Vendelux answers which events a company should invest in across a year, using attendance intelligence over a large event database. Pengo answers what to do at one fair you have already committed to: it reads that fair's exhibitor directory end to end, scores every stand against who you sell to, and names the people standing on them. Different questions, and the honest comparison starts there.
What each one is for
Vendelux describes itself as an event intelligence and meeting management platform, and says it helps teams identify high-impact events, understand their ICP's behaviour and build a strategy with attendee intelligence, across a database it puts at more than 250,000 B2B events. That is a portfolio question — which of the forty fairs in your category deserve a stand, a delegation or nothing.
Pengo starts one step later. The fair is chosen and somebody is flying to it. What that person has is a floor plan and an exhibitor list of two hundred company names that tells them nothing about any of them. Pengo reads the directory, works out what each company sells from its own pages, ranks all of it against a description of your buyer, and hands back a walk route with hall and stand numbers on it.
Side by side
| Pengo | Vendelux | |
|---|---|---|
| The question it answers | What is worth walking to at this fair | Which events to invest in across the year |
| Published price | $39, $99 and $299 a month, and a quoted price per fair before each press | None. Starter, Plus and Enterprise each carry a request-pricing form |
| Billing unit | Credits, spent per fair. A 200-stand fair read in full is 2,750 credits, about $11 | Not stated |
| Free tier | None, and no trial | Not stated |
| Exhibitor directory | Read end to end, with a completeness check and a continuation when a portal paginates | Not the stated focus; the platform is built around attendee intelligence |
| Coverage | Any fair that publishes a directory, read on demand when you press | More than 250,000 B2B events, as stated on their site |
| Email addresses | Only where the research states it read one. Never constructed | Not stated on the pages read |
| Agent access | MCP server on every plan; read-only REST API from Pro | Not stated on the pages read |
The difference you can check before you buy
Vendelux publishes a pricing page with three tiers on it and no figure against any of them. Starter, Plus and Enterprise each carry a form. That is a normal way to sell enterprise software and it is not an accusation, but it does mean the first honest number in that evaluation arrives after a call.
Pengo's is on the pricing page and, more usefully, on the button. Every research pass is quoted before you press it and charged at the quoted price, so a fair costs what the screen said it would cost — one press for the whole fair, priced by how big it is. A 200-stand fair read in full — the exhibitor list, then a profile for every company on it, then a score on every stand — is 2,750 credits, about $11. Plans start at $39 a month.
The reason to care is not that one number is smaller than an unstated one. It is that a per-fair price is a decision you can make in ten seconds without a procurement cycle, and the fair you are flying to in three weeks is a decision on that timescale.
Where Pengo loses
Four places, and they are the ones worth knowing before anybody switches.
- 1There is no free tier and no trial. Vendelux does not publish one either, but the tools further down the alternatives lists do, and if what you want is to poke at something this evening, Pengo will ask for a card first.
- 2There is no event database to browse for planning. Pengo has a catalog and it grows as fairs are researched; it is not a 250,000-row directory and it is not built to answer which fairs exist in your category next year.
- 3No ROI attribution and no meeting management. Pengo does not book meetings, does not track pipeline against an event, and does not tell you what last year's stand returned.
- 4No historical attendance prediction. Pengo reads what is published now. It does not model who attended a fair in 2024 to guess who will attend in 2027, which is a real part of what the portfolio tools sell.
Which one to pick
- Pick Vendelux
- If the question on your desk is which of a long list of events to fund, you are planning a year of spend across several teams, and you need a number to defend the plan with afterwards.
- Pick Pengo
- If the fairs are already booked and the problem is the two hundred stands you cannot triage, you want a walk route with names on it before the doors open, and you want to know what it costs before you press.
- Neither, for now
- If you attend two fairs a year and both are small enough to read the directory by hand in an afternoon, do that. A hundred stands is a real afternoon and it is not a hundred dollars.
Questions
Is Pengo a cheaper alternative to Vendelux?
Pengo starts at $39 a month and quotes each fair before you press — roughly $37 to read a 200-stand fair in full. Vendelux does not publish a price for any of its three tiers, so the two cannot be compared directly, only one of them checked.
What does Vendelux cost?
Vendelux does not state a figure. Its pricing page lists Starter, Plus and Enterprise, each behind a form asking you to request pricing. Other comparison pages quote estimates; those are estimates, not published prices.
Do Pengo and Vendelux do the same thing?
No. Vendelux is built around choosing which events to invest in across a portfolio. Pengo is built around working one fair you are already attending: reading its exhibitor directory, scoring every stand against your buyer, and naming who is on them.
Can Pengo tell me which trade fairs to attend next year?
Only partly. It can search for fairs in your region and vertical and score them against your buyer, but it has no attendance forecasting and no event-spend planning. If portfolio selection is the main job, that is what the planning platforms are for.
Does Pengo give me attendee email addresses?
Only where the research states it actually read one on a published page. Pengo will not construct an address from a name and a domain, because a constructed address is indistinguishable from a real one to whoever sends to it.
Does Pengo have a free trial?
No, and there is no free tier. Every plan is paid from the first month, and every research pass is quoted before it runs so nothing is spent by surprise.
Can I use Pengo from Claude or Cursor?
Yes. The MCP server is on every plan and connects to Claude, Claude Code, Cursor and ChatGPT. It only reads — it starts no research and spends no credits.
What happens if Pengo researches a fair and finds nothing?
The pass settles as failed and the credits are released in full. A completed run reporting zero rows against a charge is the one outcome that makes a research product impossible to trust.
The longer version of what Pengo will and will not claim is on what Pengo knows, and what it will not guess. The wider field is on Vendelux alternatives, compared honestly.
Sources
- Vendelux — Pricing — checked
- Vendelux — AI-Native Event Marketing Platform — checked