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

Crustdata is the wider data source, and Prospeo is the one you can price before you talk to anyone. Crustdata claims 1B people and adds live web data and change alerts, but publishes credits and no dollars per credit. Prospeo publishes every plan and a price per credit, but sells by the seat, so a 1M month is expensive.

Verdict

• Pick Crustdata if you build agents or products on live people and company data, with jobs, posts and change watchers, and you are fine getting a quote (Crustdata pricing, September 2026).
• Pick Prospeo if you want published prices, verified emails and mobiles on a self-serve plan from $49 a month, and a Chrome extension for reps (Prospeo pricing, September 2026).
• Pick neither if you pull people and company data by API at volume. Credits make that bill hard to forecast on both. LeadOcean is one option, covered below.

Side by side

Data and coverage

Crustdata claims the bigger index. Its homepage counts 1B people, and says it indexes web pages into one graph of people and companies (Crustdata, September 2026). The same page states both 60M and 200M+ companies, so quote neither without asking.

Prospeo's numbers are smaller and mixed. The API docs say 200M+ contacts and 30M+ companies (Prospeo API docs, September 2026). The homepage says 280M leads and companies, and 143M verified email addresses (Prospeo, September 2026). Both are vendor claims, and neither is audited.

The data is built for different jobs. Crustdata sells depth and freshness: employment history, jobs, social posts and watchers that alert on a changed person or company. Prospeo sells the last step: a verified email and, if you pay 10 credits, a mobile. It charges only for verified matches, and a repeat lookup within 90 days is free (Prospeo help center, September 2026).

Neither tool publishes a phone coverage figure. Crustdata does not publish an email figure either. Run the same 200 people through both before you commit.

API and developer experience

Both tools have a REST API and a hosted MCP server. They differ in what you send. Crustdata enriches from a profile URL, and Prospeo from a name and a company. Placeholders below stand in for real people.

Crustdata, enrich a person by profile URL (person enrich docs):

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/"]}'

That returns the base profile for 1 credit, with up to 25 URLs per request (Crustdata docs, September 2026). The pricing docs add 1 credit for a business email and 2 for a phone on the same endpoint. The pricing docs price base profile plus business email at 2 credits on person enrich (Crustdata pricing docs, October 2026). GET /account/endpoints shows what your own key is billed.

Contact Enrich needs an enterprise plan, and self-serve keys get a 403 (Crustdata contact docs, September 2026).

Prospeo, enrich a person by name and company website (enrich docs):

curl -X POST "https://api.prospeo.io/enrich-person" \
  -H "X-KEY: $PROSPEO_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"only_verified_email": true, "data": {"first_name": "Jane", "last_name": "Doe", "company_website": "acme.com"}}'

The response is synchronous. only_verified_email and enrich_mobile control when credits are spent, and no result costs nothing (Prospeo enrich docs, September 2026). Prospeo advises its bulk endpoint, up to 50 people per request, for speed.

Rate limits are the practical gap. Crustdata defaults to 15 requests a minute on person enrich, so 1M single lookups take about 46 days (1,000,000 / 15 a minute = 66,667 minutes). That figure is derived, not published. Crustdata's answer is batch jobs of up to 10,000 identifiers, which run asynchronously (Crustdata rate limits, September 2026).

Prospeo's limits depend on the plan. Enrich is capped at 2,000 requests a day on Starter, 5,000 on Growth and 500,000 on Pro (Prospeo rate limits, September 2026). On Pro, 1M single requests take two days. Free plan API access is where Prospeo's own pages disagree. The pricing table shows no Public API on Free, while the help center lists limited API access with 50 requests a day (Prospeo help center, September 2026). The API docs intro says free API access for all users (Prospeo API docs, September 2026). Test a free key before you plan around it.

On MCP, both are hosted. Crustdata accepts OAuth sign-in for interactive clients and an API key as a bearer token for code (Crustdata MCP docs, September 2026). Prospeo's has 8 tools, OAuth 2.0 or an API key, and bulk enrich takes up to 25 over MCP (Prospeo MCP docs, September 2026).

