Chimnie and Sprift both deal in UK property data, but they've built their platforms for different buyers solving different problems. Sprift is designed around estate agent workflows - property reports, compliance tools, and material information for listings. Chimnie is a property data bureau built for insurers, lenders, and property services firms who need raw data at scale via API.
This comparison sets out where each platform is strongest, where it falls short, and which type of buyer each one suits best. It's based on publicly available product information and direct experience with both platforms.
Who is Sprift?
Sprift was founded in 2016 by Matt Gilpin and is headquartered in London. The company aggregates around 300 data points for over 30 million UK residential properties, sourced from what it describes as one billion public and private records across more than 100 individual datasets. It packages this data into reports and dashboards aimed primarily at estate agents and letting agents.
The core product is a dashboard where agents can search any UK address and pull up a structured property report covering EPC ratings, planning history, flood risk, broadband, council tax, Land Registry data, leasehold length, and local amenities. These reports are white-labelled and designed to be attached to property listings or handed to prospective buyers during viewings.
In January 2024 Sprift launched a dedicated Material Information compliance tool covering Parts A, B, and C of the NTSELAT requirements. Agents face growing pressure under consumer protection regulations to disclose material facts about properties they're marketing, and Sprift's pitch is that it generates the required data in minutes rather than days. The company claims this upfront data sharing has reduced fall-through rates by over 13%.
Sprift's pricing is structured per branch rather than per user, which encourages adoption across whole teams. Exact pricing isn't published publicly, but it's broadly positioned as an SME-friendly subscription. Recent integrations with Dezrez (estate agent CRM) and Surventrix (surveyor workflow software) show the company expanding its footprint within the property transaction chain while staying close to its core agent audience.
Sprift website homepage
Who is Chimnie?
Chimnie was founded by Jon Francis, a former data scientist from Google's innovation team, with the goal of making UK property data more transparent and accessible. The company operates two platforms: chimnie.com, a B2B property data bureau serving insurers, lenders, and property services firms; and chimnie.co.uk, a free consumer research site with over 150,000 users whose feedback validates the underlying data at scale.
Chimnie processes around 30 million virtual property assessments each month, drawing on hundreds of geospatial, environmental, and proprietary datasets. Its product range includes the UK Residential Property Database, the UK Commercial Property Database, a free AVM, rebuild cost estimates, address autocomplete, risk scoring, and AI training data. Delivery is via API or flat file, with published pricing starting from less than one penny per lookup.
Feature comparison
Property data breadth
Sprift covers around 300 data points per property - enough to produce useful reports for estate agents. Chimnie returns over 500 property attributes per API call, spanning structural characteristics, environmental risk, geospatial features, EPC data, ownership, and more. The difference matters most when you're feeding data into underwriting models, risk engines, or analytics pipelines where attribute density directly affects output quality.
Automated valuation model (AVM)
Chimnie offers the UK's only free AVM, with UPRN-based lookups at zero cost. It runs separate listing price and sale price models, and provides micro-postcode level house price indices rather than the local authority level figures most providers use. Sprift doesn't offer an AVM. It uses whole-of-market comparables to support agent valuations, but there's no automated model producing estimates programmatically. If you need property valuations for insurance, lending, or portfolio monitoring, this is a significant gap.
Planning permission data
Chimnie has been completing a two-year national ingestion of planning permission data from every UK local authority, standardised into a consistent schema. This dataset is launching imminently and will be the only full UK planning permission dataset available from a single provider. It captures extensions, conversions, and outbuilding work that haven't yet triggered a new transaction or EPC - the kind of property changes that create blind spots in valuation and risk models.
Sprift shows nearby planning applications as part of its property reports, which is useful for agents listing properties. But it isn't a structured planning data product you can query programmatically at scale, and the coverage doesn't match a full national ingestion.
Rebuild cost estimates
Chimnie provides rebuild cost estimates with confidence intervals, finish-quality segmentation, and decomposed materials and labour breakdowns at regional level. This is a core product for insurance underwriting and claims validation. Sprift doesn't offer rebuild cost data. It isn't something estate agents typically need, which explains why the product doesn't exist on that platform.
Risk and environmental data
Chimnie covers flood, subsidence, crime, pollution, traffic, energy performance, roof condition (detected via satellite imagery), tree-fall risk, solar panel presence, garden boundaries, and listed building status. Sprift includes some environmental data - flood risk, broadband coverage, nearby transport - but the depth and breadth of peril-level scoring aren't comparable. For anyone building risk models or pricing insurance products, Chimnie's dataset is built for the job.
Commercial property data
data
Chimnie operates a dedicated UK Commercial Property Database covering offices, retail, warehouses, and mixed-use properties. Sprift focuses exclusively on residential property data. If your portfolio or client base includes non-residential property, Sprift won't help.
Material information compliance
This is Sprift's home ground. The platform has built specific tooling around the NTSELAT Material Information requirements - Parts A, B, and C - that agents must now meet when marketing properties. Reports are formatted for this purpose and slot into the listing workflows agents use daily. Sprift also provides market appraisal reports designed to help agents win instructions, along with interactive property reports that can be tracked and shared between parties in a transaction.
Chimnie's data could technically support material information disclosure, but it isn't packaged for that use case. An agent logging in to generate a white-labelled compliance report isn't the workflow Chimnie's been designed around.
