6 Best Candidate Enrichment APIs for Recruiting Platform Builders [2026]

A candidate enrichment API takes one identifier, such as a LinkedIn URL or an email, and returns a structured candidate profile: work history, education, skills and contact details. Recruiting platform builders call it from code to fill a search index, a scoring model or an agent.

Most "best of" lists compare Chrome extensions. This one compares APIs for people who write the integration. Builders leave tools for seven reasons. Career data is thin. Credits have no dollar price. Default rate limits are low. Contact data sits behind a sales call. There is no MCP. The refresh is monthly. The bill cannot be forecast at volume.

We rank six APIs on the same input: 1M candidate lookups a month. Where a vendor publishes no price at that volume, the table says so. Rivals with their own page: Crustdata, People Data Labs, Coresignal, ContactOut and RocketReach.

TL;DR

"1M records" means 1M candidate lookups that return a result, at list price. We use one yardstick, so the cells are comparable.

What we evaluated

• Career depth: past roles with dates, education, certifications and skills, not just a current title and company.
• Contact fields: work email, personal email and phone, and whether they sit behind an enterprise gate.
• Price at volume: flat, credits, seats or quote, and what 1M lookups cost.
• Rate limit and bulk: the default per second or minute, and whether batch calls exist.
• Agent access: whether an agent can call the data through an official hosted MCP server.

1. LeadOcean: best for API, agent and volume builders

LeadOcean holds 693M people, 366M with an email and 166M with a phone number, plus 67M companies. Enrichment is POST /v1/people/enrich. Send exactly one of linkedin_url, email, phone or person_id. Set reveal_email to get the address back.

Since October 2026 the enrich response carries career history in resume_data. It holds past roles (title, company name, dates, job level), education, certifications, awards, publications, memberships, patents and skills, each when held. Past employers carry no company_id yet, so you match them to companies by name. Phones come from GET /v2/people/phone. A candidate we hold nothing for is a free 404.

We ran one real sizing call on 21 October 2026. leadocean_count_leads for the title "Software Engineer" in the US returned 544,159 people with a mailable email (verified, catch_all_valid or catch_all). Without an email condition it matched 1,166,840 people at about 52,538 employers. The call spent no records. That is the shape of a candidate pool you can size before you pay for it.

On price, Free is $0 for 1,000 records for life, with no card and 5 requests a second. Solo is $97 a month. Agency is $497 a month with 1M enrichments a day, 200 requests a second and 5 keys. Platform is $1,997 a month with an embed and resell licence, which is the plan a recruiting product that resells the data needs. The MCP server at https://api.leadocean.io/mcp exposes 13 tools and signs in with OAuth 2.1.

Pros

• Flat monthly price at volume, with no credits and no per-record bill.
• REST and MCP on every plan, including Free.
• Free sizing calls: count a candidate pool before you spend a record.
• Platform plan carries an embed and resell licence.
• Every email carries one of 13 email_status values, so you filter before you send.

Cons

• Past employers have no company_id yet, so chaining to company data needs a name match.
• No name plus domain lookup. Search by domain first, then enrich by person_id.
• The dataset is refreshed monthly, not fetched live per call.
• No ATS, Chrome extension, sequencer or CRM.

Best for: builders who pull candidates through an API or an agent and want a fixed bill. Pricing: Free, Solo $97, Agency $497, Platform $1,997 a month (LeadOcean pricing, October 2026).

2. People Data Labs: best for licensed profiles at the largest scale

People Data Labs is the biggest dataset in this list. Its full person dataset holds 2,466,510,427 profiles. 592,376,573 have at least one email and 470,338,967 have a mobile phone (PDL datasets, September 2026). A resume dataset keyed by LinkedIn URL covers 815,552,710 profiles.

You pay per match. One credit is used per successful match, and a 404 is not billed. Bulk enrichment takes up to 100 persons per request, and paying plans get 1,000 person enrichment requests a minute. Person search is limited to 10 requests a minute by default (PDL usage limits, September 2026).

