Clearbit (Breeze Intelligence) vs Hunter.io (2026): Data, Pricing and API Compared

Clearbit (Breeze Intelligence) and Hunter.io both help you fill in B2B contacts, but you buy them in different ways. Clearbit is data enrichment inside HubSpot, with no price of its own. Hunter is a standalone email finder and verifier with a public API, a public price list and a quoted price at 1M.

Verdict

• Pick Clearbit (Breeze Intelligence) if your contacts and companies already live in HubSpot and you want them filled in without code. Enrichment rides on the plan you already pay for (HubSpot docs, September 2026).
• Pick Hunter.io if you need work emails by API, a plan you can read before you sign up, or a price you can plan around. Its Growth plan costs $149 a month for 10,000 credits, and 1M credits cost $6,900 (Hunter pricing, September 2026).
• Pick neither if you need to build the list first, with title, seniority, industry and country filters, or if you need phone numbers at volume. Both tools start from an email, a name or a domain you already hold. LeadOcean searches 693M people for a flat $499 a month.

Side by side

All prices are USD list prices, checked in September 2026. Monthly price first, billed-yearly figure after it.

Data and coverage

Neither tool publishes a database size. Clearbit's homepage gives no people, company or phone count (Clearbit, September 2026), and Hunter's gives no address total.

What Clearbit does publish is depth on the company side. The homepage lists 6-digit NAICS, GICS and SIC industry codes, parent and subsidiary mapping, and normalized role and seniority. It also lists form shortening and reverse-IP visitor identification (Clearbit, September 2026). That is firmographics and routing data, not a list of people to contact.

The input rules differ. HubSpot enriches a contact from a business email and a company from a domain. Personal addresses are not enriched (HubSpot docs, September 2026). The default contact fields are job title, seniority, role, location and a LinkedIn URL, not an email or a phone.

Hunter goes the other way. It finds the email. Email Finder takes a domain and a name and returns the most likely address with a status of valid, accept_all or unknown. Domain Search lists the addresses it holds for one domain, with department and seniority filters (Hunter API docs, September 2026).

Phones are thin on both sides. Hunter's responses carry a phone_number field that is null in its own examples, and it publishes no count. HubSpot's enrichment docs state no phone coverage. If phones matter, neither tool is built for it.

API and developer experience

Hunter has a public API you can test today, and Clearbit's sits behind a login. You can read Hunter's v2 reference, copy a request and run it on the Free plan. Clearbit's documentation redirects to a sign-in page (Clearbit docs, September 2026).

Hunter Email Finder, adapted from its API docs:

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

It returns data.email, a score and a verification status. A found email costs 1 credit and a miss costs nothing (Hunter help center, September 2026).

Clearbit, no public request. We cannot show one because the docs need a sign-in.

Sign-ups since December 2023 need a HubSpot account (Clearbit release notes, September 2026). Inside HubSpot, enrichment is a settings switch. A Super Admin turns on automatic enrichment, and it is off by default.

Rate limits differ in kind. Hunter documents them per endpoint. Email Finder and Domain Search allow 15 requests a second and 500 a minute. Email Verifier allows 10 and 300, and Discover allows 5 and 50. It returns 403 when you hit the rate limit and 429 when you hit your usage limit (Hunter API docs, September 2026). Clearbit publishes none.

On MCP, Hunter runs a remote server at mcp.hunter.io/mcp and says it is included in all plans (Hunter MCP, September 2026). We found no MCP server for Clearbit enrichment. HubSpot's own MCP server covers CRM records such as contacts and deals (HubSpot MCP docs, October 2026).

Pricing

Hunter has a price at every size, and Clearbit has a plan fee and no per-record price. Hunter bills one credit per email found and nothing for a miss. The examples assume every lookup finds an email. A lower find rate lowers the bill.

10,000 records a month

• Hunter Growth: $149 a month for 10,000 credits, or $104 a month billed yearly ($1,248 a year, 120,000 credits) (Hunter pricing, September 2026). Cost per email: $149 / 10,000 = $0.0149.
• Clearbit (Breeze Intelligence): no per-record price. Enrichment comes with any HubSpot hub from Starter up (HubSpot docs, October 2026). From an index page you enrich 100 records at a time, so 10,000 is 100 batches.

If you already pay for HubSpot, enrichment adds no per-record cost. HubSpot publishes no monthly enrichment cap, so confirm one before you plan 10,000 a month.

1M records

• Hunter Data Platform: 1,000,000 Search credits at $0.0069 each is $6,900, paid once and valid 12 months (Hunter Data Platform, September 2026).
• Clearbit (Breeze Intelligence): No public 1M price. HubSpot publishes no per-record rate to multiply and no monthly enrichment cap to size against. At 100 records an index page, 1,000,000 is 10,000 batches, so it is a workflow job (HubSpot docs, September 2026).

The $6,900 is a one-off purchase, not a monthly bill. The subscription route costs more. Hunter Scale is $299 a month for 25,000 credits, and the other 975,000 would come from packs at up to $0.02 a credit. That is about $19,799, and a pack purchase caps at 180,000 credits (Hunter help center, September 2026). Verification is extra, from $11 per 1,000 credits.

The HubSpot plan is the real Clearbit cost. Marketing Hub Professional includes 3 core seats and needs a one-time onboarding fee. The pricing page showed us Canadian dollars, so we give no USD figure (HubSpot pricing, October 2026). HubSpot's other credit-billed features are separate from enrichment.

Where Clearbit (Breeze Intelligence) wins

• Enrichment where your records live. Automatic enrichment fills new HubSpot contacts and companies with no code (HubSpot docs, September 2026). Hunter has CRM sync, but you manage the calls.
• Standardized company data. NAICS, GICS and SIC codes, parent and subsidiary mapping, and normalized role and seniority (Clearbit, September 2026). The Hunter docs we read list no industry hierarchy.
• Visitor identification. Clearbit's homepage advertises reverse-IP lookups that turn anonymous traffic into company signals. The Hunter pages we read list no visitor identification.
• Low cost for an existing HubSpot team. If the plan is already paid for, enrichment adds nothing per record.

Where Hunter.io wins

• A public API and MCP server. You can read the docs, get a key on the Free plan and run a request in a minute. The MCP server is included in all plans.
• A published price at 1M. $6,900 is a number you can plan around. Clearbit gives you a CRM plan and no volume ceiling.
• No CRM required. Hunter works on its own. You do not need to open a HubSpot account to get a work email.
• Outreach in the same product. Hunter adds Sequences, a Chrome extension and a Google Sheets add-on (Hunter, September 2026). Clearbit has no sending tool in what we read.

If you need volume through an API

LeadOcean fits when the job is building a list, not filling one in. It holds 693M people, 366M with an email and 166M with a phone number, plus 63M companies, behind REST and a 12-tool MCP server. Pro is $499 a month flat with no credits, and Free gives 1,000 records one-off with no card.

POST /v1/exports returns up to 50,000 rows per request, and the rate limit is 100 requests per second per key. LeadOcean does not credit back bounces, so read email_status before you send. It has no CRM, sequencer or extension. See the Clearbit alternative page or LeadOcean pricing. Related matchups: Hunter vs Wiza, Hunter vs Kaspr and Hunter vs Icypeas.

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