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

Crustdata and ContactOut sell different things. Crustdata is a data API with a graph of people, companies, jobs and posts, billed in credits. ContactOut is a contact finder that works from LinkedIn, with an API behind a sales call. Neither publishes a price at 1M records.

Verdict

• Pick Crustdata if you build agents or pipelines and want search, enrichment and change watchers behind one REST API and one hosted MCP server. Get your dollar price per credit before you commit.
• Pick ContactOut if recruiters or reps look people up from LinkedIn in a browser. The Chrome extension and the $49 Email plan are the point, not the API.
• Pick neither if you need millions of records through an API on a fixed bill. Both hide the 1M price, and ContactOut caps "unlimited" plans at 2,000 emails a month. A flat-price API such as LeadOcean fits that job better (see below).

Side by side

Both vendors change plans and promo prices often. Check the linked pages before you buy.

Data and coverage

Crustdata claims the bigger graph. Its homepage says 1B people, and describes a crawl of web pages parsed into one graph of people and companies (Crustdata, September 2026). The company count is unclear: the same site states 60M and 200M+. We quote no single number.

Crustdata publishes no email or phone counts. You can price those fields in credits, but you cannot size them before you pay. Search is 0.03 credits per result, so you can narrow a list cheaply first (Crustdata docs, September 2026).

ContactOut states more contact numbers, and they disagree. The data page says 800M profiles, 150M personal emails, 200M work emails and 100M direct dials. The homepage headline says 350M, and the MCP page says 600M+. Sources: ContactOut data, September 2026 and ContactOut MCP, September 2026. Ask which number your plan reaches.

The two also cover different ground. Crustdata adds live web fetch, job and post search, and watchers that alert on a changed person or company. ContactOut is narrower: people, contact details, and company lookups by domain.

That difference decides most purchases. If your question is who works at a company and how to reach them, both tools answer it. If your question is who changed jobs this month, only Crustdata is built for it.

API and developer experience

Crustdata is built for code. Every request goes to api.crustdata.com with a bearer key and an x-api-version: 2025-11-01 header. Emails and phones come from /person/contact/enrich, which needs an enterprise plan. Self-serve keys get a 403 (Crustdata docs, September 2026).

curl --request POST \
  --url https://api.crustdata.com/person/contact/enrich \
  --header "authorization: Bearer $CRUSTDATA_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"],
    "fields": ["contact.business_emails"]
  }'

Email records come back as an email plus a status of deliverable, catch_all, invalid or unknown. Crustdata also has a hosted MCP server with OAuth for interactive clients and an API key for code (Crustdata MCP docs, September 2026).

ContactOut's API is a set of GET endpoints keyed on a LinkedIn URL. You request a key by booking a meeting, so you cannot start the same day (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 call charges 1 email credit if an email is found and 1 phone credit if a phone is found. The docs list no dollar price per credit. Its MCP server has 15 tools and starts with 600+ free credits, which is the one way to test ContactOut without a call to sales.

Bulk work looks different in each. ContactOut's v2 bulk endpoint takes up to 1,000 LinkedIn URLs in one job and returns the result by polling a job id. Crustdata's batch person enrich takes up to 10,000 identifiers in one job. Both are asynchronous, so plan for a wait and a polling loop, not a single response.

Pricing

Neither vendor lets you work out a 1M bill from public pages. Here is what each page does give you, with the arithmetic shown.

Crustdata prices calls in credits. Search is 0.03 credits per result. Person enrich is 1 to 7 credits: base profile 1, business email +1, personal email +2, phone +2. Contact enrich is 1 to 5.5 per matched person, on enterprise plans only (Crustdata docs, September 2026). The pricing page lists no plan names and no dollar price per credit (Crustdata pricing, September 2026).

• 10,000 work-email lookups: 10,000 x (1 + 1) = 20,000 credits on /person/enrich, or 10,000 credits on the enterprise contact endpoint.
• 1,000,000 work-email lookups: 1,000,000 x (1 + 1) = 2,000,000 credits, or 1,000,000 on the contact endpoint.
• Dollars: credits x your quoted price per credit, which is not public. No public 1M price.

Purchased credits expire 12 months after purchase, per the docs. A Crustdata blog post dated 30 July 2026 says 6 months. Confirm the term in your dashboard before you buy in bulk. Sources: Crustdata credits, September 2026 and Crustdata blog, September 2026.

ContactOut sells seat plans. Email is $49 a month on monthly billing, $39 a month billed yearly. Email + Phone is $99 a month, $79 a month billed yearly. Both are "unlimited" in the plan card, with 300 and 600 exports a month. Every self-serve plan is one user per company (ContactOut pricing, September 2026).

The terms add a fair-use line: 2,000 email credits and 1,000 phone credits per account per month (ContactOut terms, September 2026).

• 10,000 emails: 10,000 / 2,000 = 5 account-months of fair use. One user per company means you cannot buy five accounts, so there is no public self-serve price.
• 1,000,000 emails: 1,000,000 / 2,000 = 500 account-months. Same rule. No public 1M price.
• Volume means the Team / API plan, shown as Contact Us with no number.

ContactOut's sales page says a team can start for less than $299 a month, "for work emails only. Conditions apply." (ContactOut for Sales, September 2026). The page gives no volume behind that figure.

Where Crustdata wins

Crustdata wins on size, scope and agent fit. It claims 1B people, and the credit model lets you search at 0.03 credits a result before you spend more.

It also does things ContactOut does not. It fetches live web pages, searches jobs and posts, and watches a person or company for changes. If you need a signal the day it happens, pick Crustdata.

For developers, the docs are public and you get a key without a meeting. Rate limits are low at 15 and 30 requests a minute, but they are written down, and batch jobs take up to 10,000 identifiers.

Where ContactOut wins

ContactOut wins for people who work in a browser. The Chrome extension reads a LinkedIn profile and shows the email and phone while you look at it.

It also publishes its contact coverage: 150M personal emails, 200M work emails and 100M direct dials. And you can start cheap. A free plan gives 5 emails and 5 phones a day, and Email is $49 a month with no sales call.

ContactOut's data page also reports hourly updates and email verification, though the figures are the vendor's own claims. If a recruiter needs 50 contacts this week, ContactOut is cheaper and faster than any credit-metered API. Phones are included in the $99 plan, where Crustdata adds 2 credits a phone.

If you need volume through an API

If you pull data in code or through an agent, LeadOcean is built for that. It holds 693M people and 63M companies. You call it over REST or a hosted MCP server, with 12 tools, on every plan. 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. Bulk pulls go through POST /v1/exports, 50,000 rows per request, and the rate limit is 100 requests per second per key. Crustdata and ContactOut stay the better choice for live signals and for browser lookups. Compare the plans on the pricing page.

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