How to Automate LinkedIn Prospecting (With an API, Not a Browser Bot)

Automated LinkedIn prospecting works best as a data pipeline: define the audience as filters, pull the people, enrich the ones that matter and send them to your outreach tool. This guide builds that with four LeadOcean API calls. Nothing logs in to LinkedIn or drives a browser.

TL;DR

• Time: about 15 minutes. The pipeline then re-runs on a schedule from any cron job or workflow tool.
• Cost: 30 LeadOcean records for the walkthrough (25 searched, 5 enriched). Counting is free. The Free plan has 1,000 records for life.
• Output: a list of people with LinkedIn URLs where held and emails with their status, plus a CSV export for bigger pulls.

Prerequisites

• A LeadOcean API key from app.leadocean.io. The Free plan needs no card.
• The key in your shell as $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY.
• curl and jq.
• A target audience in one sentence. This guide uses US sales VPs at companies of 51 to 200 people.

Step 1: Size the audience for free

Count first. A count spends no records, so you can tune filters until the list is the right size.

Send filters as flat JSON arrays. Enum values are exact strings, so check them with GET /v1/enums or the free leadocean_list_enum_values MCP tool before you guess. For people search, add count=true as a query parameter, not in the body, with limit 1.

curl -s -X POST "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/search?count=true" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "jobLevel": ["VP"],
    "jobFunction": ["Sales & Business Development"],
    "country": ["US"],
    "employeeRange": ["51-200"],
    "limit": 1
  }'

meta.total is capped at 100,000. An AI agent can run the same count through the leadocean_count_leads tool on the MCP server at https://api.leadocean.io/mcp.

Step 2: Pull the first page of people

Drop count=true and set a real limit (1 to 100). Each person returned is one record.

curl -s -X POST https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/search \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "jobLevel": ["VP"],
    "jobFunction": ["Sales & Business Development"],
    "country": ["US"],
    "employeeRange": ["51-200"],
    "limit": 25
  }' | tee page1.json | jq '.meta | {count, credits, nextCursor, depthCapped}'

Search rows are a thin projection with no contact points. To get the next page, send the same body plus "cursor" set to the exact meta.nextCursor string. One search pages to 10,000 rows. When meta.depthCapped is true, narrow the filters and run a second search.

Step 3: Enrich the people worth contacting

Enrich only the shortlist. Search rows carry an id at meta.source_ids.person_id. Send it back to enrich that exact person, even when no LinkedIn URL is on file. The body takes exactly one of linkedin_url, email, phone or person_id.

curl -s -X POST https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/enrich \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"person_id": "123456789", "reveal_email": true}'

reveal_email: true returns every email and phone we hold, at no extra record. Read contact_data.email_status before you send anything. Bounced emails are not refunded. Enrich also returns career history (past roles, education, certifications) in resume_data, which is useful for a first line that is not generic.

If you already have LinkedIn URLs from a list, post them as linkedin_url instead. The cURL loop for LinkedIn URLs handles retries and 404s.

Step 4: Export the whole audience as a CSV

For hundreds or thousands of rows, stop paging and create an export. One export holds up to 50,000 rows, and an account can run 500,000 rows a day. Every row costs one record.

curl -s -X POST https://api.leadocean.io/v1/exports \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "us-sales-vps-51-200",
    "limit": 500,
    "preset": "full",
    "filters": {
      "jobLevel": ["VP"],
      "jobFunction": ["Sales & Business Development"],
      "country": ["US"],
      "employeeRange": ["51-200"]
    }
  }'

The API answers 202 with a job id. Poll GET /v1/exports/{id} until it is done, then fetch GET /v1/exports/{id}/download. Bulk CSV export is not on the Free plan. On Free, page search and enrich inside your 1,000 records. The app at app.leadocean.io has an Exports page with a filter builder, a column picker and the record price before you start.

Step 5: Put it on a schedule

LeadOcean returns data. Sending is your sequencer's job, and LeadOcean has no sequencer or dialer. Wrap Steps 2 and 3 in a script, run it from cron or n8n, and push the output to the tool that sends. The n8n recipe shows the HTTP Request setup. To avoid paying twice for the same person, store the person_id of everyone you have already pulled and skip them.

What you get

The count in Step 1 is a real run. On 2026-10-21 the leadocean_count_leads tool returned this for the filters above:

{
  "total": 18567,
  "totalIsExact": true,
  "totalAll": 60456,
  "distinctCompanies": 12192,
  "credits": 0
}

total counts people whose best email is verified, catch_all_valid or catch_all, which is the default. totalAll is the same filters with no email condition. The call spent 0 records.

A search or enrich row has this shape (response shape from the API reference, placeholder values):

{
  "profile_data": { "profile_full_name": "Jane Doe" },
  "contact_data": {
    "has_email": true,
    "email_status": "verified",
    "email_type": "work",
    "contact_emails": [{ "email": "jane@acme.com", "status": "verified" }]
  },
  "meta": { "source_ids": { "person_id": "123456789" } }
}

contact_emails appears only when reveal_email is true.

Troubleshooting

FAQ