ContactOut vs Datagma (2026): Data, Pricing and API Compared

ContactOut is a LinkedIn-first email and phone finder with a Chrome extension, an API and an MCP server. Datagma is an enrichment API that sells monthly bundles of verified emails and direct mobiles. ContactOut fits people who work in a browser. Datagma fits teams that enrich a known list, especially for mobiles.

Neither publishes a price at 1M records. Every price and limit below was checked in September 2026, with its source link. Where a vendor publishes nothing, the page says so.

Verdict

• Pick ContactOut if recruiters or reps work from LinkedIn in a browser, you want personal emails, or you want the larger claimed people dataset. Email is $49 a month on monthly billing, or $39 a month billed yearly.
• Pick Datagma if you enrich a few thousand contacts a month, need direct mobiles outside the US, or hold names and companies rather than profile URLs. Regular is $49 a month, or $39 billed yearly, and you can get an API key without a sales call.
• Pick neither if you want one flat price at volume through code or an agent. ContactOut publishes no API price and Datagma has no public price past 22,500 emails a month. LeadOcean is one option.

Side by side

All figures checked September 2026. Dataset counts and accuracy figures are each vendor's own claim.

Data and coverage

ContactOut publishes more numbers than Datagma, but they do not agree. Its data page lists 800M people profiles, 200M work emails, 150M personal emails, 100M direct dials and 40M company profiles. Source: ContactOut data, September 2026. The MCP page says 600M+ profiles (ContactOut MCP, September 2026). Ask which figure your plan reaches.

Datagma gives no dataset size at all. It sells results, not a database: you send a profile URL, an email or a name plus a company, and it returns what it finds. That makes its coverage impossible to size before you test it.

Emails split on type. ContactOut returns personal and work emails, and claims 97% accuracy on its MCP page. Datagma returns verified work emails only. Catch-all addresses it cannot verify come back as "most probable" and are not billed (Datagma API, September 2026). It claims up to 93% accuracy and under 2% bounce.

Phones split on geography. Datagma claims direct mobiles in India, the UK, the US, APAC and Europe, with no landlines and a WhatsApp check (Datagma, September 2026). ContactOut is LinkedIn-first and strongest where its users recruit and sell. It publishes no regional phone breakdown.

Accuracy figures are claims, not tests. Run the same 500 people through both before you buy, because match rate depends on the input you send.

API and developer experience

ContactOut's API is wider and Datagma's is easier to start. ContactOut documents more than a dozen API sections: profile enrichment, contact info, people search, people count, decision makers, company search, email verifier and bulk jobs. Datagma has about ten GET endpoints, centred on enrich, find email, find phone and job change detection.

Access differs most. ContactOut sends you to book a meeting to get a key (ContactOut API docs, September 2026). Datagma hands out a free key on signup, with no card.

ContactOut's single lookup takes a LinkedIn URL. It bills one email credit if an email is found, and one phone credit if you ask for phones and one is found. A miss returns a 404. The request, with a placeholder person:

curl "https://api.contactout.com/v1/people/linkedin?profile=https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-doe&include_phone=true" \
  -H "Accept: application/json" \
  -H "token: $CONTACTOUT_API_TOKEN"

Datagma's Find Work Verified Email takes a name plus a company name or domain, with no profile URL. It returns a verified result or nothing, and costs no credit on a miss (Datagma docs, September 2026).

curl "https://gateway.datagma.net/api/ingress/v8/findEmail?apiId=$DATAGMA_API_ID&fullName=Jane%20Doe&company=acme.com"

Datagma puts the key in the URL of every call, where it can end up in logs. ContactOut uses a header. If you hold LinkedIn URLs, ContactOut's call is the simpler one. If you hold names and companies, Datagma takes the list as it is.

Rate limits are where ContactOut is explicit. People Search runs at 60 requests a minute and most other endpoints at 1,000 a minute (ContactOut API docs, September 2026). Datagma's docs and API page list plan allowances and no request limit, so ask before you plan a batch job.

For agents, only ContactOut ships its own server. Its MCP server has 15 tools and 600+ free credits at onboarding (ContactOut MCP, September 2026). Datagma's only listed server is run by Zapier and exposes five actions (Zapier, September 2026).

