Wood Mackenzie review
By Jan Suski. I go deep on every review, checking every number against its source and digging up details other coverage misses, a habit from six years of SEO and link building for tech companies. Bylines at Surfer, Brand24, and Senuto. How the scoring works.
· Prefer this source on Google
Best for: Strategy, M&A and investment teams that need asset-by-asset valuations and long-horizon supply forecasts they can defend in an investment committee.
Not for: Trading desks that need a daily market read. Wood Mackenzie's published cadence is quarterly reports and bespoke consulting projects.
What it costs: One-off reports carry list prices, $1,350 to $7,500, payable by credit card or invoice. Lens and the Upstream Service publish no price; both route to a demo request.
What Wood Mackenzie sells
Wood Mackenzie started in 1923 as an Edinburgh stockbroker and published its first oil report in 1973. It now sells asset-level research across oil and gas, power and renewables, and metals and mining.
The core subscription is the Upstream Service, built on 7,000+ valuations, 259 fiscal regime models and 20,000+ fields and plays across 140+ countries. Lens is the delivery platform; Lens Direct exposes the same data over an OData API and a bulk download service.
Coverage and the headcount it can't agree on
Lens Upstream covers 5,600+ upstream assets, 11,000+ companies and subsidiaries and 250+ fiscal regimes across 180 countries. The company claims more than 3,000 customers.
Its About page says “2,600+ experts” across “30+ locations.” Its careers page says “over 2,300 experts across 30 global locations.” Both numbers are live on woodmac.com.
Who owns it
Verisk Analytics announced the acquisition on 10 March 2015 at £1.850 billion, about $2.8 billion in cash, and closed it on 19 May 2015.
Verisk sold the business to Veritas Capital on 31 October 2022 for $3.1 billion in cash plus up to $200 million in contingent payments. That deal completed on 2 February 2023, and Wood Mackenzie has been a Veritas Capital portfolio company since.
In June 2026 it bought LandGate, a Denver land-and-grid data firm covering more than 150 million US land parcels. The price wasn't disclosed.
Pricing
Wood Mackenzie publishes real prices for single reports, which most of this category doesn't. Its store lists US Solar Market Insight Q2 2026 at $7,500, the global copper mine cost summary at $6,750, US energy storage monitor Q2 2026 at $5,000 and a North Sea upstream chart and data pack at $1,350.
Subscriptions run the other way. Lens, Lens Direct and the Upstream Service show no seat price and no tier; each ends at “Request a demo.”
Sources: Wood Mackenzie overview, Upstream Service, Lens Upstream, store, Verisk sale to Veritas Capital, Veritas completes acquisition, LandGate acquisition, Verisk 2015 announcement.