6 Best Free B2B Data Sources in 2026

A free B2B data source lets you pull real person or company records without paying, through a free plan or a one-off allowance. Developers, RevOps teams and agent builders use them to test a data source before they commit budget. Most free plans are small, and the gap between a free sample and a paid volume plan is where the surprises are.

Apollo, Hunter and Lusha give you a few dozen credits a month. People Data Labs hides contact data on its free tier. LeadOcean gives you 1,000 records for life with every feature switched on. We compared six sources on what the free plan buys, how you reach it (API, MCP, app) and what 1M records cost once you outgrow it. If you are leaving one of them, read the matching page: Apollo, Hunter, Prospeo, People Data Labs or Lusha.

TL;DR

Prices are list prices in USD, checked September 2026. Monthly billing comes first, the billed-yearly figure second.

What we evaluated

We asked every tool the same question: what do the free plan's credits buy in work emails and mobile numbers, and how can you reach them? The arithmetic below uses each vendor's published credit costs. It is not a lab test of find rates.

• Free allowance: how many records, whether they repeat every month or are spent once, and whether contact data is hidden.
• API and MCP access on the free plan: can a script or an agent call it before you pay.
• Rate limit: requests allowed on the free plan, and whether a limit is per second, minute or day.
• Phone cost: how many credits one mobile number takes compared with one email.
• Cost at 1M records: the published list price for a million lookups, or "No public 1M price" when none exists.

1. LeadOcean: best for API and agent builders

LeadOcean is a people and company data API with a hosted MCP server. The database holds 693M people, 366M with an email and 166M with a phone, plus 67M companies. The free plan is the whole product: every feature, the whole database, 1,000 records, no card.

The 1,000 records are spent once, not every month. A search returns one record per person. An enrichment that finds nothing, a count and a filter lookup cost nothing, so you can size a list before you spend a record. Revealing an email costs no extra record, and a phone lookup is one record.

You reach it three ways. Call the REST API with an x-api-key header. Connect the MCP server at https://api.leadocean.io/mcp (OAuth sign-in, 13 tools). Or use the account app at app.leadocean.io, which has an Exports page with a filter builder and a price preview.

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/janedoe", "reveal_email": true}'

Pros

• 1,000 records on the free plan with every feature, including search, enrich and MCP.
• No credits on paid plans. Agency is $497 a month with a fair-use pace, and it covers 1M records.
• Free sizing calls: company counts, filter lists and empty enrichments cost nothing.
• 13 MCP tools, so an agent can search, count, enrich and export without a key pasted into a prompt.

Cons

• The free allowance is one-off. A tool with a monthly reset gives you more over a year if you only need a handful of lookups.
• The free rate limit is 5 requests a second.
• Bulk CSV export is not on Free. It starts on Solo.
• There is no sequencer, dialer, CRM or Chrome extension. It is data, not a rep workspace.

Best for: developers, data teams and agent builders who need a large database through an API or MCP. Pricing: Free $0, Solo $97 a month, Agency $497 a month, Platform $1,997 a month (LeadOcean pricing, October 2026).

2. Apollo: best for reps who want a free app

Apollo is a prospecting app with a large contact database, sequences and a dialer. The Free plan gives 75 credits a month. An email costs 1 credit and a phone number costs 8, so the free month buys 75 emails or nine mobile numbers (Apollo credit costs, September 2026).

Apollo lets you use its API and its official MCP server on the Free plan. The MCP server at https://mcp.apollo.io/mcp uses OAuth and spends the same credits (Apollo MCP docs, September 2026). Rate limits on Free are 50 requests a minute, 200 an hour and 600 a day (Apollo rate limits, September 2026).

Credits are pooled per team and expire at the end of each billing cycle. At volume the price is per seat, so 1M email lookups need about 250 Professional seats on monthly billing (Apollo pricing, September 2026).

Pros

• A recurring free plan: 75 credits every month, 900 over a year.
• API and MCP are both open on Free.
• A full rep workspace around the data: sequences, a dialer and a Chrome extension.
• Searching and pulling a list stays inside one app.

Cons

• A phone number takes 8 credits, so the free plan yields nine mobiles a month.
• Credits expire each cycle and do not roll over.
• The Free rate limit is 600 requests a day.
• At 1M records the seat math reaches $24,750 a month at list price.

Best for: individual sales reps and small teams who want data and outreach in one app. Pricing: Free $0, Basic $65 a seat a month ($49 billed yearly), Professional $99 ($79 billed yearly), Organization $149 ($119 billed yearly, 3 seats minimum) (Apollo pricing, September 2026).

3. Hunter: best for email lookups by domain

Hunter is an email finder. You give it a domain, or a name and a domain, and it returns addresses. The Free plan has 50 credits a month, and one credit buys one email found. Nothing is charged when nothing is found (Hunter credits, September 2026).

Hunter has an official remote MCP server at https://mcp.hunter.io/mcp, included in every plan, with the API key in a header (Hunter MCP, September 2026). Rate limits are per endpoint: 15 requests a second and 500 a minute for Domain Search and Email Finder (Hunter API docs, September 2026). A rate-limited call returns 403, and 429 means you ran out of credits.

Hunter is the cheapest of the credit vendors at 1M. The Data Platform sells 1,000,000 Search credits for $6,900, bought once and valid 12 months (Hunter Data Platform, September 2026). It is priced per email found.

Pros

• Clear credit rules: 1 credit per email found, none for a miss.
• Official MCP server on every plan.
• Fast per-endpoint limits for an email finder.
• The cheapest published 1M price of the credit-based tools.

