AddressCloud and Sprift both work with UK property data, but they serve different industries, different buyers, and different workflows. AddressCloud is an insurance-tech firm built around geocoding and peril scoring for underwriters. Sprift is an estate agent platform focused on material information compliance, property reports, and instruction-winning tools. Comparing them head-to-head matters mainly for organisations that sit at the intersection of both worlds - or for data teams trying to understand the UK property data landscape more broadly.
This comparison covers the products, target markets, and strengths of each platform, and identifies where a more general-purpose data bureau might serve teams that need both risk intelligence and property-level detail.
Who is AddressCloud?
AddressCloud was founded in 2015 by Mark Varley after years of frustration with geocoding software at RSA Insurance. The company is bootstrapped, UK-based, and runs with a team of around 11-15 people. Its core product is a custom geocoding engine built on Ordnance Survey AddressBase Premium and Royal Mail PAF, layered with building-level peril scores for flood, subsidence, windstorm, fire, crime, and climate change.
The platform processes over 80 million transactions per month with a 99.99% uptime SLA. Notable clients include RSA, Flood Re (as official address matching partner), and Compare the Market. AddressCloud's expansion into global peril scoring through the Overture Maps Foundation - 300 million buildings scored for flood risk, scaling to 2 billion - is its most ambitious current initiative. It also holds a CII-accredited training course on geographic risk for underwriters.
Who is Sprift?
Sprift was founded in 2016 by Matt Gilpin and has positioned itself as the most comprehensive property data platform for UK estate agents. The company aggregates over 300 data points on 30 million residential properties from more than 100 sources and 1 billion-plus public and private records.
Sprift's core offering is a dashboard and report suite designed for agent workflows. The platform generates white-labelled Market Appraisal Reports (for valuation appointments), Key Facts for Buyers Reports (for material information compliance), and interactive property reports that agents can share and track. In January 2024, Sprift launched a dedicated material information compliance solution covering Parts A, B, and C of the NTSELAT requirements - a regulatory pressure point that has driven rapid adoption.
Sprift charges on a per-branch basis rather than per-user, which encourages team-wide adoption. It has integrations with Surventrix (surveyor workflow) and Dezrez (estate agent CRM), and partnerships with Kerfuffle and ICG Approved for group purchasing. The company claims that its data-led approach reduces fall-through rates by 13.3% or more.
Target markets
The two platforms barely overlap in their customer bases. AddressCloud sells almost exclusively to insurers, reinsurers, MGAs, coverholders, and price comparison websites. Its buyers are actuaries, underwriting teams, and insurance data engineers. Sprift sells to estate agents, letting agents, conveyancers, surveyors, and property sourcers. Its buyers are branch managers and agency directors.
This means the comparison is less about direct competition and more about understanding what each platform does well, and where the gaps exist for teams that need to serve both verticals - or that work in property services more broadly.
Property attribute data
Sprift is stronger here in terms of breadth for residential property. Its 300-plus data points cover planning history, flood risk, broadband, EPC ratings, council tax, Land Registry data, leasehold length, floor area, restrictive covenants, building regulations, listed building status, schools, and transport links. These are the data points that matter in property transactions and compliance workflows.
AddressCloud returns property characteristics (age, floor area, floor level, construction type, roof shape) alongside peril scores, but the attribute set is narrower. Its data is optimised for insurance quotation pre-fill rather than the broad property profile that estate agents or conveyancers need.
Risk and peril data
AddressCloud has the clear advantage on risk intelligence. Its peril scoring covers flood (via JBA Risk Management), subsidence, windstorm, fire, crime, and climate change indicators - all at rooftop-level granularity. The fire risk model is proprietary and factors in adjacency risk between buildings. The Flood Re partnership and 80-million-transaction monthly throughput demonstrate enterprise-grade reliability.
Sprift includes basic flood risk data as one of its 300-plus data points, but it does not offer the kind of granular, building-level peril modelling that insurance underwriting requires. For risk assessment beyond what a compliance report needs, AddressCloud is in a different category.
