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

ContactOut and Explorium both sell contact data, but they are built for different buyers. ContactOut is a LinkedIn-first email and phone finder with a Chrome extension and an API you get by booking a meeting. Explorium is a prepaid-credit platform for company data, prospects and events, with a public API price list.

For one rep or recruiter, ContactOut is cheaper and simpler. For a pipeline that pulls records in code, Explorium is the one you can price.

Verdict

• Pick ContactOut if a person works from LinkedIn in a browser and wants a fixed monthly seat. Email is $49 a month, or $39 a month billed yearly. It also claims 150M personal emails, which Explorium does not break out.
• Pick Explorium if you want company data, events and an API with a public price list. Lite is $29.99 for 500 credits, and the MCP server covers businesses, prospects and events.
• Pick neither if you need volume through an API at a flat price. ContactOut's API has no public price and Explorium's credits scale linearly. LeadOcean is one option: Pro is $499 a month, flat.

Side by side

Data and coverage

Both vendors claim big databases, and neither number settles anything. ContactOut says 800M people profiles on its data page, but its homepage and MCP page say 350M and 600M+. Explorium says 767M+ professional profiles and 146M+ business entities in its stats, while its hero text says 800M+ people and 150M+ companies.

Contact counts are where they split. ContactOut publishes 150M personal emails, 200M work emails and 100M direct dials. Explorium publishes no email or phone counts, so you cannot compare contact coverage on paper.

Email handling differs too. ContactOut returns personal and work emails and has separate verifier endpoints, and it calls its data "triple-verified with 99% confidence". That is a claim. Explorium returns one professional email with a status of valid, invalid or catch-all. Its output lists professional email only.

Scope is the other gap. Explorium goes wide on companies: it has business enrichments and event tracking for funding rounds, M&A, department growth and product launches. ContactOut has 40M company profiles and a domain lookup, but its core is people found through LinkedIn.

Test both on your own list. Run 500 people through each and compare match rate, email status and phone hits.

API and developer experience

ContactOut's API is one call per lookup, but you need a meeting to get a key. Explorium's API is two calls: match a person to a prospect_id, then enrich that ID. You can read both sets of docs without an account.

ContactOut sends the key in a token header. This is its single contact lookup from a LinkedIn URL, from its docs, with a placeholder profile. It uses 1 email credit if an email is found and 1 phone credit if a phone is found (ContactOut API docs, October 2026).

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

Explorium sends the key in an API_KEY header. You first call match to get a prospect_id, then the contact endpoint. The docs price this email-only body at 2 credits (Explorium docs, October 2026).

curl -X POST "https://api.explorium.ai/v2/prospects/contact_information/enrich" \
  -H "API_KEY: $EXPLORIUM_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"prospect_id": "PROSPECT_ID_FROM_MATCH", "parameters": {"contact_types": ["email"]}}'

Rate limits shape how each one scales. ContactOut allows 1,000 requests a minute on most endpoints, but only 60 a minute on People Search. Explorium has one limit per key: 200 queries a minute, and a request with 50 IDs uses 50 queries. Going over returns a 429 with a Retry-After header.

On MCP, both ship a server that returns data. ContactOut's has 15 tools and starts with 600+ free credits. Explorium's AgentSource server has 11 tools, covers business and prospect events, and uses an API key.

For big pulls, ContactOut has an async bulk job of 1,000 LinkedIn profiles per request. Explorium's async jobs take up to 10,000 records from an uploaded ID list. Neither documents a one-call CSV export of a search result.

Pricing

ContactOut charges a monthly seat fee and hides the API price. Explorium sells credit packs with a public price. To compare them, price the same job on both.

ContactOut self-serve has four public plans. Free is $0. Email is $49 a month, or $39 a month billed yearly ($468 a year), with 300 exports a month. Email + Phone is $99 a month, or $79 a month billed yearly ($948 a year), with 600 exports a month. Team / API is "Contact Us" (ContactOut pricing, October 2026).

"Unlimited" has a ceiling. Paid plans follow a fair use policy of 2,000 email credits and 1,000 phone credits per account per month (ContactOut terms, September 2026). Every self-serve plan is one user per company.

Explorium has five public packs: Lite $29.99 for 500 credits, Starter $149.99 for 5K, Growth $749.99 for 30K, Scale $7,499.99 for 500K, and a custom Enterprise (Explorium pricing, October 2026). An email-only lookup is 2 credits. Phone or both is 5.

At 10,000 records a month

For ContactOut, 10,000 email lookups is five times the 2,000-email fair use line. On paper, 10,000 / 2,000 = 5 accounts, and 5 x $49 = $245 a month. Self-serve plans are one user per company, so that is not a public path. Volume means Team / API, which has no public price.

For Explorium, 10,000 email lookups is 20,000 credits at 2 each. Four Starter packs give 20,000 credits: 4 x $149.99 = $599.96. With phones at 5 credits, 10,000 lookups need 50,000 credits. A Growth pack plus four Starter packs is $749.99 + $599.96 = $1,349.95.

Explorium does not publish what the match step costs, so these figures are a floor. Packs also expire after 12 months.

At 1M records a month

ContactOut has no public 1M price. At 2,000 emails per account, 1M emails is 500 account-months. The one-user-per-company limit means you cannot buy that on self-serve, and the API price is quote only.

For Explorium, 1M email lookups is 2M credits. The cheapest published pack is Scale, 500K credits at $7,499.99. So 4 packs x $7,499.99 = $29,999.96 at list. With phones, 1M lookups is 5M credits, which is 10 packs and $74,999.90.

Enterprise is a custom quote with volume discounts, so a negotiated price could be lower. Time is a cost too. At 200 queries a minute, 1M lookups take 5,000 minutes, about 3.5 days, and a match step before them adds the same again.

Where ContactOut wins

• A person-sized price. $49 a month, or $39 billed yearly, buys one seat with unlimited emails inside the fair use line. Explorium's smallest pack is 500 credits.
• The browser workflow. The Chrome extension, search portal and email campaigns are the core product. The Explorium docs we read list an API, an MCP server and the Vibe Prospecting connector, and no browser extension.
• Personal emails and contact counts. It publishes 150M personal emails, 200M work emails and 100M direct dials. Explorium publishes none of those.
• A free tier you can use daily. 5 emails, 5 phones and 5 exports a day, though the plan is marked "Limited time only".
• Higher stated rate limits. 1,000 requests a minute on most endpoints, against 200 queries a minute.

Where Explorium wins

• A price you can read. Every pack is on the pricing page. ContactOut shows "Contact Us" for API access.
• Company breadth. 146M+ business entities against ContactOut's 40M company profiles, by each vendor's own count.
• Events. The MCP server returns funding rounds, M&A, department growth and role changes. ContactOut's docs list no event stream.
• No user limit listed. ContactOut self-serve is one user per company. Explorium's pricing page lists no such limit.
• A bigger bulk job. Async jobs take 10,000 records, against 1,000 profiles per ContactOut bulk request.

If you need volume through an API

We build LeadOcean, so weigh this section accordingly. LeadOcean holds 693M people and 63M companies, and you reach them over REST and a 12-tool MCP server with OAuth sign-in. Free is 1,000 records, one-off, with no card. Pro is $499 a month, flat, with unlimited searches and lookups, 100 requests per second per key and 166M people with a phone number (LeadOcean pricing, September 2026).

For bulk work, POST /v1/exports returns up to 50,000 rows per request, and the app has an Exports page with a CSV download (LeadOcean exports docs, September 2026). LeadOcean has no Chrome extension and no event stream. See the ContactOut alternative page and ContactOut alternatives for line-by-line versions.

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