A prospecting tool for developers is a people and company data source you call from code or an agent, with a documented API, predictable limits and a price you can forecast. If you build enrichment into a product, feed an AI agent or script lead lists, the rep-facing features in most prospecting suites are dead weight. What matters is the API, the MCP server, the rate limit and the cost when the job runs a million rows.
We compared seven tools on those points. Prices and limits come from vendor pages and docs, linked in each section. Many of these tools have their own alternatives page here: Apollo, BlitzAPI, People Data Labs, Crustdata, Coresignal and LeadMagic.
For the rep-side view of this market, see our guide to rep prospecting.
TL;DR
| Tool | Best for | Starting price | Cost at 1M records a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| LeadOcean | Volume through an API or agent | Free (1,000 records, no card). Solo $97 a month | $497 a month (Agency) |
| Apollo | Teams that also want a rep app | Free. Basic $65 a seat a month ($49 billed yearly) | $24,750 a month at list ($19,600 billed yearly) |
| BlitzAPI | Flat-fee email and company lookups | Start $99 a month | $499 a month (Scale) |
| People Data Labs | Raw person and company datasets | Free (100 credits a month). Pro $98 a month ($78 billed yearly) | No public 1M price |
| Crustdata | Live web, jobs and change signals | No public price | No public 1M price |
| Coresignal | Employee and job posting datasets | Mini $49 a month | No public 1M price |
| LeadMagic | Cheap pay-as-you-go email finding | Essential $99 a month ($83 billed yearly) | No public 1M price |
Cost at 1M is 1,000,000 work-email lookups. Where a vendor publishes credits but not dollars per credit, we say so and do not multiply a rate out.
What we evaluated
We read each vendor's pricing page, API docs and MCP docs in September and October 2026. We did not run live calls for this ranking. Every figure below is a published one, and we mark what a vendor does not publish.
- API shape and rate limit. Documented REST endpoints, auth, and how many requests a second or minute you get on a normal plan.
- MCP server. Whether the vendor runs an official hosted server, and whether it returns records or only documentation.
- Cost at 1M lookups. The monthly list price of 1,000,000 work-email lookups, or "No public 1M price" if none is published.
- Contact data on a self-serve key. Whether emails and phones come back without an enterprise contract.
- Bulk and depth. How many rows one search or export returns, and whether a CSV export exists.
1. LeadOcean: best for developers who pull data at volume
LeadOcean is a B2B database of 693M people and 67M companies, sold as a REST API and a hosted MCP server. We make it, so weigh this section with that in mind. We rank it first only for readers who pull data through an API, an agent or at volume.
The API is plain. POST /v1/people/enrich takes a LinkedIn URL, email, phone or person ID. Search runs at /v1/people/search with 50 people filters and 34 company filters, and counts are free. POST /v1/exports returns up to 50,000 rows a request. The MCP server at https://api.leadocean.io/mcp has 13 tools and OAuth 2.1 sign-in, so an agent can register itself.
Pricing is a flat fee, not credits. Agency is $497 a month with 200 requests a second and 5 keys. A very large month is paced down, not cut off. The data is refreshed monthly, and bounced emails are not refunded, so read email_status before you send.
Pros
- Flat monthly price: $497 covers 1M lookups, with no per-record bill.
- Emails and phones are on every plan, including Free.
- 13 MCP tools, including free count and filter-listing tools that size a list before you spend a record.
- 13 email status values, from verified to spam_trap.
- One search pages to 10,000 rows, so narrow filters beat walking the index.
Cons
- No rep workspace: no sequencer, dialer, CRM or Chrome extension.
- No live web data, job postings or change alerts.
- Free is 1,000 records for life, and bulk CSV export is not on Free.
- 166M people have a phone, so phone coverage is smaller than email coverage (366M).
Best for: engineers, RevOps teams and agents that need volume and a fixed bill.
Pricing: Free $0, Solo $97 a month, Agency $497 a month, Platform $1,997 a month. See LeadOcean pricing and the API docs, checked October 2026.