Material information and compliance
Sprift has built its business around this need. The NTSELAT material information regulations require estate agents to provide comprehensive upfront property data to buyers - covering Parts A, B, and C. Sprift's platform generates this data "within minutes, not days or weeks" and packages it into white-labelled reports that double as instruction-winning tools.
AddressCloud has no material information or compliance product. Its data could theoretically feed into a compliance workflow (flood risk, property construction details), but it does not package or present data for agent use. This is not a gap in AddressCloud's offering so much as a reflection that the company does not operate in the estate agency market.
Geocoding and address resolution
AddressCloud's custom geocoding engine is purpose-built for fuzzy matching, incomplete addresses, and the messy data that flows through insurance quotation forms. It handles UK and Ireland with rooftop-level precision.
Sprift matches properties using UPRNs and addresses across its dashboard, but does not offer geocoding as a service. Address resolution is an internal function rather than a product.
API availability and developer access
AddressCloud is API-first. Its products are delivered via real-time API calls with sub-second response times, designed for integration into insurance platforms, comparison websites, and underwriting systems.
Sprift's integrations (Surventrix, Dezrez) suggest some API capability, but there is no publicly documented developer API. The platform is accessed primarily through its dashboard and report generation interface. For developers and data engineers building automated workflows, AddressCloud is the more accessible platform.
Where AddressCloud is stronger
AddressCloud is the right choice when the need is insurance-grade location intelligence: peril scoring, geocoding, and property enrichment for underwriting and quotation workflows. The Flood Re partnership, RSA relationship, and 80-million-transaction throughput demonstrate that this is a production-tested, specialist platform. Its global expansion through Overture Maps adds a capability that no estate-agent-focused platform can offer.
Where Sprift is stronger
Sprift is the right choice for estate agents and property transaction professionals who need material information compliance, valuation appointment tools, and trackable reports. The NTSELAT compliance solution addresses a regulatory requirement that agents cannot ignore. Per-branch pricing, white-labelled reports, and the proven 13.3% reduction in fall-through rates make a direct ROI case that resonates with branch managers.
For any workflow centred on property transactions rather than property risk, Sprift is the relevant platform.
Where Chimnie fits in
AddressCloud and Sprift each serve their niche well, but both leave significant gaps. AddressCloud has no property valuations, no estate agent tools, no commercial data, and no self-serve access model. Sprift has no AVM, no insurance-grade risk data, no commercial coverage, and limited API availability.
Chimnie fills much of the middle ground. Its platform covers 35 million UK properties - residential and commercial - with over 500 attributes per record. The data spans property characteristics, risk scoring across dozens of perils, rebuild cost estimates, and a free AVM with calibrated confidence intervals. Published pricing starts at £0.05 to £0.15 per residential property, with commercial properties at £0.45 each on a pay-as-you-go basis and volume discounts available.
Chimnie is also completing two years of national planning permission ingestion, launching imminently. Planning data is relevant to both insurance (has the property been extended? are there nearby developments?) and estate agency (what planning applications affect this property?). Neither AddressCloud nor Sprift provides UK-wide planning data at this scale.
Unlike both competitors, Chimnie maps outbuildings separately from main dwellings, offers API-first self-serve onboarding with no sales call required, and runs a consumer platform with over 150,000 users whose activity continuously validates the underlying data. For teams that need property data spanning insurance, lending, and property services, a free trial is the fastest way to evaluate whether the data meets the brief.
Conclusion
AddressCloud and Sprift are not competitors in any practical sense. They serve different industries, different buyers, and different use cases. AddressCloud delivers insurance location intelligence. Sprift delivers estate agent compliance and transaction tools.
For organisations that operate across both worlds - or that need broader property data with valuations, risk scoring, planning data, and commercial coverage - Chimnie provides the kind of multi-purpose data bureau that neither AddressCloud nor Sprift attempts to be.