Pricing

Both tools charge per credit, so cost scales with records. The worked example uses work emails only, every lookup a hit. Prices are monthly list first, billed-yearly after.

10,000 records a month

• Crustdata: 10,000 x 2 credits (1 base + 1 business email) = 20,000 credits on /person/enrich. On the enterprise-only contact endpoint it is 10,000 x 1 = 10,000 credits. No public dollar price: Crustdata publishes credits, not dollars per credit (Crustdata pricing docs, September 2026). A blog post reports a lowest tier from $95 a month, with no stated allowance (Crustdata blog, September 2026).
• Prospeo: one Growth seat gives 5,000 credits for $99, and the 5,000-credit add-on is $90. That is 10,000 credits for $189 a month. Billed yearly, 2 Growth seats at $74 give 10,000 credits a month for $148 (Prospeo pricing, September 2026).

1M records a month

• Crustdata: 1,000,000 x 2 = 2,000,000 credits on /person/enrich, or 1,000,000 on the contact endpoint. No public 1M price. Dollars are credits times your quoted price per credit, which is not public.
• Prospeo: (1,000,000 - 350,000 add-on credits) / 15,000 per Pro seat = 44 seats x $249 = $10,956, plus the 350,000-credit add-on at $3,500. That is 1,010,000 credits for $14,456 a month. Billed yearly, 3 Pro seats at $2,241 plus the 500,000-credit yearly add-on at $4,500 is $11,223 once, with 1,040,000 credits upfront. For a steady 1M every month on yearly billing, 67 Pro seats is $12,529 a month, $150,348 billed yearly (Prospeo pricing, September 2026).

Search is cheaper to compare. Crustdata charges 0.03 credits per result, so 10,000 results cost 300 credits. Prospeo charges 1 credit per search request of up to 25 results. So 10,000 results cost 400 credits, with no contact data (Prospeo help center, September 2026).

Credits also expire. 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 (Crustdata blog, September 2026). Confirm the term in your dashboard before you buy in bulk. Prospeo credits do not roll over: unused plan and add-on credits expire at the end of each cycle.

Prospeo publishes nothing above 350,000 add-on credits a month or 500,000 a year, and extended pricing is enabled on request (Prospeo help center, September 2026). Ask both vendors for a quote at 1M. Mobiles cost more on both: 10 credits at Prospeo, and +2 credits on Crustdata.

Where Crustdata wins

A larger index. Crustdata claims 1B people against Prospeo's 200M+ contacts. If your target is a long-tail profile, the bigger graph may hold it.

Live data and signals. Crustdata fetches live profiles, searches jobs and posts, and watches people and companies for changes. A person watcher costs 5 credits per changed person at the 30-day SLA, and up to 150 at a 1-day SLA (Crustdata pricing docs, September 2026). Prospeo has job change tracking on Growth and up, but no live web fetch.

Search and batch depth. Crustdata search uses nested and/or filters across many fields, and a batch job takes 10,000 people. Credits last 12 months per its docs, not one cycle.

Where Prospeo wins

A price you can read. Every plan, credit and add-on is on one page. A solo user pays $49 for 2,000 credits, and a team can model its bill before a call (Prospeo pricing, September 2026).

Contact data without an enterprise gate. An email is 1 credit and a mobile is 10, on published plans. Crustdata's dedicated contact endpoint needs enterprise.

An app for reps. Prospeo has a Chrome extension on every plan, CSV enrichment, and HubSpot and Salesforce sync on Growth and Pro (Prospeo pricing, September 2026). Crustdata is an API and an MCP server. Prospeo also allows faster calls on Pro, up to 30 enrich requests a second.

If you need volume through an API

LeadOcean is a people and company data API with a hosted MCP server, with no seats and no credits. Free gives 1,000 records one-off with no card, and Pro is $499 a month flat with 693M people and 63M companies over REST and MCP. Export up to 50,000 rows per request with POST /v1/exports, and call count_leads first because counts are free. It is only the data layer, with no rep workspace, live web fetch or change watchers. Keep Crustdata for signals and Prospeo for rep workflows. See pricing and the Crustdata alternative.

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