Crustdata is a data API with its own index of people and companies, billed in credits. Dropcontact cleans and completes contacts you already have, billed one credit per email found. Crustdata wins when you need to search a large live dataset from code. Dropcontact wins when you start from a list of names and companies and want verified emails.
Crustdata figures were checked in September 2026 and Dropcontact figures in October 2026, each with its source link. Where a vendor publishes nothing, this page says so.
Verdict
- Pick Crustdata if you search people and companies in code or from an agent, and want jobs, social posts and change watchers too. Accept that its pricing page shows credits and no dollar price per credit.
- Pick Dropcontact if you hold names and companies and need verified business emails, with a credit back on a miss. It also suits European buyers who want its CNIL audit claim, and teams who work in Google Sheets or a CRM.
- Pick neither if you want a searchable database, bulk export and an MCP server that returns records on one flat monthly price. Crustdata has no public dollar price and Dropcontact has no database to search. LeadOcean is one option.
Side by side
| Crustdata | Dropcontact | |
|---|---|---|
| Data size | 1B people on its homepage. Its homepage states both 60M and 200M+ companies, so we quote no single company count (Crustdata) | No contact database. Results come from its own algorithms (Dropcontact pricing) |
| Email coverage | Not published as a count. Business email is +1 credit on enrich (Crustdata pricing docs) | Not published as a count. 54.9% effective enrichment rate in its own 20,000-contact test (Dropcontact benchmark) |
| Phone coverage | Not published as a count. Phone is +2 credits on enrich (Crustdata pricing docs) | phone and mobile_phone fields. Coverage not published (Dropcontact API docs) |
| API | REST, Bearer key and an x-api-version header. Search, enrich, batch and live endpoints (Crustdata docs) | One endpoint, /v1/people/enrich/all. POST a batch, then GET the result (Dropcontact API docs) |
| MCP | Yes, install.crustdata.com/mcp. OAuth, or an API key as a bearer token (Crustdata MCP docs) | Yes, mcp.dropcontact.com. OAuth or bearer token. Enriches a contact or validates an email (Dropcontact API docs) |
| Rate limit | 15 requests a minute on person enrich, 30 on search, by default (Crustdata rate limits) | 60 requests per second (Dropcontact API docs) |
| Bulk export | Async batch jobs, up to 10,000 people per job (Crustdata batch docs) | File enrichment in the app (CSV, XLS, TXT). API batches of 250 (Dropcontact pricing, API docs) |
| Price model | Credits per call. Dollar value depends on plan (Crustdata pricing docs) | Monthly or yearly plan with a credit quota. One credit per email found (Dropcontact pricing) |
| Entry price | No public plan or dollar price. A Crustdata blog post reports a lowest tier from $95 a month. No billed-yearly figure (Crustdata blog) | 50 free credits. Starter €29 a month for 500 credits, €24 billed yearly (Dropcontact pricing) |
| Cost at 1M records | No public 1M price (Crustdata pricing docs) | No public 1M price. Top published tier is 150,000 credits, €2,245 a month (Dropcontact pricing) |
Crustdata prices are credits and Dropcontact prices are euros. We do not convert between them.
Data and coverage
Crustdata owns a searchable dataset and Dropcontact does not. Crustdata claims 1B people on its homepage, and describes a live graph built from the web (Crustdata, September 2026). Dropcontact says it works only with algorithms and uses no contact databases (Dropcontact pricing, October 2026). There is nothing to count or filter at Dropcontact. You bring the contact.
Neither vendor publishes how many people have an email or a phone. Crustdata charges 1 extra credit for a business email and 2 for a phone on person enrich (Crustdata pricing docs, September 2026). Its email statuses are deliverable, catch_all, invalid and unknown (Crustdata contact docs, September 2026). Dropcontact qualifies each email as a string such as nominative@pro or catch_all@pro (Dropcontact API docs, October 2026).
Dropcontact publishes one hit-rate figure. In a 20,000-contact test it reports a 54.9% effective enrichment rate, after removing hard bounces and wrong domains (Dropcontact benchmark, October 2026). Dropcontact ran that study on first name, last name and company only. It does not name Crustdata. Treat it as a claim to test, not a ranking.
Phones differ in kind. Dropcontact returns phone and mobile_phone fields, and its pricing page says mobile numbers come from signature extraction in internal email flows (Dropcontact pricing, October 2026). Crustdata sells phones as a +2 credit add-on. Test both on your own list before you rely on either.
API and developer experience
Crustdata is built for search and lookup by profile. Dropcontact is built for cleaning a batch. The Crustdata contact endpoint takes a profile URL and returns emails and phones, billed per type requested. It needs an enterprise or higher plan, and self-serve keys get a 403 (Crustdata contact 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"]}'Self-serve keys use /person/enrich instead. It takes up to 25 profile URLs per request and adds contact fields as credit add-ons (Crustdata 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, 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 to /v1/people/enrich/all/{request_id} returns "Request not ready yet, try again in 30 seconds" until processing ends. Webhooks remove the polling (Dropcontact API docs, October 2026).
