Coresignal sells professional data by the credit: employee profiles, companies and job postings. Dropcontact finds and verifies business emails for contacts you already hold, and charges one credit per email found. Pick Coresignal for data volume and job signals. Pick Dropcontact for a clean email list. Neither publishes a price at 1M records.
Coresignal figures were checked in September 2026 and Dropcontact figures in October 2026, each with its source link. Coresignal prices are in US dollars and Dropcontact prices are in euros. We do not convert between them.
Verdict
- Pick Coresignal if you need employee, company or job-posting data in bulk, or an MCP server that searches records. Its price ladder is public, from $49 to $5,000 a month.
- Pick Dropcontact if you hold names and companies and need verified business emails, you want to pay only for emails found, or you sell into Europe and want its CNIL audit claim and native CRM connectors.
- Pick neither if you need a database you can filter, phone numbers with a published count, and a price you can read at 1M records. Neither vendor publishes those. LeadOcean is one option.
Side by side
| Coresignal | Dropcontact | |
|---|---|---|
| Data size | 907M+ employee records, 70M+ companies, 482M+ job postings (Coresignal) | No contact database. Results come from its own algorithms (Dropcontact pricing) |
| Email coverage | Not published as a count. Professional email on multi-source employee records only (Coresignal data dictionary) | Not published as a count. 54.9% effective enrichment rate in its own 20,000-contact test (Dropcontact benchmark) |
| Phone coverage | Not published. No phone field in the employee dictionaries (Coresignal data dictionary) | Not published. phone and mobile_phone fields in the response (Dropcontact API docs) |
| API | REST, apikey header, search by filter or Elasticsearch DSL (Coresignal docs) | One endpoint, /v1/people/enrich/all. POST a batch, then GET the result (Dropcontact API docs) |
| MCP | Official server, OAuth 2.1, 5 tools (Coresignal MCP docs) | Server at mcp.dropcontact.com. OAuth or bearer token. Enriches a contact or validates an email (Dropcontact API docs) |
| Rate limit | 5 per second up to Starter, 10 Pro, 20 Growth, 50 Premium, 100 Scale (Coresignal rate limits) | 60 requests per second (Dropcontact API docs) |
| Bulk export | Bulk Collect, 10,000 records per request. Flat-file datasets from $1,000 a month (Coresignal docs, pricing) | CSV, XLS or TXT file enrichment in the app. API batches of 250 (Dropcontact pricing, API docs) |
| Price model | Monthly plan with a credit balance, 10 to 20 credits per record (Coresignal docs) | Monthly or yearly plan with a credit quota. One credit per email found (Dropcontact pricing) |
| Entry price | Free trial, 2,000 credits for 7 days. Mini $49 a month, no yearly plan (Coresignal pricing) | 50 free credits. Starter €29 a month for 500 credits, €24 billed yearly (Dropcontact pricing) |
| Cost at 1M records | No public 1M price. 1M email lookups is 20,000,000 credits and the top plan holds 10,000,000 (Coresignal pricing) | No public 1M price. Top published tier is 150,000 credits, €2,245 a month (Dropcontact pricing) |
Data and coverage
Coresignal is a dataset you query. Dropcontact is a service that builds answers for the contacts you send. The two do not overlap much.
Coresignal lists 907M+ employee records, 70M+ companies and 482M+ job postings. It says company data is delivered daily (Coresignal, September 2026). Dropcontact says it works only with algorithms and uses no contact databases (Dropcontact pricing, October 2026). So there is nothing to count or filter at Dropcontact. You bring the contact.
On email, Coresignal publishes no count. Its multi-source employee records carry a professional email with four statuses: verified, matched_email, matched_pattern and guessed_common_pattern. The Base Employee API pages list no email field (Coresignal data dictionary, September 2026). Two of the four statuses are pattern guesses, so filter to verified before you send.
Dropcontact builds the address from a name and a company, then verifies it. Each result gets a qualification such as nominative@pro or catch_all (Dropcontact API docs, October 2026). It publishes one hit-rate figure: 54.9% effective enrichment in a 20,000-contact test, after removing hard bounces and wrong domains. Dropcontact funded and ran that study and is one of the 15 tools in it (Dropcontact benchmark, October 2026). Treat it as a claim to test.
