Moonfare vs iCapital 2026
Both wrap institutional private equity in feeder vehicles so smaller commitments can reach funds that normally require $5M+. Only one of them will let you sign up. This guide compares them on primary source data — SEC Form D reconstruction, Form ADV, FOCUS reports and a 61-record catalog capture.
Guide Thesis
One is a product. One is plumbing.
Moonfare: direct access at $75K, published fees, a catalog whose footnotes need reading. iCapital: 747 feeders, $106.6B sold-at-filing, 54% unbranded, and no way in without an adviser.
For most individual investors this is not a choice between two platforms.
You can join Moonfare directly. You can only reach iCapital through a participating adviser or wealth platform.
The Core Decision
Different customers, same structure.
Both pool smaller commitments into a feeder that takes an institutional-sized position in a GP fund. Moonfare sells that to the investor; iCapital sells it to the adviser. If you have no adviser, only Moonfare is available. If you do, the question is whether the feeder you are being offered is priced and disclosed as well as what you could reach directly.
Direct Access
Moonfare
Accredited US investors can register and commit at $75,000 without an intermediary. iCapital is advisor-only — individuals cannot access it independently.
Scale
iCapital
747 SEC-filed feeders reporting $106.6B sold-at-filing and $149.9B of regulatory AUM. Moonfare: ~€3.9B global AUM, ~$430M visible in US EDGAR filings.
Published Terms
Moonfare
0.50% placement plus 0.35-0.75% annual feeder fee, confirmed across filings. iCapital's feeder terms are not publicly published — they live in each offering's documents.
TL;DR
The structural difference in two sentences
Moonfare is a direct-to-investor platform: $75,000 minimum, a browsable catalog of named GPs, and a published fee layer of 0.50% placement plus 0.35-0.75% annually — though across all 61 catalog records AltStreet captured, the performance footnotes carry documented methodology problems. iCapital is advisor-only infrastructure at a completely different scale — 747 SEC-filed feeders reporting $106.6 billion sold-at-filing and $149.9 billion of regulatory AUM — where 54% of feeders are unbranded, feeder terms are unpublished, and the end investor sees no feeder-level performance at all.
If you read nothing else: scroll to the head-to-head comparison sections →
Moonfare is better for
- → Investors without an adviser relationship
- → Seeing the fee stack before committing
- → Browsing named GPs and choosing specific funds
- → A semi-annual secondary with an institutional backstop buyer
iCapital is better for
- → Investors already working with an adviser
- → Institutional durability and operational scale
- → Breadth — 1,144 advised funds, a $386.6B distribution footprint
- → Advisers needing diligence, education and reporting workflow
0 of 61
Moonfare records meeting AltStreet's clean-disclosure threshold
Every captured catalog record carried at least one of nine documented methodology problems. This is an AltStreet standard, not a regulatory definition.
54%
iCapital feeders carrying no iCapital branding
404 of 747 SEC-filed feeders are code-named or manager-branded, identifiable only through Form D related-persons disclosures.
86%
Of Moonfare's US broker-dealer FY2025 revenue from affiliate debt forgiveness
$400,000 of $464,067 total. Actual placement fees: $64,067. Source: FOCUS Part II FY2025 report.
Bottom Line Up Front
For an individual investor without an adviser, Moonfare is the only one of the two that is actually available, and it is a genuinely well-built route into funds that would otherwise require a $5 million to $25 million ticket. The published fee layer and the browsable catalog are real advantages over the alternative of seeing nothing at all.
That availability comes with two things to verify rather than assume. The catalog's performance tiles carry documented methodology problems across every record AltStreet captured — read the footnotes, not the headline IRR. And the US broker-dealer's FY2025 revenue was 86% affiliate debt forgiveness rather than placement fees, which is a fair question to raise about standalone operating substance behind a decade-long commitment.
If you already work with an adviser, an iCapital feeder may be present in your portfolio even when the vehicle carries another manager's branding — 54% of its SEC-filed feeders do. The useful action there is not choosing a platform but asking one question: is this recommended access fund a platform feeder, and what is its own fee stack in writing?
