7 Best LinkedIn Scrapers to Use in 2026 (Compared)

A LinkedIn scraper is a tool that turns LinkedIn profiles, searches or companies into structured data you can use. Some run a browser on your own account. Others sell profile data through an API. Sales teams, recruiters and data engineers all use them.

The catch is the first kind. LinkedIn's user agreement forbids crawlers, plugins and scripts that copy profiles from the service (LinkedIn user agreement, October 2026). Account-based tools also stop at daily caps and break when the page changes. This is not legal advice.

So the list below mixes both kinds and says which is which. Seven tools, ranked for people who pull data in code, through an agent or at volume. If you came from a data vendor, see our Coresignal and Crustdata alternatives pages.

TL;DR

Prices are monthly list prices in USD, checked September and October 2026. Billed-yearly figures follow where a vendor shows them.

What we evaluated

• Data source: whether it scrapes live through your account, or serves stored data over an API.
• API and MCP: what you can call from code or from an agent, and how it signs in.
• Rate limits and caps: requests a second, daily export caps and slots.
• Cost at 1M records a month: list price only. Where there is no public 1M price, we say so and never multiply a rate out.
• Account risk: whether your own LinkedIn login is in the loop.

What we ran: one free LeadOcean count on 21 October 2026, shown below. We read every other vendor's pricing page and docs in September and October 2026. We did not scrape a profile with any competitor, so we quote no match rates or accuracy numbers.

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

LeadOcean does not scrape. It is a stored people and company database with 693M people and 67M companies, reached over REST and a hosted MCP server. You look a person up by LinkedIn URL, email, phone or person ID with POST /v1/people/enrich, or build a list with POST /v1/people/search.

Here is the test we ran. We asked how many US sales VPs sit in the database, using a free count. Filters: jobLevel VP, jobFunction Sales & Business Development, country US. The count on 21 October 2026 was 350,517 people, of which 129,494 had a verified or catch-all email. Counts cost nothing and spend no records.

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}'

Enrichment returns career history too: past roles, education, certifications and awards. Past employers have no company ID yet. One search pages to 10,000 rows, so narrow the filters rather than walking the index.

Pros

• Flat price: Agency is $497 a month with no credits and no overage invoice.
• No LinkedIn login, no browser, no session to expire.
• 13 MCP tools with OAuth 2.1, including a free leadocean_count_leads.
• 366M people with an email and 166M with a phone.

Cons

• It is a database, not a live scraper. It returns no LinkedIn posts, comments or reactions.
• No sequencer, dialer, CRM or Chrome extension. The app has an Exports page for CSV.
• Bulk CSV export is not on Free.
• Data refreshes monthly, so a profile edited yesterday may not show yet.

Best for: engineers, agents and agencies that need profiles and contacts at volume.

Pricing: Free is $0 for 1,000 records, one-off, no card. Solo is $97, Agency $497 and Platform $1,997 a month. Rate limits are 5, 50, 200 and 10,000 requests a second (LeadOcean pricing, October 2026).

2. Coresignal: best for raw LinkedIn-sourced profile and job data

Coresignal sells large stored datasets over an API. Its homepage claims 907M+ employee records, 70M+ company records and 482M+ job postings (Coresignal, September 2026). You search or fetch records and pay in credits.

A Base or Clean employee record costs 10 credits. A Multi-source record costs 20, and a contact enrichment call costs 20 (Coresignal docs, September 2026). The biggest public plan, Elite, is 10,000,000 credits at $5,000 a month. That covers 500,000 email lookups, and Coresignal publishes no price at 1M.

The hosted MCP server has 5 tools and signs in with OAuth 2.1. It leaves EEA and UK employees out of email lookups (Coresignal MCP docs, September 2026).

Pros

• Very large employee and job datasets, with company data delivered daily.
• Public plan ladder from $49 to $5,000 a month, so you can plan a budget.
• Rate limit rises with the plan, to 100 or more requests a second on Elite.

