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

Coresignal and ContactOut both sell people data, but they are built for different jobs. Coresignal is a credit-metered data API with a public price for every plan. ContactOut is a LinkedIn-first email and phone finder, and its API has no public price.

Verdict

• Pick Coresignal if you need job postings, raw profile volume or flat-file datasets, and want a price you can read first. It lists 907M+ employee records and 482M+ job postings.
• Pick ContactOut if your team finds emails and phones for people one at a time, in a browser. Paid plans start at $49 a month and the Chrome extension is the core product.
• Pick neither if you need contact data at volume through an API at a price you can read. Neither publishes a 1M price. LeadOcean is one option: Pro is $499 a month, flat.

Side by side

Data and coverage

Coresignal publishes record counts and a data dictionary. ContactOut publishes contact counts, but its profile count changes from page to page. Both sets of numbers are marketing claims, so test them on your own list.

Coresignal's homepage lists 907M+ employee records, 70M+ companies and 482M+ job postings, with company data delivered daily (Coresignal, September 2026). ContactOut's data page lists 800 million people profiles, 150 million personal emails, 200 million work emails, 100 million direct dials and 40 million companies (ContactOut data, September 2026).

Ask which ContactOut number your plan reaches. The MCP page says 600M+ profiles, and the pricing page says the Team / API plan carries a bulk license of 700 million+ profiles (ContactOut MCP, September 2026; pricing).

Email works differently on each. Coresignal's multi-source employee records carry a professional email with four status values: verified, matched_email, matched_pattern and guessed_common_pattern. Its Base Employee API pages list no email field (Coresignal data dictionary, September 2026).

ContactOut returns work and personal emails together by default. Its API docs show a work_email_status of Verified or Unverified, and real-time work-email verification runs only when you pass email_type=work (ContactOut API docs, September 2026).

Phone is the gap for Coresignal. It lists no phone field in either employee dictionary, so a dial list needs a second source. ContactOut sells phones as a separate credit, switched on with include_phone=true.

Coresignal's MCP email lookup excludes employees in the EEA and UK (Coresignal MCP docs, September 2026). Test that first if your list is European.

API and developer experience

Coresignal is built to search for free and collect by ID or URL. ContactOut is built to turn a LinkedIn URL or an email into contact details. Both have a hosted MCP server.

Coresignal sends the key in an apikey header. The collect call takes a shorthand name from a profile URL and costs 20 credits on the multi-source API (Coresignal docs, September 2026).

curl -X GET \
  "https://api.coresignal.com/cdapi/v2/employee_multi_source/collect/jane-doe" \
  -H "accept: application/json" \
  -H "apikey: $CORESIGNAL_API_KEY"

Search by filter or Elasticsearch DSL is free and returns IDs. You pay when you collect, and a search preview costs 10 to 20 credits (Coresignal docs, September 2026).

ContactOut sends the key in a token header. The single contact call takes a LinkedIn URL. It bills 1 email credit if an email is found, plus 1 phone credit if you ask for phones and one is found (ContactOut API docs, September 2026).

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"

The hurdle is access. ContactOut's docs tell you to book a meeting to get a key, so you cannot try the API from a signup page (ContactOut API docs, September 2026).

Rate limits differ in kind. Coresignal ties speed to the plan, from 5 to 100 requests a second. ContactOut's limits are per minute and per endpoint, and People Search is the slowest at 60 a minute.

Both have an MCP server. Coresignal's has 5 tools and bills entity_search at 20 credits a call. ContactOut's has 15 tools, including People Count to size a list before you spend credits, and offers 600+ free credits at onboarding.

Pricing

Compare the two on one task: a work-email lookup by profile. Figures use the monthly list price first, with the billed-yearly price after it.

At 10,000 work emails a month

Coresignal: 10,000 lookups x 20 credits = 200,000 credits. Contact enrichment starts at Pro, and Growth stops at 150,000 credits. That leaves Premium at $1,500 a month for 1,000,000 credits, or $1,350 a month billed yearly. You use a fifth of it, so $0.15 a lookup on the monthly price (Coresignal pricing, September 2026).

Premium shows a Get started button, but the pricing page flags Premium, Scale and Elite for a sales contact, so expect a call (Coresignal pricing, September 2026).

At small scale the plan matters more than the rate. Pro is $499 for 35,000 credits, which is 1,750 lookups, about $0.29 each.

ContactOut: no public price at this size. Paid unlimited plans are capped at 2,000 email credits and 1,000 phone credits per account per month, and self-serve plans allow one user per company (ContactOut terms, September 2026; pricing). 10,000 emails is 5 times the cap.

Up to 2,000 emails a month, Email is $49 a month, or $39 billed yearly. That is $0.0245 a lookup at the ceiling, on the monthly price. The plan also lists 300 exports a month. Above 2,000 you need the Team / API plan, which is Contact Us.

At 1M work emails a month

Coresignal: no public 1M price. 1,000,000 lookups x 20 credits = 20,000,000 credits, and no public plan reaches that. The top plan, Elite, is $5,000 a month for 10,000,000 credits ($4,500 billed yearly), which covers 500,000 lookups (Coresignal pricing, September 2026).

Coresignal does not document buying two Elite plans at once, so volume past Elite needs a quote.

ContactOut: no public 1M price. 1,000,000 emails / 2,000 a month = 500 account-months, and one-user-per-company rules out buying 500 accounts (ContactOut terms, September 2026). The API has no public price, so volume means a sales call.

Do not multiply a seat price out to 1M and call it a price. On both tools the 1M number is a quote, and the quote is the only number that counts.

Credit expiry differs too. Coresignal monthly plans reset each cycle, and Premium, Scale and Elite roll credits over for 3 months. Annual credits last 12 months (Coresignal docs, September 2026).

Where Coresignal wins

• A public price ladder. Seven paid plans from $49 to $5,000 a month, and most plans list a yearly price 10 percent lower.
• An API you can try. A free trial of 2,000 credits is on the pricing page. ContactOut's API key starts with a booked meeting.
• Job postings. 482M+ postings at 1 credit each. ContactOut's pages list no job data.
• Free search. Search by filter or DSL costs nothing. You pay only to collect.
• Speed you can read. A rate limit per plan, up to 100+ requests a second.

Where ContactOut wins

• Phones and personal emails. It claims 100 million direct dials and 150 million personal emails. Coresignal's employee dictionaries list no phone field.
• Cheap for one person. Email is $49 a month, with a free plan of 5 emails and 5 phones a day. Coresignal's cheapest paid plan is Mini at $49 for 2,500 credits.
• A browser workflow. Chrome extension, search portal and email campaigns. Coresignal sells data, not a prospecting app.
• A bigger MCP toolset. 15 tools against 5, with People Count to size a list first.

If you need volume through an API

We build LeadOcean, so weigh this section accordingly. LeadOcean holds 693M people and 63M companies, reachable over REST and MCP. Free is 1,000 records, one-off, with no card. Pro is $499 a month, flat, with no credits and a limit of 100 requests per second per key (LeadOcean pricing, September 2026).

For bulk work, POST /v1/exports returns up to 50,000 rows per request. The app has an Exports page with a filter builder and CSV download (LeadOcean exports docs, September 2026). It has no job postings, Chrome extension or dialer. See the Coresignal alternative page for a line-by-line version.

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