Head to Head
Moonfare vs iCapital, section by section
A platform you join vs infrastructure your adviser uses
Moonfare vs iCapital: Access Model
This is the difference that determines whether the rest of the comparison is even actionable. Moonfare is a direct-to-investor platform: an accredited US investor registers, completes KYC, browses a catalog and commits at a $75,000 minimum. iCapital is business-to-business infrastructure. Individual investors cannot sign up, cannot see the menu, and cannot subscribe without a financial adviser who licenses its technology and places clients into its feeder funds. Both ultimately do the same structural thing — pool smaller commitments into a feeder vehicle that takes an institutional-sized position in a GP fund — but only one of them is a product an individual can choose.
| Who the customer is | Moonfare: the investor. Direct registration, self-directed browsing and commitment. iCapital: the adviser. The platform's customer is the wealth manager, RIA or family office; the end investor is served through them. |
|---|---|
| How you get in | Moonfare: register, complete KYC and biometric verification, commit at $75,000 (standard) or $125,000+ (Series tiers). iCapital: your adviser presents an access fund from their platform menu; typical minimums $100,000+, or $25,000 for registered funds. |
| What you can see before committing | Moonfare: a browsable catalog with named GPs and performance tiles — AltStreet captured 61 records. iCapital: whatever your adviser shows you; there is no investor-facing menu and no feeder-level performance disclosure. |
| Underlying structure | Moonfare: US investor → Delaware LP wrapper → Luxembourg SCSp Access Feeder → GP master fund. EU investors access the SCSp directly. iCapital: a Delaware LP or LLC managed by iCapital Advisors aggregates client subscriptions into the underlying fund. |
Verdict
If you do not work with an adviser, this is not a real choice: Moonfare is the accessible option and iCapital is unavailable. If you do work with an adviser, the practical question is whether the iCapital feeder they recommend is priced and disclosed at least as well as what you could access directly.
Numbers requiring scrutiny vs no feeder-level numbers
Moonfare vs iCapital: Transparency
Neither platform comes out of this well, and it is worth being precise about how each falls short because the failures are opposites. Moonfare publishes performance tiles for named funds, which is more than most feeder platforms do — but across all 61 records AltStreet captured, methodology footnotes contained at least one of nine documented disclosure-quality problems. Examples include material predecessor underperformance buried in dense footnotes, net returns computed from assumed rather than actual management fees, aggregates that exclude unfavourable subsets, and peer-relative quartile claims substituted for absolute LP returns. Zero of the 61 met AltStreet's clean-disclosure threshold — an AltStreet methodology standard, not a regulatory definition. iCapital's problem is upstream of that: 404 of 747 SEC-filed feeders (54%) carry no iCapital branding, feeder terms are not publicly published, and performance is not disclosed at the feeder level at all.
| Investor-facing catalog | Moonfare: yes — named GPs including KKR, Carlyle, EQT, Apax, Warburg Pincus, Vista, Hg and Lexington. iCapital: no investor-facing menu; the adviser controls what is shown. |
|---|---|
| Feeder-level performance | Moonfare: displayed on catalog tiles, with the documented methodology caveats. iCapital: not disclosed at the feeder level. |
| Branding clarity | Moonfare: feeders are Moonfare-branded (Access Feeder A##, Series Fund I LLC). iCapital: 54% of feeders are code-named or manager-branded, identifiable as iCapital vehicles only through Form D related-persons data. |
| Documented disclosure issues | Moonfare: nine recurring problems across 61 records — buried predecessor underperformance, assumed-fee net returns, selective composites, cross-vintage IRR mutation, and peer-quartile substitution. iCapital: the issue is absence of feeder-level disclosure rather than the quality of what is disclosed. |
Verdict
Moonfare gives you numbers that require careful reading of the footnotes before you trust them. iCapital gives the end investor no feeder-level numbers to read. A disclosure you can interrogate is more useful than one that does not exist — but 'more useful' is not the same as 'reliable', and the nine documented patterns are reasons to verify rather than reasons to dismiss.