Rate limits shape how each scales. Crustdata defaults to 15 requests a minute on enrich and 30 on search (Crustdata rate limits, September 2026). Dropcontact allows 60 requests per second, and each request carries up to 250 contacts.
For agents, both ship a hosted MCP server with OAuth. Crustdata's is at install.crustdata.com/mcp (Crustdata MCP docs, September 2026). Dropcontact's enriches a contact or validates an email (Dropcontact MCP page, October 2026).
Pricing
Crustdata bills credits per call and publishes no dollar price per credit. Dropcontact bills a credit per email found and publishes its plans. To compare them, price a month of work-email lookups at two sizes.
At 10,000 records a month. Crustdata needs 2 credits per work email on /person/enrich (1 base plus 1 business email). 10,000 x 2 = 20,000 credits. On the enterprise-only contact endpoint it is 10,000 x 1 = 10,000 credits. The dollar cost is your quoted price per credit times that number, and the price is not public (Crustdata pricing docs, September 2026). A blog post from Crustdata reports a lowest tier from $95 a month, with no credit allowance stated (Crustdata blog, September 2026).
Dropcontact needs 10,000 credits to find 10,000 emails. The nearest published tier is 11,000 credits: €199 a month on Starter, or €166 a month billed yearly. €199 / 10,000 = €0.0199 per email at best. Growth is €303 a month at the same tier (Dropcontact pricing, October 2026). A miss is refunded, so a lower hit rate lowers the credits you use.
At 1M records a month. Crustdata has no public 1M price. 1,000,000 x 2 = 2,000,000 credits self-serve, or 1,000,000 credits on the contact endpoint. Dollars depend on a price per credit that Crustdata does not publish (Crustdata pricing docs, September 2026). Purchased credits expire 12 months after purchase, per its docs (Crustdata credits, September 2026). A Crustdata blog post dated 30 July 2026 says 6 months, so confirm the term before you buy in bulk.
Dropcontact has no public 1M price either. Its top published tier is 150,000 credits a month, and 1,000,000 is more than six times that. 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 here. Ask Dropcontact for a quote.
Time matters too. At 25 profiles a request and 15 requests a minute, Crustdata's default enrich limit moves 375 people a minute. 1,000,000 / 375 is about 2,667 minutes, or 44 hours. Batch jobs of up to 10,000 people get around that, with async waits (Crustdata batch docs, September 2026). Dropcontact at 250 contacts a request needs 4,000 POST calls for 1M.
For more Dropcontact matchups, see Prospeo vs Dropcontact, FullEnrich vs Dropcontact and Findymail vs Dropcontact. For Crustdata on its own, see the Crustdata alternative page and Crustdata alternatives.
Where Crustdata wins
- A dataset to search. 1B people on its homepage, with person and company search, so you build a list and not only clean one.
- Signals beyond contacts. Job search, social posts, live web fetch and change watchers, at 5 credits per changed person on the 30-day setting (Crustdata pricing docs, September 2026).
- Cheap search. 0.03 credits per search result, and a contact lookup with no match is not billed.
- Batch scale. Up to 10,000 people in one async job.
Where Dropcontact wins
- Starting from names. It finds an email from a name and a company. Crustdata's person enrich takes a profile URL.
- A published price. Starter from €29 a month, with every step of the slider shown on the pricing page.
- Pay on success. A credit is charged only for a verified email, and a miss is refunded (Dropcontact API docs, October 2026).
- No enterprise gate on email. Email enrichment and the API are on the Starter plan.
- European and CRM fit. A stated CNIL audit, a Google Sheets add-on and native CRM integrations (Dropcontact pricing, October 2026).
If you need volume through an API
LeadOcean is a third option if you want to search, enrich and export at volume on one price. 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, and 100 requests per second per key. Both plans include the REST API and an MCP server with 12 tools that return records. POST /v1/exports pulls up to 50,000 rows per request. See pricing.
FAQ
Is Crustdata or Dropcontact cheaper?
At 10,000 emails a month, only Dropcontact publishes a price: €199 on Starter. Crustdata publishes 20,000 credits for that job and no dollar price per credit. At 1M, neither has a public price.
Does Dropcontact have a database like Crustdata?
No. Dropcontact says it uses algorithms and no contact databases, so you cannot search or count people there (Dropcontact pricing, October 2026). Crustdata claims 1B people you can search.
Which one has an MCP server?
Both do. Crustdata's is at install.crustdata.com/mcp and Dropcontact's is at mcp.dropcontact.com. Both accept OAuth or a bearer token. Dropcontact's tools enrich a contact or validate an email.
Which one finds phone numbers?
Both return phones. Dropcontact has phone and mobile_phone fields. Crustdata charges 2 credits for phone data. Neither publishes a coverage count, so test both on the same 500 contacts.
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).
Do credits roll over at either?
Dropcontact credits carry over on Growth, and the pricing page lists no carry-over on Starter. Crustdata purchased credits last 12 months per its docs. A Crustdata blog post says 6, so check your dashboard.
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