Head-to-Head
Affinity vs Attio: Which CRM a Venture Fund Should Buy in 2026
Affinity lists Scale at $2,300 a seat a year; Attio lists Pro at $79 a seat a month billed annually, $948 a year. The question is whether the team will use what the extra money buys.
Written by Michael Kaufman · Reviewed against our editorial standards · Updated
Quick Answer
Attio Pro costs 41 to 47 percent of Affinity per seat for the same team and wins on customization, self-serve buying and published API limits; Affinity wins on warm intro paths through the whole team's network, inferred connections and included onboarding. For a 10-person fund at list price that is $9,480 a year on Attio Pro against $23,000 on Affinity Scale. If you will not use intro-path scoring every week, buy Attio.
For context: of the 100 venture firms in the VC Tech 100, 16 have a CRM we could evidence from a public source. We publish the count, not which firm runs which tool. For every other option, priced the same way, see the best CRM for venture capital.
The Verdict
Buy Affinity if
- Partners source through warm introductions and will ask “who knows this founder?” every week.
- The team is big enough that nobody knows everyone else’s network.
- You want onboarding done for you: Affinity includes import, field mapping and historical relationship data.
Buy Attio if
- You want to model deals, LPs, co-investors and portfolio companies your own way.
- You would rather start on a free plan or a trial than a sales call.
- Someone on the team will build workflows and integrations against a documented API.
Cost at 3, 10 and 25 Seats
Annual licence cost at list price, annual billing, computed from each plan’s published per-seat price. Attio Plus caps at 10 seats, so a 25-person team prices on Pro.
| Plan | Per seat a year | 3 seats | 10 seats | 25 seats |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Affinity Essential | $2,000 | $6,000 | $20,000 | $50,000 |
| Affinity Scale | $2,300 | $6,900 | $23,000 | $57,500 |
| Affinity Advanced | $2,700 | $8,100 | $27,000 | $67,500 |
| Attio Plus | $420 | $1,260 | $4,200 | Caps at 10 seats |
| Attio Pro | $948 | $2,844 | $9,480 | $23,700 |
Prices checked October 2, 2026 on affinity.co/pricing and attio.com/pricing. Negotiated discounts and add-ons excluded.
AI usage limits
Affinity states no separate cap on AI features; its limit is the API allowance (100,000 calls a month on Scale and Advanced, unlimited on Enterprise), which MCP queries count against. Attio meters AI and workflows through credits: a personal allowance per seat and a shared pool per workspace.
| Attio plan | Seat credits | Workspace credits |
|---|---|---|
| Free | 100 per user a month | 250 a month |
| Plus | 500 per user a month | 1,500 a month |
| Pro | 1,000 per user a month | 10,000 a month |
| Enterprise | 2,500 per user a month | Custom |
Side by Side
Every cell is what the vendor’s own pages state, checked October 2, 2026.
| Dimension | Affinity | Attio | Source and date |
|---|---|---|---|
| List price per seat | Essential $2,000, Scale $2,300, Advanced $2,700 a year; Enterprise custom | Free; Plus $35 ($420 a year), Pro $79 ($948 a year) a month billed annually; Enterprise custom | affinity.co/pricing; attio.com/pricing, 2026-10-02 |
| Billing | Annual only | Annual or monthly (Plus $44, Pro $99 a seat a month on monthly billing) | affinity.co/pricing; attio.com/pricing, 2026-10-02 |
| How you buy | Contact sales on every plan | Self-serve on Free, Plus and Pro; 14-day Pro trial; sales for Enterprise | affinity.co/pricing; attio.com/pricing, 2026-10-02 |
| Seat limits | None stated | Free up to 3 seats, Plus up to 10, Pro and Enterprise unlimited | affinity.co/pricing; attio.com/pricing, 2026-10-02 |
| Email and calendar capture | Automatic on every tier, with team-level sync policies and per-user control | Sync on every plan: 1 account per user on Free and Plus, 2 on Pro, 3+ on Enterprise | affinity.co/pricing; attio.com/pricing, 2026-10-02 |
| Relationship strength | Relationship strength score on every tier | Connection strength (no connection to very strong) and strongest connection on every plan | affinity.co/pricing; Attio help: communication intelligence, 2026-10-02 |
| Intro paths and network | Relationship graph and warm intro path; Scale adds inferred connections beyond direct email history | Shows which teammate has the strongest connection; multi-hop intro paths not described | affinity.co/pricing; attio.com/pricing, 2026-10-02 |
| Data model | People, organizations and opportunities in unlimited Smart Lists | Custom objects: up to 3 on Free, 5 on Plus, 12 on Pro, unlimited on Enterprise | affinity.co/pricing; attio.com/pricing, 2026-10-02 |
| Enrichment | Affinity data enrichment; Advanced adds Dealroom, Crunchbase and PitchBook (your own PitchBook subscription) | Company enrichment (including funding raised) and people enrichment on every plan | affinity.co/pricing; attio.com/pricing, 2026-10-02 |
| API | 100,000 calls a month on Scale and Advanced; unlimited on Enterprise; MCP queries count against it | API and webhooks on every plan; documented limit of 100 read and 25 write requests a second | affinity.co/pricing; Attio docs: rate limiting, 2026-10-02 |
| AI | AI features from Essential; Scale adds Notetaker, AI Chat, Ascend agents and a hosted MCP server; no separate AI caps | Ask Attio, AI agents and workflows draw on seat and workspace credits that scale by plan (table below) | affinity.co/pricing; attio.com/pricing, 2026-10-02 |
| Onboarding | Standard onboarding included (import, field mapping, historical relationship data); most firms live within 60 days | Help center on every plan; migration service through sales from Plus up | affinity.co/pricing; attio.com/pricing, 2026-10-02 |
What Affinity Does That Attio Does Not
The intro path. Both products score how strong a relationship is. Affinity goes a step further and lists a relationship graph and a warm intro path: not just who on the team knows a founder, but the route to someone nobody on the team knows directly. On Scale it also infers connections beyond direct email history. Attio shows the strongest connection inside your workspace and stops there.
