Hunter.io vs Kaspr (2026): Data, Pricing and API Compared

Hunter.io is an email finder you call by domain. Kaspr is a LinkedIn tool you click on a profile. They overlap on work emails and split on phones, Europe and API volume.

Verdict

• Pick Hunter.io if you start from a name and a company domain, call an API or an agent, and want work emails with a published price. It has an MCP server, a per-credit price list and a public 1M-record price.
• Pick Kaspr if your reps prospect on LinkedIn and Sales Navigator and need phone numbers, especially in Europe. Free is a recurring plan and paid plans have unlimited B2B emails, subject to fair use.
• Pick neither if you start from an audience (title, country, industry) and need volume at a fixed price. Kaspr publishes no 1M price and caps its API at 500 requests a day. See the LeadOcean section below.

Side by side

Prices are USD list prices. Monthly price first, billed-yearly figure after it.

Data and coverage

Hunter.io is built around work emails found on the web. Kaspr is built around phones and emails for people you already found on LinkedIn. Neither is a database you filter by title and country.

Hunter's homepage counts 150,430,313 verified email addresses (Hunter homepage, September 2026). Its MCP page cites data on 100M+ companies (Hunter MCP, September 2026). It publishes no phone count. Domain Search and Email Finder return a phone_number field, and in the docs examples it is null.

Kaspr's numbers do not agree with each other. The homepage claims 200m+ profiles and 500m+ phone numbers and emails. The help center says over 500 million consumer profiles (Kaspr homepage, September 2026; Kaspr help center).

Europe is Kaspr's strongest claim. It says it holds 200 million European B2B decision-makers, from 120+ data sources (Kaspr data page, September 2026). Hunter makes no regional claim.

Neither vendor publishes an independent accuracy test. Run 200 of your own contacts through both before you buy.

API and developer experience

Hunter has the wider API. Kaspr has one job: it enriches a LinkedIn profile and reports your credit balance. Hunter splits work across Discover, Domain Search, Email Finder, Email Verifier and enrichment endpoints. Kaspr's API input is a LinkedIn profile URL, and Sales Navigator URLs do not work (Kaspr help center, September 2026).

Hunter Email Finder, from its API docs, checked September 2026:

curl "https://api.hunter.io/v2/email-finder?domain=acme.com&first_name=Jane&last_name=Doe" \
  -H "X-API-KEY: $HUNTER_API_KEY"

It returns data.email, a score and a verification.status. A found email costs 1 credit and a miss costs nothing.

Kaspr, from its help center and API docs, checked September 2026:

curl -X POST "https://api.developers.kaspr.io/profile/linkedin" \
  -H "Authorization: $KASPR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name": "Jane Doe", "id": "jane-doe"}'

The id is the part of the LinkedIn URL after /in/. Each request spends one credit for the data type fetched, plus one export credit per successful call.

Hunter has a quirk to code for. A 403 means you hit the rate limit and a 429 means you used up your credits (Hunter API docs, September 2026). Most clients treat 429 as the rate limit, so a naive retry loop gets it backwards.

The limits use different units. Hunter caps each endpoint per second and per minute, not per plan. The minute cap binds first on Email Finder, so the real ceiling is about 8 requests a second. Kaspr caps by plan and by day: Business is 250 an hour and 500 a day (Kaspr pricing, September 2026).

On MCP, Hunter ships a remote server at https://mcp.hunter.io/mcp that uses your plan credits (Hunter MCP, September 2026). We found no Kaspr MCP server on its pricing, API or help pages. That is absence of evidence, so ask Kaspr before you rule it out.

Pricing

Both vendors publish prices, but Hunter prices the volume and Kaspr does not. Hunter sells credits. Kaspr sells seats, with phone, direct email and export credits on top. The Kaspr page opens in euros: Starter is EUR 59 and Business EUR 99, which is $65 and $99 in USD.

At 10,000 records a month

• Hunter, work emails: 10,000 credits at one per email found. That is Growth, $149 a month, or $104 a month billed yearly ($1,248 a year) with 120,000 credits a year (Hunter pricing, September 2026). A miss costs nothing, so 10,000 lookups use fewer credits when some find no email.
• Kaspr, work emails through the API: one Business seat at $99 a month. 10,000 calls at 500 a day takes 20 days, and uses 10,000 of the 30,000 yearly exports (Kaspr pricing, September 2026). Starter allows 250 a day, so 40 days.
• Kaspr, phones: the top add-on pack is 100,000 credits for $20,600 on the yearly plan, about $0.21 each. 10,000 phone credits is about $2,060 at that rate, plus the $99 seat. Smaller packs cost more per credit.
• Hunter, phones: no phone price published.

At 1M records a month

• Hunter: 1,000,000 Search credits on Data Platform, 1,000,000 x $0.0069 = $6,900. It is one purchase, valid 12 months (Hunter Data Platform, September 2026). The all-in-one plans cost more: credit packs cap at 180,000 credits per purchase on Scale (Hunter help center, September 2026).
• Kaspr: No public 1M price. Business allows 500 API requests a day, about 15,000 a month, and 30,000 exports a year. No public plan reaches 1M. Enterprise is custom (Kaspr pricing, September 2026).

Do not multiply a Kaspr add-on rate out to 1M and call it a quote. Its own caps stop a self-serve plan far short, so ask Kaspr for a quote.

Kaspr's page markup also holds annual figures of $49 for Starter and $79 for Business. The page shows no annual option and says plans renew monthly, so treat them as reported, not available.

Where Hunter.io wins

• Name and domain input. You do not need a LinkedIn URL. Kaspr's API needs one.
• A public price at volume. 1M credits is $6,900 on Data Platform. Kaspr gives no 1M price.
• API headroom. 15 requests a second on Email Finder beats 500 a day on Kaspr's top public plan.
• An MCP server. Included in every Hunter plan, with your credits behind it.
• Pay only when found. A found email costs 1 credit and a miss costs nothing.

Where Kaspr wins

• Phones and Europe. It leads its pitch with phone numbers and claims 200 million European B2B decision-makers. Hunter publishes no phone price or count.
• The LinkedIn workflow. A rep opens a profile and clicks. It also runs on Sales Navigator on Starter and Recruiter Lite on Business (Kaspr pricing, September 2026).
• Unlimited B2B emails on paid plans, subject to fair use, so email is not the credit you ration.
• A recurring free plan with phones. 15 B2B email, 5 phone and 5 direct email credits a month.

If you need volume through an API

Neither tool is built to pull a million records from a database you filter. LeadOcean holds 693M people and 63M companies behind REST and a 12-tool MCP server, with 100 requests per second per key on every plan. Pro is $499 a month flat with no credits and no per-record price, and Free gives 1,000 records one-off with no card. POST /v1/exports returns up to 50,000 rows per request, so 1M rows is 20 requests over two days (LeadOcean exports docs, September 2026). It is not a name-and-domain finder: search by domain first, then enrich by person_id. See LeadOcean pricing.

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