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Ask two different databases for a private equity fund's performance and you can get two different answers — not because either is wrong, but because they measured different things. One reports a pooled, anonymized median for the fund's vintage-year cohort. Another reports the individual fund's own Net IRR, sourced from LP cash flows rather than a GP's own marketing deck. A third looks through the fund entirely to the performance of the underlying portfolio companies.
For most diligence questions, that distinction matters more than which logo is on the platform. This guide compares the databases most commonly used to evaluate private equity fund performance in 2026, organized around how each one actually measures and sources its numbers — not just what asset classes it covers.
Before comparing platforms, it helps to know the three methodologies underneath them:
Most platforms commit to one of these three. That commitment is the real basis for comparison.
Joe, Powered by Dakota, is a private markets intelligence and performance platform built for institutional investors and investment professionals. It brings together fund performance, custom benchmarking, GP and sponsor intelligence, funds in market, portfolio company data, private company transactions, and market news in one connected platform.
Joe provides performance data for more than 18,000 named funds and vehicles, including Net IRR, TVPI, DPI, and RVPI for closed-end private market funds. Joe also includes returns for hedge funds, evergreen funds, and semi-liquid alternatives.
Users can evaluate individual fund performance, analyze a manager’s track record across fund vintages, and build custom peer groups by strategy, vintage year, geography, fund size, and other relevant criteria. Joe also enables users to identify funds currently raising capital and evaluate them alongside manager histories, investment strategies, portfolio companies, transaction activity, and allocator relationships.
Every record is reviewed by Joe’s research team, structured consistently, and updated in real time as new information becomes available. Users can search, compare, benchmark, and export data through the Joe platform, with additional access through API, MCP, and AI connectors.
Joe is available for $9,500 per year for up to five users, with transparent pricing and a straightforward purchasing process.
Best for: investment consultants, endowments and foundations, family offices, RIAs, institutional allocators, CIOs, secondaries investors, and GP investor relations teams conducting manager diligence, evaluating named-fund performance, benchmarking track records, and identifying funds currently raising capital.
If your diligence question is about one specific fund rather than a cohort average, it helps to see the difference directly. Request access to Joe.
Preqin's private equity coverage is built on the pooled-and-anonymized model. Its benchmarking tools let a user compare a fund's Net IRR, TVPI, DPI, and RVPI against a peer cohort segmented by vintage, strategy, and geography, alongside broader fundraising and investor data.
Preqin was acquired by BlackRock in 2024 for $3.2 billion, pairing its dataset with BlackRock's Aladdin and eFront platforms (BlackRock, 2024). The benchmarking methodology has stayed cohort-based: strong for seeing where a fund sits in a vintage-year distribution, limited for identifying which specific funds make up that distribution.
Best for: benchmarking a PE fund against a broad, anonymized vintage-year cohort.
PitchBook treats fund performance as one layer of a broader deal, valuation, and company-intelligence platform rather than a specialized benchmarking product. IRR and multiples appear alongside deal terms, dry powder, and portfolio company data, which makes it useful when a performance question is really a deal-sourcing or valuation question in disguise.
Its fund performance methodology leans on a mix of GP and LP-sourced data without the cash-flow-level verification that dedicated benchmarking providers apply, and it remains Morningstar-owned with pricing that scales by seat and module.
Best for: teams whose primary need is deal and valuation intelligence, with fund performance as a secondary layer.
Burgiss is widely regarded as the highest-quality source of institutional PE performance data, because its numbers are derived directly from LP cash flow reporting rather than GP self-reporting. That sourcing discipline is why pensions, endowments, and academic researchers treat Burgiss benchmarks as a credible reference point.
Burgiss remains a pooled-and-anonymized model: the cash-flow rigor applies to how the aggregate is built, not to whether an individual fund's number is disclosed by name.
Best for: institutional-grade, cash-flow-verified benchmarks where the peer group's methodology matters as much as the number itself.
Cambridge Associates functions less as a lookup database and more as the benchmark index itself — the line an investment committee measures a manager against. Its private equity indices are widely cited in institutional reporting and asset allocation research.
Like Burgiss, it is a pooled-and-anonymized methodology: authoritative as a reference index, not built for pulling an individual, named fund's track record.
Best for: investment committees that need a credible index to measure portfolio and manager performance against.
Cobalt is built for what an allocator does after they have performance data, not for sourcing it fresh: commitment pacing, cash flow forecasting, scenario analysis, and portfolio construction across a diversified private markets book. Fund performance feeds into those models rather than being the primary product.
Best for: institutional allocators optimizing pacing and portfolio construction across existing PE commitments.
CEPRES takes the deal-level look-through approach: rather than stopping at a fund's TVPI, it decomposes performance into the operating results of the underlying portfolio companies, which is useful for investors trying to understand what actually drove a return, not just its size.
Best for: due diligence teams that need to look through fund-level multiples to the portfolio companies producing them.
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If your question is… |
Consider |
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Where does this fund sit in its vintage-year cohort? |
Preqin |
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Is this fund performance relevant to a deal or valuation I'm sourcing? |
PitchBook |
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Is this benchmark backed by verified LP cash flows? |
Burgiss |
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What's the reference index my committee should measure against? |
Cambridge Associates |
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How should I pace commitments across my existing PE portfolio? |
Hamilton Lane Cobalt |
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What actually drove this fund's return, at the portfolio company level? |
CEPRES |
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What did this exact, named fund actually return? |
Joe |
Most PE diligence workflows need more than one methodology. A pooled benchmark from Preqin, Burgiss, or Cambridge Associates is the right tool for a directional, cohort-level question. Joe is the right tool the moment the question narrows to a specific, named fund or GP series — the point where an anonymized aggregate stops being able to answer what's actually being asked.
For more information on Joe, request access.