A published layer vs an unpublished one
Moonfare vs iCapital: Fee Stack
Both platforms insert a fee layer between the investor and the GP's own economics, which typically run 1.5-2.0% management on committed capital plus 20% carried interest over an 8% hurdle. Moonfare's layer is documented: a 0.50% one-time placement fee on commitments, structurally confirmed across 11+ records spanning 2020-2025 vintages with identical verbatim language, plus a 0.35-0.75% annual feeder fee by Series tier and 0.025% annual liability compensation to the feeder GP. Its Series Fund I LLC tiers scale down with commitment size — Series A at $125K pays 1.00% setup and 0.75% annually, Series F at $5M+ pays 0% setup and 0.35%. iCapital's feeder terms are not publicly published at the feeder level; they exist in each offering's documents, with an adviser fee typically layered on top of that.
| Platform fee | Moonfare: 0.50% one-time placement + 0.35-0.75% annual feeder fee + 0.025% liability compensation. iCapital: not publicly published; feeder-level terms are disclosed only in each offering's documents. |
|---|---|
| Underlying GP economics | Both: typically 1.5-2.0% management (on committed capital, declining to invested) plus 20% carried interest over an 8% hurdle. This is the same layer on either platform. |
| Adviser fee | Moonfare: none by default — the investor transacts directly. iCapital: an adviser fee typically applies on top of the feeder and fund layers. |
| Fee reduction with size | Moonfare: explicit tiering — Series A $125K (1.00% setup / 0.75% annual) through Series F $5M+ (0% setup / 0.35% annual). iCapital: whatever the adviser and platform have negotiated; not investor-visible. |
Verdict
Moonfare wins on fee transparency, not necessarily on total cost — a well-negotiated adviser relationship could land at a comparable or better all-in number. The difference is that you can price Moonfare before engaging and can only price an iCapital feeder by reading the specific offering's documents. Compounding matters here: any feeder layer applies across a 10-year-plus fund life.
A $4B challenger vs the industry's plumbing
Moonfare vs iCapital: Scale & Corporate Substance
The size difference is large enough to change what each platform is. AltStreet's EDGAR reconstruction identifies 747 iCapital feeder entities reporting $106.6 billion of cumulative amount sold across 220,449 aggregate reported investor positions, cross-checked against $149.9 billion of regulatory AUM at iCapital Advisors across 1,144 private funds. Its observable distribution footprint extends further: 106 third-party funds with $386.6 billion of aggregate reported sales name iCapital Securities as a compensated sales agent — a measure of the funds in its footprint, not capital attributable to it. Moonfare reports ~€3.9 billion global AUM and ~5,600 investors, with roughly $430 million and 30 entities visible in US EDGAR filings. One detail on the US entity deserves attention: Moonfare Securities USA LLC reported FY2025 revenue of $464,067, of which $400,000 was forgiveness of indebtedness from a sister company, leaving $64,067 of actual placement fees.
| Visible US scale | iCapital: 747 feeders, $106.6B sold-at-filing, 220,449 aggregate reported investor positions. Moonfare: 30 Moonfare-direct entities, ~$430M raised — roughly 10% of its claimed global AUM, most of which is European. |
|---|---|
| Ownership | iCapital: BlackRock holds ~21%, carried at $0.7B under the equity method per its Q2 2026 10-Q — an accounting carrying amount BlackRock says may not represent fair value; a separate 2025 round valued the firm at $7.5B. Moonfare: founder-led, founded 2016 by Steffen Pauls (ex-KKR), Berlin-headquartered. |
| Regulatory posture | iCapital: iCapital Advisors LLC files Form ADV; iCapital Securities acts as compensated sales agent across 106 third-party funds. Moonfare: FINRA-approved captive BD (CRD 325838, January 2024); subsidiary Moonfare Financial Services GmbH received BaFin investment-firm authorisation on May 26, 2026. |
| Operating substance caveat | Moonfare Securities USA LLC FY2025: $464,067 total revenue, $400,000 (86%) from affiliate debt forgiveness, $64,067 from placement fees, per its FOCUS Part II report. iCapital: no equivalent concern at this scale. |
Verdict
iCapital has materially greater institutional scale and balance-sheet backing, with BlackRock holding roughly 21%. Moonfare is a smaller direct-access challenger with a materially lighter US operating footprint, whose US broker-dealer currently runs on parent support rather than placement revenue. That is a real consideration for a commitment spanning a decade, though the FINRA license and the May 2026 BaFin authorisation are genuine regulatory facts, not marketing.
