The Ocean.io alternative with one flat price

Ocean.io is a lookalike search engine with a credit-metered API. LeadOcean is one data layer you call over REST or MCP at one flat price. If you pull people and emails in code or through an agent, LeadOcean is the more predictable source, with one flat bill. If you start from your best customers and want more like them, keep Ocean.io for that step.

Why teams switch from Ocean.io

Every step draws from one credit pool

Search costs 0.2 credits per result. Enrichment costs 0.1, an email found costs 1 and a phone found costs 10 (Ocean.io docs, September 2026). Your bill depends on which calls your code makes.

The self-serve API has a low ceiling

Self-serve accounts get 60 requests a minute and 1,000 a day (Ocean.io docs, September 2026). Higher limits sit in an enterprise agreement, so a large job waits on a contract.

Emails and phones arrive by webhook

Reveal Emails and Reveal Phones are asynchronous and take up to 500 person IDs per request (Ocean.io docs, September 2026). You need a public endpoint to receive results. The docs list 1 to 3 minutes for 50 IDs and 2 to 10 minutes for 500.

The MCP server takes a token in the URL

Ocean.io's MCP server connects with ?api-token= in the URL (Ocean.io docs, September 2026). Every MCP call draws credits at the REST rate. LeadOcean signs in with OAuth 2.1 and never puts a key in a chat.

LeadOcean vs Ocean.io

Ocean.io figures come from its API docs at app.ocean.io/docs and the sources linked in each cell, checked in September 2026. Ocean.io's pricing page blocks automated reading, so plan prices, credits per plan and which plan includes API access are not published where we could read them. See its pricing page for current terms. Third-party plan figures circulate, but they come from a competing data vendor, FullEnrich, and its credit costs (3 credits per email) are out of date against the docs (1).

What 1M, 5M and 25M records cost

Ocean.io prices every result in credits, so cost scales with volume. LeadOcean Pro stays at $499 a month. Ocean.io publishes no price per credit that we could read, so the table counts credits and gives no dollar figure. Enterprise terms sit in a subscription agreement (Ocean.io docs).

Arithmetic: a person with an email costs 0.2 credits to search plus 1 credit per email found. Ocean.io's own example finds 79% of emails, so about 0.99 credits, rounded to 1 (Ocean.io docs, September 2026). Records x 1 credit.

Search alone is cheaper. One million search results is 200,000 credits, and no dollar figure is public. You only reach the table above when you reveal emails. Phones add 10 credits each, so a phone for every record would multiply the bill.

Volume also hits the rate limit. Reveals take 500 IDs per call and self-serve allows 1,000 calls a day. One million emails is 2,000 calls, so at least two days, and 25M is 50,000 calls.

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.

Contact data in the same response

A call to POST /v1/people/enrich returns the profile, the email status and, with reveal_email, every email and phone number we hold. It costs one record either way. There is no second reveal step and no webhook to host. A person we hold nothing for is a 404 and costs nothing.

Built for code and agents

The same data is reachable over REST and over MCP, on the Free plan too. Sizing an audience is free: count=true with limit=1 returns meta.total and spends no records. Then enrich one person for one record.

curl "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/search?jobLevel=VP&country=US&limit=1&count=true" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY"

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. The server has 12 tools, and count_leads, list_filters and get_account cost nothing.

A bigger dataset and headroom on limits

LeadOcean holds 693M people and 63M companies in one database. Ocean.io's own llms.txt lists 67M company profiles and 250M+ employee records (Ocean.io llms.txt). The rate limit is 100 requests per second per key on every plan. Export up to 50,000 rows per request with POST /v1/exports, so a 1M-row pull is 20 calls over two days.

Where Ocean.io wins

Lookalike search

Ocean.io finds companies similar to your best customers. Pass seed domains in lookalikeDomains and it returns look-alike accounts, or seed a person with lookalikeLinkedinHandles (Ocean.io docs, September 2026). Its workflow guide suggests 3 to 5 seed customers. LeadOcean has no similarity engine. You describe your market with filters, and that only works if you already know the filters.

Bigger search pages and a wider API

Ocean.io returns up to 10,000 results in one request, where LeadOcean pages at 100. It also covers 25 endpoints, including social posts, reactions and reshares, batch enrichment and a crawl on domains it does not hold (Ocean.io docs, September 2026). LeadOcean does not have social data. If you work from LinkedIn activity, Ocean.io has the endpoints.

Search-only work at small scale

Search costs 0.2 credits a result, so a list of 500 people is 100 credits. Ocean.io publishes no price per credit that we could read. If you pull a few thousand records a month and need lookalikes, price those credits on your plan before you choose a flat $499.

Use both: Ocean.io to find accounts, LeadOcean to fill them

You do not have to leave Ocean.io to stop paying for reveals. Use lookalike search where it is strong, and move the expensive reveals to a flat fee. Search alone costs 0.2 credits a company, so the credit spend stays small.

1. Create a free LeadOcean key at app.leadocean.io/register. The free plan needs no card.
2. Run Ocean.io's Search Companies with 3 to 5 seed domains in lookalikeDomains. Keep the returned domain of each match.
3. Call GET /v1/companies/{domain}/people on LeadOcean for the people at each domain, then POST /v1/people/enrich with reveal_email on the ones you want. You skip Ocean.io's reveal credits and the webhook.

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