7 Best B2B Data Providers for AI Agents (2026)

A B2B data provider for AI agents returns people and company records to an agent or to your code, through an API or an MCP server. Agent builders, GTM engineers and RevOps teams need one when an agent has to find, enrich and verify contacts without a human in the loop.

Agents change the buying question. They run loops, so the price model, the rate limit and the cost of a miss matter more than the interface. Seats matter less, because an agent is not a rep.

This page ranks seven providers on those points, with list prices checked in September 2026. Each rival has its own page: Crustdata, ZoomInfo, Apollo, BlitzAPI, Coresignal and People Data Labs. For live data specifically, read real-time B2B data providers for AI agents.

TL;DR

"1M records" means 1M work-email lookups that return a result, at list price. Where no plan reaches 1M, we show the credits and do not multiply a rate out to dollars.

What we evaluated

• Volume: how many records a month the plan supports, and what happens past the line.
• Price model: flat, credits, seats or a quote, and what a miss costs.
• API and rate limit: which endpoints are open on the entry plan, and requests per second or minute.
• MCP: whether an agent can search and enrich through a hosted server, or only read docs.
• Seats: whether you pay per human user when the caller is an agent.

We ran no accuracy test, so we quote no quality numbers. We ranked on first-party docs, not vendor blogs, except where a fact is marked as reported.

1. LeadOcean: best for agents and code that pull data at volume

LeadOcean is a people and company database you call over REST or MCP. It holds 693M people, 366M with an email and 166M with a phone number, plus 67M companies. You search with 50 people filters and 34 company filters.

There are no credits and no per-record price. Solo is $97 a month at 50 requests a second. Agency is $497 a month with 1M enrichments a day, 200 requests a second and 5 API keys. Reaching the fair-use pace slows the key until the window resets, and the pace is raised on request for a real workload. Person enrich also returns career history: past roles, education and certifications.

The MCP server at https://api.leadocean.io/mcp signs in with OAuth 2.1 and supports dynamic client registration, so a client can register itself. It exposes 13 tools. count_leads is free, so an agent can size an audience before it spends a record. A miss on POST /v1/people/enrich is a 404 and costs nothing.

Pros

• Agency is $497 a month flat for 1M enrichments a day, with no credit meter and no seat fee.
• REST and MCP on every plan, including Free, with the same 13 tools.
• Free counts, free filter lookups and a free miss on person enrich.
• 200 requests a second on Agency and 10,000 on Platform, so a loop over a large list finishes fast.

Cons

• It is a database you query, refreshed monthly, not a live web fetch.
• 693M people is fewer than the largest indexes listed below.
• A v2 contact lookup that finds nothing still costs one record.
• No rep workspace: no sequences, dialer or CRM. The app has an Exports page, not a sales seat.

Best for: agent builders and engineers who need volume and a fixed bill.

Pricing: Free is 1,000 records for life, no card. Solo is $97 a month, Agency $497 and Platform $1,997 (LeadOcean pricing, October 2026).

2. Crustdata: best for live data and change alerts

Crustdata sells people, company, job and social data through APIs, plus live web endpoints and change watchers. Its homepage claims 1B people (Crustdata, September 2026). A person watcher costs 5 credits per changed person at the 30-day SLA, and up to 150 at 1 day (Crustdata docs, September 2026).

Its hosted MCP server at install.crustdata.com/mcp takes OAuth for interactive clients and an API key as a bearer token for code (Crustdata MCP docs, September 2026). That second path suits a headless agent.

The weak point is the meter. The pricing page lists no plans and no dollar prices (Crustdata pricing, September 2026). Person enrich runs 1 to 7 credits and search is 0.03 credits per result. Default limits are 15 requests a minute on enrich and 30 on search (Crustdata rate limits, September 2026).

Pros

• Live data, job search and change watchers that a static database lacks.
• Hosted MCP server with a bearer-key path for code.
• A lookup with no match on contact enrich is not billed.

Cons

• No public dollar price per credit, so you cannot price 1M from the site.
• The dedicated contact endpoint needs an enterprise plan. Self-serve keys get a 403 (Crustdata contact docs, September 2026).
• Low default rate limits slow a large loop. Batch jobs take up to 10,000 identifiers.

