Is Plotbook an iWave alternative?

Not for screening, which is what most people buy iWave to do. Plotbook has no file upload, no batch rating, no capacity or affinity scores, and no philanthropic giving data. It is an alternative for the separate problem of finding wealthy households in a service area who are not in your database at all, which screening cannot address at any price.

Does Plotbook have donor giving history?

No. There is no charitable giving database, no foundation affiliation data, and no gift history in the product. The only giving-adjacent data is federal campaign-finance records through OpenFEC, which the research agent uses mainly to confirm an identity, since those records carry a name, city, employer, and occupation. Political contributions are a wealth signal as a side effect, not a philanthropic profile, and federal law prohibits using that data for commercial solicitation.

Can Plotbook screen our constituent file?

No. There is no bulk upload and no batch processing. Plotbook researches one prospect at a time, at 25 credits per run, producing a profile with four wealth ranges and a confidence score. If screening a file is the immediate need, a prospect research platform is the correct purchase and Plotbook is not a substitute.

How would a small development shop actually use Plotbook?

Draw your catchment on the map, filter to the assessed-value band that matches your gift table, and look at what comes back. Owner names are printed on the parcels, so the first pass costs nothing. Check the names against your database, ignore the ones you already know, and spend research credits only on the ones you do not. A 7 day trial with 100 credits is enough to run that loop and see whether the names it produces are people you would actually call.

What does iWave cost compared to Plotbook?

We do not hold a sourced figure for iWave and will not print one we cannot stand behind; ask them directly. Plotbook publishes its pricing: $79 per month for Starter, $199 for Professional, $499 for Enterprise, with 750, 2,500, and 8,000 credits, and roughly 20% off annually. What we can say with confidence is the shape rather than the number: Plotbook is a card and a trial, with no annual commitment.

Which is better for major gift prospecting?

For qualifying prospects you already know, a prospect research platform, without much argument. Giving history and affinity data are the right signals for that job and we do not have them. For expanding the pool beyond your file, Plotbook, because it works from the county record rather than from your history. Most shops need both jobs done, and they are genuinely different jobs.

Plotbook vs iWave

iWave rates your file. Plotbook works the neighborhood

iWave sits in the prospect research tradition: take the constituents a nonprofit already has records for, screen them, rate capacity and affinity, and hand development officers a prioritised list. It is a mature category and it works. What it cannot do is tell you about the household on the good side of town that has never given to you, never attended anything, and appears nowhere in your database. Plotbook comes at the problem from the property instead.

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iWave details from public sources, checked August 2026. iWave capabilities here are described only at the level of what they publish about their own product. We hold no dated pricing or usage figures for iWave, so this page quotes none. Check the official iWave product page. Plotbook is the vendor here, so read this as our argument and check it against theirs.

plotbook.io

The short answer

Screening your list, or expanding past it

A development shop with a real constituent file should have a prospect research tool, and iWave is one of the established choices in that category. This comparison is only interesting once that box is ticked, because the next question is what to do about the majority of wealthy households in your service area who are not in the file at all. Screening cannot reach them. That gap is the only thing Plotbook is claiming to fill.

Plotbook

Pick Plotbook to expand beyond the database

Your constituent file is small, or you have already screened it and want new names.
You fundraise for a place: a hospital, a school, a land trust, a regional arts organisation with a defined catchment.
You want to see the wealth in your service area geographically rather than as a ranked export.
You need the person behind a property held by an LLC or a family trust.
You are a small shop without the budget for a full prospect research platform.

iWave

Pick iWave for prospect research proper

You have a substantial constituent file and need it screened and rated.
You want capacity, propensity, and affinity ratings on donors and alumni.
Philanthropic history is central to how you qualify a prospect, which it should be.
You want results delivered into a donor CRM rather than exported as a file.
Your team already runs a prospect research function and needs the tooling it expects.

Neutral ground

What each product actually is

Described the way each team would describe itself. We hold less sourced detail on iWave than on other vendors, so this card stays at the level of what they publish.

Plotbook

A map of US property colored by assessed value, with an AI agent that identifies the owner behind a deed and estimates their wealth in ranges.

