Cortellis is the industry standard for the regulatory clock and the pipeline view. It is trusted by 100% of the top 20 pharma companies for compliance and creation work.1 The sourcing question underneath, who actually ships this API, on what lane, at what concentration, with what compliance trail, is a different surface. PharmaDB is the answer there. One independent guide describes the difference plainly: "Cortellis answers 'What drugs are in development?' PharmaDB answers 'Who's manufacturing and shipping products?'"2
Enterprise quote, no published rate card. Capterra lists the starting price as "Contact vendor for pricing" with no free trial.3 Independent analysis of Clarivate contracts reports them as "six figures annually, with multi-year commitments", with BD teams paying "$100,000+ for what is fundamentally an expensive research interface."4 Coverage and modules available depend on which entitlements were purchased.5
Published banded rate card. Lookup fees banded by how many graph queries the agent fires inside a run: $0.20 under 10 lookups, $0.50 for 10 to 50, capped at $1.00 per run for 50+. AI usage at 20% over Anthropic's published rates, line by line in your chat. $100 minimum top-up, credits valid 12 months. Pro tier $5,000 a year covers both lookups and AI, plus watchlist, export, and a forthcoming API. Numbers on the page before the conversation.
Cortellis Generics & Products Intelligence describes itself as "a single source of global drug, market, API, and patent data", listing 63k+ molecules, 72k+ manufacturers, 1.4m+ worldwide patents, and biopharma pricing across 90+ markets.6 Cortellis Regulatory Intelligence covers "310,000+ regulatory documents" across 80+ jurisdictions.7 Cortellis CMC Intelligence covers "global chemistry, manufacturing and controls (CMC) requirements".8 Across these product pages, trade flows, lane-level concentration, and FDA 483 or import-alert trajectories are not named as data domains.6,7,8
Trade flows joined to FDA Type II DMF and EDQM CEP registers, plant inspections, warning letters, and import alerts. Lane-level HHI, top-3 exporter share, active-exporter counts, and median USD per kilogram percentiles are first-class objects in the graph.
Cortellis Competitive Intelligence is built for "portfolio strategy, licensing and business development, competitive intelligence, and R&D investment planning", tracking 100,000+ pipeline drugs across 3,000+ diseases.9 Cortellis Regulatory Intelligence is built for regulatory affairs; a Global Head of Regulatory Intelligence at a top 50 pharma describes using it "every day to stay compliant."10 The workflow is multi-year planning around a pipeline asset.
API procurement, BD sourcing, supply continuity, finance pre-RFQ. The workflow is "qualify this lane, this quarter, before we issue the order." Designed for the same buyer one Cytel customer described being stuck with before consolidating: "We had a variety of tools, and that was the pain, the variety. We had to go to multiple places to get streamlined data."4
Cortellis tracks the regulatory timeline of trastuzumab biosimilars: marketing applications, approvals, clinical holds, labelling changes, and CMC filings across 80+ jurisdictions.7 Below is the sourcing-side picture for the same molecule, surfaced from PharmaDB's warehouse. Same molecule, orthogonal depth.
The India to US trastuzumab biosimilar lane currently has six declared exporters, the top three account for 100% of inbound value, and any disruption to the leading exporter takes the lane offline. The Cortellis page and the PharmaDB page stack rather than substitute. One tells you when the regulatory window opens; the other tells you whether the supply behind the window can actually carry an order.
No. They cover different surfaces. Cortellis is the pipeline, IP, and regulatory record, trusted by 100% of the top 20 pharma companies for that work.1 PharmaDB is the sourcing graph underneath: customs, exporter cohorts, plant inspections, dossier registers. Teams that need both run both.
Across the Cortellis Generics, Regulatory, and CMC product pages, the named data domains are drug, market, API, patent, sales, manufacturer, and CMC filing data.6,7,8 Trade flows flows, exporter shares per lane, Lane HHI and top-3 share, plant inspection trajectories, warning letter and import-alert overlays, and median USD per kilogram percentiles are not named on those pages. PharmaDB ships those as first-class objects.
Cortellis is sold by enterprise quote, with annual contracts and seat counts; Capterra lists the starting price as "Contact vendor for pricing", and independent analysis reports contracts at "six figures annually, with multi-year commitments."3,4 PharmaDB is consumption-based: $0.20 per run starting band, $1.00 maximum per run on lookups, plus AI usage at 20% over Anthropic's published rates. $100 minimum top-up. Pro is $5,000 a year covering both lookups and AI, plus watchlist, export, and API.
Probably Cortellis. A Global Head of Regulatory Intelligence at a top 50 pharma describes Cortellis Regulatory Intelligence as "used every day to stay compliant."10 PharmaDB adds value when a procurement decision is downstream of the regulatory milestone, not when the regulatory milestone is the question itself.
One independent guide observes that "the user experience can be fragmented across its various modules (Regulatory, CI, Clinical, Deals), although efforts are underway to unify them on the Cortellis Cloud", and that "the breadth of data can sometimes result in 'overlapping content' confusion between legacy modules."5 PharmaDB ships one chat surface against one graph; lookups and AI usage line by line per run.
There isn't one, because there isn't a switch. PharmaDB sits alongside; the cost is the per-run rate on the questions it newly answers. With Clarivate having announced in February 2026 that it is "exploring a sale of its Life Sciences & Healthcare business",11 a number of teams are pairing their existing Cortellis seat with a $100 PAYG top-up on a single live sourcing question before deciding on Pro.
Book a 30-minute call. Bring three sourcing questions. We'll run them on the live data with you. No top-up needed, and you keep whatever we find.