Done-for-you onboarding. Affinity includes standard onboarding on every subscription, covering data import, field mapping and historical relationship data, and says most firms are fully live within 60 days. Attio’s migration service is a sales conversation from Plus up; on the self-serve path, setup is yours.
Private-markets enrichment. Advanced adds Dealroom and Crunchbase enrichment and a PitchBook integration for firms with their own PitchBook subscription, aimed squarely at deal teams.
What Attio Does Better
The data model. Attio lets you define your own objects (up to 12 on Pro) and link them, so a fund can model deals, LPs, co-investors and portfolio companies as first-class records. Affinity organizes people, organizations and opportunities into lists, which covers deal flow well and LP tracking less naturally.
Buying and building without a sales call. Attio has a free plan, a 14-day Pro trial, monthly billing and a self-serve checkout. Its API, webhooks and MCP server are on every plan, with documented limits of 100 read and 25 write requests a second. Affinity states its API allowance for Scale and above.
Price. At 41 percent of Affinity Scale’s per-seat price, Attio Pro leaves room in the budget for the person who will configure it.
Switching: What Migrates and What Does Not
People, organizations, opportunities, lists and list entries, interactions, notes and files can all be moved through the two APIs, which ClonePartner recommends over CSV export so relationships between records survive.
- Automations and integrations do not transfer; they are rebuilt in Attio or re-pointed at its API.
- Third-party enrichment is either re-enriched in Attio or carried over as custom attributes.
- Calls and chats become Attio notes linked to the right records.
- Affinity entity files have no one-to-one equivalent; they go to cloud storage and are linked back.
ClonePartner's guide does not list relationship scores among the data to import. Attio's help documentation says it calculates connection strength from the emails and meetings it syncs, so expect scores to rebuild as each inbox connects rather than arrive with the migration.
Source: ClonePartner’s Affinity to Attio migration guide, a migration vendor’s own guide, cited for what moves, not as a template.
Adoption Is the Real Failure Mode
Both products score relationships from connected inboxes. A partner who never connects theirs is missing from the graph, and a graph missing a partner is one nobody trusts. Whichever you buy, connect every investor’s email and calendar in week one and run the Monday pipeline meeting from the CRM. The more expensive tool is wasted if half the team never opens it; the cheaper one is a bargain only if they do.
What We Tested and What We Did Not
Done
- Read both vendors' pricing pages and plan tables on 2026-10-02 and computed every cost on this page from them.
- Read Attio's help documentation on how connection strength is calculated and its API rate-limit documentation.
- Read ClonePartner's Affinity-to-Attio migration guide for what does and does not carry over.
Not done
- We hold no paid seat in either product, and we did not build the same pipeline in both. No screenshots or setup timings appear here because we did not take any.
- We did not take an Affinity demo. Affinity sells through a sales call, so nothing on this page describes its interface first-hand.
- We did not connect an inbox to Attio's free plan, so connection-strength behavior is described from Attio's documentation, not observed.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Attio cheaper than Affinity?
Yes, by a wide margin at list price. Attio Pro is $79 a seat a month billed annually ($948 a year); Affinity's cheapest plan, Essential, is $2,000 a seat a year and Scale is $2,300. A 10-person team pays $9,480 on Attio Pro against $23,000 on Affinity Scale. Prices checked October 2, 2026.
Does Attio have relationship intelligence?
Some. Every Attio plan shows connection strength, from no connection to very strong, and which teammate has the strongest connection to a person or company, calculated from the recency and frequency of the workspace's emails and meetings. What Attio does not describe is Affinity's warm intro path through the whole team's network or Affinity's inferred connections beyond direct email history.
Can I migrate from Affinity to Attio?
Yes. People, organizations, opportunities, lists, interactions, notes and files can be moved through the two APIs. Automations and integrations have to be rebuilt, calls and chats become notes, and Affinity entity files go to cloud storage and are linked back. Relationship scores are not imported; Attio recalculates connection strength from the inboxes you connect.
Which is better for a small fund?
Attio, for most. Its free plan covers up to 3 seats and Plus is $35 a seat a month billed annually, $1,260 a year for three people, against $6,000 for three Affinity Essential seats. Affinity's scoring is worth more as the team and its network grow; for one or two investors there is little network to score.
Does Affinity publish pricing?
Yes, now it does. Affinity's pricing page lists Essential at $2,000, Scale at $2,300 and Advanced at $2,700 per user per year, billed annually, with Enterprise priced on request. You still buy every plan through a sales conversation rather than a checkout.
Sources & References
- 1.Affinity: pricing and plan comparison(Plan prices, features by tier, API allowance, onboarding and implementation FAQ. Fetched 2026-10-02.)
- 2.Attio: pricing and plan comparison(Plan prices, seat limits, objects, credits, email sync, enrichment, trial. Fetched 2026-10-02.)
- 3.Attio help: communication intelligence(How connection strength is calculated and its levels)
- 4.Attio developer docs: rate limiting(100 read and 25 write requests per second)
- 5.ClonePartner: Affinity to Attio migration guide(What migrates through the APIs and what has to be rebuilt)
- 6.VC Beast: the VC Tech 100, deal CRM column(Evidenced CRM count across the panel, generated 2026-09-21)