How we build and check the index

What qualifies for the index

A company is listed when all three are true on the check date:

1. It buys, brokers or lists licenses to internal operating data from companies: chat, email, tickets, code, CRM records or documents.
2. It describes that offer on a public page we can link to.
3. The offer is open to companies, not only to individuals selling their own data.

We list buyers whether or not they run a referral program and whether or not they could ever pay us. Each row has one of four types:

The primary-source rule

• Every figure in a row links to the company’s own page (its website, terms, help center or program page), an official filing, a public business registry, RDAP domain records or an accelerator’s official company page. We keep the exact sentence and the date we read it.
• Figures that appear only in press coverage, social posts, ads or third-party trackers do not go into a field. If the company does not publish it, the field says Not published.
• Ranges are shown as published by the company. They are what the company says it may pay, not verified payouts.
• We do not estimate, average or fill gaps.
• We describe what companies publish. We do not characterize companies, guess at relationships between them or repeat allegations about them.

What each field means

Tiers

Tier tells you how much public history there is to check. It is not a rating and not a recommendation.

Public history means dated material we can see: archived copies of the site, registry filings or dated pages. A domain registration date alone is not enough, because a domain can sit unused or carry a different site for years.

Every row states its tier reason in plain words, for example the month the domain was registered or that no legal entity is published. For a New buyer, ask more before you share anything. The offer checklist lists the questions.

Ingestion and platform terms

We record how each buyer takes in data, because platform terms treat the two routes differently.

• Owner export: the company exports its own data with the platform’s admin tools and hands over files under the license.
• Connector/OAuth: the buyer connects to the platform through an app or API that the company authorizes.

Two platform policies on API access matter here:

• Slack’s API Terms of Service, effective October 10, 2025, say the provider of an application offered outside its own organization may not “use API Data to train a large language model” or “bulk export Slack message and file data except where expressly allowed by an additional agreement”.
• Google’s Workspace user data and developer policy, last updated September 3, 2026, lists as prohibited “Transferring, selling, or using user data to create, train, or improve a machine learning or artificial intelligence model beyond that specific user’s personalized model”.

We do not judge whether a given buyer’s pipeline complies with these terms. We record what the buyer publishes about ingestion, so you can ask the right question before you authorize anything. If you are closing a Google Workspace account, read how to cancel Google Workspace and keep your data first.

How a row is checked

1. Open every source URL in the row and confirm the quoted sentence still appears. Record the date.
2. Look for new or changed pages: updated terms, new program pages, changed pricing.
3. Check the legal entity in the company’s own terms, privacy policy or imprint, and in a public business registry where one is available.
4. Look up the domain registration date in RDAP through ICANN Lookup.
5. Compare with the previous check. Every changed field is updated and logged on the changelog with the date, and the row’s sources show the new quote.
6. If a source page disappears or no longer supports a figure, the field changes to Not published until a new primary source exists.

How often we check

• Every week an automated check reopens every cited page and confirms the quoted text is still there. Rows where it is not are flagged for a re-check.
• The date in the header is the date of the last full check, and each row shows its own last-checked date.
• When a company or a reader reports a change, we re-check that row.
• Terms move between checks. micro1’s referral terms, for example, carry a “Last Updated: October 14, 2026” date, four days before the first full check of this index. Open the source link before you rely on a figure.

How the value estimator works

The estimator on the home page and the value check is arithmetic on the index, not a valuation of your company.

1. Filter. It keeps the buyers whose own published minimums your company meets: employees (now or at peak) and years of history. Buyers that publish no minimum stay in, because they may fit.
2. Summarize. From the buyers left, it takes each published dollar range for a whole company and shows the middle of the lower ends and the middle of the upper ends (the medians), plus the lowest and highest figure published.
3. Leave out what is not comparable. Per-token prices, per-workflow prices, figures from a company’s own calculator, and ranges given only in words (“six figures”) are not counted.

It never scales a number by company size, and the result is not an offer. A real figure depends on how many years of history you have, how many systems, the language and how much personal data has to come out. The value check gives a closer estimate, with the buyers that fit and the contract terms to watch.

Order and independence

The index does not rank buyers. There are no scores and no “best buyer” list. Rows are sorted by tier, then alphabetically. The six-row preview on the home page shows established rows that publish the most of four fields (payout model, published range, seller fee and minimum size), then alphabetically, so the first table a visitor sees has the most data in it. Fees, paid or unpaid, never change a row’s order, tier, fields or wording. The disclosure page explains how we earn money and what buyers can never buy.

Corrections and right of reply

• Report an error. Email hello@datalicensingindex.com with the row, the field and a link to a primary source. Anyone can do this, including the listed company.
• Fixes. When a primary source confirms the error, we fix the row and log the fix on the changelog.
• Right of reply. A listed company can send a reply of up to 150 words. We publish it in the row’s notes with its date, edited only for length. A reply cannot change a field without a primary source, and we do not publish claims about other companies.
• Removal. We do not remove a row because a company asks. We remove it when the company stops offering what qualified it, and we log the removal.

What the index does not do

• It does not value your data or predict what you will be offered.
• It does not tell you whether a license is legal for your company. That depends on your contracts, your staff and where they work. See the terms.
• It does not take or hold data. To hear from buyers, ask for offers.