7 best people search APIs in 2026

A people search API lets code or an agent find professionals by title, company, location and seniority, then pull contact data for the matches. The best one for you is the one whose bill and rate limit still work at your volume. Teams leave a tool for one of three reasons. A credit meter grows with every search, a rate limit queues a batch job, or there is no way to plug it into an agent.

We compared seven on public docs and pricing pages, including Crustdata, People Data Labs, Coresignal, Apollo, ZoomInfo and RocketReach. We built LeadOcean, so we rank it with the reasons and its limits stated. See pricing for ours, and the detailed people data API analysis for a longer read.

TL;DR

The 1M column assumes 1,000,000 work-email lookups in one month. Where a vendor publishes no tier that covers it, we say so and do not multiply a rate out.

What we evaluated

We scored every tool on the same five questions, all answerable from public docs.

• Search filters: can you search by title, level, function, country, industry and headcount, and how many results come back per page?
• Price at volume: what does the list price give you at 1M records a month, and is any of it hidden behind a sales call?
• Rate limit: how many requests can one key make, per second or per minute, before it gets a 429?
• Agent support: is there an official hosted MCP server, and what does a call cost?
• Contact data: does a search result lead to an email and a phone, and does it carry a status you can filter on?

To test any of them the same way, send one query: VPs of Sales in the US, then enrich one result. A free count call shows how big the pool is before you spend anything. This is how it looks on LeadOcean.

curl "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/search?jobLevel=VP&jobFunction=Sales%20%26%20Business%20Development&country=US&limit=1&count=true" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY"

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

LeadOcean is one people and company database of 693M people and 67M companies behind REST and a hosted MCP server. Search is GET|POST /v1/people/search with 50 people filters and 34 company filters. Pages return 1 to 100 rows, and one search pages to 10,000 rows.

Paid plans have a fair-use pace instead of credits. Agency allows 1M enrichments a day and 25M search records a month, both raisable. The rate limit is per plan: 5 requests a second on Free, 50 on Solo, 200 on Agency and 10,000 on Platform.

The MCP server has 13 tools on every plan, including Free, and leadocean_count_leads and leadocean_count_companies are free. Email status comes back on every record with 13 values. The data refreshes monthly, and each record carries its own fetched_at date.

Pros

• Flat price: $497 a month covers 1M enrichments, with no per-record meter or overage invoice.
• 200 requests a second per account on Agency, against per-minute limits on most rivals.
• Free count calls size a list before you spend a record.
• Hosted MCP server with OAuth sign-in, so no key is pasted into a chat.
• 5 keys on Agency, so a pipeline and an agent do not share one.

Cons

• Not live. The dataset refreshes monthly, so use a live-lookup tool if you need today's job change.
• No rep workspace, sequencer, dialer, CRM or Chrome extension. It is a data API and an Exports page, not a sales tool.
• No name plus domain lookup. Search by domain first, then enrich by person_id.
• Bulk CSV export is not on Free.

Best for: engineers, agencies and RevOps teams who pull people data through code or an agent. See the people data API. Pricing: Free $0 for 1,000 records for life, Solo $97, Agency $497, Platform $1,997 a month (LeadOcean pricing, October 2026).

2. Crustdata: best for live, fresh people lookups

Crustdata sells people and company search with live endpoints for fresher answers. Search costs 0.03 credits per result, and person enrich costs 1 to 7 credits depending on whether you add a business email, personal email or phone (Crustdata docs, September 2026).

The pricing page lists no plan names and no dollar price per credit. Dollar value depends on your plan, so you confirm cost in the dashboard. Its contact-enrich endpoint, the cheaper route to a work email, needs an enterprise plan.

Default limits are per minute: 30 on search and 15 on person enrich (Crustdata docs, September 2026). A hosted MCP server exists at install.crustdata.com/mcp (Crustdata docs, September 2026). See the Crustdata alternative page for a full comparison.

Pros

• Live endpoints for freshness-sensitive work such as recruiting and signals.
• Official hosted MCP server with OAuth and API-key access.
• Cheap search at 0.03 credits a result.
• Batch person enrich takes up to 10,000 identifiers a job.