Scale is where PDL stops being self-serve. Pro is meant for fewer than about 100,000 profiles, and above that PDL sends buyers to Enterprise. There is no official PDL MCP server in its docs, llms.txt or GitHub organization. Only community servers exist.

Pros

• Largest person dataset here, with a resume dataset for career data.
• Pay only for matches. Misses cost nothing.
• 1,000 enrichment requests a minute on paid plans.
• Free tier of 100 credits a month to test the schema.

Cons

• No public price at 1M. Above roughly 100,000 profiles you negotiate.
• Contact data is obscured on the Free plan.
• No official MCP server.
• Search is 10 requests a minute by default.

Best for: teams that want licensed profile data and will sign an Enterprise contract at scale. Pricing: Free $0 for up to 100 credits a month. Pro from $98 a month for 350 credits, $78 a month billed yearly. Enterprise is custom (PDL pricing, September 2026).

3. Coresignal: best for deep employee records and history

Coresignal sells employee records as a data product with three tiers: Base, Clean and Multi-source. Its homepage claims 907M+ employee records, 70M+ company records and 482M+ job postings (Coresignal, September 2026). The Multi-source Employee API documents a professional email field with a four-value status. Neither data dictionary lists a phone field.

Credits drive the price. A Base or Clean employee record costs 10 credits, a Multi-source record 20, and contact enrichment 20. Search by filter is free. Plans run from Mini at $49 a month for 2,500 credits up to Elite at $5,000 a month for 10,000,000 credits. Contact enrichment is included from Pro upward (Coresignal pricing, September 2026).

The rate limit climbs with the plan: 5 requests a second up to Starter, 10 on Pro, 20 on Growth, 50 on Premium and 100 on Scale. The MCP server has 5 tools and uses OAuth 2.1.

Pros

• Three record tiers, so you pay for the depth you need.
• Free search by filter before you fetch records.
• Official MCP server with 5 tools.
• Bulk Collect takes up to 10,000 records per request.

Cons

• No public 1M price. 1M contact lookups is 20,000,000 credits, more than any single public plan holds.
• No phone field in the data dictionaries we read.
• Credit math changes by record tier and endpoint.
• Free trial lasts 7 days and credits do not carry to a paid plan.

Best for: platforms that need deep employee records and will model credits per endpoint. Pricing: Mini $49, Starter $199, Pro $499, Growth $1,000, Premium $1,500, Scale $3,000, Elite $5,000 a month (Coresignal pricing, September 2026). Yearly billing is 10% off.

4. Crustdata: best for live lookups and change alerts

Crustdata is an API-first platform with its own people, company, job and post data. Its homepage claims 1B people. It also offers live endpoints and watchers that alert you when a tracked person changes, at 5 credits per changed person on the 30-day schedule (Crustdata docs, September 2026).

The pricing is the catch. The docs list credits per call: search is 0.03 credits a result, person enrich is 1 to 7, and contact enrich is 1 to 5.5. They state no dollar price per credit and tell you to check your dashboard. A work-email lookup is 2 credits on /person/enrich, so 1M lookups is 2,000,000 credits. The dollar total is not public.

Contact enrichment needs an enterprise plan, and self-serve keys get a 403. Default limits are 15 requests a minute on person enrich and 30 on search. A hosted MCP server exists at https://install.crustdata.com/mcp.

Pros

• Live endpoints and person watchers for job-change signals.
• Batch person enrich takes up to 10,000 identifiers a job.
• Hosted MCP server with OAuth.
• Free company identify and autocomplete.

Cons

• No public dollar price per credit and no plan list.
• Contact enrich is enterprise only.
• Low default rate limits: 15 a minute on person enrich.
• A blog post and the docs disagree on credit expiry (6 months versus 12).

Best for: teams that need job-change alerts and live data and will negotiate a quote. Pricing: no public list. A Crustdata blog post reports a lowest tier from $95 a month (Crustdata blog, September 2026); the pricing page lists none (Crustdata pricing, September 2026).

