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

Crustdata and Findymail both bill by the credit through an API, but they do different jobs. Crustdata is a searchable index of people, companies and jobs. Findymail takes a name and a company and returns one verified email.

Facts below were checked in September 2026, each with its source link. Where a vendor shows nothing we could read, the page says so.

Verdict

• Pick Crustdata if you need to search a large people index, pull job and social data, or watch accounts for changes. It claims 1B people and accepts that you get a quote for the dollar price.
• Pick Findymail if you already hold names and domains and want a verified work email, a US phone or a plain-language lead list. You pay only for a hit.
• Pick neither if you need to filter a database and pull millions of rows at a price you can read. Neither publishes a 1M price. LeadOcean is one option: Pro is $499 a month, flat.

Side by side

Data and coverage

Crustdata sells a stored index you search. Findymail resolves an address when you ask. So Crustdata coverage is a record count, and Findymail coverage is a find rate on your list.

Crustdata's homepage claims 1B people (Crustdata, September 2026). It states 60M companies in one place and 200M+ in another, so this page quotes no company count. Treat the 1B as a claim and test it on a sample.

Findymail publishes no record count. Its docs charge a finder credit only when a verified email is found, so a miss costs nothing (Findymail API docs, September 2026). The honest metric is the share of your list it resolves, and neither tool publishes that.

Email works differently on each:

• Crustdata: business email is +1 credit on person enrich. The dedicated contact endpoint needs an enterprise plan, and self-serve keys get a 403. Statuses are deliverable, catch_all, invalid and unknown (Crustdata contact docs, September 2026).
• Findymail: only verified emails come back. It also sells a standalone verifier at one verifier credit per check (Findymail API docs, September 2026).

Phone is the weak spot for both. Crustdata prices a phone at +2 credits and publishes no coverage figure. Findymail charges 10 credits per number, returns US numbers only and returns nothing for EU citizens, for legal reasons (Findymail API docs, September 2026).

People at a company also differ. Crustdata searches by filter at 0.03 credits a result. Findymail's employee call returns a few contacts per request, 1 credit each, with no email in the response.

API and developer experience

Crustdata is built to search and then enrich. Findymail is built to resolve one name to one email. Both are REST APIs with a hosted MCP server.

Findymail, from its API docs, checked September 2026:

curl --request POST "https://app.findymail.com/api/search/name" \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer $FINDYMAIL_API_KEY" \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --data '{"name": "Jane Doe", "domain": "acme.com"}'

Crustdata, from its person enrich docs, checked September 2026:

curl --request POST \
  --url https://api.crustdata.com/person/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/"]}'

The inputs differ. Findymail needs a name and a domain. Crustdata needs a profile URL, up to 25 per request, and returns the base profile for 1 credit. Email and phone are extra credits on top.

Search is where Crustdata pulls ahead. Its filters cover many fields in nested and/or groups (Crustdata search docs, September 2026). Findymail's Intellimatch takes a plain-language query such as "SaaS companies in US" and is capped at 5,000 companies per search.

Rate limits are the sharpest gap for volume work. Crustdata defaults to 15 requests a minute on person enrich. At 25 URLs a request that is 375 profiles a minute, so 1,000,000 profiles take about 44 hours (1,000,000 / 375 = 2,667 minutes). That figure is derived from the docs, not published.

Findymail allows 300 concurrent requests, but find-from-domain is limited to 5 at a time. It documents async jobs through a webhook that can take up to 24 hours (Findymail API docs, September 2026).

On MCP, Findymail exposes 14 tools. It states that lookups which find nothing are free (Findymail Cursor plugin, September 2026). Crustdata's server signs in with OAuth for interactive clients and takes an API key as a bearer token for code.

Pricing

Both bill by the credit, so compare them on one task: a work-email lookup. Figures use the monthly list price first, with the billed-yearly price after it. Neither vendor prints a price we could read for these volumes.

At 10,000 work emails a month

Crustdata: 10,000 lookups x 2 credits (1 base plus 1 business email) = 20,000 credits on /person/enrich. On the enterprise-only contact endpoint it is 10,000 credits. The docs give no dollar price per credit, so there is no dollar total (Crustdata pricing docs, September 2026).

A Crustdata blog post reports a lowest tier from $95 a month. The pricing page does not list it, so treat it as reported (Crustdata blog, September 2026).

Findymail: 10,000 lookups x 1 credit = 10,000 finder credits if every lookup finds a verified email. Misses are free, so a lower hit rate uses fewer credits. Plan prices sit behind a bot check, so read the step that covers 10,000 on Findymail's pricing page.

At this size Findymail uses half the credits. That does not make it cheaper, because a Findymail credit and a Crustdata credit are not the same price.

At 1M work emails a month

Crustdata: no public 1M price. 1,000,000 x 2 = 2,000,000 credits on /person/enrich, or 1,000,000 on the contact endpoint. Dollars equal credits times your quoted price per credit, which is not public. Call GET /account/endpoints to see the credit cost on your own account.

Findymail: no public 1M price. 1,000,000 x 1 = 1,000,000 finder credits if every lookup hits. Add phones and the sum moves fast: 1,000,000 US phones at 10 credits each is 10,000,000 credits.

Do not multiply a rate out to 1M and call it a price. Both vendors sell large volume by quote.

Credit expiry differs in the fine print. Crustdata's docs say purchased credits expire 12 months after purchase (Crustdata credits, September 2026). A Crustdata blog post from 30 July 2026 says 6 months, so confirm the term before you buy in bulk.

Where Crustdata wins

• A bigger claimed index. 1B people on its homepage. Findymail publishes no count.
• Real search. Filters across many fields, at 0.03 credits a result. Findymail's search is a plain-language query.
• More than contacts. Job search, social posts, live web endpoints and a company enrich at 2 to 4 credits.
• Change watchers. A person watcher costs 5 credits per changed person at the 30-day SLA (Crustdata pricing docs, September 2026).
• Batch size. Up to 10,000 identifiers in one batch enrich job.

Where Findymail wins

• Verified or nothing. Every email returned is verified, and a miss is free. Crustdata's contact endpoint needs an enterprise plan.
• A stated concurrency. 300 simultaneous requests, against 15 a minute on Crustdata person enrich.
• A standalone verifier. One verifier credit checks any address you already hold.
• Lead lists and signals. Intellimatch builds a list from a sentence, and the docs list signals for job changes and new hires (Findymail API docs, September 2026).
• A free key to start. Its API page advertises a free key with no card.

If you need volume through an API

We build LeadOcean, so weigh this section accordingly. LeadOcean holds 693M people and 63M companies over REST and MCP. Free is 1,000 records, one-off, with no card. Pro is $499 a month, flat, with no credits and a limit of 100 requests per second per key (LeadOcean pricing, September 2026).

For bulk work, POST /v1/exports returns up to 50,000 rows per request. The app has an Exports page with a filter builder and CSV download (LeadOcean exports docs, September 2026). It has no job data, no watchers and no name-plus-domain lookup. See the Crustdata alternative page for a line-by-line version.

FAQ