AI-Ark is a B2B data platform with an app, a REST API, a hosted MCP server and a CLI, all sold on credits. LeadOcean is one dataset behind REST and MCP at one flat fee. If you pull people and emails in code or through an agent, LeadOcean costs less at volume and never runs out of credits. If you want lookalike search in an app, or you pull under roughly 125,000 records a month, AI-Ark can be the cheaper pick.
Why teams switch from AI-Ark
Every action has a credit price
AI-Ark charges 0.5 credits for a person profile, 0.5 for a verified email and 5 for a found mobile number. A person with an email costs 1 credit, and a phone adds 5 more (AI-Ark pricing, September 2026). You budget in credits, then convert to dollars.
The price per credit is hard to see
The pricing page shows $49 a month for 5,000 credits and a free plan with 100 credits a month. Above 30,000 credits it says $2 to $4 per 1,000, and the Starter, Builder and Scale plans carry no price (AI-Ark pricing, September 2026). A real quote means a sales conversation.
Rate limits and job sizes are small for millions of rows
The default is 5 requests per second per key. One Export People with Email job holds at most 10,000 people. Custom rate limits start at 450,000 credits a month (AI-Ark docs, September 2026).
A search stops at 10,000 records
One AI-Ark search retrieves up to 10,000 records through pagination. To go past that you re-run the search with exclusion lists, which expire after 24 hours and cap at 50 a day (AI-Ark docs, September 2026). A big pull becomes a loop of small ones.
LeadOcean vs AI-Ark
| LeadOcean | AI-Ark | |
|---|---|---|
| Price model | Flat monthly fee. No credits, no per-record price, no overage invoice. | Monthly subscription in credits. Each action has its own credit cost (AI-Ark pricing). |
| Entry price | Free plan, 1,000 records one-off, no card. | Free plan, 100 credits a month, no card. Usage-based plan $49 a month for 5,000 credits (AI-Ark pricing). |
| What $499 a month buys | Pro: unlimited searches, enrichments and lookups, whole database, 5 API keys. | About 125,000 to 250,000 credits at $2 to $4 per 1,000 on plans above 30,000 credits. One person with an email is 1 credit (AI-Ark pricing). |
| Credits | None. | Profile 0.5, verified email 0.5, mobile 5, company 0.1 (AI-Ark docs). |
| API access | REST on every plan, including Free. | REST on every plan, key available on sign-up (AI-Ark pricing). |
| Auth | x-api-key header. | X-TOKEN header (AI-Ark docs). |
| MCP server | Yes, OAuth 2.1 sign-in, on every plan. 12 tools. | Yes, hosted. The API key goes in the URL query string (AI-Ark MCP docs). |
| Rate limit | 100 requests per second per key, every plan. | 5 requests per second per key by default. Custom above 450,000 credits a month (AI-Ark docs). |
| People records | 693M people, one dataset. | 400M+ people (AI-Ark). |
| Company records | 63M companies. | 70M+ companies (AI-Ark docs). |
| Email status on every record | Yes. 13 status values, from verified to spam_trap. | Verified in real time at export by BounceBan. Invalid, unknown and risky addresses are removed (AI-Ark pricing). |
| Phone numbers | 166M people with a phone number. GET /v2/people/phone, one record per call. | Mobile Phone Finder, 5 credits per found number, none charged on a miss (AI-Ark docs). |
| Bulk export | POST /v1/exports, 50,000 rows per request. | Export People with Email, up to 10,000 people per job (AI-Ark docs). |
| Search depth | Pages of up to 100. meta.total is capped at 100,000. | 10,000 records per search. totalElements is uncapped (AI-Ark docs). |
| Sizing a market first | count_leads and search with count=true are free. | People Preview, 1 credit per page of 25 to 100 results (AI-Ark docs). |
| Miss on a lookup | POST /v1/people/enrich returns a 404 that costs nothing. A v2 contact miss costs one record. | Single export costs 0 when no valid email is found (AI-Ark docs). |
| Lookalike company search | No. | Yes, up to 5 seed companies (AI-Ark docs). |
| Semantic search | No. Filters and closed-list enums. | Yes, SMART text mode (AI-Ark docs). |
| Personality analysis | No. | Yes, DISC and OCEAN, 4 credits a request (AI-Ark docs). |
| No-code app | No. API, MCP and CSV export. | Yes, point-and-click filters and saved lists (AI-Ark pricing). |
| Data refresh | Monthly. Each record carries its own fetched_at date. | Whole database refreshed every 30 days (AI-Ark). |
| Search filters | 50 people filters, 34 company filters. | No filter count published. The docs group people filters by profile, professional, and skills and education, and company filters by identification, details, size and advanced (AI-Ark docs, October 2026). |
| Cost of a very large month | Same $499. Paced down past the fair-usage line. | Enterprise, custom quote (AI-Ark pricing). |
| Who it suits | Engineers, RevOps and agents that need volume and a fixed bill. | Agencies and GTM teams that want an app, lookalikes and pre-verified emails. |
AI-Ark figures come from ai-ark.com, its pricing page and docs.ai-ark.com, checked in September 2026. AI-Ark updates its plans and docs often, so check the pages before you buy.