Cons

• Only 50 credits a month on Free, 600 over a year.
• It is an email index. You look up a domain; you do not build a list by title or seniority.
• Credits are priced per email, so it is a poor fit for phone-heavy lists.
• Free credits do not carry over on monthly plans.

Best for: teams that already know the domains and only need verified emails. Pricing: Free $0, Starter $49 a month ($34 billed yearly), Growth $149 ($104), Scale $299 ($209) (Hunter pricing, September 2026).

4. Prospeo: best for verified emails and mobiles on a budget

Prospeo sells verified emails and mobile numbers by credit. The Free plan has 100 credits a month. A verified email costs 1 credit and a mobile costs 10 with the email included, so the free month buys 100 emails or ten mobiles (Prospeo credits, September 2026).

Plan on paying for Prospeo's API. Its pricing table lists the Enrich and Search API rate limits as "No access" on Free, with API enrichment from Starter up (Prospeo pricing, October 2026).

Prospeo's hosted MCP server has 8 tools. It takes OAuth or an API key (Prospeo MCP, September 2026).

No single plan reaches 1M. The cheapest published path is 44 Pro seats plus the 350,000-credit add-on, $14,456 a month on monthly billing (Prospeo pricing, September 2026).

Pros

• 100 free credits a month, the highest recurring free allowance among the email vendors here.
• A free search request that returns no result costs 0 credits.
• Re-enriching the same record inside 90 days is free.
• MCP server with OAuth.

Cons

• A mobile is 10 credits, so the free plan yields ten.
• Credits and add-ons expire each cycle.
• The pricing table lists no API access on Free.
• 1M records need many seats plus an add-on.

Best for: small teams that need verified emails and some mobiles at a low monthly price. Pricing: Free $0, Starter $49 a user a month ($37 billed yearly), Growth $99 ($74), Pro $249 ($187) (Prospeo pricing, September 2026).

5. People Data Labs: best for developers building on profiles

People Data Labs is a person and company data API with no consumer app. The person dataset holds 2,466,510,427 profiles, and 592M of them have at least one email (PDL datasets, September 2026). The Free plan gives up to 100 credits a month with contact data obscured (PDL pricing, September 2026).

That makes the free plan a way to test profile fields, not to collect emails. One credit is used per successful match, and a 404 is not billed. Free Person Enrichment allows 100 requests a minute and Person Search 10 a minute (PDL usage limits, September 2026).

PDL has no official MCP server in its docs, llms.txt or GitHub organization as of September 2026 (PDL llms.txt, September 2026). Self-serve plans are meant for volumes below roughly 100,000 profiles, and above that PDL quotes Enterprise only (PDL, September 2026).

Pros

• A very large profile dataset with a clean developer API.
• 100 free credits a month, 1,200 over a year.
• Misses are not billed.
• Docs that list rate limits per endpoint.

Cons

• Contact data is obscured on Free, so you cannot test email or phone there.
• No official MCP server.
• Person Search is limited to 10 requests a minute by default.
• No public price at 1M.

Best for: engineering teams building a product on person profiles who can talk to sales at volume. Pricing: Free $0, Pro from $98 a month for 350 credits ($940 a year, about $78 a month, billed yearly) (PDL pricing, September 2026).

6. Lusha: best for quick phone numbers for one rep

Lusha is a contact lookup tool with a browser extension and an API. The Free plan is $0 for 40 credits a month, one seat, no card. An email costs 1 credit and a phone costs 5, so the free month buys 40 emails or eight phones (Lusha API guide, September 2026).

Every user gets an API key on every plan, Free included. The Free rate limit is 40 requests a minute and 100 a day (Lusha API guide, September 2026). The MCP server has 50 tools and shares the REST credit pool (Lusha MCP tools, September 2026).

The largest public tier is Premium at 10,000 credits a month. That is far below 1M, and Lusha publishes no price above it (Lusha pricing, September 2026).

Pros

• Phone numbers cost 5 credits, the cheapest mobile price on this list apart from LeadOcean.
• An API key and an MCP server on the free plan.
• A browser extension for one-off lookups.
• Clear published tiers up to Premium.

Cons

• Only 40 credits a month, 480 over a year, the smallest recurring allowance here.
• The Free API limit is 100 requests a day.
• No public price at 1M records.
• The top public tier, Premium, holds 10,000 credits a month.

Best for: a single rep who needs a few phone numbers a month. Pricing: Free $0, Starter $49.90 a month ($37.45 billed yearly), Pro $69.90 ($52.45), Premium $399.90 ($299.95) (Lusha pricing, September 2026).

Comparison table

How to choose

• You build with an API or an agent: start with LeadOcean. It has the largest free allowance with every feature on, an MCP server and a flat paid price.
• You are a rep who wants data and outreach in one place: Apollo's free plan covers both, if 75 credits a month is enough.
• You only need emails for known domains: Hunter is the simplest, and it has the lowest published 1M price of the credit tools.
• You want a recurring free allowance and mobile numbers: Prospeo's 100 credits a month is the largest of the email-and-phone tools here. Its API starts on Starter.
• You are building a product on person profiles: use People Data Labs for the schema, and expect to talk to sales past 100,000 profiles.
• You need a handful of mobiles a month: Lusha's 5-credit phone is cheap, but 40 credits goes fast.

Verdict

LeadOcean wins for anyone who pulls data through an API, an agent or at volume, because the free plan carries every feature and the paid plan has no credits. Apollo wins for a rep who wants a free prospecting app. Hunter wins for email-only lookups at a known-domain scale. Prospeo wins for the biggest monthly free allowance with phones. People Data Labs wins for product teams that need profile depth. Lusha wins for one rep with a few phone lookups a month.

Free allowances are small on purpose. Use them to test fit, then price the plan you would actually buy at your volume.

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