Built for: Advisors, fundraisers, and small teams
Entry point: A geography, browsed on a map
Needs a list: No. There is nothing to upload and no file to screen.
Wealth figures: Four AI-generated ranges with a confidence score, per researched person
Giving history: None, beyond federal campaign-finance records used to confirm identity
Pricing: $79 to $499 per month, published, self-serve

iWave

A prospect research and donor screening platform for nonprofits, built around researching and rating constituents an organization already has records for.

Built for: Nonprofits, higher education, and healthcare development
Entry point: A constituent file or a person's name
Needs a list: Yes, for the screening workflow
Wealth figures: Screening scores and ratings across their data sources
Giving history: Central to the product
Pricing: Not published by us; ask them

Side by side

Capability by capability, including where we lose

Phrases rather than checkmarks, because a cross against a named vendor is usually a claim we cannot defend. Rows favouring iWave are set in darker type on their side. Where we do not hold a sourced fact about iWave, the cell says so.

Plotbook compared with iWave, capability by capability.
Capability	Plotbook	iWave
Screening an existing constituent file	PlotbookNot offered. No upload, no batch rating.	iWaveThe core function of the product
Finding households not in any file	PlotbookThe core function. Starts from the parcel, not the record.	iWaveOutside the screening model
Philanthropic giving history	PlotbookNone. Federal campaign-finance records only, used mainly to confirm identity.	iWaveA primary qualification signal
Geographic view of wealth	PlotbookParcel map across six assessed-value bands, plus a hotspot heatmap	iWaveNot a mapping product
Identifying the person behind an LLC or trust deed	PlotbookEntity classification, then registry, county record, and open-web research	iWaveNot a published workflow
Capacity and affinity ratings	PlotbookNo propensity or affinity scoring of any kind	iWaveCore to prospect research
Donor CRM integration	PlotbookCSV export only, on Professional and Enterprise	iWaveIntegrations with donor management systems
Showing its work	PlotbookA live timeline of every search and source, kept on the profile	iWaveProfiles cite the sources behind a rating
Contact details	PlotbookEmails and phones per person from contact data providers, masked until you spend a credit	iWaveContact information as part of a research profile
Published pricing	Plotbook$79, $199, or $499 per month, on the site	iWaveNot published by us; we hold no sourced figure

We hold no dated pricing or usage research for iWave, so this table describes only what iWave publicly presents as its own product and leaves everything else blank rather than guessing. If you work at iWave and something here is wrong, write to us and we will fix it.

The Plotbook map filtered to high-value parcels across a metropolitan area.

The ceiling on screening

Screening cannot find someone you never met

Prospect research is a genuinely good discipline, and the ratings it produces are more useful than most things sold to fundraisers. But it has a structural ceiling: every answer it can give is about a person already in your file. Screen the file twice and you get the same names back, ranked the same way.

For an organisation tied to a place, that ceiling arrives quickly. A regional hospital foundation, an independent school, a land trust, a community foundation: each serves a defined catchment containing far more wealthy households than have ever interacted with it. Those households are not hiding. Their houses are on the map.

Plotbook gives you the catchment as a picture. Nationwide parcel data from Regrid, covering 150M+ parcels, painted across six assessed-value bands, with deed owner names printed on parcels once you zoom past 16. Filter to parcels over five million dollars inside your service area and you are looking at a prospect pool assembled from the county record rather than from your own history. Reading the map costs no credits on any plan.

Six assessed-value bands, from under $500K to over $10M, usable as filters
Deed owner names read straight off the parcel tiles
232 hand-curated high-net-worth ZIP codes as a heatmap for orientation
Panning, filtering, and reading owner labels are free on every plan

A Plotbook research run showing source links and public records gathered on the live timeline.

What we do not have

No giving history, and that matters

Past giving is the single best predictor of future giving. Every experienced fundraiser knows it, the research supports it, and it is the foundation prospect research is built on. Plotbook does not have it. There is no charitable giving database in the product, no foundation affiliation data, and no gift history of any kind.

