Updated October 2026 · Guide

Glenigan alternatives for subcontractors & suppliers (2026)

Glenigan is one of the two long-established UK construction project-intelligence platforms, alongside Barbour ABI, built for large research and business-development teams and sold through a demo and a quote. If you are a subcontractor, material supplier or small developer, you probably do not need the full enterprise suite. Here are the alternatives worth knowing in 2026, what each costs, and how to pick the right one.

What Glenigan is, and who it is for

Glenigan tracks construction projects from early planning to contract award, and advertises “Up to 3 Weeks Earlier Insight via planning data from the Planning Portal”. Its 160 researchers make more than a million calls a year to add values, bidders and decision-maker contacts, and it now also advertises AI that mines each planning application, planning documents to download, NBS specification data, an in-app sales pipeline and Hubexo Reach, an app for smaller construction firms. It publishes no price: you book a demo and get a quote, and 2024 reviews quote renewals of £3,500 and £6,800 a year. Its terms renew a contract for further 12-month periods unless you email at least 90 days’ notice, and let fees rise each year by up to RPI plus 5%. For a national contractor with a dedicated BD team, that depth earns its keep. For a small firm that just needs to know which nearby projects are worth chasing, it is a lot of platform, and a lot of money, to buy.

Why smaller firms look for an alternative

• Price. Renewals of £3,500 to £6,800 a year, as 2024 reviews quote them, are hard to justify for a sole trader or a small team.
• The sales gate. There is no public price, the “Free trial” button books a demo, and the free project search stops at 50 results.
• Features you will not use. Much of the enterprise feature set is aimed at large-team workflows you may never touch.
• Fit. Supply-chain firms want to decide in seconds whether a new application suits their trade, which is a filtering job more than a research one.

What to look for in a Glenigan alternative

• Coverage. Every new application across 380+ UK councils, collected every night.
• Classification. Applications sorted by trade and project type, with estimated value bands that name their basis, so you skip the noise.
• Who is behind each scheme. No page on glenigan.com mentions Companies House. A good alternative gives you the Companies House record behind the firms on the application, with the directors, people with significant control and filing health, plus the use class, the appeal outcome and the council’s document list, alongside the agent’s published contacts, competitor and decision alerts, contract awards and analytics.
• Alerts filtered to your area and your work, delivered without you logging in.
• Self-serve, published pricing. A free plan to try, and a price on the page.

The main alternatives in 2026

SiteLens is the self-serve option built for the supply chain. It brings in every new application across 380+ UK councils each night, tags each one with the trades it needs and emails the matches for your trade and area each morning, with a free plan that has no time limit. It matches the applicants, agents and contractors to Companies House on every plan, and Pro names them, opens the directors, people with significant control and filing health, and adds the agent’s published email and phone, the named project team and 15 contact lookups a month. Every plan also shows the use class, the appeal outcome, the council’s document list and public tenders and awards near each site, with decision alerts; Pro adds competitor alerts and analytics. Pro is £39/mo, or £29/mo billed annually, with no sales call and no contract, where Glenigan’s terms renew a year at a time unless you email 90 days’ notice. Team, at £99/mo, or £79/mo billed annually, puts up to 5 people on one shared leads pipeline, with hourly alerts and larger exports. See the full SiteLens vs Glenigan comparison.

Barbour ABI is the other established enterprise platform, similar in shape to Glenigan, and its own ROI page puts the average subscription at around £7,500 a year. See SiteLens vs Barbour ABI. Planning Pipe is a lower-cost planning-data feed with contact details, priced by region and sold online. See SiteLens vs Planning Pipe. Planning Signal is a self-serve planning search, free to start, with keyword leads for trades on its Leads plan at £49 a month + VAT. See SiteLens vs Planning Signal. SearchLand is aimed at finding and buying land rather than supply-chain leads. See SiteLens vs SearchLand. And Buildscout, built by SearchLand, sells planning data to builders and, on its Homeowner outreach plan, posts letters to homeowners for them. See SiteLens vs Buildscout.

How to choose

If you run a large BD team and need researched contacts at every project stage nationally, an enterprise platform may still be the right tool. If you are a subcontractor, supplier or small developer who wants to spot the right schemes early, filter out the noise, and pay a price that makes sense for a small team, a self-serve planning-intelligence tool will serve you better. A good test: start with the free option, set one alert for your area and trade, and see whether the projects that land are worth acting on before you pay anyone.

Related reading: Planning data tools compared, the main tools side by side; Glenigan vs Barbour ABI, the two enterprise platforms head to head; and How to find planning applications in your area (free and paid), the full primer on every way to find UK applications before you commit to any tool.