Orbyt vs Comprehensive.io.

At a glance.

Infrastructure coverage.

What Comprehensive.io is.

Comprehensive.io is a compensation benchmarking platform founded in 2022 by Roger Lee, focused on VC-backed startups in major U.S. hubs. The product pulls real-time data from connected customer payroll systems and surfaces benchmarks through a polished HR-facing dashboard. For startups inside the customer network, the dataset is fresh and the UX is modern. Outside that network the coverage thins: public companies, enterprise SaaS, frontier AI labs that are not customers, non-tech industries, and regional employers see the dataset drop off a cliff. Comprehensive has paid APIs for customers but no free public tier, no MCP manifest, and no CC BY license on the data. The product is built for HR at Series A through Series C companies. Orbyt Intelligence covers 3,445 roles across 81 U.S. cities whether or not a company has ever signed a contract with us: source-driven coverage, not customer-driven coverage.

Pricing, head to head.

Comprehensive.io's consumer UI is free to browse without an account. Paid API and dashboard access is published for Starter tiers (roughly $500 to $2,000 per month for early-stage startups) and quote-only for Growth and Enterprise tiers. There is no self-serve developer tier and no way to evaluate the API before a contract. Orbyt Intelligence publishes its full pricing grid: Free (60 req/min, 1,000 requests a month, AI Role Taxonomy engine, no card), scaling through Pro at $99 per month (300 req/min, MCP server, /lineage provenance) and Ultra at $199 per month (1,500 req/min, company leveling catalog, annual reports). Every tier is visible at orbyt-intelligence/pricing: no sales call required. For a developer, a researcher, or a startup founder who wants to validate salary data against a use case before committing budget, Comprehensive is closed and Orbyt is open, starting free.

Orbyt wins.

A slice, or the map.

Feature by feature.

On real-time freshness inside the customer network, Comprehensive wins: payroll-feed data refreshes continuously for participating companies. On coverage breadth, Orbyt wins by a wide margin. Comprehensive's dataset is concentrated on VC-backed startups in major hubs; Orbyt covers 3,445 roles across 81 U.S. cities including FAANG, enterprise SaaS, public companies, and frontier AI labs regardless of customer status. On developer experience, it is not close: Comprehensive has no self-serve API tier, no MCP manifest, no OpenAPI spec, no MCP tool-call surface. Orbyt ships all of those starting on the free tier. On forward modeling, Orbyt projects through 2030 with a public methodology; Comprehensive reports what is current. On license, Orbyt is CC BY 4.0 (cite, redistribute, train models, embed in products); Comprehensive data is proprietary and contract-locked. On emerging-role coverage specifically, Orbyt tracks 598 specialized roles with leveling frameworks for Anthropic, OpenAI, DeepMind, Meta AI, and Cohere; Comprehensive's coverage depends on whether those labs are customers.

Who each is for.

Use Comprehensive.io if you are an HR or People Ops lead at a VC-backed startup in the Comprehensive customer network, you need real-time benchmarks against peer companies in your slice, and you value the dashboard UX. For that audience, inside that network, the product is a solid choice. Use Orbyt Intelligence if your comp data needs extend outside the VC-backed startup ecosystem, if you are a developer building a feature, if you are an AI team running agent workflows, if you are a researcher citing data in a paper, or if your coverage requirements include public companies, enterprise SaaS, or frontier AI labs that may not be Comprehensive customers. The distinction is sharp: Comprehensive is a private club, Orbyt is the public square. Both can be legitimate, depending on who the buyer is and what the use case covers.

Bottom line, in 2026.

In 2026, Comprehensive.io is an excellent product for a narrow audience and Orbyt Intelligence is the only open programmatic alternative that scales past that audience. The name Comprehensive describes Orbyt's product, not theirs. 3,445 roles. 81 cities. Public API free to start. MCP server for AI agents. Forward projections through 2030. CC BY 4.0 license. Every one of those features describes what a compensation data product should ship in 2026 if it is designed for the whole market, not just the part of the market willing to connect payroll feeds to a vendor. Comprehensive will keep owning the VC-backed startup slice. Orbyt owns everything else.

How to migrate from Comprehensive.io to Orbyt.

Migrating from Comprehensive.io to Orbyt Intelligence is straightforward because the two products solve overlapping problems. If you are using Comprehensive for startup comp benchmarking and your coverage needs have grown past the VC-backed network, here is the path.

1. ✓Sign up for an Orbyt Intelligence account at intelligence/signup. The free tier unlocks 60 req/min with Bearer authentication and the AI Role Taxonomy engine, with no card.
2. ✓Generate an API key from the API dashboard. The OpenAPI 3.1 spec is at /openapi-intelligence.yaml for code generation.
3. ✓Map your current Comprehensive role taxonomy to Orbyt role slugs. Orbyt's coverage extends past the startup slice into AI labs, FAANG, enterprise SaaS, and public companies; if you have been working around Comprehensive's coverage gaps, those gaps disappear here.
4. ✓For AI agents, drop the Orbyt MCP manifest URL into Claude Desktop or ChatGPT Actions. Manifest is at /mcp-intelligence.json. Comprehensive has no MCP story; Orbyt does.
5. ✓Replace any Comprehensive CSV exports or API calls with `/api/v1/intelligence/salaries` queries. Orbyt returns structured total comp (base, equity, bonus, signing) with source citations and percentile bands.
6. ✓Confirm your citation complies with CC BY 4.0. Orbyt's required attribution is 'Orbyt Intelligence, Q2 2026' plus a link to the dataset. Comprehensive's data under their terms cannot be redistributed in a derivative product.

Most teams finish the migration in under an hour once the role mapping is done. The coverage expansion is the biggest immediate win: companies and roles that were gaps in Comprehensive's startup-focused dataset are first-class in Orbyt's. Forward projections through 2030 and the CC BY 4.0 license are the longer-term wins for anyone building on top of the data.

Response shape is stable. OpenAPI spec published at /openapi-intelligence.yaml. Every field is cited, versioned, and under CC BY 4.0.