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

Hunter.io and Wiza both find work emails, but they start from different places. Hunter starts from a company domain and bills in credits. Wiza starts from a LinkedIn profile and bills per user. Hunter has the only public price at 1M records, and Wiza has the stronger phone and LinkedIn workflow.

Verdict

• Pick Hunter.io if you know the company domain, want an API with a price you can read, or want finding, verifying and sending in one product. Its Growth plan costs $149 a month for 10,000 credits, and 1,000,000 credits cost $6,900.
• Pick Wiza if your reps work inside LinkedIn, you need mobile numbers, or you want contact data verified at the moment you ask. One seat is cheap. The API is not priced in public.
• Pick neither if you need to build a list by title, industry and country, then pull it at volume through an API or an agent. Both tools price per lookup or per seat. LeadOcean holds 693M people for a flat $499 a month.

Side by side

All prices are USD list prices checked in September 2026. Monthly price first, billed-yearly figure after it.

Data and coverage

Hunter is an email index, and Wiza is a LinkedIn-first lookup. Hunter's homepage cites 150,430,313 verified email addresses (Hunter, September 2026). Wiza claims 850M+ contacts, which is a larger headline number (Wiza, September 2026).

The two numbers count different things. Hunter counts email addresses. Wiza counts contacts, and it publishes no split between people with an email and people with a phone.

Wiza says it verifies data against live sources the moment you ask (Wiza, September 2026). That is a design choice with a trade-off. Fresh checks cost time per request, so Wiza meters lookups with a concurrency limit. Hunter verifies each email it finds and returns a status of valid, accept_all or unknown (Hunter API docs, September 2026).

Phones favor Wiza. It sells phone numbers on paid plans and by API, at 5 API credits for a returned number (Wiza docs, September 2026). Hunter returns a phone_number field when it holds one, and it publishes no phone count. Neither vendor publishes an independent accuracy test, so test both on your own list before you buy.

API and developer experience

Hunter's API is the simpler of the two. One GET with a domain and a name returns the address, a score and the sources. The call below uses placeholders (Hunter API docs, 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"

Wiza's API is asynchronous. You POST a reveal, get an id back with status queued, then fetch the result or wait for a webhook (Wiza docs, September 2026).

curl -X POST https://wiza.co/api/individual_reveals \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $WIZA_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"individual_reveal":{"full_name":"Jane Doe","company":"Acme","domain":"acme.com"},
       "enrichment_level":"partial",
       "email_options":{"accept_work":true,"accept_personal":false}}'

Access differs too. Hunter gives every plan, including Free, an API key. Wiza lists API access on its Team plan, and its help center says to ask support to enable it (Wiza help, September 2026).

Rate limits are not like for like. Hunter documents 15 a second and 500 a minute per endpoint. A rate-limited Hunter call returns 403, and 429 means you ran out of credits (Hunter API docs, September 2026). Wiza's help center states 15 requests a second on Individual Reveal and a 429 when you exceed it. Its docs describe concurrency instead, 5 on Starter API and 15+ on Enterprise API.

Both have a remote MCP server. Hunter's is included in every plan and uses plan credits (Hunter MCP, September 2026). Wiza's has 5 tools and needs API access plus API credits (Wiza MCP guide, September 2026).

Pricing

Hunter sells credits and Wiza sells seats. Hunter's rates are public at every volume up to 1M. Wiza's seat prices are public, and its API price is not.

Hunter at 10,000 emails a month. One credit is one email found, and a lookup that finds nothing costs nothing (Hunter help center, September 2026). Growth gives 10,000 credits for $149 a month, or $104 a month billed yearly ($1,248 for 120,000 credits). That is $0.0149 per email on the monthly price (Hunter pricing, September 2026).

Wiza at 10,000 emails a month. The monthly Email plan is $99 a seat and includes 500 valid emails. Extra emails cost $0.15 each (Wiza pricing, September 2026). So 10,000 emails is $99 plus 9,500 times $0.15, which is $99 plus $1,425, or $1,524 for one seat. Phones add $0.35 each.

Annual Wiza plans include unlimited email reveals but cap exports at 2,500 a month per seat. Through the API, a valid email costs 2 credits, so 10,000 emails is 20,000 credits. The dollar price per credit is not published (Wiza docs, September 2026).

Hunter at 1M records. Data Platform sells 1,000,000 Search credits for $6,900, which is $0.0069 a credit. It is bought once and valid 12 months (Hunter Data Platform, September 2026). 1,000,000 times $0.0069 is $6,900. Separate verification starts at $11 per 1,000, though Email Finder already verifies what it finds.

Wiza at 1M records. No public 1M price. Wiza's API page says "Book a call to discuss API pricing" (Wiza API, September 2026). The seat route is not a path to 1M, because exports stop at 2,500 a month per seat.

Where Hunter.io wins

Hunter wins on price transparency, API simplicity and small volume. You can read the cost of 10,000 or 1,000,000 emails on its public pages. You can also start with a Free plan that renews 50 credits every month.

It also wins when you want one product. Hunter includes Sequences, a Chrome extension and a Google Sheets add-on next to the finder (Hunter, September 2026). A team that finds, verifies and sends from one login should stay with it.

Where Wiza wins

Wiza wins on phones, on LinkedIn workflow and on one-seat economics. A rep can build a list in Sales Navigator and export it to a CRM. Wiza also reports a larger headline contact count and verifies at request time.

For one person, it is cheap. The annual Email plan is $83 a month per user with unlimited email reveals (Wiza pricing, September 2026). If one rep prospects from LinkedIn, the seat price is close to the whole bill.

If you need volume through an API

Neither tool is built for a pipeline that pulls millions of records on a fixed bill. LeadOcean has two plans, Free and Pro. Free is 1,000 records, one-off, with no card. Pro is $499 a month, flat, with no credits and no per-record price.

It has 693M people and 63M companies, searchable by title, seniority, country and industry before you spend a record. REST and a 12-tool MCP server come on every plan. POST /v1/exports returns up to 50,000 rows per request. Details are on the pricing page.

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