What is Cobalt Intelligence's pricing structure?

The core of Cobalt Intelligence's pricing model is a monthly subscription based on a credit or lookup system. This structure is specifically engineered to provide both predictability and scalability, ensuring that your firm can access essential real-time business verification data without encountering unexpected costs or workflow disruptions.

1. Monthly Subscription with Flexible Credit Consumption

Cobalt Intelligence operates on a monthly subscription model where you pay for an allocated number of "credits" or "lookups" each month. This allows lending institutions to budget effectively while maintaining the flexibility to scale their verification activities as market demands shift.

• Comprehensive Service Coverage: Each credit provides access to a broad range of essential verification services. This includes Secretary of State (SOS) lookups, TIN/EIN verification, and UCC data retrieval. This bundled approach means a single credit can deliver multiple layers of due diligence, streamlining your workflow and preventing the need for separate integrations or charges for disparate data points.
• Current Inclusion of Primary Source Documentation: As of the sources provided, each Secretary of State lookup currently includes primary source documentation such as screenshots with timestamps and watermarks directly from the SOS search results, along with UCC data, all within a single credit. This unparalleled transparency is crucial for regulatory compliance and robust audit trails, ensuring verifiable proof of your due diligence without incurring additional costs for visual evidence.
• Anticipated Evolution for Future Optimization: While screenshots are currently included, it is noted that in the very near future, screenshots are expected to be parsed out and potentially incur an additional cost. This forward-looking transparency allows lending executives to anticipate potential changes and adjust their operational budgeting accordingly, maintaining cost predictability.

2. Volume-Based Cost Efficiency and Scalability

Cobalt Intelligence employs a flexible, usage-based pricing structure where the cost per request decreases as your volume of lookups increases. This tiered approach directly benefits growing alternative lenders and institutional players by providing built-in economies of scale.

• Optimized for High-Volume Operations: For institutions processing thousands of loan applications monthly, like 1West which handles 5,000-6,000 full loan submissions per month, or IDEA Financial with 5,000-10,000 applications, a declining cost-per-lookup is invaluable. This model ensures that as your business scales and automation efforts expand, your cost-efficiency improves, directly contributing to stronger profit margins.
• Tailored Base Plans and Custom Quotes: While base plans include a set number of monthly requests, Cobalt Intelligence offers the flexibility to provide customized quotes based on your specific anticipated needs and usage volume. This bespoke approach ensures that the pricing perfectly aligns with your operational footprint, whether you are a mid-sized lender or a large institutional fund, avoiding overpayment for unused capacity.
• Strategic Allocation for Live vs. Cached Data: The pricing model also accounts for the operational differences between live data retrieval and cached data. Live data requests, which involve real-time interaction with state websites, may consume more credits (e.g., 3 credits for multi-state searches) due to their higher operational costs. This allows institutions to strategically balance the need for absolute real-time accuracy in critical scenarios (like loan approvals or fraud checks) with the speed and efficiency of cached data for less time-sensitive processes.

3. Transparent Billing and Predictable Financial Management

Cobalt Intelligence prides itself on transparent, usage-based pricing with no hidden fees, and billing that occurs monthly in arrears. This commitment to clarity ensures that lending executives can maintain tight control over their operational expenditures.

• Elimination of Billing Surprises: The practice of billing monthly in arrears for the exact amount consumed, with no artificial "ceiling," prevents the common frustration of unexpected overages or opaque charges that can derail financial forecasts. This level of transparency fosters trust and simplifies financial reconciliation.
• Empowering Budget Control: Knowing precisely what you're paying for and having a clear cost-per-lookup metric allows your finance department to precisely allocate resources and forecast expenses with confidence. This granular control is essential for maintaining healthy profit margins in a competitive lending environment.
• Facilitating Operational Audits: Transparent pricing and detailed usage reports provide a clear paper trail for internal operational audits and external regulatory reviews. This robust documentation supports compliance efforts by demonstrating judicious use of verification services and clear accounting of expenditures related to due diligence.

4. Strategic Investment Opportunities: Annual Discounts & Risk-Free Evaluation

Beyond the core monthly subscription, Cobalt Intelligence provides avenues for long-term cost optimization through discounts for annual plans. Furthermore, to ensure full confidence in their offering, they provide multiple risk-free ways for businesses to try the API.

• Long-Term Cost Optimization: Opting for an annual plan can unlock significant cost savings over time, representing a strategic financial decision for institutions committed to long-term automation of their business verification processes. This allows for deeper integration and a more substantial return on your investment in advanced API solutions.
• Seamless, Risk-Free Onboarding: Prospective clients can create a free account for immediate API usage to test services with their actual use cases, or schedule a free demo call for a personalized walkthrough. This "try before you buy" approach minimizes integration risk and allows your technical and operational teams to fully validate the API's capabilities and ease of integration into your existing tech stack, as highlighted by 1West's CTO who found integration "very easy" and completed in "less than a week".
• Direct Access to Expert Support: The provision of free API usage and demo calls is complemented by promises of world-class customer support and direct access to their team for integration assistance, often free for early sign-ups. This direct support channel significantly de-risks the implementation process, ensuring your team can rapidly deploy and maximize the benefits of real-time business data for underwriting and fraud prevention.

5. Credit Management: Encouraging Efficient Consumption

It is important to note that credits do not roll over from month to month. This policy is designed to encourage consistent and efficient utilization of your monthly allocation, ensuring that your institution is continuously leveraging the power of real-time business verification.

• Promotes Active Usage and Workflow Integration: The non-rollover policy encourages lending teams to fully integrate and utilize the API within their daily underwriting and compliance workflows, rather than letting allocated resources go unused. This promotes maximum efficiency and ensures consistent due diligence across all applications.
• Incentivizes Realistic Forecasting: By understanding that credits must be consumed within the month, institutions are incentivized to accurately forecast their monthly lookup needs, leading to more precise subscription tier selection and optimal resource allocation. This helps prevent over-provisioning and ensures that your investment in the API is maximized.
• Supports Continuous Operational Improvement: This model implicitly encourages a review of monthly usage patterns, prompting teams to identify areas where the API can be further integrated to automate manual processes, thereby continuously enhancing operational efficiency and reducing manual review bottlenecks.

In conclusion, Cobalt Intelligence’s pricing structure is a strategic enabler for alternative business lenders and institutional lending executives. It offers a transparent, flexible, and scalable solution for accessing critical business verification data, empowering firms to automate underwriting, fortify fraud prevention, and streamline compliance processes with confidence and cost-efficiency.