How to Get an Email Address From a LinkedIn Profile or URL (Step-by-Step)

You get an email from a LinkedIn URL by sending the URL to an enrichment API and asking it to reveal contact points. With LeadOcean that is one POST to /v1/people/enrich with linkedin_url and reveal_email: true.

This guide is the short version. No browser extension, no copy and paste. Real requests, the response shape, and the errors you will hit.

TL;DR

• One call to POST /v1/people/enrich turns a LinkedIn URL into a work email plus its email_status. It takes about 10 minutes the first time, seconds after that.
• Cost: 1 record per profile we hold. A 404 (nobody matched) costs nothing. The Free plan gives you 1,000 records for life, no card.
• Check email_status before you send. There is no refund for bounces.

Prerequisites

• A LeadOcean API key from app.leadocean.io. Free works, and it carries both the search and enrich scopes.
• The key in your shell as $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY.
• curl and jq. Python or Node works the same way.
• One or more LinkedIn profile URLs. Examples below use a placeholder: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-doe-example.

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

Step 1: Check your account and balance

Confirm the key works and see how many records you have left. GET /v1/account is free.

curl -s https://api.leadocean.io/v1/account \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" | jq

A 401 here means the key is wrong or missing. Fix that before anything else.

Step 2: Enrich one LinkedIn URL

Send exactly one identifier. For this task it is linkedin_url. Set reveal_email to true, because the default for a LinkedIn lookup is false and you would get the profile without the address.

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-example",
    "reveal_email": true
  }' | jq '.data.contact_data'

reveal_email adds every email and phone we hold for that person at no extra record. You pay one record for the person, not one per field.

Step 3: Read the status before you use the address

The contact_emails array comes back with a status on each address. Filter to what is worth sending to.

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-example","reveal_email":true}' \
  | jq '.data.contact_data.contact_emails[]
        | select(.status=="verified" or .status=="catch_all_valid")
        | .email'

verified and catch_all_valid are safe defaults. catch_all is a gamble on a domain that accepts everything. risky, unknown, invalid, role, disposable and spam_trap should not go into a sequence.

Look at type too. work is the current employer. work_other is a former employer. personal is a personal address, and our verifier has not tested those.

Step 4: Loop over a list of URLs

For a list, run the same call per row and skip the misses. A 404 means we hold nothing for that profile, so it is free.

while read -r url; do
  out=$(curl -s -w "\n%{http_code}" -X POST https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/enrich \
    -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -d "{\"linkedin_url\":\"$url\",\"reveal_email\":true}")
  code=${out##*$'\n'}
  body=${out%$'\n'*}
  if [ "$code" = "200" ]; then
    echo "$url,$(echo "$body" | jq -r '.data.contact_data.contact_emails[0].email')"
  else
    echo "$url,,$code"
  fi
  sleep 0.25
done < urls.txt > emails.csv

The sleep 0.25 keeps you at about 4 requests a second, under the 5 a second Free limit. On Agency the limit is 200 a second. Above 1,000 rows, use POST /v1/exports instead, which takes up to 50,000 rows a request.

Step 5: Script it in Python

The same call from code. This version writes one row per URL and keeps the status next to the address, so the filter in Step 3 happens before anything reaches a sequencer.

import os, time, csv, requests

API = "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/enrich"
HEADERS = {"x-api-key": os.environ["LEADOCEAN_API_KEY"]}

def lookup(url):
    r = requests.post(API, headers=HEADERS,
                      json={"linkedin_url": url, "reveal_email": True})
    if r.status_code == 429:
        time.sleep(int(r.headers.get("Retry-After", 1)))
        return lookup(url)
    if r.status_code != 200:
        return None
    emails = r.json()["data"]["contact_data"].get("contact_emails", [])
    good = [e for e in emails if e["status"] in ("verified", "catch_all_valid")]
    return good[0] if good else None

with open("urls.txt") as f, open("emails.csv", "w", newline="") as out:
    w = csv.writer(out)
    for url in (line.strip() for line in f if line.strip()):
        hit = lookup(url)
        w.writerow([url, hit["email"] if hit else "", hit["status"] if hit else ""])
        time.sleep(0.25)

Two details matter. A 429 is not charged, so retrying after Retry-After is safe. And a profile that returns only a catch_all address is skipped on purpose: decide that one by hand.

Step 6: Do it in Claude with the MCP server

If you work in Claude, the hosted MCP server at https://api.leadocean.io/mcp signs in with OAuth, so no key is pasted. It exposes 13 tools. leadocean_get_lead looks up one person by LinkedIn URL, work email, phone or person_id, and costs 1 record. A lookup that finds nobody costs nothing.

Use leadocean_get_lead for https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-doe-example.
Reveal the work email. Tell me its email_status and whether the address
is work or work_other. Do not guess if nothing comes back.

To size a list before you spend anything, call leadocean_count_leads. It is free.

What you get

Response shape from the API reference, with placeholder values (not a real person):

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "profile_data": { "...": "name, headline, location" },
    "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", "priority": 1 }
      ],
      "contact_current_experiences": [ { "...": "current role" } ]
    },
    "resume_data": { "...": "past roles, educations, certifications" }
  },
  "meta": { "source": "leadocean" }
}

Since 17 October 2026 the same call also returns resume_data: past roles, education, certifications and awards. Past employers carry no company_id yet.

For scale, here is a free count run on 21 October 2026 with leadocean_count_leads, filtered to jobLevel VP and country US. It counted only addresses worth sending to (verified, catch_all_valid or catch_all):

{ "total": 1242801, "totalIsExact": true, "totalAll": 3102417, "distinctCompanies": 226527, "credits": 0 }

That is the count, not a spend. Counts cost 0 records.

Troubleshooting

FAQ