How to Rebuild a Sales Navigator Search as an API Query (How the Tool Works)

Sales Navigator is a filtered search over LinkedIn members, plus saved lists and alerts on the people you save. This guide walks through how it works, then rebuilds the search part as a LeadOcean API query you can size for free.

LinkedIn describes the tool as search with 50+ filters, saved custom filters and real-time lead alerts (September 2026). The same page says you can search 1+ billion members. Most explainers stop at that feature tour. This one shows the queries.

TL;DR

• Sales Navigator has three working parts: filtered search, saved searches and lists, and alerts on saved leads. Only the first is a data query, so only the first can move to an API.
• It takes about 15 minutes. Sizing the audience costs 0 records, and a 25-person test page spends 25 of your 1,000 free records.
• Sales Navigator stays the place for research and alerts. The API is for pulling the same audience as rows, with emails and statuses.

Prerequisites

• A Sales Navigator search you want to reproduce. You need its filter values, not a login in the loop.
• A LeadOcean account. Start free: no card, 1,000 records, one-off, work email required.
• An API key from the app, exported as $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY.
• curl and jq.

Step 1: Write down what your Sales Navigator search does

Start from the search, not the screen. Note each filter you set, because each one maps to a field. This is the example used below, as a plain spec.

{
  "seniority_level": "VP",
  "function": "Sales",
  "geography": "Canada",
  "result": "people at companies that fit"
}

This is how the tool works in practice. You set filters, LinkedIn returns matching members, you save the ones you want, and the saved leads feed alerts. The plan sets how much of that you get. LinkedIn's plans page (September 2026) lists three: Core for individual sellers, Advanced for sales teams, and Advanced Plus for teams on an integrated CRM. Advanced Plus pricing is by demo request.

Two details matter for what comes next. Lead and account alerts fire on job or role changes for saved leads. And per LinkedIn, adding leads to your CRM (September 2026) is available only on Advanced Plus.

Step 2: Map each filter to a LeadOcean field

Each Sales Navigator filter has a matching field in the LeadOcean search body. The body is flat JSON, and every filter is an array of strings.

Enum values are exact strings, and a near miss returns nothing. Vice President is empty, VP works. List the valid values for free.

curl -s "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/enums/job_level" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" | jq -c '.values'

The same lookup works for job_function, employee_range and country. LeadOcean has 50 people filters and 34 company filters. Not every Sales Navigator filter has a twin, and spotlights such as recent posts have no search field here.

Step 3: Size the audience for free

Send count=true as a query parameter with limit at 1. It costs 0 records and data comes back empty.

curl -s -X POST "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/search?count=true" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "jobLevel": ["VP"],
    "jobFunction": ["Sales & Business Development"],
    "country": ["CA"],
    "emailStatus": ["verified", "catch_all_valid", "catch_all"],
    "limit": 1
  }' | jq '.meta | {total, totalIsExact, countOnly}'

meta.total is capped at 100,000. If you work in an AI assistant, the same check is one prompt against the hosted MCP server at https://api.leadocean.io/mcp.

Using LeadOcean, count people in Canada with job level VP and job
function Sales & Business Development. Do not search for anyone.

Claude calls leadocean_count_leads, which is free.

Step 4: Pull one page of rows

Drop count=true and set a small limit. Each person returned costs 1 record, so start at 25. The limit runs from 1 to 100.

curl -s -X POST "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/search" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "jobLevel": ["VP"],
    "jobFunction": ["Sales & Business Development"],
    "country": ["CA"],
    "emailStatus": ["verified", "catch_all_valid", "catch_all"],
    "limit": 25
  }' > page1.json

jq '.meta | {count, credits, nextCursor}' page1.json

For page two, send the same body with "cursor" set to the exact meta.nextCursor string. Do not edit or store a cursor. One search pages through at most 10,000 rows by default, so narrow the filters for larger pulls.

Search rows are thin. They carry the profile and flags such as has_email, not addresses. To read an address, enrich one person. POST /v1/people/enrich takes exactly one of linkedin_url, email, phone or person_id, and reveal_email set to true returns the address. The email guide covers that call.

Step 5: Replace the saved search with a file

A Sales Navigator saved search is a set of filters you re-run. Store it as a JSON file and re-run the free count on a schedule.

cat > search.json <<'JSON'
{"jobLevel":["VP"],"jobFunction":["Sales & Business Development"],
 "country":["CA"],"emailStatus":["verified","catch_all_valid","catch_all"],"limit":1}
JSON

curl -s -X POST "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/search?count=true" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d @search.json | jq -r '[now|strftime("%Y-%m-%d"), .meta.total] | @csv' >> counts.csv

Run it from cron and read counts.csv. LeadOcean refreshes its dataset monthly, and each record carries its own fetched_at date. So a weekly count is enough.

This is not a replacement for alerts. LeadOcean has no alert feed and no job-change push. If real-time lead alerts are why you pay for Sales Navigator, keep it for that and use the API for the list.

When to keep Sales Navigator and when to use the API

Keep Sales Navigator when the job is research. Lead pages, spotlights and alerts on saved leads exist to tell you who just changed jobs or posted. An API does not do that.

Use the API when the job is volume or automation. A browser seat does three things badly. It cannot version a query in git, run a count every week or hand a CSV to a sequencer. The cost shape differs too. A Sales Navigator plan is per seat, with Advanced Plus priced by demo request. LeadOcean is Free for 1,000 records, then Solo at $97 a month for one person or Agency at $497 a month for a team, both at a fair-use pace.

The honest split for most technical buyers is both. Research and alerts in Sales Navigator, list building in code. Neither one replaces the other.

What you get

Step 2 returns the exact strings the jobLevel filter accepts. We ran it through the MCP server on 2026-10-21.

{"name":"job_level","total":6,"matched":6,"values":["C-Team","Director","Manager","Other","Staff","VP"],"truncated":false}

Step 3 for jobLevel VP, jobFunction Sales & Business Development and country CA was counted through leadocean_count_leads on 2026-10-21, with no email filter passed. It returned 5,574 people, the tool's default of verified, catch_all_valid and catch_all addresses. Without that default the same filters match 18,800 people. It cost 0 records. Your number moves as the data refreshes.

Step 4 returns a page of rows and a meta block. This is the meta shape from the API reference (September 2026), with placeholder values:

{
  "meta": {
    "source": "leadocean",
    "count": 25,
    "credits": 25,
    "limit": 25,
    "nextCursor": "opaque-string-from-the-response"
  }
}

Reading credits after each call is the quickest way to see what a run cost.

Troubleshooting

FAQ