Kscope · deep dive · 2026-10-22
Morningstar Direct is the fund desktop. Holdings from N-PORT and listed financials are live. A star, a moat, and a fair value are models on that book. Live prices and non-US manager files stay a license.
The row stays slice. Fund holdings from N-PORT and listed financials are live. A star rating, a moat, and a fair value are models on that book. Live prices and non-US fund files stay a license. No current dollar price is printed. The 2016 and 2018 seat schedules disagree with each other and are not a 2026 rate card. The 3,000 dollar figure is Direct Advisory Suite, a different product. Coverage counts disagree, and each figure is left as printed.
| Feature | Morningstar | Kscope | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What an analyst opens | Morningstar Direct is a Windows desktop on Morningstar-hosted data, updated throughout the day. The product page, search stamp 2026-08-16, lists research, portfolio and model construction, Presentation Studio, Report Portal, Analytics Lab, data feeds, and an AI assistant. The comparison of 2026-06-24 says Direct is for researchers, analysts, portfolio managers, and risk analysts. Direct Advisory Suite is a different product. Mo is the in-Direct assistant. Direct Compass is the home of analyst research. | Fund holdings from N-PORT and listed financials are the slice of this desktop we already hold. Presentation Studio and a report portal are packaging on that book. | Match |
| The seat | No current dollar price is on the Direct product pages. The investor Q&A of 2025-09-26 says Direct is priced on the number of licenses, with extra fees for distribution or publication, and prints no dollar figure. A 2016 newsroom comment says 17,000 dollars, then 10,500, then 9,000. A 2018 Q&A says 18,000, 11,500, and 9,800 dollars in the US. Those two schedules disagree, and neither is a 2026 rate card. A 2026 Schwab PDF prints 3,000 dollars a year for Direct Advisory Suite individual membership. | The filing and holdings seat can be priced on its own. Their old schedules stay on the site as history. | Partial |
| Feature | Morningstar | Kscope | |
|---|---|---|---|
| How many investments | The licensed-data page, stamp 2026-07-17, says over 1.4 million managed investments, equities, bonds, indexes, alternatives, and more. A broad-coverage page says about 1.4 million investment offerings, and real-time global market data on about 35 million equities, indexes, futures, options, commodities, and precious metals. Direct Web Services says over 300,000 investments and 2,000-plus data points. An Australia Direct campaign says over 50,000 global companies and 150,000 mutual fund and ETF share classes. A data-factory post of 2026-07-07 says ratings on over 400,000 funds, ETFs, SMAs, and CITs, and an AI-assisted Medalist process on 440,000 managed investments every month, against 40,000 funds once a year by humans alone, and 200 million documents a month. | N-PORT from 2019-09-30 is 84.4 million raw holding rows, US-registered funds. That is a holdings file. It is a different object from their offering count, their rated-vehicle count, and their document count. Each of their figures is left as printed. | Partial |
| Listed equities | The coverage catalog includes stocks. The Direct page says a customer chooses the datasets, from one dataset to 100. Equity methodology dated 4 August 2026 says clients pay subscriptions and Morningstar does not offer issuer-paid coverage. | As-reported financials for US filers are live, about 473,000 face-statement filing-rows. A fair value on that history is a model. | Ahead |
| The star, the moat, and the Medalist | Medalist, the Style Box, and the moat are Morningstar's. The trial page says 100-plus independent analysts, 37 risk factors, and 15 sustainability factors. Sustainalytics appears on the business site as a Morningstar brand and is not a line on the Direct product page itself. | A star, a moat, and a fair value computed from holdings and filings we hold are models. The rating they publish under their name stays their brand. The ESG note of 2026-09-19 found no sustainability score in the graph. | Partial |
| Feature | Morningstar | Kscope | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Live prices | The broad-coverage page describes real-time global market data Morningstar keeps. The source of the price is not named on that page. | A live and global price stays a license. A holdings file does not replace it. | Gap |
| Manager files outside the US filing | The data-factory post says raw intake from regulatory filings, asset managers, websites, and data aggregators. Manager due diligence is named as inside Direct. | A US fund's N-PORT holding is in the file. A portfolio a non-US manager sends only to Morningstar stays theirs. | Beside |
Ahead The feature is data we already hold, in a form an investor can use.
Match Both products do this.
Partial We hold the filing or the extract, and not their finished screen.
Gap They ship it. We do not.
Beside Live prices, non-US manager files, and the Medalist rating they publish stay theirs. A star, a moat, and a fair value on holdings and filings we hold are models.