Illicit money does not stay on one chain, in one currency, or inside one jurisdiction's reporting rules.
Chainalysis is the strongest published capability for tracing funds on public blockchains and Feedzai is a serious fiat monitoring platform. Both are excellent inside their lane. Cross-network, cross-border tracing is the space between the lanes.
Our financial-crime work comes from the team already defending systems behind billions of accounts, so the tracing is built on live payment-network experience rather than on data purchased from someone else's platform. It is delivered for regulators, enforcement agencies and the institutions they supervise.
Side by side
| Attribute | Represented by UnstratFinancial crime intelligence | ChainalysisChainalysis Reactor1United States | FeedzaiAML Transaction Monitoring2Portugal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Domain traced12 | Illicit flows across payment networks and borders, cross-network and cross-jurisdiction | Public blockchains: 27+ chains and 40 million+ assets, following funds through 325M+ swaps and 300+ bridges and decentralised exchanges | Transactions and entities inside a financial institution's own systems |
| Who it is built for12 | Regulators, enforcement agencies and supervised institutions | Law enforcement, intelligence, regulatory and tax agencies, exchanges, financial institutions and corporate investigation teams | Institution compliance teams, with defined L1 and L2 analyst, QA, manager, MLRO and integrator roles |
| Published adoption and results12 | Not published | 1,500+ organisations; $34B+ in stolen funds frozen and recovered | Relative claims only: up to 50 times more transactions and entities handled, and SAR filing up to 20 times faster |
| Evidence for court and enforcement12 | Turns raw transaction data into an evidence chain regulators and courts can act on | States that findings are presentable in court and that outputs are clear, defensible evidence for investigators | SAR Manager produces reports in formats accepted across jurisdictions, backed by a full audit trail |
| Explainability of findings12 | Positioned against black-box scoring from a foreign vendor; mechanism not published | Not published as a model-explainability claim | Whitebox explanations generated per decision, with a 4-eyes check requiring two approvers before a rule change takes effect |
| Detection technique12 | Not published for this service in isolation | Cross-chain tracing with entity attribution and AI-assisted wallet triage across 30M+ unidentified wallets | Individual behavioural profiling rather than cohort profiling, with dynamic thresholds and machine-learning alert prioritisation |
| Integration with other investigative tooling12 | Integrates with the wider financial-cyber-defence suite | Connects with digital forensics and link-analysis platforms including Cellebrite, Siren and i2 | Not published in the solution guide |
| Cryptocurrency coverage12If your caseload is predominantly crypto, Chainalysis is the incumbent for a reason and we will say so plainly. | Not published | The core of the product: cross-chain tracing including mixers, bridges and decentralised exchanges | Not covered in this solution guide |
| Origin and political exposure12 | Independent, non-aligned origin, with no political exposure to any major-power ecosystem | United States (New York) | Portugal |
Competitor values are quoted from the vendor documents listed under Sources, as published on the date shown. Configurations vary, so treat every row as a starting point for the evaluation rather than a like-for-like test result.
What the table means
The gap between the chain and the bank is where the money goes
Chainalysis follows funds across 27+ blockchains, through mixers, bridges and decentralised exchanges, and has real recoveries behind it. Feedzai watches transactions and entities inside a bank with individual behavioural profiling and a documented approval trail. An investigator chasing an actual laundering network needs the handover between those worlds: the off-ramp into a local bank, the mobile-money leg, the correspondent hop that neither platform sees the whole of. Our starting point is the payment networks themselves, which is where that handover is visible.
Who else sees your case file
A financial-crime investigation is state business. It names suspects before they are charged, exposes which institutions are being examined, and reveals what the authorities know. Chainalysis is a US company holding attribution data for much of the world's crypto activity; Feedzai is Portuguese and inside the EU regime. Both are legitimate suppliers. Whether a national regulator wants its live case material processed by either is a sovereignty question, and it should be answered before the procurement, not after the first leak.
Be honest about the numbers on this page
Chainalysis publishes concrete adoption figures. Feedzai publishes relative improvement multiples. We publish neither, because the service is newer than our platform work and we will not invent a recovery statistic. What we can evidence is the pedigree: the same team defends payment and financial platforms behind billions of accounts in production, which is not the same thing as a caseload record and should not be presented as one.
Questions buyers ask
What is the best alternative to Chainalysis Reactor for a national financial intelligence unit?
For pure on-chain tracing there is no straightforward substitute, and pretending otherwise wastes your time: Reactor covers 27+ blockchains, 40 million+ assets and 325M+ swaps, and Chainalysis cites $34B+ in stolen funds frozen and recovered across 1,500+ organisations. Where a national unit needs something different is the fiat and payment-network side, cross-border and cross-institution, plus an assurance that live case material is not being processed by a supplier answerable to another government. That is our part of the problem.
How do you trace money laundering across borders and payment networks?
By working from the networks rather than from a single institution's records. Bank-side monitoring, which is what Feedzai does well with individual behavioural profiling and dynamic thresholds, shows you one participant's view. Chain analysis shows you the on-chain leg. Cross-network tracing joins the correspondent hops, the mobile-money legs and the off-ramps into an evidence chain a court can follow. We do not publish coverage figures for that yet, which is a fair thing to press us on.
Will financial crime evidence from an analytics platform stand up in court?
It depends on the chain of custody and on whether the reasoning can be explained by a human witness. Chainalysis states its findings are presentable in court. Feedzai builds jurisdiction-standard reports on a full audit trail with two-person approval for rule changes. Our approach is to produce an evidence chain regulators and courts can act on rather than a score with no working shown. When you evaluate any of us, take one closed case and ask to see the whole audit trail.
Do we need separate tools for crypto and traditional AML?
Today, mostly yes, and the vendors' own documents show why: Chainalysis does not cover bank transaction monitoring and Feedzai's AML guide does not cover blockchains. The practical answer is to buy the specialist tool for the dominant part of your caseload, then make sure someone owns the join between them. That join is where the laundering network is actually visible, and it is the part most programmes leave unfunded.
Sources
- 1. Chainalysis, Chainalysis Reactor (product page)Retrieved: 2026-07-31 · HTML only. Source of the 1,500+ organisations, $34B+ recovered, 27+ blockchains, 40 million+ assets, 325M+ swaps and 300+ bridges and DEXs figures.
- 2. Feedzai, AML Transaction Monitoring (solution guide, 2024) (copy held on this site)Retrieved: 2026-07-31 · Behavioural profiling, dynamic thresholds, whitebox explanations, 4-eyes rule control, SAR Manager and the published efficiency claims.