Cons

• Credits, not a flat fee. Contact enrichment is 20 credits a call.
• Contact enrichment starts on Pro and is not on Mini or Starter.
• Free trial is 2,000 credits for 7 days.

Best for: data teams that want raw profile and job records to model on.

Pricing: Mini $49 (2,500 credits), Starter $199, Pro $499, Growth $1,000, Premium $1,500, Scale $3,000, Elite $5,000. Billed yearly takes 10% off (Coresignal pricing, September 2026).

3. Crustdata: best for live profile data and change alerts

Crustdata sells person and company data by API, with live endpoints and watchers that alert you when a profile changes. Its homepage claims 1B people (Crustdata, September 2026).

The pricing page lists no plan names, no dollar prices and no price per credit. Search is 0.03 credits a result. Person enrich is 1 to 7 credits, and a work email adds 1 (Crustdata docs, September 2026). That makes 1M work-email lookups 2,000,000 credits on /person/enrich. There is no public dollar price for that.

The hosted MCP server is at https://install.crustdata.com/mcp, with OAuth for interactive clients and a bearer key for code.

Pros

• Watchers track job changes, at 5 credits per changed person on a 30-day schedule.
• Hosted MCP server with OAuth.
• Misses on contact enrich are not billed.

Cons

• No public dollar price. You find your cost in the dashboard or from sales.
• Default limits are low: 15 requests a minute on person enrich, 30 on search.
• Contact enrich needs an enterprise plan. Self-serve keys get a 403.
• Credits expire 12 months after purchase.

Best for: teams that need fresh data and job-change signals, and can negotiate.

Pricing: No public plan price (Crustdata pricing, September 2026).

4. PhantomBuster: best for automating actions on your own account

PhantomBuster is the classic scraper. It runs automations through your own LinkedIn login and returns the result as a file or over its API. It does not sell a database. Its pricing FAQ says it provides no pre-built lists (PhantomBuster pricing, October 2026).

Plans meter slots and execution hours, not records. Start has 5 slots and 20 hours a month. Scale has 50 slots and 300 hours. Email lookups use separate email credits. PhantomBuster publishes no records-per-hour rate, so 1M records cannot be priced from public data.

The API controls agents and reads their output. The MCP server is at https://mcp.phantombuster.com (PhantomBuster MCP docs, September 2026). The API page states no rate limit.

Pros

• Automates more than scraping: searches, connection steps and exports.
• Unlimited users on every plan, so headcount does not raise the bill.
• MCP server on every plan, including the trial.

Cons

• Runs through your own login, so LinkedIn limits and restrictions apply to you.
• Hours and slots cap the work. Automations pause when hours run out.
• Trial exports stop at 10 rows.
• No rate limit published for the API.

Best for: a rep or founder who wants LinkedIn actions automated on a schedule.

Pricing: Billed yearly, Start is $56 a month ($672 a year), Grow $128 ($1,536) and Scale $352 ($4,224). The page says yearly billing saves 20% (PhantomBuster pricing, October 2026).

5. Evaboot: best for exporting Sales Navigator searches

Evaboot turns a LinkedIn Sales Navigator search into a clean file with emails attached. It exports the results of your own searches, so you need a Sales Navigator seat. Core starts at US$119.99 a month (LinkedIn, October 2026).

One lead exported is one credit, email included, even when no email is found. The plans are 100 credits for $9, 400 for $29 and 1,000 for $49 a month (Evaboot pricing, October 2026). Anything bigger is Enterprise.

Exports are capped at 2,500 leads per 24 hours per Sales Navigator account, and buying credits does not lift it (Evaboot help, October 2026). At 1M records that is 400 seat-days, or 14 seats over 30 days. API and a hosted MCP server at https://mcp.evaboot.com/mcp come on every plan.

Pros

• Cleans a Sales Navigator export and adds emails in one step.
• Cheap entry: $9 a month.
• API and MCP on every plan.