2. Apollo: best for teams that want an API and a rep app
Apollo is a prospecting suite with a database, sequencer and dialer, and an API on every plan. If your developers and your sales team share one tool, it is the broad choice. Its official MCP server at https://mcp.apollo.io/mcp also ships as a built-in connector in Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor (Apollo MCP docs, September 2026).
Apollo prices by seat and credit. 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). Enrichment on paid plans runs at 1,000 requests a minute (Apollo rate limits, September 2026).
That model gets expensive at developer volumes. A million email lookups is a million credits, and the biggest seat plan grants 6,000 a month. See our Apollo alternatives page for the full comparison.
Pros
- Official MCP server, free to connect on any plan.
- Enrichment limit of 1,000 requests a minute on paid plans.
- A full rep workspace sits on the same data.
- Every plan includes API access.
Cons
- Per-seat credits make 1M lookups a seat-count problem.
- Credits expire each cycle and do not roll over.
- A phone number costs 8 credits.
- Search endpoints are rate-limited to 50,000 calls a day on paid plans.
Best for: sales teams with a few developers, where one tool serves both.
Pricing: Free; Basic $65 a seat a month, $49 billed yearly; Professional $99 ($79 yearly); Organization $149 ($119 yearly, 3 seats minimum). Apollo pricing, September 2026. At 1M lookups, 250 Professional seats is $24,750 a month at list. Apollo does not say whether it sells that many seats self-serve.
3. BlitzAPI: best for flat-fee email and company lookups
BlitzAPI is a data API built around company search, people search, verified work emails and US phone numbers. Plans differ by speed and fair use, not by data. Every endpoint is open on every plan (BlitzAPI pricing, October 2026).
Start is $99 a month with 200,000 records and 10 requests a second per endpoint. Scale is $499 with 5,000,000 records and 25 requests a second. One record is one item returned, and a call that finds nothing counts nothing. Phone numbers cover the US only (BlitzAPI quality docs, September 2026).
Its hosted MCP server returns records, with 20 tools and OAuth sign-in or an x-api-key header (BlitzAPI MCP, October 2026). The data includes job postings. A bulk CSV export is not documented (BlitzAPI docs index, September 2026). We compare it in detail on the BlitzAPI alternatives page.
Pros
- Flat monthly fee with a published record allowance.
- Per-endpoint rate budgets, so email lookups do not slow searches.
- Verified work emails are included on every plan.
- A hosted MCP server that returns data.
- Identity resolution endpoints: domain to LinkedIn, reverse email and reverse phone.
Cons
- Scale runs 25 requests a second, against 200 on LeadOcean Agency.
- Phone numbers are US only.
- No documented CSV export.
- An SLA, DPA and reseller rights come only on the custom plan.
Best for: developers who want a simple flat fee for email and company lookups.
Pricing: Start $99 a month, Scale $499 a month, custom from $999 a month. BlitzAPI pricing, October 2026.
4. People Data Labs: best for raw person and company datasets
People Data Labs sells person and company data as an API and as bulk datasets. Its person dataset holds 2,466,510,427 profiles, and 592,376,573 of them have at least one email (PDL datasets, September 2026). It is the biggest raw index on this list.
Pricing is per credit. One credit is one successful match, and a 404 is not billed. Pro person data starts at $98 a month for 350 credits (PDL person pricing, September 2026). Self-serve is meant for volumes below about 100,000 profiles a year, and above that PDL sends buyers to sales (PDL blog, September 2026).
Rate limits are 1,000 requests a minute on paid person enrichment and 10 a minute on person search by default (PDL usage limits, September 2026). We found no official MCP server in its docs or llms.txt (PDL llms.txt, September 2026). Read our PDL comparison for more.
Pros
- 2.47B person profiles and 592M with an email.
- 1,000 requests a minute on paid enrichment.
- Misses are free.
- Bulk enrichment takes up to 100 persons per request.
Cons
- The entry price is 350 credits for $98, about $0.28 a credit.
- No public price at 1M; large volumes go through sales.
- Person search is 10 requests a minute by default.
- No official MCP server.
Best for: data teams that want a wide raw index and are happy to negotiate volume.
Pricing: Free (100 credits a month, contact data obscured), Pro from $98 a month or $78 billed yearly, Enterprise custom. PDL person pricing, September 2026.