Cons

• No public dollar price, so you cannot cost a 1M run without a quote.
• Contact enrich is enterprise only, and self-serve keys get a 403.
• Per-minute rate limits slow large pulls.
• Purchased credits expire, 12 months per the docs.

Best for: teams that need fresh people data and will negotiate a contract. Pricing: No public price. A Crustdata blog post reports a lowest tier of $95 a month, which the pricing page does not list (Crustdata pricing, September 2026).

3. People Data Labs: best for dataset depth and schema

People Data Labs (PDL) is the large, well-documented option. Its full person dataset holds 2,466,510,427 profiles, and 592,376,573 of them have at least one email (PDL docs, September 2026). You can query any field in the person schema, 1 to 100 results per page (PDL docs, September 2026).

One credit is used per profile returned, and a 404 costs nothing. Pro starts at $98 a month for 350 credits, which is $0.28 a credit. Self-serve is meant for volumes below about 100,000 profiles a year, and above that PDL quotes Enterprise.

Person Search defaults to 10 requests a minute, while paid enrichment allows 1,000 a minute (PDL docs, September 2026). PDL has no official MCP server, only community ones. Read the People Data Labs alternative page before you commit at volume.

Pros

• Largest public dataset in this list, with a deep person schema.
• Search any field, with bulk enrichment of 100 people per request.
• Whole datasets can be licensed as files for your own warehouse.
• Free plan of 100 credits a month with contact data obscured.

Cons

• Search is 10 requests a minute by default, so a search-heavy job queues.
• A search costs one credit per profile returned, so exploring is not free.
• No official MCP server.
• No public price at 1M. The self-serve ceiling is near 100,000 profiles.

Best for: data teams that build on a large schema or license files. Pricing: Free $0 for 100 credits a month. Pro from $98 a month, or $940 a year (PDL pricing, September 2026).

4. Coresignal: best for employee history and job data

Coresignal sells employee, company and job-posting data. Its homepage claims 907M+ employee records, 70M+ company records and 482M+ job postings (Coresignal, September 2026). It fits market-mapping and workforce analysis better than rep prospecting.

Pricing is credits. A Base or Clean record costs 10 credits, a Multi-source record 20, and contact enrichment 20. 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). Search preview returns up to 20 records per call and 1,000 across 50 pages.

Rate limits are per second: 5 on Free, Mini and Starter, 10 on Pro, up to 100 on Scale (Coresignal docs, September 2026). The MCP server has 5 tools, and email_enrich costs 20 credits per email found (Coresignal docs, September 2026).

Pros

• Employee, company and job-posting data in one vendor.
• Published plan ladder with dollar prices from $49 a month.
• Per-second rate limits that reach 100 a second on Scale.
• Official MCP server with OAuth 2.1.

Cons

• The Contact Enrichment API starts at Pro, not on Mini or Starter.
• 20 credits per email makes 1M lookups 20,000,000 credits, above any single plan.
• Neither employee data dictionary lists a phone field.
• Credits reset on most monthly plans.

Best for: analysts and builders who need employee history and job postings. Pricing: Free trial of 2,000 credits for 7 days, then Mini $49, Starter $199, Pro $499 a month (Coresignal pricing, September 2026).

5. Apollo: best for reps who also want outreach

Apollo is a sales platform with a people search API behind it. Every plan includes API access, and the official MCP server at mcp.apollo.io/mcp works on any plan, including Free (Apollo docs, September 2026).

Pricing is per seat plus credits. An email costs 1 credit, a phone number costs 8, and enrichment by API runs 1 to 9 credits. Credits are pooled across the team and expire at the end of each billing cycle (Apollo pricing, September 2026).

Paid plans allow 200 search requests a minute and 50,000 a day, with enrichment at 1,000 a minute (Apollo docs, September 2026). At 1M work emails a month, the cheapest list route is 250 Professional seats at $99, which is $24,750 a month. See the Apollo alternative page for the full count.

Pros

• Search, sequences and a dialer sit in the same tool as the API.
• Free plan with API access.
• Official MCP server on every plan.
• Published per-seat prices.