What 1M, 5M and 25M records cost
AI-Ark prices per credit, so cost scales with volume. LeadOcean Pro stays at $499 a month. The AI-Ark column is list-price maths using the published $2 to $4 per 1,000 credits. Enterprise discounts will lower it, so ask AI-Ark for a quote at your volume.
| Records a month | AI-Ark at list price | LeadOcean |
|---|---|---|
| 1M | $2,000 to $4,000. Above the 450K+ Scale plan, so Enterprise. | $499 a month. |
| 5M | $10,000 to $20,000. Enterprise plan. | $499 a month. |
| 25M | $50,000 to $100,000. Enterprise plan. | $499 a month. Past fair use, one email raises the headroom. |
AI-Ark arithmetic: 1 credit per person with a verified email x records x $2 to $4 per 1,000 credits. That is list price, before any volume discount. The credit cost is 0.5 for the profile plus 0.5 for the email (AI-Ark pricing, September 2026; AI-Ark docs, September 2026). A mobile number adds 5 credits, so a phone on every record is 6 credits.
Below the crossover, AI-Ark is cheaper, and we say so plainly. At $4 per 1,000 credits, $499 buys about 125,000 credits. At $2 it buys about 250,000. Under that volume a month, compare the two on your own filters before you switch.
AI-Ark publishes no rate for 1M credits a month or more. Its pricing page gives $2 to $4 per 1,000 credits above 30K credits a month and says Enterprise volume pricing is custom (AI-Ark pricing, October 2026).
The calculator below uses $2 per 1,000 credits, the low end of AI-Ark's range. Move the volume to see where the lines cross.
Your numbers
List rate times volume, if AI-Ark sold that volume at that rate. Change the inputs to your own quote.
Where LeadOcean wins
A flat bill at any volume
Pro is $499 a month. Every person or company returned counts as a record, but there is no credit balance to watch and no overage invoice. A very large month is paced down to one request a minute until the reset, not cut off. One email to support gets you more headroom.
A bigger people dataset and free sizing
LeadOcean holds 693M people in one database, and 366M of them have an email and 166M have a phone number. You size an audience first with count_leads, which is free, then pull only what you need. AI-Ark charges a credit per page for its preview.
Room to pull in bulk
The rate limit is 100 requests per second per key on every plan, against 5 a second by default on AI-Ark. POST /v1/exports takes 50,000 rows per request, so a 1M-row pull is 20 calls over two days. The same pull on AI-Ark is 100 export jobs of 10,000 people, and each job runs in the queue.
An agent can sign in without a key in a URL
AI-Ark's MCP setup puts your API key in the server URL. LeadOcean's MCP server uses OAuth 2.1, so you sign in and no key is pasted into a config file or a chat. The Free plan includes both REST and MCP.