A $100,000 commitment, side by side
| Moonfare | iCapital | |
|---|---|---|
| Can you actually do this? | Yes if accredited — $75,000 standard minimum, so $100,000 clears it. Register, complete KYC, commit. | Only through a participating adviser or wealth platform. There is no self-directed path, no investor-facing menu, and no way to subscribe independently. |
| Platform fee you can price up front | 0.50% one-time placement ($500) plus 0.35-0.75% annually on the feeder, plus 0.025% liability compensation. | Not published. Feeder terms are disclosed in the specific offering's documents; an adviser fee typically sits on top. |
| Underlying GP economics | Identical on both: typically 1.5-2.0% management plus 20% carried interest over an 8% hurdle. The feeder layer is what differs. | |
| What you can see before signing | A catalog tile with named GP and performance history — with methodology footnotes that require reading before the headline is trusted. | Whatever your adviser presents. No feeder-level performance disclosure, and the fund may carry a code name rather than iCapital's. |
| Getting out early | Semi-annual digital secondary with Lexington Partners as institutional backstop buyer; pricing and fill are not guaranteed. | Generally none — the feeder follows the underlying fund's 7-12 year life with capital calls along the way. |
Which platform can you actually use?
Short answer
Moonfare, if you do not have an adviser — it is the only one of the two an individual can join. iCapital is business-to-business infrastructure: individuals cannot register, cannot see the menu and cannot subscribe without a financial adviser who licenses its technology. The comparison is therefore about distribution channel first and product second.
Moonfare's US route runs from the investor through a Delaware LP wrapper into a Luxembourg SCSp Access Feeder and then into the GP's master fund; EU investors reach the SCSp directly without the Delaware layer. US securities are distributed through Moonfare Securities USA LLC, a wholly-owned FINRA-approved broker-dealer. Standard access is $75,000, with Series Fund I LLC qualified-purchaser tiers starting at $125,000.
iCapital's structure is similar in principle — a Delaware LP or LLC managed by iCapital Advisors aggregates client subscriptions and invests into the institutional fund — but the relationship runs through the adviser. The end investor owns the feeder, not the underlying fund, and typically encounters the vehicle under a manager's brand or a code name rather than iCapital's. That is not concealment so much as how white-labelled infrastructure works, but it does mean the platform layer is easy to miss.
Which is more transparent?
Short answer
Both fall short, in opposite directions. Moonfare publishes performance tiles, but all 61 records AltStreet captured carried at least one of nine documented methodology problems — buried predecessor underperformance, assumed-fee net returns, selective composites. iCapital discloses no feeder-level performance to the end investor at all, and 54% of its feeders carry no iCapital branding.
The specific Moonfare patterns are worth knowing because they recur regardless of which GP is being marketed. Predecessor funds with poor outcomes appear inside dense footnotes rather than beside the headline. Displayed net returns are sometimes computed using assumed management fees rather than the actual rate — one record uses an assumed 2% where the actual was 2.5%. Aggregates exclude unfavourable subsets, and in at least one case the same underlying fund was displayed at materially different net IRRs across two vintage marketings. Where absolute returns are unavailable, peer-relative quartile claims sometimes stand in their place.
None of that makes the underlying GPs less real — KKR, Carlyle, EQT, Apax, Warburg Pincus, Vista, Hg and Lexington are institutional managers, and the access is genuine. It makes the displayed performance a starting point for diligence rather than a conclusion. AltStreet also notes that its own "clean disclosure" threshold is a methodology standard rather than a regulatory one, so zero records meeting it is a statement about disclosure practice, not a compliance finding.
On iCapital the transparency question sits with the adviser rather than the platform. Because more than half the feeder book carries someone else's name, an investor genuinely cannot tell from a fund's title whether a platform layer is present. That is the single most useful thing to ask about before subscribing.