Cons

• Per-seat pricing makes volume expensive, since credits do not roll over.
• A phone number costs 8 credits.
• The price of an add-on credit is not public.
• Search and enrichment limits are per team, not per key.

Best for: sales reps who prospect and send from one login. Pricing: Free $0, Basic $65, Professional $99, Organization $149 per seat a month (Apollo pricing, September 2026).

6. ZoomInfo: best for pay-as-you-go credits with MCP

ZoomInfo's API product is GTM AI. It sells data credits pay as you go from $20, with no contract and no seat fee. Search, lookup and find-similar are free. One data credit enriches or exports one company, contact or intent record (GTM AI docs, September 2026).

The list price falls with the purchase size, from $0.45 a credit at 100 credits to $0.25 at 100,000 for $25,000. The slider stops there, and larger volumes go to Enterprise (GTM AI pricing, September 2026). The Free tier gives 1,000 data credits and 1,000 AI credits with no card.

Rate limits are 5 requests a second on Builder, 25 on Standard and 35 on Scaling (GTM AI docs, September 2026). The official MCP server works with Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor. Batch enrichment takes only 25 records per call. See the ZoomInfo alternative page for platform plans.

Pros

• Free search, so you size a list before you spend credits.
• Free tier of 1,000 data credits with MCP, API and CLI access.
• Official MCP server across major clients.
• Records are charged once per 12 months.

Cons

• No public price at 1M. The top published pack is 100,000 credits.
• Batch enrichment of 25 per call makes bulk work slow.
• Rate limits start at 5 requests a second.
• The ZoomInfo platform plans were behind a bot check, so we do not price them.

Best for: teams that want pay-as-you-go credits and search that costs nothing. Pricing: Free 1,000 data credits, then pay as you go from $20 (GTM AI pricing, September 2026).

7. RocketReach: best for individual lookups

RocketReach is a lookup tool first, with an API added on paid plans. Person search costs 1 Universal Credit per page of up to 100 results. A professional email costs 2 credits, a personal email 3 and a phone 6 (RocketReach docs, September 2026).

Monthly plans are reported at $69 for Essentials, $119 for Pro and $209 for Ultimate (G2, September 2026). RocketReach's own pricing page shows a bot check, so these are not read first-party.

The docs publish no dollar price per credit and no API plan price.

The global limit is 10 requests a second, with monthly person lookup caps from 5,000 to 200,000 (RocketReach docs, September 2026). The MCP server exposes 9 tools (RocketReach docs, September 2026). See the RocketReach alternative page for the seat math.

Pros

• Search pages of up to 100 results cost 1 credit.
• Re-lookups of the same profile are free while the plan is active.
• No charge when no data is found.
• Official MCP server with 9 tools.

Cons

• API access is set up through the API team, not a checkbox.
• No public price per credit or for the API.
• The highest published lookup cap is 200,000 a month.
• No public price at 1M.

Best for: one recruiter or seller who looks up people one at a time. Pricing: Essentials $69, Pro $119, Ultimate $209 a month, reported (G2, September 2026).

Comparison table

How to choose

• You pull data in code or through an agent: pick LeadOcean for the flat price and the per-second limit.
• You need freshness above all: pick Crustdata and ask for a quote.
• You build on a large schema or want files: pick People Data Labs.
• You study employee history or job postings: pick Coresignal.
• You prospect and send from one login: pick Apollo.
• You want pay-as-you-go with free search: pick ZoomInfo GTM AI.
• You look up a few contacts by hand: pick RocketReach.
• You hire with it: see how to add a people search API to a recruiting workflow.

Verdict

For API and agent buyers, LeadOcean wins on price at volume and rate limit, since $497 a month covers 1M enrichments and no rival publishes a 1M price that low. Crustdata wins for live freshness and People Data Labs for raw dataset depth. Coresignal wins for job and employee history, Apollo for reps who want outreach in the same tool, and ZoomInfo GTM AI for free search. RocketReach suits one person doing lookups by hand. Start with the free plan, run the same query on two tools, and compare the match rate on your own list before you commit.

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