Best for: AI SDR and signal workflows that need fresh data more than raw volume.

Pricing: Credit based. No public plan list or price per credit (Crustdata pricing, September 2026).

3. ZoomInfo (GTM AI): best for pay-as-you-go credits with an official MCP server

ZoomInfo sells agent access through GTM AI, a pay-as-you-go layer with no contract and no seat fee. A free account gets 1,000 data credits and 1,000 AI credits, no card, with MCP, API and CLI access included (GTM AI pricing, September 2026).

Search, lookup and find similar are free. One data credit enriches or exports one company, contact or intent record, and a record is charged once per 12 months (GTM AI docs, September 2026). The official MCP server works with Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and Copilot (GTM AI MCP docs, September 2026).

Rate limits are 5 requests a second on the Builder package, 25 on Standard and 35 on Scaling (GTM AI docs, September 2026). Batch enrichment takes at most 25 records per call (GTM AI docs, September 2026).

Pros

• Free search and lookup, so an agent can scope before it spends credits.
• No seat fee and credits do not expire while the account is active.
• Official MCP server for the main agent clients.

Cons

• The public price slider stops at 100,000 credits for $25,000. Larger volumes go to Enterprise (GTM AI pricing, September 2026).
• Rates fall from $0.45 a credit at 100 credits to $0.25 at 100,000, so small agent runs cost more per record.
• The MCP server needs a GTM AI account or an existing ZoomInfo subscription with data credits.

Best for: teams that want credits they can top up in small amounts and an official MCP server.

Pricing: Pay as you go from $20. $0.45 a credit at 100 credits, $0.25 at 100,000 (GTM AI pricing, September 2026).

4. Apollo: best for reps whose agent also sequences

Apollo runs an official MCP server at mcp.apollo.io/mcp, with OAuth 2.0 or an API key for headless clients. It is also a built-in connector in Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Replit and Cursor. Any plan qualifies, Free included (Apollo MCP docs, September 2026).

The meter is seats plus credits. An email costs 1 credit and a phone number 8. Credits are pooled across the team and expire at the end of each billing cycle (Apollo API pricing, September 2026). Every plan includes API access (Apollo developer FAQ, September 2026).

At volume the seat model bites. Professional gives 4,000 credits per seat a month, so 1M email lookups needs 250 seats. Enrichment allows 1,000 requests a minute on paid plans, and search 200 a minute (Apollo rate limits, September 2026).

Pros

• Official MCP server on every plan, with sign-in and no pasted key.
• The agent can act inside a sales workspace, not only read data.
• High enrichment limit: 1,000 requests a minute on paid plans.

Cons

• Seats and credits both scale, and unused credits do not roll over.
• A phone number costs 8 credits, 8 times an email.
• The price of extra credits is not public, so a cheaper path to 1M cannot be priced (Apollo pricing, September 2026).

Best for: reps who prospect and send from one workspace and want an agent inside it.

Pricing: Free. Basic $65, Professional $99, Organization $149 per seat a month billed monthly. Billed yearly they are $49, $79 and $119 (Apollo pricing, September 2026).

5. BlitzAPI: best for a second flat-price API

BlitzAPI sells people, company, email and phone data on flat monthly plans. It lists 550M+ profiles, 65M+ companies, 65M+ verified work emails and 45M+ US phone numbers (BlitzAPI docs, September 2026).

Start is $99 a month with 10 requests a second per endpoint and 200,000 records a month. Scale is $499 a month with 25 requests a second and 5,000,000 records a month. Build Your Infra starts at $999 a month and is set on a call. Every endpoint, emails and US phones included, is open on every plan (BlitzAPI pricing, October 2026).

Its hosted MCP server at https://api.blitz-api.ai/mcp returns data through 20 tools (8 people, 8 company, 2 job, 2 docs) plus built-in skills. It signs in with OAuth, or with the x-api-key header for clients that cannot sign in (BlitzAPI MCP, October 2026).

Pros

• Flat monthly price, with 5,000,000 records a month on Scale.
• A call that finds nothing counts nothing.
• 1,000 free records to try, no card.

