The Lusha API alternative with one flat price

Lusha is a contact and company data platform with a Chrome extension, a REST API and an MCP server, sold on credits. LeadOcean is one data layer you call over REST or MCP at one flat price. If you pull data in code or through an agent, LeadOcean is the cheaper and more predictable source. If your reps live in a browser extension, keep Lusha.

Why teams switch from Lusha

Every reveal spends credits

An email costs 1 credit and a phone number costs 5, so one contact with both costs 7 through a single API request: 5 for the phone, 1 for the email and 1 for the request (Lusha API guide, September 2026). In the platform and extension it is 6. The same guide says a request costs at least 1 credit even when no data comes back. Lusha's V3 billing FAQ says no credit is deducted for a no-match request (Lusha billing FAQ, September 2026). Lusha's own docs disagree, so confirm with Lusha support before you budget for misses.

Small plans have small API limits

Free and Starter allow 40 requests a minute and 100 a day. Pro allows 1,500 a day (Lusha API guide, September 2026). That is a ceiling for any job that runs on a schedule.

Bulk stops at 100 per request

Both bulk APIs take at most 100 contacts or companies per request (Lusha API guide, September 2026). A million-row pull is 10,000 calls.

Credits expire

Annual plans reset unused credits at year end. Monthly plans roll credits over, up to twice the monthly allowance (Lusha pricing, September 2026). You plan around the meter, not the work.

LeadOcean vs Lusha

Lusha figures come from the pages linked in each cell, checked in September 2026. Lusha changes plans and limits often, so check the pages before you buy.

What 1M, 5M and 25M records cost

Lusha prices every reveal in credits, so cost scales with volume. LeadOcean Pro stays at $499 a month. Lusha publishes no price at these volumes. Its highest public tier is Premium at 10,000 credits a month ($977.40 billed monthly) or 120,000 credits a year ($9,539.10 billed yearly). Scale is a custom quote, so ask Lusha for your real number.

The lowest published rate is about $0.0795 a credit, on Premium billed yearly ($9,539.10 for 120,000 credits). Pro billed yearly is $0.087375 a credit ($629.10 for 7,200), so it is not the lowest (Lusha pricing, September 2026). Email only is 1 credit per record. Email plus phone is 6 in the platform and 7 through a single API request (Lusha API guide, September 2026). At list rate, if sold at that volume, 1M work emails by bulk API need about 1,040,000 credits, which is about $82,700 at $0.0795.

Lusha does not publish a Scale price per credit. The pricing page says Scale is custom and gives 50%+ off price per credit compared with Premium (Lusha pricing, September 2026).

The calculator below uses $0.0795 a credit, the lowest published rate. It is an illustration, not a price at volume.

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, and one email to support gets you more headroom.

A larger dataset

LeadOcean holds 693M people and 63M companies. Lusha states more than 525 million contacts and more than 29 million companies on its homepage (Lusha homepage, September 2026). The email and phone counts follow the same pattern: 366M and 166M here against more than 165 million and more than 117 million there.

Built for code and agents

The same data is reachable over REST and MCP, and the Free plan includes both. One request returns a profile, email status and, with reveal_email, every email and phone number 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 Claude or Cursor, add the MCP URL https://api.leadocean.io/mcp and sign in with OAuth. No key gets pasted into a chat.

Search and export at database scale

Search people with 50 filters and companies with 34, across 254 countries and 534 industries. Counts are free. Export up to 50,000 rows per request with POST /v1/exports, so a 1M-row pull is 20 calls over two days, not 10,000.

Where Lusha wins

Signals, lookalikes and buying groups

Lusha tracks 26 buying signals refreshed weekly, and its API and MCP server expose lookalikes, buying-group search and signal scores (Lusha homepage, September 2026; Lusha MCP tools, September 2026). LeadOcean is a data source. It does not score accounts for you.

Reps in a browser

Lusha ships a Chrome extension and native apps for Salesforce, HubSpot and Pipedrive (Lusha homepage, September 2026). A rep can reveal a contact on LinkedIn in two clicks. LeadOcean has no extension, so a sales team with no engineer should stay on Lusha.

Published compliance and accuracy

Lusha lists ISO 27001, ISO 27701 and SOC 2 Type II, and claims 98% email accuracy (Lusha homepage, September 2026). If procurement asks for a certificate, that matters.

Use both: LeadOcean for volume, Lusha for reps

You do not have to drop Lusha to cut credit spend. Put the bulk work, the lists and the agent lookups on LeadOcean's flat price. Keep Lusha credits for the reveals your reps do by hand and for its signals. Wappalyzer users can also read our tech-stack data alternatives.

1. Create a free LeadOcean key at app.leadocean.io/register. The free plan needs no card.
2. Size the audience with count_leads, which is free, then pull it with POST /v1/exports at 50,000 rows per request. Load the file into your CRM.
3. Add both MCP servers to your agent. Use LeadOcean for list building and Lusha for signals and buying groups on your top accounts.

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