Phones are thin on both sides. Neither Coresignal employee dictionary lists a phone field. Dropcontact returns phone and mobile_phone fields, and says mobile numbers come from signature extraction in internal email flows. It publishes no coverage count (Dropcontact pricing, October 2026). If you need a dial list, test a sample first.
Coresignal's edge is signals. It sells job postings at 1 credit each, plus historical headcount and employee posts (Coresignal docs, September 2026). Dropcontact's edge is French company data: SIREN, NAF code and company leader details when you set the siren flag.
One caution for European lists. Coresignal's MCP email lookups exclude employees in the EEA and UK (Coresignal MCP docs, September 2026). Test that before you buy.
API and developer experience
Both are JSON APIs with a key header. Coresignal has many record types and a credit meter behind every call. Dropcontact has one endpoint and a batch-then-poll flow.
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 is separate. 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 a call for up to 20 results (Coresignal docs, September 2026). Bulk Collect is a two-step job: POST a query, then poll for the files. It takes up to 10,000 records per request (Coresignal docs, September 2026).
Dropcontact needs a first name, a last name and a company, or a LinkedIn URL, or an email. You POST up to 250 contacts, each under 15 kB, then GET the result with the request ID (Dropcontact API docs, October 2026).
curl -X POST "https://api.dropcontact.com/v1/people/enrich/all" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-H "X-Access-Token: $DROPCONTACT_API_KEY" \
-d '{"data":[{"first_name":"Jane","last_name":"Doe","website":"acme.com"}],"language":"en"}'The GET returns "Request not ready yet, try again in 30 seconds" until processing ends. A custom_callback_url webhook removes the polling. If no email is found, you get your input back unchanged (Dropcontact API docs, October 2026).
Rate limits scale differently. Coresignal ties speed to the plan, from 5 requests per second up to Starter to 100 on Scale (Coresignal rate limits, September 2026). Dropcontact states a limit of 60 per second, and each request carries up to 250 contacts.
Both have an MCP server that returns records. Coresignal's signs in with OAuth 2.1 at https://mcp.coresignal.com/mcp/v2 and has 5 tools. entity_search costs 20 credits a call and entity_fetch costs 20 credits per employee or company record. Email lookups bill only when an email is found (Coresignal MCP docs, September 2026).
Dropcontact's server takes OAuth or an API token and enriches a contact from a name and company, a full name and company, or a LinkedIn URL. It can also validate an email. It cannot search (Dropcontact API docs, October 2026). Its docs call remote MCP connections "still early".
Pricing
Coresignal sells monthly plans that hold a credit balance, and each record type burns a set number of credits. Dropcontact sells a monthly quota of credits and charges one only when it finds a verified email. To compare them, price a work-email lookup on each.
At 10,000 records a month
For Dropcontact, 10,000 emails found need 10,000 credits. The nearest published tier is 11,000 credits: €199 a month on Starter, or €166 billed yearly. €199 / 10,000 = €0.0199 per email at best. A miss is refunded, so a lower hit rate spends fewer credits (Dropcontact pricing, October 2026).
For Coresignal, contact enrichment costs 20 credits a call, so 10,000 x 20 = 200,000 credits. The Contact Enrichment API is included from the Pro plan upward. Pro holds 35,000 credits and Growth holds 150,000, so neither covers it (Coresignal pricing, September 2026).
That leaves Premium at $1,500 a month for 1,000,000 credits, or $1,350 a month billed yearly at $16,200. $1,500 / 10,000 = $0.15 per lookup. Monthly Premium is self-serve (Get started opens sign-up), while the yearly plan goes through Contact us (Coresignal pricing, October 2026). Premium credits roll over for 3 months (Coresignal docs, September 2026).
For emails, Dropcontact is far cheaper at this size. The gap is bigger than any euro to dollar swing. Profiles are a different sum: 10,000 Base employee records is 100,000 credits, which fits Growth at $1,000 a month. Base employee records list no email field.