For code, one request returns a profile and, with reveal_email, the emails and phone numbers we hold, for one record.
curl -X POST "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/enrich" \
-H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
-H "content-type: application/json" \
-d '{"linkedin_url":"https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-doe","reveal_email":true}'For an agent, add the MCP URL https://api.leadocean.io/mcp to Claude or Cursor and sign in. Then ask in plain words: "How many VPs of Sales in Canada have a mailable email?" The agent calls count_leads, which costs nothing. On 2026-09-30 it returned 5,066.
Where AI-Ark wins
Lookalike and semantic search
AI-Ark's headline feature is lookalike search. Pass up to 5 seed companies and it finds similar ones. Its SMART text mode also matches related titles and industries, so a search for "creative director" finds "art director" (AI-Ark docs, September 2026). LeadOcean searches by filters and enum values. If you want fuzzy matching, your own agent has to do the judging. For a team that builds lists by feel, that is a real gap.
More companies, and cheaper at low volume
AI-Ark lists 70M+ company profiles, more than LeadOcean's 63M. Its company export costs 0.1 credit, so a 100,000-company list is 10,000 credits. At low volume the price gap runs the other way too. A team pulling 100,000 people a month pays $200 to $400 at list price, which is under $499.
Emails verified at export, and an app for non-coders
Every AI-Ark email is checked in real time by BounceBan when you export, and invalid or risky addresses are stripped from the file (AI-Ark pricing, September 2026). LeadOcean returns a status on every record and leaves the filtering to you. AI-Ark also has a point-and-click app and saved lists. LeadOcean does not, so a sales team with no engineer should stay on AI-Ark.
Use both: AI-Ark for accounts, LeadOcean for people at volume
You can keep AI-Ark for what it does well and move the volume pulls. Use its lookalike search to choose target accounts, then pull the people behind them from LeadOcean at a flat price. This keeps your AI-Ark spend to company exports at 0.1 credit each. A list of 5,000 lookalike companies costs 500 credits, which is $1 to $2 at list price. The people behind them then cost nothing extra on Pro.
- Create a free LeadOcean key at app.leadocean.io/register. The free plan needs no card.
- In AI-Ark, run Company Search with up to 5 seed companies and export the lookalike domains.
- For each domain, call
GET /v1/companies/{domain}/peopleon LeadOcean, size the audience withcount_leadsfirst, and send only rows whoseemail_statusisverifiedorcatch_all_valid.
FAQ
Does AI-Ark have an API and an MCP server?
Yes, both, plus a CLI. The REST API sits on every plan and authenticates with an X-TOKEN header. The hosted MCP server works in Cursor, Windsurf and Claude Desktop, with the API key in the URL (AI-Ark MCP docs, September 2026). The ark command runs searches and exports from a terminal (AI-Ark CLI docs, September 2026).
How much does AI-Ark cost per record?
A person with a verified email is 1 credit. The Usage-based plan is $49 for 5,000 credits. Plans above 30,000 credits list $2 to $4 per 1,000, so one record is $0.002 to $0.004 at list price (AI-Ark pricing, September 2026).
When is AI-Ark cheaper than LeadOcean?
Under roughly 125,000 to 250,000 records a month, at the $2 to $4 per 1,000 credit range. Above that, the $499 flat fee wins, and the gap grows with every million. Mobile numbers move the line, because each one costs AI-Ark 5 credits. Check your own volume and the quote AI-Ark gives you.
Is LeadOcean's data bigger than AI-Ark's?
For people, yes: 693M against AI-Ark's 400M+ (AI-Ark, September 2026). For companies, no: AI-Ark lists 70M+ and LeadOcean holds 63M. Both figures are vendor claims, so test both on your target filters.
Can I use both?
Yes. AI-Ark is strong for lookalike account discovery and LeadOcean is cheaper for people at volume. The steps are in the section above. You keep your AI-Ark free plan, which refreshes 100 credits every month, and add a LeadOcean key next to it.
What does LeadOcean cost, and do I need a card?
Free gives you 1,000 records, one-off, with no card. Pro is $499 a month, flat, with no credits and no per-record price. Past the fair-usage line a very large month is paced down instead of cut off, and support can raise the headroom.
Related: Swordfish alternative, SalesIntel alternative, Ocean.io alternative, pricing. Back to all alternatives.
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