How to Find an Email From a LinkedIn Profile (2026)

TL;DR

• Send the profile URL to GET /v2/people/email/work and you get one checked work email, or null. No guessing, no pattern lists.
• One profile takes about 10 minutes the first time, mostly getting a key. Each lookup spends 1 record of your 1,000 free ones, whether or not it finds an address.
• For a list, loop the same call over a CSV of profile URLs. The rate limit is per plan, per account: 5 requests a second on Free, 50 on Solo, 200 on Agency.

Prerequisites

• A LeadOcean account and key from app.leadocean.io. The free plan has no card and 1,000 records, one-off.
• The key in your shell as $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY. The key needs the enrich scope, which Free keys get.
• curl and jq. For the bulk step, a CSV with one linkedin.com/in/... URL per line.

export LEADOCEAN_API_KEY="paste-your-key-here"

Step 1: Check the profile by hand

Open the profile and look at Contact info first. It is free and takes a minute.

Often there is no email there. That is where the manual way stops scaling: guessing jane.doe@acme.com from the company domain gives you an address nobody has tested.

Before you hand the URL to anything else, clean it. Share links carry tracking parameters that add nothing.

echo "https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-doe-123abc/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop" \
  | sed -E 's/\?.*$//'

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-doe-123abc/

Step 2: Look up one profile

Send the cleaned URL to the work email endpoint. It returns one address at the person's current employer, or data: null.

curl -s -G "https://api.leadocean.io/v2/people/email/work" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  --data-urlencode "linkedin_url=https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-doe-123abc/" | jq

This endpoint only returns addresses whose deliverability was checked (verified), whose mailbox was confirmed on a catch-all domain (catch_all_valid), or whose domain accepts everything (catch_all). So null means "none that qualify", not "this person has no email".

The call costs 1 record, found or not. See the pricing page for what the free plan covers.

Step 3: Pull the full record when you need more

Use enrich when you want the profile fields, every email and the phone numbers in one response. It takes exactly one of linkedin_url, email, phone or person_id. Set reveal_email to true to get the contact points.

curl -s -X POST "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/enrich" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-doe-123abc/",
    "reveal_email": true
  }' | jq '.data.contact_data'

A person we hold nothing for is a 404 and costs nothing. A found person costs 1 record, and reveal_email adds no extra charge. The same record carries career history under resume_data: past roles with dates, education and certifications, when we hold them.

Pick the endpoint by job. Use /v2/people/email/work when you only want the address to send to. Use enrich when you want the record to store.

Step 4: Run it over a list

Put one profile URL per line in profiles.csv, with no header row. Loop the work email call and write one JSON line per profile.

while IFS= read -r url; do
  clean=$(echo "$url" | sed -E 's/\?.*$//')
  curl -s -G "https://api.leadocean.io/v2/people/email/work" \
    -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
    --data-urlencode "linkedin_url=$clean" \
  | jq -c --arg url "$clean" '{url: $url, email: .data.email, status: .data.status}'
done < profiles.csv > results.jsonl

Records add up fast on a loop: 2,000 profiles spend 2,000 records, hits and misses alike. Run 20 profiles first and read the hit rate before you run the rest. On the free plan the loop runs at 5 requests a second at most, so add sleep 0.25 inside it.

On a paid plan, drop the sleep or shorten it. Solo at $97 a month allows 10k enrichments every 5 hours and 50k a week, and each lookup here counts as one. Agency at $497 a month allows 1M a day.

Bulk export is a different tool. POST /v1/exports takes search filters, not a list of profile URLs, and writes up to 50,000 rows a request and 500,000 a day. Use it when you have an audience definition but no URLs yet. Bulk CSV export is not on Free: Solo includes it.

Step 5: Filter on status before you send

An address is not a send list until you have read its status. Keep verified and catch_all_valid. Treat catch_all as a risk you size, not a green light.

jq -c 'select(.email != null and (.status == "verified" or .status == "catch_all_valid"))' \
  results.jsonl > sendable.jsonl
wc -l sendable.jsonl

LeadOcean gives no refund or credit-back for bounced emails, so this filter is your protection. Each address also carries verified_batch_date, the verification run it was checked in. A null date means the check was not LeadOcean's own, not that the address is unverified.

What to do with the result

Store the profile URL next to the address so you can re-check later. The dataset is refreshed monthly, and each record carries its own fetched_at date. If a send is more than a month old, look the profile up again.

Keep misses in the file too. A null is a decision for a human: try the personal email endpoint, find a different contact at the same company, or drop the lead. Do not guess a pattern address to fill the gap.

If your list has names and companies but no profile URLs, search by domain first with GET /v1/companies/{domain}/people, then enrich by person_id. That route needs no LinkedIn URL at all.

What you get

Response shape from the API reference, with placeholder values. The work email call returns success and data, with no meta object.

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "email": "jane.doe@acme.com",
    "status": "verified",
    "verified_batch_date": "2026-09-20"
  }
}

The enrich call returns the contact points under data.contact_data. Phones come back as contact_phones[].phone.

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "contact_data": {
      "has_email": true,
      "has_phone": true,
      "email_status": "verified",
      "email_type": "work",
      "contact_emails": [
        {
          "email": "jane.doe@acme.com",
          "type": "work",
          "status": "verified",
          "verified_batch_date": "2026-09-20"
        }
      ],
      "contact_phones": [
        { "phone": "+14155550133", "type": "mobile" }
      ]
    }
  }
}

Troubleshooting

FAQ