Cons

• Needs a Sales Navigator seat on top of the credits.
• A lead with no email still costs a credit.
• No phone numbers.
• Volume turns into a seat count because of the daily cap.

Best for: teams whose lists already live in Sales Navigator.

Pricing: Starter $9, Grow $29 and Scale $49 a month for 100, 400 and 1,000 credits. Enterprise is custom (Evaboot pricing, October 2026).

6. Reverse Contact (ScrapIn): best for profile lookup by LinkedIn URL

ScrapIn joined Reverse Contact in March 2026. The live plans sit on Reverse Contact's page (ScrapIn blog, March 2026). You send a LinkedIn URL, an email or a domain and get a profile back.

Go is $249 a month for unlimited URL checks and fetches from the cache. Plus is $449 and Max is $699. Credit packs start at $100. On packs a cached fetch is 1 credit, and a live refresh is 2 on every plan. A business email is 3 credits and a direct phone is 20, charged only when found (Reverse Contact pricing, October 2026).

The base rate limit is 100 or more requests a minute. At 100 a minute, 1M calls take about 6.9 days. Every option includes API, MCP and CLI.

Pros

• Simple input: a LinkedIn URL in, a profile out.
• Emails and phones are charged only when found.
• Unlimited cached fetches on Go for a flat $249.

Cons

• Phones cost 20 credits each.
• Low default rate limit.
• Packs expire after 3 months.
• Older ScrapIn docs are no longer maintained, and older endpoints are being retired.

Best for: product teams resolving LinkedIn URLs into profiles.

Pricing: Go $249, Plus $449, Max $699 a month. Packs from $100 (Reverse Contact pricing, October 2026).

7. Apify: best for developers who write or rent their own scrapers

Apify is a marketplace of ready-made scrapers called Actors, plus a platform to run your own. LinkedIn Actors on it are third-party, and each sets its own price and rules. Treat each one as its own tool.

Platform plans carry prepaid usage. Free is $0 with $5 of usage. Starter is $19 a month, Scale is $199 and Business is $999. Compute is $0.2 per unit on Free and Starter, $0.16 on Scale and $0.13 on Business (Apify pricing, October 2026).

The REST API has a global limit of 250,000 requests a minute and a default 60 requests a second per resource (Apify API docs, September 2026). The hosted MCP server at https://mcp.apify.com lets an agent find and run Actors.

Pros

• Write your own scraper in JavaScript or Python, or rent one.
• Schedules, datasets and an API for every run.
• Hosted MCP server with OAuth.

Cons

• It returns what a page shows. Emails and phones need another step.
• Cost depends on the Actor and run time, so do a test run first.
• LinkedIn's terms still apply to what you scrape.

Best for: developers who want to keep scraping and own the code.

Pricing: Free $0, Starter $19, Scale $199, Business $999 a month, plus pay as you go (Apify pricing, October 2026).

Comparison table

The 1M column uses published plan prices only. Where a vendor publishes no price at 1M, we do not multiply a rate out. Vendors change plans often, so confirm on the pricing page before you buy.

How to choose

• You pull profiles in code or from an agent, at volume: LeadOcean. One flat price, REST and MCP on every plan.
• You want a big raw dataset to model on: Coresignal, if you can budget in credits.
• You need alerts when people change jobs: Crustdata, and expect a sales call.
• You want LinkedIn actions automated on your own account: PhantomBuster. Accept the account risk.
• Your lists live in Sales Navigator: Evaboot, with a seat per rep.
• You hold LinkedIn URLs and want profiles back: Reverse Contact.
• You want to write or rent scrapers: Apify.

Verdict

LeadOcean wins for API, agent and volume buyers because it has no login, no session and no cap that turns volume into a seat count. Coresignal wins for raw datasets and Crustdata for live signals. PhantomBuster wins for account automation and Evaboot for Sales Navigator exports. Reverse Contact wins for URL-to-profile lookups, and Apify for developers who want to own the scraper. If you need live posts or comments, none of the database tools cover that, so pick a scraper.

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