5. ContactOut: best for recruiter contact data from profiles

ContactOut is a recruiter and sales tool first, and an API second. The self-serve plans are priced for people in a browser: Email at $49 a month ($39 billed yearly) and Email + Phone at $99 a month ($79 billed yearly). Every self-serve plan lists a one-user-per-company limit (ContactOut pricing, September 2026).

The API sits behind a sales meeting. The Team / API plan shows Contact Us with no price, and API keys come from booking a call. The docs state credit use, 1 email credit if an email is found and 1 phone credit if a phone is found, but no dollar price per credit. Paid "unlimited" plans follow a fair use cap of 2,000 email credits and 1,000 phone credits per account per month (ContactOut terms, September 2026).

API limits are 60 requests a minute on People Search and 1,000 a minute on most other endpoints. The MCP page shows 15 tools.

Pros

• Strong on contact data: emails and phones for recruiters.
• MCP integration with 15 tools.
• Cheap seat plans for a single recruiter.
• Free tier of 5 emails, 5 phones and 5 exports a day.

Cons

• API access needs a sales meeting and has no public price.
• Self-serve plans cap at one user per company and 2,000 emails a month.
• Coverage numbers differ by page: 350M, 600M+ and 800M profiles.
• Refund and credit terms sit in a non-public agreement.

Best for: recruiters who want contact data in a browser, and teams that accept a sales-led API. Pricing: Free; Email $49 and Email + Phone $99 a month, or $39 and $79 billed yearly (ContactOut pricing, September 2026).

6. RocketReach: best for contact lookups with a clear credit table

RocketReach publishes its Universal Credit costs clearly. Person enrichment is 1 credit, professional email 2, personal email 3 and phone 6. One export in the app equals one API credit, and no credit is charged when no data is found (RocketReach credits, September 2026).

It prices by plan and lookup cap. Monthly person lookup caps are 5,000 on Essentials, 20,000 on Pro, 50,000 on Ultimate and 200,000 on Custom. The global limit is 10 requests a second (RocketReach rate limits, September 2026). The docs publish no dollar price per credit. The MCP server at mcp.rocketreach.co/mcp has 9 tools.

Its own pricing page showed a bot check when we checked, so the plan prices below come from G2, which copies them from RocketReach.

Pros

• Clear credit table by action.
• Re-lookups of the same profile are free while the plan is active.
• Official MCP server with 9 tools and OAuth 2.1.
• Misses cost nothing.

Cons

• Highest published lookup cap is 200,000 a month, short of 1M.
• No dollar price per API credit.
• 10 requests a second is the global limit.
• Pricing page unreadable to us, so prices are second-hand.

Best for: teams that want a simple credit table and a modest monthly lookup volume. Pricing: Essentials $69, Pro $119 and Ultimate $209 a month on monthly billing, as reported by G2 (G2, September 2026).

Comparison table

How to choose

• You embed candidate data in a product and want a fixed bill: LeadOcean. Platform has an embed and resell licence, and Agency is flat.
• You need an agent to call the data: LeadOcean, Coresignal, Crustdata, ContactOut or RocketReach all run an official MCP server. PDL does not.
• You want the largest licensed dataset and have an Enterprise budget: People Data Labs.
• You need deep employee records and can model credits: Coresignal.
• You need job-change alerts or live lookups: Crustdata. Budget for a quote.
• You are one recruiter who wants emails from profiles: ContactOut.
• Your volume is a few thousand lookups a month: RocketReach or a PDL Pro plan.

Read what data a candidate enrichment API should return before you pick. For company fields on the employer side, see the company enrichment API guide. For contact-only lookups, see the best contact enrichment APIs. Plan details are on /pricing.

Verdict

LeadOcean wins for builders who call an API or an agent at volume. $497 a month flat covers 1M enrichments, and resume_data gives you roles, education and skills in one call. People Data Labs wins on raw dataset size if you will sign Enterprise. Coresignal wins on depth of employee records. Crustdata wins when you need live data and change alerts. ContactOut wins for a single recruiter in a browser. RocketReach wins for small volumes with a clear credit table. We ran no live match-rate test, so we quote none. Run your own 100 candidates through two APIs before you commit.

FAQ