Last updated: August 2026
Serava.AI and Scouly are built on the same observation: most small businesses that change hands never appear on a marketplace, and the public record already tells you which owners are approaching a transition. Both turn registries, SBA loan files and map data into ranked lists of off-market targets. From there they diverge hard: price, what the money buys, who does the outreach, and how much of the underlying record you get to check.
Full disclosure: I built Scouly. Every claim about Serava below comes from their own public pages, fetched on August 27, 2026, and linked in the sources at the bottom. Check them yourself.
Serava's database page counts 6,071,556 acquisition-ready businesses across 45 industries and 6 countries: the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand. Nineteen of the 45 are what Serava calls core verticals, and they skew heavily to trades and services. HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, pest control, landscaping, manufacturing, janitorial, auto repair, painting, managed IT, staffing, property management. Dental sits outside that core 19 but is covered, with 55,309 dental practice owners matched from state dental boards. Their sources page names OpenStreetMap, UK Companies House, SBA 7(a) FOIA loan data, secretary-of-state corporate filings, state licence and dental boards, FMCSA and NPPES.
One wrinkle worth flagging. Serava's homepage meta tag still advertises 6.1M+ across 22 industries, so the two counts on their own site disagree. I've used the ones printed on the page.
The product is a map. You describe a mandate, Serava ranks the market and grades every company by how many datapoints it has verified. Platinum is 1,200+ companies with 20 or more datapoints. Bronze is 4.5M+ with seven to ten, described on their pricing page as name, owner, phone and address from public registries. Below that sits a Modeled tier of 1.3 million market estimates. Pro buys verified owner-contact reveals and CSV export. A done-for-you Sourcing Partnership runs owner outreach on your behalf and books the conversations.
Scouly tracks 173,769 companies across 7 verticals: HVAC and plumbing, dental, manufacturing, landscaping, auto repair, funeral homes and veterinary. Coverage runs to 51 US state pages (50 states plus DC) and 15 UK metros. The sources are SBA 7(a)/504 FOIA loan files, PPP loan data, DOL Form 5500 filings, state business registries, UK Companies House and OpenStreetMap establishment density.
Each company gets a deterministic 0 to 100 score built from SBA loan maturity, registry longevity and local market fragmentation, with the underlying records linked on the profile so you can audit every input. Scouly never contacts owners and sells no contact enrichment. It publishes no revenue or EBITDA estimate of any kind. It finds the firms, shows the evidence, drafts your letter, and leaves the relationship to you.
| Scouly | Serava.AI | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Operator, $35/month | Pro, $3,900/year or $425/month; Founding Member $1,900/year, capped at 15 seats |
| Free tier | Explorer: browse everything, 10 full profile unlocks | Free Preview: 1 ranked target map per month, top 100 companies, 3 verified owner-contact reveals |
| Data sources | SBA 7(a)/504 FOIA, PPP, DOL Form 5500, state registries, Companies House, OpenStreetMap | OpenStreetMap, Companies House, SBA 7(a) FOIA, secretary-of-state filings, state licence and dental boards, FMCSA, NPPES |
| Verticals | 7 | 19 core, 45 tracked |
| Geographies | US (50 states plus DC), UK (15 metros) | US, Canada, UK, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand |
| Owner contact data | No | Yes, verified owner-contact reveals on Pro |
| Contacts owners for you | Never | Optional Sourcing Partnership runs outreach end to end |
| Map interface | No | Yes |
| Marketplace / listings | No, nothing is for sale | No, nothing is for sale |
I pulled Serava's pricing page on August 27, 2026. Pro is $3,900 a year, or $425 month to month: 5 ranked target maps per month of up to 10,000 companies each, enrichment of up to 6,500 owners across the term, CSV export of 2,500 contact rows a month, and weekly new-target alerts. The Founding Member rate is $1,900 a year, limited to 15 seats. The free preview gives you one map a month and 3 contact reveals.
Scouly's Explorer tier is free and includes 10 full profile unlocks. Operator is $35 a month with unlimited unlocks. Over a year that's $420 against $3,900, roughly a 9x difference.
The gap is real but so is the difference in what you're buying. Serava's price includes contact enrichment and, at the partnership level, humans doing your outreach. Scouly's price buys ranked targets and the public records behind them. You find the mailing address and write the letter yourself, and the free thesis builder plus the deal benchmark tool are there to sharpen both.
