BlitzAPI vs Hunter.io (2026): Data, Pricing and API Compared

BlitzAPI is a data API sold at one flat monthly fee. Hunter.io is an email finder with outreach attached, sold in credits. Pick BlitzAPI to pull work emails from code in volume. Pick Hunter when you need a few thousand emails a month, a tool your team can click, or an MCP server that returns records.

All figures were checked in September 2026, each with its source link. Where a vendor publishes nothing, the page says so.

Verdict

• Pick BlitzAPI if you feed LinkedIn profile URLs into code and want verified work emails at a flat price. Plus is $499 a month for accounts opened by September 30, 2026, far cheaper than Hunter at 1M lookups. Prices for accounts opened since are not published.
• Pick Hunter.io if you need under about 25,000 emails a month, a published price ladder, an app with sequences, or an official MCP server that returns data. Growth costs $149 a month for 10,000 credits.
• Pick neither if you want one flat price with no credits and no tiers, phones on the same plan, and a CSV export from the API. BlitzAPI sells phones on a $599 tier and documents no export. Hunter prices by the credit. LeadOcean is one option.

Side by side

All figures checked September 2026.

Data and coverage

BlitzAPI counts profiles and Hunter counts email addresses, so the sizes are not like for like. The better question is which one finds an address for your input.

BlitzAPI lists 550M+ profiles, 65M+ companies and 65M+ verified work emails (BlitzAPI docs, September 2026). Its email lookup starts from a LinkedIn profile URL. If it cannot prove an address, it returns found: false and no email.

Hunter's homepage cites 150,430,313 verified email addresses (Hunter, September 2026). Its lookups start from a domain, a company name or a LinkedIn handle, plus a name. Hunter says its data carries a record of its origins, and each address comes with a confidence score (Hunter, September 2026).

Phones favor BlitzAPI, narrowly. It holds 45M+ numbers, and its docs say phone enrichment is US only. They sit on the $599 Full plan, and the free trial excludes phone endpoints (BlitzAPI pricing, September 2026).

Hunter returns a phone_number on some Domain Search and Email Finder results (Hunter API docs, September 2026). It publishes no phone count. Treat it as a bonus field and test a sample before you plan a call list around it.

BlitzAPI also lists 100M+ job postings, which Hunter does not offer.

Hunter's edge is trust in the address. A separate Email Verifier checks lists you already own, at half a credit per address (Hunter help center, September 2026).

API and developer experience

Both are plain REST APIs with a key header. BlitzAPI wants a LinkedIn URL. Hunter wants a name and a domain.

BlitzAPI's Find Work Email takes a LinkedIn profile URL. It returns found, the verified email, an all_emails array and a fair_usage block with your records used and the rate limit. It counts one record on the free trial (BlitzAPI docs, September 2026).

curl -X POST "https://api.blitz-api.ai/v2/enrichment/email" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "x-api-key: $BLITZAPI_API_KEY" \
  -d '{"person_linkedin_url":"https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-doe"}'

Hunter's Email Finder takes a domain and a first and last name. It returns the address, a score and the sources it found it on. Hunter accepts the key as an X-API-KEY header, an api_key parameter or a Bearer token (Hunter API docs, September 2026).

curl "https://api.hunter.io/v2/email-finder?domain=acme.com&first_name=Jane&last_name=Doe" \
  -H "X-API-KEY: $HUNTER_API_KEY"

Search differs. BlitzAPI Find People returns 50 results a page and stops at 50,000 per query (BlitzAPI docs, September 2026). Hunter's Domain Search works inside one domain and returns up to 100 results per call.

One Hunter quirk matters in code. A 403 means you hit the rate limit, and a 429 means you used up your credits (Hunter API docs, September 2026). Most clients treat 429 as the rate limit, so a naive retry loop gets this backwards.

Rate limits are the sharpest gap. BlitzAPI runs at 50 requests per second per endpoint for accounts opened by September 30. The standard rate is 5, and the limit applies per endpoint (BlitzAPI pricing, September 2026).

Hunter limits each endpoint on its own: Email Finder and Domain Search allow 15 a second and 500 a minute. The minute cap binds first, so the ceiling is about 8 requests a second.

For agents, Hunter has the stronger server. Its remote MCP server at https://mcp.hunter.io/mcp takes your API key in a header, or OAuth where the client supports it. It is included in every plan and spends your plan credits (Hunter MCP, September 2026).

BlitzAPI's MCP server gives an AI tool live access to its documentation. It cannot search people or return a record (BlitzAPI docs, September 2026).

For bulk work, Hunter's Bulk Email Finder takes up to 50,000 rows per file. Unpaid rows are capped by plan at 2,500 on Free and 10,000 on Starter billed monthly (Hunter help center, September 2026). BlitzAPI documents no bulk or CSV export. Data comes through the JSON API with cursor pagination, and we did not check its signed-in app.