Cons

• Phone numbers are US only.
• An SLA needs the custom plan, and no bulk or CSV export is documented (BlitzAPI docs, September 2026).

Best for: teams that run their own code and want a second flat-price API.

Pricing: Start $99 and Scale $499 a month. Build Your Infra from $999 a month (BlitzAPI pricing, October 2026).

6. Coresignal: best for job postings and raw profile volume

Coresignal sells employee, company and job records on credits. Its homepage claims 907M+ employee records, 70M+ companies and 482M+ job postings (Coresignal, September 2026). Search by filter is free. A multi-source employee record costs 20 credits and a contact enrichment 20 (Coresignal docs, September 2026).

Plans run from Mini at $49 a month for 2,500 credits to Elite at $5,000 for 10,000,000 (Coresignal pricing, September 2026). Contact enrichment starts on Pro. Rate limits rise from 5 requests a second on Free, Mini and Starter to 100 on Scale (Coresignal rate limits, September 2026).

Its MCP server has 5 tools and uses OAuth 2.1. It excludes EEA and UK employees from email lookups (Coresignal MCP docs, September 2026).

Pros

• Free filter search, and job postings at 1 credit each.
• Hosted MCP server with OAuth 2.1.
• Flat-file datasets for your own warehouse, from $1,000 a month.

Cons

• Every record costs credits, and no public plan sits above Elite.
• The employee data dictionaries list no phone field (Coresignal docs, September 2026).
• Email data sits in the multi-source tier, which costs twice the base record.

Best for: teams that need job postings or licensed datasets more than contact data.

Pricing: Mini $49, Starter $199, Pro $499, Growth $1,000 a month and up, billed monthly. Billed yearly the plans are 10% cheaper (Coresignal pricing, September 2026).

7. People Data Labs: best for licensed person datasets

People Data Labs (PDL) is a person and company data API with the largest person dataset on this list. It holds 2,466,510,427 profiles, and 592,376,573 have at least one email (PDL datasets, September 2026).

Pro starts at $98 a month for 350 credits, which is $0.28 each, or $78 a month billed yearly (PDL pricing, September 2026). One credit is used per successful match, and a 404 is not billed (PDL docs, September 2026). Self-serve is meant for volumes below roughly 100,000 profiles. Above that PDL sends buyers to Enterprise (PDL blog, September 2026).

Enrichment allows 1,000 requests a minute on paid plans. Person Search defaults to 10 a minute (PDL usage limits, September 2026). We found no official PDL MCP server in its docs index (PDL llms.txt, September 2026). Only community servers exist.

Pros

• The biggest stated person dataset, and bulk licences for a warehouse.
• Misses are not billed, and enrichment allows 1,000 requests a minute.

Cons

• $0.28 a credit at the entry rate, with no public price at 1M.
• No official MCP server, so an agent needs your own wrapper.
• Search is capped at 10 requests a minute by default.

Best for: teams that license data in bulk and call it from their own code.

Pricing: Free up to 100 credits a month with contact data obscured. Pro from $98 a month, or $940 a year ($78 a month) (PDL pricing, September 2026).

Comparison table

How to choose

• An agent that pulls data at volume: LeadOcean. Flat price, free counts, REST and MCP on every plan.
• Live signals and job changes: Crustdata, if you can get a quote and live with low default limits.
• Small, topped-up credit buys with an official MCP server: ZoomInfo GTM AI.
• An agent inside a sales workspace: Apollo, and count the seats before you scale.
• A second flat-price API for your own code: BlitzAPI, which also has a hosted MCP server that returns data.
• Job postings: Coresignal.
• A licensed dataset in your warehouse: PDL.

Verdict

LeadOcean wins for agents that pull data at volume. Agency is $497 a month flat at 200 requests a second, counts are free, and the MCP server returns records on every plan. Crustdata wins for live signals and ZoomInfo GTM AI for small credit buys with an official server. Apollo wins when the agent works inside a sales workspace, BlitzAPI is the flat-price runner-up for code, Coresignal wins for job postings and PDL for licensed datasets. Start on the free plan and compare the same lookups. If you also need a wider list of options, see best B2B databases and best B2B data providers in the UK.

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