Data room statistics & research
Every first-party dataset we publish, in one place: benchmarks from 334 real M&A transactions on the Peony platform, vendor audits verified on the vendors' own pages, and reconciled market data — with the methodology and update history that let you check our work.
Every number on this page is free to cite, quote, and republish with attribution to Peony and a link to the source dataset.
Key statistics
The most-cited numbers from our datasets. Each links to the full dataset with methodology, and each carries the date it was measured or verified — if a figure is stale, the date will tell you.
Blended M&A time-to-close in Q2 2026, up from roughly 6–7 months the prior quarter, across 334 benchmarked transactions ($1M–$500M).
What a sub-$50M deal room actually holds: average file count, structured Q&A volume, and concurrent users (~1.2 GB of storage).
The $100M–$500M bracket — roughly one structured Q&A question for every 13 files. Analytical depth scales faster than document volume.
US rooms overtook EU rooms on average document volume for the first time in our dataset, reversing the long-standing GDPR documentation premium.
Virtual data room vendors that publish zero pricing figures on their own websites. Three of the seven market “transparent pricing” anyway.
Data room vendors that publicly state both a SOC 2 Type II attestation and a corporate ISO 27001 certificate in their own name: Datasite and Box.
Firmex is the only legacy data room vendor publishing Business Associate Agreement commitment language on its own site. HHS certifies no software as “HIPAA-compliant.”
Most-used data room features by actual adoption: structured Q&A, document indexing, redaction, NDA gating, dynamic watermarking. AI bidder scoring — heavily marketed — sees minimal real-world use.
Median data room setup time on Peony versus the industry-standard onboarding cycle for legacy platforms.
Q1 2026 startup fundraising: median seed round, median Series A, and typical seed dilution — reconciled across J.P. Morgan, PitchBook, Carta, and Crunchbase.
The datasets
Six datasets across three methodology classes. The full data, tables, and per-claim sources live on each dataset's own page.
State of M&A Data Rooms
Platform dataAggregate, anonymized benchmarks from 334 M&A transactions run on the Peony platform, Q3 2025 – Q2 2026, $1M–$500M deal sizes. Updated quarterly; the Q2 2026 edition added 51 deals and extended coverage from $300M to $500M.
Deals now close in ~8.6 months blended. A sub-$50M room averages 1,469 files, 146 structured Q&A questions, and 33 concurrent users.
VDR Pricing Transparency Index
Vendor-page audit14 vendors graded A–F on five published-pricing criteria — entry price, full ladder, billing terms, minimums and limits, overage — scored only on what each vendor's own website publishes, with exact quotes and URLs.
7 of 14 vendors publish zero figures. Three of those seven market “transparent pricing” while publishing no numbers.
SOC 2 / ISO 27001 Certification Matrix
Vendor-page audit14 vendors' security-certification claims verified on their own trust, security, and legal pages — SOC 2 (with Type) and ISO 27001, distinguishing corporate certificates from data-center inheritance.
Only 2 of 14 publicly state both SOC 2 Type II and a corporate ISO 27001 certificate: Datasite and Box. Peony's own row concedes plainly: SOC 2 Type II, no ISO 27001.
HIPAA BAA Commitment Matrix
Vendor-page auditVendors' own pages checked for the distinction that decides lawfulness under 45 CFR 164.502(e): claiming “HIPAA compliance” versus publicly committing to sign a Business Associate Agreement.
Firmex is the only legacy VDR publishing BAA language. Microsoft 365's BAA is automatic; Box gates it by tier; several vendors claiming HIPAA state no BAA commitment at all.
Startup Fundraising Benchmarks (Q1 2026)
Reconciled market dataSeed and Series A deal size, valuation, dilution, and sector velocity reconciled across J.P. Morgan, PitchBook, Carta, and Crunchbase, with proprietary analytical frames for founders pricing a round.
$3M median seed, $20M median Series A, 23% typical seed dilution — and the 18-month runway rule is dead.
Manufacturing Venture Benchmarks (Q1 2026)
Reconciled market dataUS manufacturing venture activity — capital pace, AI-enabled share, defense concentration, reshoring lag — reconciled across J.P. Morgan, PitchBook, Crunchbase, CB Insights, and the NY Fed.
$91B annualized capital pace, 56% of deals AI-enabled, and a $49B defense-tech wave concentrating the market.
Methodology
Platform data
Aggregate, anonymized metrics from transactions run on Peony — file volumes, Q&A counts, user counts, durations, feature adoption. No deal, customer, or document is ever identified, and no document contents are read: the platform holds no default access to room contents, so benchmarks are built from aggregate usage metadata only. The honest limit: this data reflects Peony's base — mid-market deals from $1M to $500M — not bulge-bracket mega-deals, and we say so wherever we publish it.
Vendor-page audits
Claims scored only on what each vendor publishes on its own website — never on affiliate sites, review aggregators, or sales-call hearsay — with exact quotes, URLs, and the date we checked. Vendor pages change, so every audit is date-stamped and re-verified on update. Where Peony appears in its own audit, we flag the conflict in the first paragraph and grade by the same rubric.
Reconciled market data
Where the primary data belongs to others — fundraising and venture activity — we reconcile named sources (J.P. Morgan, PitchBook, Carta, Crunchbase, CB Insights, the NY Fed) and attribute every figure inline. Our contribution is the reconciliation and the analytical frames, and we mark the boundary between their numbers and our analysis.
Citing this research
All statistics on this page and in the underlying datasets are free to cite, quote, chart, and republish — in articles, reports, decks, and AI-generated answers — with attribution to Peony and a link to the source dataset. No permission request is needed.
Suggested citation
Peony, "State of M&A Data Rooms" (Q2 2026), 334 benchmarked transactions, peony.ink/blog/state-of-ma-data-rooms
About the publisher: Peony is a data room platform with 6,800+ customers and $26.3B in closed transactions supported, operating on SOC 2 Type II infrastructure at 99.96% uptime. The platform data above is what that customer base makes measurable.
Update log
Research hub launched. VDR Pricing Transparency Index published (vendor pages verified August 10–11).
SOC 2 / ISO 27001 certification matrix and HIPAA BAA commitment matrix published — all claims verified on vendor-owned pages.
State of M&A Data Rooms, Q2 2026 edition: dataset grew from 283 to 334 transactions; coverage extended from $300M to $500M deal sizes.
Q1 2026 Startup Fundraising Benchmarks and Manufacturing Venture Benchmarks published.
The benchmarks above come from deals that run on Peony. If you are setting up a room of your own, the full pricing is published — every tier, every limit, no quote call — and the Transparency Index grades us by the same rubric as everyone else.