5. Crustdata: best for live web, jobs and change signals
Crustdata is a data API with people, companies, jobs and social posts, plus live endpoints and change watchers. Pick it when you want signals, such as who changed jobs, not just a static index. It runs a hosted MCP server at install.crustdata.com/mcp with OAuth for interactive clients and an API key for code (Crustdata MCP docs, September 2026).
Pricing is in credits, with no dollar price per credit on the pricing page (Crustdata pricing docs, September 2026). Search is 0.03 credits a result. Person enrich is 1 to 7 credits, and a work email adds 1. A Crustdata blog post reports a lowest tier of $95 a month (Crustdata blog, September 2026).
Default limits are tight: 15 requests a minute on person enrich and 30 on search (Crustdata rate limits, September 2026). The dedicated contact endpoint needs an enterprise plan, and self-serve keys get a 403 (Crustdata contact docs, September 2026). See the Crustdata alternatives page.
Pros
- Live web, job search and social post endpoints.
- Change watchers on people and companies.
- Hosted MCP server with OAuth or an API key.
- Misses on contact enrich are not billed.
Cons
- No public dollar price per credit.
- 15 person enrich requests a minute by default.
- Contact enrich is enterprise only.
- No fixed bill: cost scales with credits.
Best for: teams building signal-driven products that need live and changing data.
Pricing: credits per call, no plan prices on the pricing page. Crustdata pricing docs, September 2026. 1M work-email lookups is 2,000,000 credits on self-serve, with no public dollar price to convert them.
6. Coresignal: best for employee and job posting datasets
Coresignal sells employee, company and job posting data through APIs and flat-file datasets. Its homepage claims 907M+ employee records and 482M+ job postings (Coresignal, September 2026). It is a dataset vendor first, and prospecting is one use of the data.
Plans are credit packs. A base employee or company record costs 10 credits, and contact enrichment costs 20 per call and starts on the Pro plan (Coresignal pricing docs, September 2026). Rate limits climb with the plan, from 5 requests a second on Free, Mini and Starter to 100 on Scale (Coresignal rate limits, September 2026).
The MCP server has 5 tools and uses OAuth 2.1 (Coresignal MCP docs, September 2026). Bulk Collect takes up to 10,000 records per request (Coresignal bulk docs, September 2026). More in our Coresignal comparison.
Pros
- Large employee and job posting datasets.
- Rate limit scales to 100 requests a second on Scale.
- Bulk Collect for up to 10,000 records per request.
- Official MCP server.
Cons
- Contact enrichment is not on Mini or Starter.
- 20 credits a call makes email lookups costly.
- No public price at 1M.
- The free trial lasts 7 days and its credits do not carry over.
Best for: teams that need employee history and job posting data in bulk.
Pricing: Mini $49 a month, Starter $199 ($179 billed yearly), Pro $499 ($449), up to Elite at $5,000 ($4,500 billed yearly). Coresignal pricing, September 2026. Free trial: 2,000 credits for 7 days.
7. LeadMagic: best for cheap pay-as-you-go email finding
LeadMagic is a credit-based email and mobile finder with search, validation and a hosted MCP server. It suits developers who mostly want a verified email for a name and company. Email Finder costs 1 credit per valid email, and a miss is free (LeadMagic pricing, September 2026).
Paid plans start at $99 a month for 5,000 credits, with no free plan (LeadMagic plans FAQ, September 2026). Email Finder is capped at 600 requests a minute on standard plans (LeadMagic email finder docs, September 2026). The search API is zero-credit only on Professional and Ultimate, and bills about 1 credit per person on Essential and Growth (LeadMagic agent guide, September 2026).
The biggest self-serve plan is Ultimate at $849 a month for 100,000 credits. That stops well short of 1M lookups, and top-up prices are not published. See the LeadMagic alternatives page.
Pros
- Misses on Email Finder are free.
- Credits roll over on monthly plans, up to 2x the monthly allocation.
- Hosted MCP server.
- Search in the app spends no credits on paid plans.
Cons
- No free plan or trial credits.
- Self-serve tops out at 100,000 credits a month.
- No public price at 1M.
- Search through the API costs credits on Essential and Growth.