Pricing

BlitzAPI charges one fee a month, whatever you pull, but you must buy the plan with the data type you need. Hunter charges per credit, so cost follows volume. Compare both as the cost of a found work email.

At 10,000 records a month

For BlitzAPI, 10,000 work emails need Plus, because Core has no verified emails. Plus is $499 a month, or $0.0499 an email. Only emails it finds count as results (BlitzAPI pricing, September 2026).

For Hunter, one credit buys one email found, and a lookup that finds nothing costs nothing. Growth gives 10,000 credits a month for $149, or $0.0149 an email. Billed yearly it is $104 a month, $1,248 a year (Hunter pricing, September 2026).

At this size Hunter is cheaper: $499 - $149 = $350 a month. Monthly credits do not roll over, so a quiet month wastes them. Data Platform sells 10,000 Search credits once for $209, valid 12 months (Hunter Data Platform, September 2026).

At 1M records a month

For an account opened by September 30, 2026, BlitzAPI at 1M is $499 a month at list. 1,000,000 results sit under the 15,000,000 results a month fair use line, so one Plus plan covers it: $499 x 1 month = $499 (BlitzAPI pricing, September 2026).

Hunter at 1M is cheapest on Data Platform, its API and bulk product. 1,000,000 Search credits cost $6,900, or $0.0069 a credit, paid once and valid 12 months (Hunter Data Platform, September 2026).

The all-in-one route costs more. Scale is $299 for 25,000 credits, and the other 975,000 come from credit packs at $0.02 each, $19,500. That totals about $19,799 (Hunter help center, September 2026). Packs also cap at 180,000 credits per purchase on Scale, so Data Platform is the real option.

For one 1M month on a launch-offer account, Hunter costs $6,900 and BlitzAPI costs $499. That is about 14 times more. Hunter's credits last 12 months, so the gap narrows if you spread the pull over a year.

One caution on BlitzAPI. The $499 price, the 50 requests per second and the 15,000,000 fair use line belong to accounts opened by September 30, 2026. After that date the plan terms are those on the website or order form at signup. The only published standard figure is 5 requests per second (BlitzAPI Terms, September 2026). There is no public price for later accounts.

Time matters at 1M too. On BlitzAPI, 1,000,000 / 50 per second is 20,000 seconds, about 5.6 hours. At 5 per second it is 200,000 seconds, about 2.3 days. On Hunter's 500 a minute, 1,000,000 / 500 is 2,000 minutes, about 33 hours. BlitzAPI's paid plans carry no SLA (BlitzAPI docs, September 2026).

More Hunter matchups: Hunter vs Wiza, Hunter vs Kaspr and Hunter vs Icypeas. On BlitzAPI alone: the alternative page and the alternatives roundup.

Where BlitzAPI wins

• Cost at volume. $499 for 1M work emails against $6,900, for accounts opened by September 30.
• Verified-only emails. An address it cannot prove comes back as not found.
• LinkedIn URL in, email out. One input, one answer, no name matching.
• Speed. 50 requests per second per endpoint on the offer, against about 8 on Hunter's Email Finder.
• US phones and job postings. 45M+ numbers and 100M+ postings that Hunter does not sell.

BlitzAPI's weak points are US-only phones, no documented bulk export, an MCP server that only reads docs, and no public price for accounts opened after September 30.

Where Hunter.io wins

• Small and mid volume. $149 for 10,000 emails, and a free plan that renews 50 credits every month.
• A price ladder you can read. Every plan and the 1M figure are public, and none depends on an offer that expired.
• An MCP server that returns data. It runs on every plan with an API key or OAuth.
• Bulk and verification built in. Bulk Email Finder takes 50,000 rows a file, and the Verifier cleans your own lists.
• A product people can click. Sequences, a Chrome extension and a Sheets add-on sit next to the API (Hunter, September 2026).

Hunter's weak points are the credit math, per-endpoint limits that cap a pipeline at about 8 requests a second, and a 1M bill 14 times BlitzAPI's launch-offer price.

If you need volume through an API

We build LeadOcean, so weigh this section accordingly. It has a free plan with 1,000 records, one-off, no card. Pro is $499 a month, flat, with unlimited searches, enrichments and lookups, no credits and no per-record price (LeadOcean pricing, September 2026).

It holds 693M people, 366M with an email and 166M with a phone number, plus 63M companies. The same REST API and a hosted MCP server with 12 tools run on every plan, and the MCP server searches, enriches and exports records (LeadOcean MCP docs, September 2026).

Each key runs at 100 requests per second on every plan. For bulk pulls, POST /v1/exports returns up to 50,000 rows per request, so 1M rows is 20 requests over two days (LeadOcean exports docs, September 2026). It has no job-posting data. See pricing for the detail.

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