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

Pick ContactOut if your people work from LinkedIn and want a bigger people file. Pick Prospeo if you want a public price, a public API and a credit meter you can plan around. Neither tool publishes a price for a million records a month.

Verdict

• Pick ContactOut if recruiters or reps live in LinkedIn and a browser extension is the workflow. It claims 800 million people profiles and 100 million direct dials, and its Email plan starts at $49 a month (ContactOut data, September 2026; ContactOut pricing, September 2026).
• Pick Prospeo if you call an API or an agent and want to see the price first. Plans, credit costs and rate limits are all public, and a miss costs nothing (Prospeo pricing, September 2026; Prospeo help center, September 2026).
• Pick neither if you need millions of records a month at a fixed bill. ContactOut has no public API price and caps self-serve accounts. Prospeo scales by seats and add-ons. That job suits LeadOcean, covered below.

Side by side

ContactOut changes promotional prices often and Prospeo runs pricing-page tests. Check both pages before you buy.

Data and coverage

ContactOut claims the bigger people file, and it publishes more coverage lines. Its data page lists 800 million people profiles, 150 million personal emails, 200 million work emails, 100 million direct dials and 40 million company profiles (ContactOut data, September 2026). The numbers disagree across its own pages: 350 million in the homepage headline and 600 million+ on the MCP page (ContactOut; ContactOut MCP). Ask which figure your plan reaches.

Prospeo publishes less, and the figures also differ by page. The homepage says 280 million leads and companies, 143 million verified emails and 98% accuracy. The API docs say 200 million+ contacts and 30 million+ companies (Prospeo; Prospeo API docs). It publishes no mobile count. We have not tested either accuracy claim.

The two files serve different jobs. ContactOut leans on personal emails and LinkedIn profiles, which suits recruiting. Prospeo charges only for verified emails, which suits outbound where bounces cost you a domain. Prospeo search returns 25 results a page and stops at 25,000 per search. Search results carry no email or mobile, so you pay again to enrich them (Prospeo search docs, September 2026).

API and developer experience

Prospeo is easier to start with. The docs are public, the endpoints are documented and there is a free key to test. ContactOut gates the API behind a meeting: the docs end with "Request an API key by booking a meeting" (ContactOut API docs, September 2026).

ContactOut looks up a person from a LinkedIn URL and can add phones with include_phone=true. Auth is a token header:

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

Prospeo matches on name plus a company datapoint, a LinkedIn URL, an email or a person_id from search. Auth is an X-KEY header:

curl -X POST "https://api.prospeo.io/enrich-person" \
  -H "X-KEY: $PROSPEO_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"data":{"first_name":"Jane","last_name":"Doe","company_website":"acme.com"}}'

Both calls follow each docs page, with placeholder values (ContactOut API docs; Prospeo enrich docs, September 2026). Prospeo charges 1 credit per email found and 10 per mobile. ContactOut charges a credit when an email or phone is found, and publishes no dollar price per credit.

Rate limits point the same way. ContactOut's People Search runs at 60 a minute. Prospeo's Starter plan allows 2,000 enrichment requests a day, and Pro allows 500,000 (ContactOut API docs; Prospeo rate limits). Both have an MCP server, so an agent can call either.

Pricing

Both start at $49 a month for a paid plan. After that they diverge: ContactOut sells time on an account, Prospeo sells credits.

ContactOut. Email is $49 a month, $39 a month billed yearly ($468 a year). Email + Phone is $99 a month, $79 a month billed yearly ($948 a year). Plans are unlimited on paper, but terms cap them at 2,000 email and 1,000 phone credits per account a month, with one user per company (ContactOut pricing; terms, September 2026).

Prospeo. Starter is $49 a month for 2,000 credits, Growth $99 for 5,000 and Pro $249 for 15,000. Billed yearly they are $37, $74 and $187 a month. Credits expire each cycle, and add-ons run from $0.02 down to $0.01 a credit (Prospeo pricing; help center, September 2026).

Worked example: 10,000 verified emails a month

• ContactOut: No public price. One account yields 2,000 emails a month under fair use, and self-serve allows one user per company. 10,000 a month means the Team / API plan, which shows "Contact Us".
• Prospeo, monthly billing: 10,000 credits cost $189 (Prospeo pricing, September 2026). One Growth seat at $99 gives 5,000 credits, and the 5,000-credit add-on at $90 adds the rest.
• Prospeo, billed yearly: 120,000 credits a year cost $1,641 on the cheapest public mix, about $137 a month. One Starter seat at $441 gives 24,000 credits, and the 100,000-credit yearly add-on at $1,200 adds the rest. Two Growth seats at $888 each come to $1,776.

A mobile costs 10 credits, so 10,000 mobiles is 100,000 credits.

Worked example: 1M records a month

• ContactOut: No public 1M price. The API has no public price, and self-serve is capped at 2,000 emails per account a month.
• Prospeo, monthly billing: $14,456 a month. 44 Pro seats at $249 is $10,956 for 660,000 credits, plus the 350,000-credit add-on at $3,500. That is 1,010,000 credits.
• Prospeo, billed yearly: $11,223 once. Three Pro seats at $2,241 is $6,723, plus the 500,000-credit yearly add-on at $4,500. That is 1,040,000 credits upfront, for one month of volume.

No single Prospeo tier reaches 1M, and the figure assumes every lookup finds an email. Prospeo's help center says support enables extended add-on pricing on request, so a real quote will differ (Prospeo help center, September 2026).

Where ContactOut wins

A bigger people file. It claims 800 million profiles and 100 million direct dials, and it counts personal emails separately. Prospeo publishes no mobile count (ContactOut data, September 2026).

LinkedIn and recruiting. ContactOut sells a Chrome extension and a search portal (ContactOut pricing, September 2026). Its free tier gives 5 emails and 5 phones a day, and its MCP server has 15 tools against Prospeo's 8 (ContactOut MCP, September 2026).

Phones on a flat plan. Email + Phone at $99 a month includes unlimited phones on paper, with a 1,000 phone credit fair-use line. Prospeo charges 10 credits for every mobile.

Where Prospeo wins

A price you can read. Plans, credit costs, add-on rates and rate limits are public. ContactOut's API price needs a meeting, and its refund and renewal terms sit in a Subscription Agreement that is not public (Prospeo pricing, September 2026; ContactOut terms).

Verified-only billing and free misses. You are not charged when no result is found, or when you re-enrich the same record within 90 days (Prospeo enrich docs, September 2026).

Seats that scale. ContactOut limits you to one user per company on self-serve. Prospeo pools credits across seats and adds Chrome extension, CSV enrichment and HubSpot and Salesforce sync (Prospeo pricing, September 2026).

If you need volume through an API

Both tools are priced for people, not pipelines. If you pull records in code or through an agent, LeadOcean is a third option. The Free plan gives you 1,000 records, one-off, with no card. Pro is $499 a month flat, with no credits and no per-record price. You get the same REST API and 12-tool MCP server on both plans, and POST /v1/exports returns up to 50,000 rows per request. LeadOcean has no Chrome extension and no rep workspace. It is data and an API.

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