Delivery and integration
Chimnie is API-first. Its REST API returns structured JSON, supports bulk queries, and is designed for integration into automated pipelines. Full API documentation is available without a sales call.
Sprift is dashboard-first - built for human users searching individual addresses. It integrates with agent CRM systems like Dezrez and surveyor platforms like Surventrix, but these are workflow integrations rather than open API access. For any use case involving programmatic access or high-volume lookups, Chimnie's architecture is the better fit.
Pricing
and transparency
Chimnie publishes its pricing openly. Residential lookups cost £0.05 (Core), £0.10 (Plus), or £0.15 (Premium) per property on PAYG, with all 500+ attributes available at the top tier. Commercial lookups are £0.45 per property. There's a free tier for the AVM and address search.
Sprift's pricing isn't published online. It's structured as per-branch subscriptions, likely in the range of £100 to £300 per month depending on the package. Individual reports work out to roughly £1 to £3 each when amortised across typical agent usage. Chimnie's pay-per-lookup model suits technology teams running automated pipelines; Sprift's subscription suits agencies where a fixed monthly cost is easier to budget.
AI training data
Chimnie offers over one billion property images for AI model training, alongside structured property datasets built for machine learning. Sprift doesn't offer training data.
Chimnie property data API homepage
Where Sprift is stronger
Sprift wins on estate agent experience. If you run a high-street agency or a lettings operation, Sprift understands your workflow in a way that Chimnie doesn't attempt to. The dashboard is built for agents searching one address at a time, the reports are formatted for attaching to listings, and the Material Information tooling is directly relevant to the compliance pressure agents now face.
The per-branch pricing model is a practical advantage too. Agents don't have to worry about per-lookup costs or API rate limits. Everyone in the branch gets access, which means the data actually gets used rather than being gatekept behind one login.
Sprift's integration with agent CRM systems like Dezrez reduces friction. Data flows into the tools agents already use rather than sitting in a separate platform. For agents who've been spending two to three hours manually researching each property before listing it, Sprift's pitch of doing that in minutes is compelling - and the 13% reduction in fall-throughs gives it a quantifiable ROI that agents can point to when justifying the cost.
The company's built real credibility within the estate agency community over the past decade, and its partnership network through Kerfuffle and ICG reflects that standing.
Where Chimnie is stronger
Chimnie is stronger anywhere the requirement goes beyond property reports for listings.
Data breadth
is the most obvious difference - over 500 attributes per property versus roughly 300, with Chimnie's attributes including risk signals, structural details, and environmental factors that Sprift doesn't cover.
The free AVM is a standout. There's no equivalent from Sprift or most other UK property data providers. UPRN-based lookups at zero cost, with separate listing and sale price models, give businesses a way to add property valuations without adding cost. For mortgage brokers, insurers, and portfolio managers who'd benefit from a valuation on every case, the economics are hard to argue with.
Chimnie's planning permission dataset is unique - no other single provider has ingested and standardised planning data from every UK local authority. For anyone building risk models or tracking planning trends at national scale, this is difficult to replicate elsewhere.
Rebuild cost estimates
with confidence intervals fill a specific insurance need that Sprift doesn't address. The same applies to the commercial property database - if your portfolio or client base includes non-residential property, Chimnie covers it and Sprift doesn't.
Pricing
transparency and API-first delivery are structural advantages for technology teams. Published rates, a free tier to test with, and documented REST endpoints mean you can evaluate Chimnie's data in days rather than weeks of procurement negotiation.
The consumer platform at chimnie.co.uk - with over 150,000 users - creates a feedback loop that most B2B data providers lack. Homeowners checking their own property details and flagging inaccuracies is ground-truth validation that subscription-only platforms can't easily replicate.
Who should choose which
Estate agents and letting agents should look at Sprift first. The product is purpose-built for agency workflows, the Material Information compliance tooling is directly relevant, and the reports are formatted for the job agents actually do. Chimnie's data is richer per property, but it isn't packaged for the daily work of listing and marketing homes.
Insurers, MGAs, and reinsurers should choose Chimnie. The risk scoring, rebuild cost estimates, AVM, and API delivery are all built around insurance underwriting and pricing workflows. Sprift doesn't serve this market.
Mortgage lenders and building societies will find Chimnie's AVM, property attributes, and risk data more relevant to their needs. Sprift's agent-focused tools don't map to lending decisions.
Proptech firms and data science teams need programmatic access to structured data at scale. Chimnie's API-first approach, published pricing, and training data products make it the practical choice. Sprift's dashboard-first model isn't designed for this kind of consumption.
Conveyancers and surveyors sit in an interesting middle ground. Sprift's shareable dashboards and Surventrix integration give it a foothold in surveying workflows, but firms needing structural risk data, rebuild values, or planning history will find Chimnie fills gaps that Sprift's reports don't cover.
Conclusion
Sprift and Chimnie serve different parts of the UK property data market with limited overlap. Sprift is a property report and compliance tool built for estate agents. Chimnie is a property data bureau built for insurers, lenders, and technology teams who need raw data at scale.
If you're an agent looking for Material Information compliance and listing reports, Sprift does that job well - and its track record in the agency community reflects nearly a decade of focus on that specific problem. If you need property valuations, risk data, rebuild costs, planning permissions, commercial property data, or API access to 500+ property attributes, Chimnie is where you should start.
For some organisations - particularly larger property services groups with both agency and analytics functions - using both makes sense. But for most buyers, the choice comes down to which problem you're actually trying to solve.
