search under every request leads the public benchmarks: SimpleQA Verified, 97.9 F-score on all 1,000 official questions (978 correct), and WideSearch, 64.0 item F1 and 43.4 row F1 on all 200 official tasks. The Extract API scores 0.908 F1 on WCXB. The scores and their method are on benchmarks.
The API is on every account
Cause IQ's API needs a Pro or Enterprise subscription and stops at 25,000 records a day. SpecStream's REST API, Python and TypeScript SDKs, CLI and MCP server at https://api.specstream.ai/mcp are open to every account at the same row rates, and every request gets a quote of the most it can cost, good for 30 minutes, before it runs.
The rows land in your CRM
Save the request and it reruns hourly to yearly. Each row comes back labeled changed, unchanged or no longer matching, and new matches go to Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Attio, Google Sheets, Slack or Teams with no code. A changed or new row costs half its rate and an unchanged row costs 1¢.
Other Cause IQ alternatives
SpecStream
The live web data engine for teams and agents. Every nonprofit that fits your request comes back as a structured row at 5¢, 15¢ or $1, priced before the run, free to export and delivered to your CRM, sheet or agent. New accounts get $10 of credit, no card.
Candid (GuideStar)
GuideStar searches 1.8 million IRS-recognized tax-exempt organizations, and Candid sells its Premium plan at $219 a month. On SpecStream every nonprofit that fits your conditions comes back as one row, and exporting it costs nothing.
ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer
A free site for browsing the annual returns tax-exempt organizations file, last updated October 22, 2026, with an API that only accepts GET requests. SpecStream returns the organizations that fit your request as rows with the facts you name, ready for your CRM.
Instrumentl
A grants platform for fundraisers, with 450k+ funder profiles. Discover costs $299 a month paid upfront annually for up to 3 users. On SpecStream there is no seat price, and 300 funders with 15 facts each cost $45.
How SpecStream scores
The same numbers as the benchmarks page, from the official tasks and scorers.
| SpecStream |  Parallel |  Exa |  Tavily |  Perplexity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Web researchWideSearch, GPT-5.6 Luna | 60.9 | 45.5 | 53.0 | 47.9 | 47.0 |
| Factual accuracySimpleQA Verified, GPT-5.6 Luna | 96 | 94 | 91 | 94 | 94 |
| Factual accuracySimpleQA Verified, GPT-5.6 Sol | 99 | 97 | 91 | 92 | 95 |
How to switch from Cause IQ
Write the nonprofits you want in plain words, in place of the saved searches you run today. Or import the list you exported from Cause IQ, as a CSV, Excel file, Google Sheet or Airtable base of up to 20,000 rows, and SpecStream fills in or checks each row. Sign up and you get $10 of credit, no card. At 5¢ a row, that is up to 200 nonprofits.
Or send the request from code. This call spends nothing: the 402 reply shows how SpecStream read the request, the columns and the most it can cost.
curl -i https://api.specstream.ai/v1/agent/lists \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"request": "Nonprofit hospitals and health systems in Ohio with revenue above $50 million, with revenue and assets from the latest Form 990, the CFO and their email", "count": 25}'Approve that maximum by card through Stripe's Link agent wallet, or in USDC, and you pay for the rows found. On an account, your agent uses the MCP server at https://api.specstream.ai/mcp and your team uses the workspace, from the same balance.
Frequently asked questions
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Sources
SpecStream wrote this page. Every rival figure comes from that company's own page.
- SpecStream pricingspecstream.ai/pricing, read Nov 9, 2026
- SpecStream for agentsspecstream.ai/agents.md, read Nov 9, 2026
- SpecStream nonprofits dataspecstream.ai/data/nonprofits, read Nov 9, 2026
- SpecStream benchmarksspecstream.ai/benchmarks, read Nov 9, 2026
- SpecStream federal grants dataspecstream.ai/data/grants, read Nov 9, 2026
- Cause IQ pricingcauseiq.com/pricing/, read Nov 9, 2026
- Cause IQ terms of servicecauseiq.com/terms_of_service/, read Nov 9, 2026
- Cause IQ APIcauseiq.com/help/enrich-information/cause-iq-api/, read Nov 9, 2026
- GuideStarguidestar.org/, read Nov 9, 2026
- Candid pricingcandid.org/pricing, read Nov 9, 2026
- ProPublica Nonprofit Explorerprojects.propublica.org/nonprofits/, read Nov 9, 2026
- Instrumentl pricinginstrumentl.com/pricing, read Nov 9, 2026