The AltStreet Take
Most platform comparisons assume the reader can pick either option. This one cannot, and pretending otherwise would be the least useful thing we could do. iCapital is the plumbing behind a large share of advisor-mediated private markets — 747 SEC-filed feeders, $106.6 billion sold-at-filing, BlackRock holding roughly 21% — and no individual can walk up to it. Moonfare is a product built for the investor to buy directly.
Judged as what it is, Moonfare does something valuable: it prices its layer openly and lets you see which fund you are buying. That is more than the alternative offers, and the access to named institutional GPs at $75,000 rather than $5 million is real. The two caveats are equally real and both come from primary filings, not impressions: every catalog record we captured had at least one documented methodology problem in its performance footnotes, and the US broker-dealer earned $64,067 of placement fees against $400,000 of affiliate debt forgiveness in FY2025.
For advised investors the actionable insight is not a platform choice at all. It is that a majority of iCapital's feeders carry other firms' branding, so the access fund on the recommendation sheet may have a platform layer inside it that the name does not reveal. Ask whether it is a feeder, ask whose, and ask for its fee stack in writing before you subscribe.
How do the fee stacks compare?
Short answer
Moonfare's layer is published: 0.50% one-time placement, 0.35-0.75% annual feeder fee by Series tier, 0.025% liability compensation, all on top of the GP's usual 1.5-2.0% and 20% carry. iCapital's feeder terms are not publicly published at the feeder level — they exist in each offering's documents — and an adviser fee typically applies as well. Moonfare wins on transparency of pricing, which is not the same as winning on total cost.
Moonfare's tiering is unusually explicit for this market and rewards size directly: Series A at a $125,000 commitment pays a 1.00% setup fee and 0.75% annually, while Series F at $5 million and above pays no setup fee and 0.35% annually. The 0.50% placement fee on standard Access Feeder commitments was confirmed across more than eleven records spanning 2020 to 2025 vintages with identical verbatim language, which is why AltStreet treats it as structural rather than promotional.
The comparison with iCapital cannot be completed on published data, and that is the finding rather than a gap in the research. Feeder terms sit in each offering's documents, so an advised investor can only price the stack by reading the specific PPM. A well-negotiated adviser relationship might land at a comparable all-in cost or better; the point is that you cannot know before engaging. Either way, a feeder layer compounds across a fund life of ten years or more, so a difference of 40 basis points annually is not a rounding error.
Frequently asked questions
Can I choose between Moonfare and iCapital as an individual investor?+
Usually not, and this is the most important thing to understand before comparing them. Moonfare is direct-to-investor: an accredited US investor can register, complete KYC and commit at a $75,000 minimum without an intermediary. iCapital is business-to-business infrastructure — individual investors cannot access it independently and must work through a participating adviser or wealth platform that uses its technology and feeder funds. So for most people the real question is not which platform to pick, but whether to go direct through Moonfare or to accept the iCapital feeder your adviser is already recommending.
How big is each platform?+
The gap is roughly two orders of magnitude on the visible US record. AltStreet's EDGAR reconstruction identifies 747 iCapital feeder entities reporting $106.6 billion of cumulative amount sold in their latest Form D snapshots, across 220,449 aggregate reported investor positions, alongside $149.9 billion of regulatory AUM at iCapital Advisors across 1,144 private funds per Form ADV. Moonfare reports approximately €3.9 billion (~$4.13 billion) of global AUM and about 5,600 investors, with 30 Moonfare-direct entities and roughly $430 million raised visible in EDGAR — approximately 10% of its claimed global AUM, since most of the book is European.
Which is more transparent about what it offers?+
They fail transparency differently, and neither is clean. Moonfare publishes a browsable catalog with named GPs and performance tiles — AltStreet captured 61 fund records — but across all 61, methodology footnotes contained at least one of nine documented disclosure-quality problems, including predecessor underperformance buried in footnotes and net returns calculated from assumed rather than actual fees. Zero records met AltStreet's clean-disclosure threshold, which is an AltStreet methodology standard rather than a regulatory definition. iCapital publishes nothing comparable at the feeder level: 404 of its 747 feeders (54%) carry no iCapital branding, feeder terms live only in each offering's documents, and performance is not disclosed at the feeder level at all. Moonfare shows you numbers you then have to interrogate; iCapital shows the end investor no numbers to interrogate.