Best for: developers who want verified emails in small to mid volumes.
Pricing: Essential $99 a month ($83 billed yearly), Growth $249, Professional $499, Ultimate $849. LeadMagic pricing, September 2026.
Comparison table
| Tool | Best for | Starting price | Cost at 1M records a month | API | MCP | Rate limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LeadOcean | Volume through an API or agent | Free. Solo $97 a month | $497 a month (Agency) | REST on every plan | Yes, 13 tools, OAuth 2.1 | 5, 50, 200 or 10,000 a second by plan |
| Apollo | Teams that want a rep app too | Free. Basic $65 a seat ($49 yearly) | $24,750 a month at list | REST on every plan | Yes, official | 1,000 a minute on paid enrichment |
| BlitzAPI | Flat-fee lookups | Start $99 a month | $499 a month (Scale) | REST | Yes. 20 tools | 10 a second per endpoint (Start), 25 (Scale) |
| People Data Labs | Raw datasets | Free. Pro $98 a month ($78 yearly) | No public 1M price | REST | No official server | 1,000 a minute enrich, 10 a minute search |
| Crustdata | Live data and signals | No public price | No public 1M price | REST | Yes, OAuth or key | 15 a minute enrich, 30 search |
| Coresignal | Employee and job datasets | Mini $49 a month | No public 1M price | REST | Yes, 5 tools | 5 a second up to 100 by plan |
| LeadMagic | Pay-as-you-go emails | Essential $99 a month ($83 yearly) | No public 1M price | REST | Yes, hosted | 600 a minute on Email Finder |
How to choose
- You pull data at volume or run an agent: LeadOcean. A flat fee and 13 MCP tools that return records.
- Your sales team and your developers share one tool: Apollo, accepting the per-seat credit math.
- You want a flat-fee email and company API: BlitzAPI, if US-only phones are fine.
- You need the widest raw person index: People Data Labs, and budget for a sales call at volume.
- You need live data and change alerts: Crustdata, and plan around the default rate limits.
- You need employee history or job posting data: Coresignal.
- You need verified emails at small volume: LeadMagic.
If you also compare tools by integrations or customization, see best integrations and best customization.
Verdict
LeadOcean wins for developers who need volume through an API or an agent, because $497 a month covers 1M lookups, Agency runs 200 requests a second and the MCP server returns records. BlitzAPI's does too. Apollo wins when reps and developers share one tool. BlitzAPI is the other flat-fee option for email and company lookups, with job postings included. People Data Labs wins on raw index size, Crustdata on live signals and Coresignal on employee and job posting datasets. LeadMagic fits small, cheap email jobs. Check the pricing page against your own volume before you commit.
FAQ
What is the best prospecting tool for developers?
LeadOcean for volume through an API or agent, because it has a flat price, a REST API on every plan and 13 MCP tools that return records. Apollo is the better pick if sales reps use the same tool. Choose by how you will call it.
Which prospecting tools have an MCP server?
LeadOcean, Apollo, BlitzAPI, Crustdata, Coresignal and LeadMagic run hosted MCP servers that return records. We found no official People Data Labs MCP server in September 2026.
Which tool is cheapest for 1M email lookups a month?
LeadOcean at $497 a month and BlitzAPI Scale at $499 a month are the only two with a flat monthly price at that volume. Apollo is $24,750 a month at list, in seats. The others publish no 1M price.
Do I need an enterprise contract to get emails and phones by API?
Not with LeadOcean, Apollo, BlitzAPI or LeadMagic. Crustdata gates its contact endpoint behind enterprise plans, and Coresignal starts contact enrichment on Pro. People Data Labs sends large volumes to sales.
Is there a free prospecting API?
LeadOcean Free gives 1,000 records for life with no card. People Data Labs Free gives 100 credits a month with contact data obscured. Coresignal gives a 7-day trial and BlitzAPI offers 1,000 free records to try.
Which tool has the highest rate limit?
LeadOcean Agency allows 200 requests a second and Platform 10,000. Coresignal reaches 100 a second on Scale. Apollo and People Data Labs publish per-minute limits, and Crustdata's defaults are the lowest at 15 to 30 a minute.
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