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

Coresignal and Explorium both sell B2B data to developers, but they sell different things. Coresignal is a large professional-data warehouse you query and collect by ID on monthly credit plans. Explorium is a data platform with company enrichments, events and a contact API, sold in prepaid credit packs.

For raw profile volume and job postings, pick Coresignal. For company signals and phone lookups, pick Explorium.

Verdict

• Pick Coresignal if you need job postings, the largest raw profile count (907M+ employee records) or flat-file datasets. Search is free, and you pay only when you collect a record.
• Pick Explorium if you want phone numbers, company events and an MCP server on one API key. It also starts cheaper, with Lite at $29.99 for 500 credits against Coresignal Mini at $49 for 2,500.
• Pick neither if you want one flat price for people and company data with phones and a 12-tool MCP server. LeadOcean is one option: Pro is $499 a month, flat. It is smaller than both on raw counts, so test your list first.

Side by side

Data and coverage

Coresignal is the bigger dataset, and Explorium has more contact types. Coresignal lists 907M+ employee records and 70M+ companies. Explorium claims 767M+ professional profiles and 146M+ business entities.

Both are marketing counts. A profile is not a mailable contact, and neither vendor publishes how many records have an email or a phone number. You cannot compare contact coverage on paper.

Email fields differ. Coresignal's professional email sits on its Multi-source employee records, with four confidence levels: verified, matched_email, matched_pattern and guessed_common_pattern. Its Base Employee API pages list no email field (Coresignal data dictionary, September 2026). Explorium returns valid, invalid or catch-all beside the professional email.

Phones are the clearest split. Explorium's contact endpoint returns a mobile number and a list of phone numbers. Coresignal's employee data dictionaries list no phone field, so a dial list needs a second vendor.

Scope also differs. Coresignal adds job postings and a Real-time Employee API that fetches a live profile. Explorium adds events such as funding rounds, hiring and product launches, plus business enrichments for technology and financials (Explorium MCP docs, October 2026).

Test on your own list before you commit. Run the same 500 people through each and compare match rate and email status.

API and developer experience

Coresignal is search by filter, then collect by ID or URL. Explorium is match, then enrich. Both are REST APIs, and both split a lookup into two calls.

Coresignal sends the key in an apikey header. Search by filter or Elasticsearch DSL is free and returns IDs. The collect call below 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"

Explorium sends the key in an API_KEY header. You first match a person to a prospect_id, then call the contact endpoint. The docs price this body at 2 credits for email only (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 scales. Coresignal's limit rises with the plan. It is 5 requests a second up to Starter, then 10 on Pro, 20 on Growth, 50 on Premium and 100 on Scale (Coresignal docs, September 2026). Explorium has one limit for every key, 200 queries a minute, and a request with 50 IDs uses 50 queries (Explorium docs, October 2026). That is about 3 a second.

Both have an MCP server. Coresignal's has 5 tools, uses OAuth 2.1 and sits at https://mcp.coresignal.com/mcp/v2. entity_search costs 20 credits a call, and it excludes EEA and UK employees from email lookups (Coresignal MCP docs, September 2026). Its email_enrich tool bills only when an email is found.

Explorium's AgentSource MCP has 11 tools at https://mcp.explorium.ai/mcp and uses an API key. Its statistics tools size an audience before you pull (Explorium MCP docs, October 2026).

For big pulls, both cap a request at 10,000 records. Coresignal's Bulk Collect is asynchronous. Explorium's async jobs run for 24 hours at most, so 1M records is at least 100 jobs on either side.

Pricing

Coresignal sells monthly plans that hold a credit balance. Explorium sells prepaid packs. To compare them, price the same job on both: work-email lookups.

Coresignal bills a contact enrichment at 20 credits, and the Contact Enrichment API is included from Pro upward. Here are the plans, with the monthly list price first and the billed-yearly figure after it (Coresignal pricing, September 2026).

Explorium packs are one-off. Lite is $29.99 for 500 credits, Starter $149.99 for 5K, Growth $749.99 for 30K and Scale $7,499.99 for 500K (Explorium pricing, October 2026). Enterprise is a custom quote.

At 10,000 records a month

Coresignal: 10,000 work emails x 20 credits = 200,000 credits. Pro (35,000) and Growth (150,000) fall short. Premium has 1,000,000 credits, so one plan covers it at $1,500 a month, or $1,350 a month billed yearly. Monthly Premium is self-serve (Get started opens sign-up), while the yearly plan goes through Contact us (Coresignal pricing, October 2026).

Explorium: 10,000 work emails x 2 credits = 20,000 credits. 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. One Growth pack (30K) plus four Starter packs (20K) comes to $749.99 + $599.96 = $1,349.95 (Explorium docs, October 2026).

At this size Explorium is cheaper for email alone. Packs expire after 12 months, and Explorium's pricing page lists no price for the match step, so treat these figures as a floor.

At 1M records a month

Coresignal has no public 1M price. 1,000,000 work-email lookups x 20 credits = 20,000,000 credits. The largest listed plan, Elite, holds 10,000,000 credits for $5,000 a month, which covers 500,000 lookups. Past that you need a quote (Coresignal pricing, September 2026).

Explorium: 1M work emails x 2 credits = 2M credits. The cheapest per-credit pack is Scale, 500K credits at $7,499.99 ($0.015 a credit). So 4 x $7,499.99 = $29,999.96 at list. With phones, 1M lookups is 5M credits, or 10 packs and $74,999.90 (Explorium pricing, October 2026).

Enterprise has volume discounts, so a negotiated price could be lower. Time matters too: at 200 queries a minute, 1M rows take 5,000 minutes, about 3.5 days, unless you buy more query capacity.

Where Coresignal wins

• Raw size. 907M+ employee records and 70M+ companies, against Explorium's 767M+ profiles and 146M+ business entities, by each vendor's own count.
• Job postings. 482M+ postings at 1 credit each.
• Free search. Filter and Elasticsearch DSL search cost nothing. You size and shape a pull before you pay a credit.
• Rate limits at the top plans. 50 requests a second on Premium and 100 on Scale, against Explorium's 200 queries a minute.
• Datasets. Flat files from $1,000 a month, priced by contract (Coresignal pricing, September 2026).

Where Explorium wins

• Phone numbers. A mobile number and a phone list from one contact call. Coresignal's employee dictionaries list no phone field.
• A cheaper start. Lite is $29.99 against Mini at $49, and a 10,000 email job is $599.96 against Coresignal's $1,500 plan.
• Events and company enrichments. Funding, hiring and product launches, plus technology and financial enrichments.
• A bigger MCP server. 11 tools against 5, including free statistics tools.
• One rate limit for everyone. A new key gets 200 queries a minute. Coresignal starts at 5 requests a second on Starter and below.

If you need volume through an API

We build LeadOcean, so weigh this section accordingly. LeadOcean holds 693M people and 63M companies, reached 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 is smaller than Coresignal on raw profiles. See the Coresignal alternative page and Coresignal alternatives for line-by-line versions.

FAQ