What do the fees look like on each?+
Both add a feeder layer on top of the underlying GP's economics — typically 1.5-2.0% management plus 20% carried interest over an 8% hurdle. Moonfare's own layer is published and structurally confirmed across filings: a 0.50% one-time placement fee on commitments, a 0.35-0.75% annual feeder fee depending on Series tier, and 0.025% annual liability compensation to the feeder GP. Its Series Fund I LLC tiers scale with size, from Series A at $125K (1.00% setup, 0.75% annual) to Series F at $5M+ (0% setup, 0.35% annual). iCapital's feeder terms are not publicly published at the feeder level — they exist in each offering's documents — and an adviser fee typically sits on top of that. Neither stack is cheap; only one of them can be priced before you engage.
What are the minimums?+
Moonfare: $75,000 for standard US access, rising to $125,000 and above for the Series Fund I LLC qualified-purchaser tiers. iCapital: typically $100,000 or more for its private access feeders, with $25,000 cited for registered funds — but the operative minimum for most investors is whatever their adviser's platform sets, since access runs through the adviser rather than the investor. Both compare favorably with the $5 million to $25 million direct commitments these institutional funds normally require, which is the entire point of a feeder structure.
Is Moonfare's US business substantial?+
The regulatory license is real; the standalone operating substance behind it is thin. Moonfare Securities USA LLC is a FINRA-approved broker-dealer (CRD 325838, approved January 2024) — this is genuine oversight, not a shell claim. But its FY2025 FOCUS Part II report shows total revenue of $464,067, of which $400,000 (86%) was forgiveness of indebtedness from a sister company under an expense-sharing agreement. Actual placement fees were $64,067. Net capital was $102K; without the forgiveness it would have been deficient by roughly $335K. The BD has no direct employees and outsources its financial operations function. Separately, on May 26, 2026 subsidiary Moonfare Financial Services GmbH received its own BaFin authorisation as an investment firm, ending the platform's prior reliance on a third-party tied-agent license in Germany.
Who owns iCapital, and does that matter?+
BlackRock holds approximately 21%, carried at $0.7 billion under the equity method per its Q2 2026 10-Q — an accounting carrying amount that BlackRock itself states may not represent fair value. A separate 2025 funding round valued the company at $7.5 billion. The distribution footprint is visible in other firms' filings too: 106 third-party funds with $386.6 billion of aggregate reported sales name iCapital Securities as a compensated sales agent, though Form D does not disclose per-agent placement amounts, so that figure measures the scale of funds in its observable footprint rather than capital attributable to iCapital. For an end investor, the practical significance of the ownership is institutional durability rather than better terms.
Can I get my money out of either one early?+
Not readily from either. These are feeder vehicles into institutional funds with 7-12 year lives and capital calls along the way, and that underlying structure governs both platforms. Moonfare operates a semi-annual digital secondary market with Lexington Partners acting as institutional backstop buyer — a real mechanism, though pricing and fill rates are not something an investor should assume. iCapital feeders generally follow the underlying fund's life with no early exit at the investor level. Neither should be entered with capital you expect to recover on a defined timetable.
What should I ask my adviser if they recommend an access fund?+
Ask whether the vehicle is a platform feeder and, if so, whose. Because 54% of iCapital's SEC-filed feeders carry no iCapital branding, a fund presented under a manager's name or a code name may still be a platform feeder with platform economics inside it. Then request the feeder's own fee stack in writing — it sits on top of the underlying fund's fees and beneath your adviser's fee, and none of the three are visible from the fund's marketing name alone. Price the full stack from the offering documents before subscribing.
Full Platform Analysis: Moonfare and iCapital
Each platform review is sourced from primary filings — SEC Form D reconstruction, Form ADV, FOCUS broker-dealer reports, and direct platform capture. No marketing language, no affiliate framing.
Moonfare Full Review
61-record catalog analysis, nine documented disclosure patterns, the three-layer feeder fee stack, and the US broker-dealer's FY2025 financials.
iCapital Full Review
747-feeder EDGAR reconstruction, the 54% unbranded finding, the $386.6B distribution footprint, and what advisor-mediation means for end investors.