At 1M records a month
Dropcontact has no public 1M price. Its top published tier is 150,000 credits, €2,245 a month, or €1,871 a month billed yearly. Enterprise starts at 200,000 credits a month on a custom quote (Dropcontact pricing, October 2026). We do not multiply a rate out to 1M. Ask Dropcontact for a quote. Note that 1,000,000 contacts at 250 per request is 4,000 POST calls.
Coresignal also has 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, which covers 500,000 lookups (Coresignal pricing, September 2026).
Two Elite months at $0.0005 a credit would come to $10,000. That is derived, not published, and Coresignal does not document buying two Elite plans at once. Ask for a quote.
Profile records are another sum. 1,000,000 Base employee records x 10 credits = 10,000,000 credits, one Elite month at $5,000, or $4,500 a month billed yearly at $54,000 (Coresignal docs, September 2026). Those records carry no email field.
Where Coresignal wins
- Data size. 907M+ employee records, 70M+ companies and 482M+ job postings, against no database at Dropcontact.
- Search. Filter and Elasticsearch search is free, so you can size a pull before you pay.
- Signals. Job postings at 1 credit each, historical headcount and employee posts.
- Bulk. Bulk Collect takes 10,000 records per request, and flat-file datasets start at $1,000 a month.
- A public price ladder. Seven paid plans from $49 to $5,000 a month, with support tiers on the larger ones.
Its weak points are the credit math, email on multi-source records only, and no phone field.
Where Dropcontact wins
- Starting from names. It finds a business email from a name and a company. Coresignal's collect call needs a profile URL, a shorthand name or an ID.
- Pay on success. A credit is charged only for a verified email, and a miss is refunded (Dropcontact API docs, October 2026).
- Cost for emails. €199 a month for up to 11,000 emails, against $1,500 for 10,000 lookups at Coresignal.
- Speed. 60 requests per second, against 5 to 20 on Coresignal plans up to Growth.
- European and CRM fit. A stated CNIL audit, plus native HubSpot, Pipedrive and Salesforce connectors (Dropcontact pricing, October 2026).
Its weak points are no search, no database and a batch-then-poll flow.
If you need volume through an API
We build LeadOcean, so weigh this section accordingly. Free gives you 1,000 records, one-off, with no card. Pro is $499 a month, flat, with no credits and no per-record price (LeadOcean pricing, October 2026).
It holds 693M people, 366M with an email and 166M with a phone number, plus 63M companies. The REST API and an MCP server with 12 tools run on every plan, and the MCP server searches, enriches and exports records (LeadOcean MCP docs, October 2026).
POST /v1/exports returns up to 50,000 rows per request, and the app has an Exports page for the same job. 1M rows is 20 requests over two days (LeadOcean exports docs, October 2026). See pricing.
FAQ
Is Coresignal or Dropcontact cheaper?
For work emails at 10,000 a month, Dropcontact: €199 against $1,500 for Premium at Coresignal, in different currencies. At 1M neither has a public price. Coresignal's derived figure is about $10,000 a month.
Does Dropcontact have a database like Coresignal?
No. Dropcontact says it uses algorithms and no contact databases, so you cannot search or count people there (Dropcontact pricing, October 2026). Coresignal lists 907M+ employee records you can search.
Which one has an MCP server?
Both. Coresignal's has 5 tools and bills credits per call. Dropcontact's enriches a contact or validates an email, and cannot search (Dropcontact API docs, October 2026).
Which one finds phone numbers?
Neither publishes a phone count. Coresignal's employee dictionaries list no phone field. Dropcontact returns phone and mobile_phone fields and charges credits only for emails. Test both on your own list.
What does a Dropcontact credit buy?
One credit is one verified email found, or one email verified if you send an email. If no email is found, the credit is refunded (Dropcontact API docs, October 2026).
Can I try either for free?
Yes. Coresignal gives 2,000 credits for 7 days, one trial per company email domain, and they do not carry to a paid plan (Coresignal docs, September 2026). Dropcontact gives 50 free credits (Dropcontact pricing, October 2026).
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