Vertical breadth. 45 industries tracked, 19 of them core, against Scouly's 7. If you're buying a pest control company, an MSP or a roofing contractor, Scouly has no live data today and Serava does.
Geographic breadth. Serava covers Canada, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand. Scouly stops at the US and 15 UK metros.
Contact data. Serava reveals named owners where they are published, sells verified owner-contact reveals on Pro, and exports up to 2,500 contact rows a month. Scouly publishes no contact information at all. If you want a list you can start calling this week, that is what Serava is built for.
The map. Serava's core interface is a geographic map of targets. Scouly ranks in lists and tables and has no map view.
Done-for-you. Serava's Sourcing Partnership will run the entire owner-outreach motion for you. Scouly deliberately offers nothing like it.
Price. $35 a month is a different category of spend than $3,900 a year. For a self-funded searcher running a two-year search on savings, that gap compounds.
Auditability. Every Scouly profile links the specific SBA loan record, registry filing or establishment footprint that produced its score, and every scoring input is deterministic. There is no modeled tier. Serava does label its 1.3 million modeled records as modeled. Scouly ships none of them.
SBA timing depth. Scouly publishes state-level SBA maturity data, loans reaching payoff in 2026 to 2028 by state, industry and metro, on 51 state pages. The maturity window is the strongest publicly visible transition signal, and it's the center of Scouly's score. See the state-by-state 2026 analysis for the full picture.
Proprietary first contact. Because Scouly never contacts owners and runs no outreach service, the first letter an owner receives about your interest is yours.
Pick Serava if you want owner contact data delivered, need coverage outside Scouly's 7 verticals or its US/UK footprint, or want to pay someone to run outreach entirely. Its buyer is closer to a funded search or a small PE team with a sourcing budget. Its own homepage answers the question of how Serava differs from Apollo, ZoomInfo, BizBuySell and Axial.
Pick Scouly if you're a self-funded searcher or independent sponsor who plans to write your own letters, buys the public-records thesis, and would rather spend $35 a month on evidence than $3,900 a year on enrichment. Our full roundup of the category, including where marketplaces and enterprise platforms fit, is in the deal sourcing software guide, with the enterprise tier covered in Grata alternatives.
Or skip the reading and test the thesis directly: build a free acquisition thesis and see every tracked company in your vertical and state, scored, with the records attached.
Is Serava.AI free? Serava has a free preview tier: one ranked target map per month covering your top 100 companies by fit, with 3 verified owner-contact reveals, per their pricing page as of August 2026. Full contact access, enrichment and CSV export require Pro at $3,900 a year or $425 a month.
Is Scouly a Serava alternative? For US and UK buyers in Scouly's 7 verticals, yes. Both rank off-market companies using public records like SBA loan files, Companies House and OpenStreetMap. Scouly costs $35 a month, links every underlying record, and never sells contact data. Serava tracks 45 industries across six countries and includes owner contact reveals at a much higher price.
How much does Serava cost compared to Scouly? Serava Pro is $3,900 a year, or $425 month to month, with a $1,900-a-year founding rate limited to 15 seats. Scouly Operator is $35 a month, about $420 a year, with unlimited profile unlocks. Both had free tiers as of August 2026. The price difference reflects Serava's bundled contact enrichment and outreach services.
Does either tool contact business owners? Scouly never does. It scores companies from public records and drafts your outreach letter, and every first contact comes from you. Serava offers a done-for-you Sourcing Partnership, by application, where their team finds, contacts and qualifies owners on your behalf and books the conversations for you.
Is Serava or Scouly a business-for-sale marketplace? Neither one. Nothing on either site is listed for sale, and neither operates as a broker. Both tools identify operating companies whose public records suggest a possible ownership transition. Marketplaces like BizBuySell list businesses whose owners have already decided to sell, which is a different and much smaller pool.
What data sources does each tool use? Serava's database page names OpenStreetMap, UK Companies House, SBA 7(a) FOIA loan data, secretary-of-state corporate filings, state licence and dental boards, FMCSA and NPPES. Scouly uses SBA 7(a)/504 FOIA loan files, PPP loan data, DOL Form 5500 filings, state business registries, UK Companies House and OpenStreetMap establishment density, with each record linked on the company profile.