Pricing

Both tools charge by the month, but they meter different things. ContactOut sells seats with unlimited emails under a fair use cap. Datagma sells email and phone allowances, and you pay only for matches.

ContactOut self-serve. Email is $49 a month on monthly billing, $39 a month billed yearly, with unlimited emails and 300 exports a month. Email + Phone is $99 a month, $79 billed yearly, with 600 exports (ContactOut pricing, September 2026). Every plan has a one user per company limit. Paid "unlimited" is capped at 2,000 email credits and 1,000 phone credits per account per month (ContactOut terms, September 2026).

Datagma self-serve. Regular is $49 a month for 3,000 emails and 100 phones. Popular is $99 for 7,500 emails and 250 phones. Expert is $249 for 22,500 emails and 750 phones. Annual billing takes 20% off, and unused credits roll over for up to 12 months (Datagma pricing, September 2026). Datagma's own pages disagree on Expert: the API page lists it at $261 a month, or $209 billed yearly (Datagma API, September 2026).

At 10,000 records a month. Take 10,000 verified work emails. Datagma Popular covers 7,500, so you need Expert: $249 a month on the pricing page ($261 on the API page), or $209 a month billed yearly. That assumes one email allowance per find.

ContactOut has no public price for 10,000. The cap is 2,000 emails per account, so 10,000 / 2,000 = 5 accounts. Arithmetic only: 5 x $49 = $245 a month. The one user per company limit makes that a number, not a public path. The API route needs a sales call.

Phones change the sum. Expert includes 750 phones, and 10,000 phones is about 13 times that, so it becomes an Enterprise quote. ContactOut caps phones at 1,000 per account, so 10,000 phones is 10 accounts, which self-serve does not allow.

At 1M records a month. Neither has a public price. Datagma's largest self-serve plan holds 22,500 emails, and 1,000,000 / 22,500 is about 44 times that. Enterprise is custom, and no per-email rate is published (Datagma pricing, September 2026).

ContactOut's cap of 2,000 emails per account makes 1M a 500-account job. Its pricing page shows Contact Us for Team / API, and the API docs say to book a meeting (ContactOut pricing, September 2026). No public 1M price. Ask each vendor for a quote at your volume.

Where ContactOut wins

• A bigger claimed dataset. 800M people profiles, 200M work emails and 150M personal emails, against a Datagma that publishes no size.
• Personal emails. Datagma returns verified work emails. ContactOut returns both types.
• Browser workflow. A Chrome extension, a search portal, email campaigns and a list builder on self-serve plans (ContactOut pricing, September 2026).
• An MCP server of its own. 15 tools and a People Count tool to size a list before you spend credits.
• Published API limits. 1,000 requests a minute on most endpoints, and bulk jobs of 1,000 profiles.

Its weak points are no public API price, a key that needs a meeting, and caps that sit behind the word unlimited.

Where Datagma wins

• Entry price and a real free plan. 90 emails and 3 phones a month, forever, with API access. Paid plans start at $49 a month.
• Mobiles beyond the US. Direct mobiles only, no landlines, with a WhatsApp check (Datagma, September 2026).
• Lookup inputs. Name plus a company name or domain works with no profile URL.
• Bulk files. Up to 50,000 rows per upload, against ContactOut's 1,000 per API job.
• Open API access. A free key in minutes, and no charge for a miss.

Datagma's weak points are the 22,500-email ceiling, no published rate limit or dataset size, and no first-party MCP server.

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, and no credits or 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 runs at 100 requests per second per key on every plan. A hosted MCP server with 12 tools runs on every plan too (LeadOcean MCP docs, September 2026).

For bulk pulls, POST /v1/exports returns up to 50,000 rows per request, or you can use the Exports page in the app. 1M rows is 20 requests over two days (LeadOcean exports docs, September 2026). See pricing for the detail.

Back to the blog. For more Datagma matchups, read Prospeo vs Datagma, LeadMagic vs Datagma and Hunter vs Datagma. For ContactOut alone, see the ContactOut alternative page and ContactOut alternatives.

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