Crustdata vs BetterContact (2026): Data, Pricing and API Compared

Crustdata and BetterContact solve different problems. Crustdata is an index of people and companies that you search and enrich by API. BetterContact takes a list you already have and asks 20+ providers for an email or a mobile number. Pick on the job, then on the bill.

Verdict

• Pick Crustdata if you need to search a large index in code, add live web data or change alerts, or connect an agent over MCP. Expect to talk to sales to learn what a credit costs.
• Pick BetterContact if you already own a list of names and domains and want a waterfall across 20+ providers, billed only for valid results. It is cheap at small volume and has 28 native integrations.
• Pick neither if you want to pull people and companies at volume with a fixed monthly bill. LeadOcean is flat at $499 a month, with a 100 requests per second rate limit and an MCP server.

Side by side

Credit costs are list figures and change by plan. Check each vendor before you buy.

Data and coverage

Crustdata owns an index. BetterContact does not, so the two are not measured the same way.

Crustdata claims 1B people on its homepage. The homepage states both 60M companies and 200M+ companies, so no single company count can be trusted (Crustdata, September 2026). It also covers jobs, social posts and live web pages, and it can watch a person or company for changes.

BetterContact routes each lead through 20+ providers and charges only when a result is valid (BetterContact, September 2026). Its reach is the sum of those sources, so a list of named contacts can come back fuller than any one database would return. It has a Lead Finder for search, capped at 200 leads per request (BetterContact API docs, September 2026).

Neither vendor publishes an email or phone coverage percentage. Run your own sample of 500 rows before you commit.

Phone is the sharpest difference. Crustdata sells phone and email through a dedicated contact endpoint that needs an enterprise plan, and self-serve keys get a 403 (Crustdata docs, September 2026). BetterContact prices a mobile at 10 credits, but its API docs say phone enrichment needs a phone add-on, and no add-on price is published (BetterContact pricing, September 2026; API docs).

API and developer experience

Crustdata is synchronous and BetterContact is asynchronous. That one choice shapes the code you write.

Crustdata returns the profile in the same response. This request is from its enrich docs, with a placeholder profile URL (Crustdata docs, September 2026):

curl --request POST \
  --url https://api.crustdata.com/person/enrich \
  --header 'authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY' \
  --header 'content-type: application/json' \
  --header 'x-api-version: 2025-11-01' \
  --data '{"professional_network_profile_urls": ["https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-doe"]}'

BetterContact accepts up to 100 leads and answers with a request id. You then poll or wait for the webhook. This body follows its create endpoint docs, with placeholder values (BetterContact docs, September 2026):

curl --request POST \
  --url https://app.bettercontact.rocks/api/v2/async \
  --header 'X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY' \
  --header 'content-type: application/json' \
  --data '{"data": [{"first_name": "Jane", "last_name": "Doe", "company_domain": "acme.com"}], "webhook": "https://example.com/results"}'

BetterContact submissions are not idempotent. Retrying a call that had succeeded enriches the same leads twice and spends credits twice (BetterContact docs, September 2026). Build your retry logic around the request id.

On rate limits, Crustdata's defaults are tight for bulk work. At 15 requests a minute and 25 profiles per request, one key enriches 375 profiles a minute, so 1M profiles takes about 44 hours. That is our arithmetic on the documented defaults (Crustdata docs, September 2026). Its batch jobs of 10,000 people get around that, at the cost of an async wait.

BetterContact allows 200 requests a minute on Pro and 100 leads per call (BetterContact docs, September 2026). That is a ceiling of 20,000 leads a minute, and the waterfall itself sets the real pace.

On agents, Crustdata has a hosted MCP server. We found none for BetterContact, so an agent needs a wrapper around its REST API.

Pricing

Both vendors bill in credits, but only BetterContact tells you the dollars.

BetterContact Pro monthly steps run from 1,000 credits at $49 to 50,000 credits at $1,999. Billed yearly you get 2 months free (BetterContact pricing, September 2026). One valid email is 1 credit and one valid mobile is 10.

Crustdata lists credits per call but no price per credit. The docs say the dollar value depends on your plan and tell you to read it from your dashboard (Crustdata docs, September 2026). Purchased credits expire 12 months after purchase in the docs. A Crustdata blog post from 30 July 2026 says 6 months, so confirm the term before you buy in bulk (Crustdata credits, September 2026; Crustdata blog, September 2026).

Worked example, one work email per record, every lookup valid:

Arithmetic, not a price: 1,000,000 x $0.03998 is $39,980 at BetterContact's top-step rate, which is 20 x $1,999. Billed yearly the same step is about $1,665.83 a month, or $33,316.67 for 20. Above 50,000 credits BetterContact sells a custom quote, with Enterprise listed from $799 a month (BetterContact pricing, September 2026).

For Crustdata, multiply the credit counts by the price in your dashboard. A work email through /person/enrich is 1 base credit plus 1 for the business email (Crustdata docs, September 2026). Add 2 for a phone and a lookup is 4.

Where Crustdata wins

• A real index you can search. BetterContact enriches names you bring. Crustdata lets you query people and companies by filter, at 0.03 credits per search result.
• Live data and signals. Job search, social posts, live web fetch and change watchers are in the product.
• MCP. A hosted server with OAuth, ready for an agent.
• Synchronous calls. One request, one response, no polling loop.

Where BetterContact wins

• Find rate on a list you own. A waterfall across 20+ providers can reach people that one database misses.
• A published price. You can read the dollar cost of every step, and you pay only for valid results.
• Cheap at small volume. Starter is $15 a month and Pro starts at $49, with unused credits rolling over, capped at twice your plan.
• No-code reach. 28 native integrations and CSV upload suit teams that do not write code.

If you need volume through an API

LeadOcean is a people and company database you call over REST or MCP. It has two plans. 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.

The rate limit is 100 requests per second per key on every plan. POST /v1/exports returns up to 50,000 rows per request, and the app has an Exports page with a filter builder and CSV download. The MCP server at https://api.leadocean.io/mcp has 12 tools. A very large month is paced down past the fair-usage line, not cut off.

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