What Plotbook has instead is federal campaign-finance records through OpenFEC, and it is worth being precise about how those are used. The research agent queries them mainly to confirm an identity, since a contribution record carries a name, city, employer, and occupation that can corroborate a match. Political giving is a wealth and engagement signal as a side effect, not a philanthropic history, and federal law prohibits using that data for commercial solicitation.

So the honest framing is that Plotbook produces a qualified name and a property-grounded wealth picture, and your existing research process still has to establish affinity. If affinity is the constraint in your shop rather than volume of names, screening is the better spend and we would rather you knew that before signing up.

The other side

What iWave does better than us

For a development office running an established major gifts programme, most of this list matters more than anything on our side of the table.

Screening at file scale

Rate an entire constituent database in one pass. Plotbook researches one prospect at a time at 25 credits a run, with no upload and no batch mode. For a file of any size this is not a comparison, it is a different product.

Philanthropic data

Giving history, foundation affiliations, and the signals that actually predict a gift. Plotbook has none of this and does not claim to.

Capacity and affinity ratings

The ratings a gift officer is trained to work from. Plotbook produces wealth ranges about a person, not a rating of their likelihood to give to you.

Fit with a donor CRM

Prospect research tools are built to sit alongside donor management systems. Plotbook has CSV export, on Professional and Enterprise only, and no direct integrations at all.

A category fundraisers already trust

Prospect research is an established discipline with its own standards and expectations. A parcel map is an unfamiliar object in a development office, and that friction is real.

Coverage of non-property wealth

Plotbook reads the world through real estate. A donor whose wealth is in a private business, a portfolio, or an inheritance, and who rents, is close to invisible to us and perfectly visible to a screening platform.

If you have a constituent file and no screening tool, buy the screening tool first. Plotbook earns its place at the point where the file has been worked and the question becomes where the next hundred names come from.

Running both

Screen the file, then work the map

These two genuinely divide the work rather than duplicate it. Screening tells you who among your existing constituents deserves a gift officer's time. Plotbook tells you who in your service area you have never had a reason to look at.

A practical sequence: define the catchment on the map, filter to the value band that matches your gift table, identify owners on the parcels that come back, and check each name against your database before spending anything further. Names already in your file go back into the screening workflow, where they belong. Names that are not are genuinely new prospects, and those are the ones worth a research run.

Export is CSV, on Professional and Enterprise. It carries the parcel, the four wealth ranges, the confidence score, and the research summary explaining how the identification was made, which is enough for a research officer to review rather than take on faith.

Screen constituents in your prospect research tool, prospect the catchment in Plotbook
Check names against your database before paying for research, so you do not pay to rediscover a donor
Export new prospects with parcel, wealth ranges, confidence score, and research summary attached
CSV export requires Professional ($199/month) or Enterprise ($499/month)

What it costs

Priced for a small shop

Plotbook bills a subscription plus credits, spent only when a paid source is called for you. Working a catchment costs far less than most people assume, because the map itself is free to read.

Mapping your catchment and filtering by value band: included
Opening a parcel Plotbook has not seen before: 1 credits
Instant owner lookup on a residential address: 15 credits
Full research run on an entity-held deed: 25 credits
Keeping the result as a profile: 10 credits
Exporting to CSV: 5 credits

Starter is $79 per month for 750 credits, Professional $199 for 2,500, Enterprise $499 for 8,000, with roughly 20% off billed annually. New subscribers get 7 days and 100 credits, which is enough to map a catchment and research a handful of owners properly. The trial takes a card and converts on day 8, and we email you before it does.

See full pricing

Questions

Plotbook and iWave, asked directly

Keep comparing

Plotbook vs DonorSearch

The philanthropic data comparison, where giving history is the whole argument.

Plotbook vs WealthEngine

Enterprise wealth screening, and the property data it keeps behind the curtain.

For nonprofits

How development teams use a parcel map alongside their prospect research process.

AI Owner Research

What one research run actually does, and what it costs when it fails.

All comparisons

Look at your catchment as a map

Filter your service area to parcels above the value your gift table starts at, and count how many owners you do not recognise. That number is the argument.

Start free trial For nonprofits

New subscribers start with 7 days and 100 credits. We email you before the trial ends.