LeadMagic vs BetterContact (2026): Data, Pricing and API Compared

LeadMagic is the better fit for code, agents and cheap credits. BetterContact is the better fit for a list you already own, where find rate matters more than price. At 1M records a month, neither publishes a price.

Verdict

• Pick LeadMagic if engineers or agents need emails, mobiles and search from an API or MCP server. A credit costs $0.0198 on Essential and a mobile is 5 credits (LeadMagic pricing, September 2026).
• Pick BetterContact if you have names and company domains and want the highest find rate from 20+ providers. It starts at $15 a month and has 50 free credits (BetterContact pricing, September 2026).
• Pick neither if you pull millions of records a month through an API at a fixed bill. LeadOcean is flat at $499 a month, covered below.

Side by side

Data and coverage

The two tools sell different things. LeadMagic owns a searchable dataset and validates what it returns. BetterContact owns no contact database that it publishes. It asks other providers, in order, until one returns a valid result.

LeadMagic states 400M+ people, 25M+ companies and 46M+ job posts on its homepage (LeadMagic, September 2026). You can search that data by title, function, seniority, company and geography, then enrich the result. BetterContact has a Lead Finder too, but the company is built around enrichment.

BetterContact publishes no database size. Its homepage cites 545M+ data points behind provider routing, which is not a record count (BetterContact, September 2026). It also says 36.3% of the data it receives from providers fails its verification, and it absorbs that cost.

Neither publishes an email find rate or a phone coverage rate. Both charge only for valid results. LeadMagic validates every email before it returns one, and a miss costs nothing (LeadMagic docs, September 2026).

Phones are where they split. BetterContact prices a mobile at 10 credits and scores each number for likelihood to connect (BetterContact pricing, September 2026). LeadMagic prices a mobile at 5 credits. BetterContact's API docs say phone enrichment needs a phone add-on, and we found no published price for it (BetterContact docs, September 2026).

A waterfall can reach people that no single database holds. The only honest test is your own list. Run 200 named contacts through both and compare the valid results. Count the valid emails, the valid mobiles and the credits each tool spent, then divide.

API and developer experience

Both use one key in an X-API-Key header. LeadMagic answers in the same request. BetterContact accepts a batch and answers later. Placeholders below stand in for real people.

LeadMagic, find a work email from a name and domain.

curl -X POST 'https://api.leadmagic.io/v1/people/email-finder' \
  -H "X-API-Key: $LEADMAGIC_API_KEY" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"first_name":"Jane","last_name":"Doe","domain":"acme.com"}'

The response carries the email and its status. A miss spends no credit, and an email found on an unrelated domain returns as a free not-found unless you set allow_domain_mismatch (LeadMagic docs, September 2026).

BetterContact, submit a batch for enrichment.

curl -X POST https://app.bettercontact.rocks/api/v2/async \
  -H "X-API-Key: $BETTERCONTACT_API_KEY" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"enrich_email_address":true,"data":[{"first_name":"Jane","last_name":"Doe","company_domain":"acme.com"}]}'

A 201 means the batch was accepted, not that it was enriched. You keep the returned id, then poll GET /async/{request_id} or pass a webhook URL (BetterContact docs, September 2026). Submissions are not idempotent, so a retry of a successful post costs credits twice.

Limits favour LeadMagic. Its email finder takes 600 requests a minute, about 10 a second (LeadMagic docs, September 2026). BetterContact allows 100 a minute on Starter and 200 on Pro, and a call carries up to 100 leads (BetterContact docs, September 2026). For batches the 100-lead call narrows the gap.

Search differs on cost. On Essential and Growth the LeadMagic search API bills about 1 credit per returned person. Professional and Ultimate get zero-credit search at 5 and 10 requests a second (LeadMagic docs, September 2026).

On MCP, LeadMagic runs a hosted server with OAuth sign-in and no static API key (LeadMagic MCP, September 2026). We found no BetterContact MCP server in its docs index (BetterContact docs, September 2026). An agent needs a wrapper around the REST API.

Pricing

Both sell credits, so cost grows with volume. The examples use work emails at one credit each, with every lookup a hit. Prices are monthly list first, billed-yearly after.

10,000 records a month

• LeadMagic: 10,000 credits needs Growth, $249 a month for 20,000 credits. Billed yearly it is $208 a month ($2,490 a year). The spare 10,000 credits roll over on monthly plans, up to 2x the allocation (LeadMagic pricing, September 2026).
• BetterContact: the 10,000-credit Pro step is $399 a month. Billed yearly, two months are free, so $3,990 a year or about $332.50 a month. That yearly figure is derived from the stated rule (BetterContact pricing, September 2026).

LeadMagic is $150 a month cheaper at 10,000 emails on list price. At 20,000 emails the gap is wider: Growth is $249, and the 20,000-credit BetterContact step is $799.

Mobiles. 10,000 mobiles is 50,000 LeadMagic credits, which is Professional at $499 a month. On BetterContact it is 100,000 credits. The top public step is 50,000 credits for $1,999 a month, so that volume has no public price.

1M records a month

• LeadMagic: no public 1M price. The top self-serve plan is Ultimate, $849 a month for 100,000 credits. Top-up prices are not published, and Enterprise starts at $2,490 a quarter with no per-credit price (LeadMagic pricing, September 2026).
• BetterContact: no public 1M price. The top public step is 50,000 credits for $1,999 a month. Enterprise is listed from $799 a month on a custom quote (BetterContact pricing, September 2026).

1M emails need 1,000,000 credits. That is 10 times LeadMagic's top plan and 20 times BetterContact's top step. We do not multiply a rate out to 1M, because neither vendor sells it at a printed rate. Ask both for a quote.

Credits also behave differently. LeadMagic bills 1 credit per valid email and nothing on a miss. BetterContact bills only valid results, and catch-all addresses are charged unless you pay for extra catch-all verification (BetterContact docs, September 2026).

Where LeadMagic wins

• Price per credit. $0.0198 on Essential down to $0.00849 on Ultimate, against BetterContact steps from $0.049 to $0.03998 (LeadMagic pricing; BetterContact pricing). Above about 1,000 lookups a month it is the cheaper bill.
• Mobiles at half the credits. 5 credits against 10.
• A real dataset. Search 400M+ people and 25M+ companies, plus job posts and job change checks at 3 credits.
• Agents. A hosted MCP server with OAuth, and synchronous answers with no polling loop.
• Faster pace. 600 requests a minute on the email finder.

Where BetterContact wins

• Find rate on a list you own. It cascades through 20+ providers and skips results that fail verification. That reaches people no single database holds.
• Small volume. Pro starts at $49 a month for 1,000 credits, against LeadMagic Essential at $99. There are also 50 free credits and no card (BetterContact pricing, September 2026).
• Phone-first teams. On Pro, Connect Intelligence scores mobiles by likelihood to connect, and you pay only for the highest-scoring ones (BetterContact pricing, September 2026).
• No-code reach. 28 native integrations, including Clay, HubSpot and Zapier, plus CSV upload and download.

If you need volume through an API

LeadOcean is a database you call over REST and MCP, not a credit pool. The Free plan gives 1,000 records one-off with no card. Pro is $499 a month, flat, with no credits and no per-record price.

It holds 693M people and 63M companies. The rate limit is 100 requests per second per key on every plan, and POST /v1/exports returns up to 50,000 rows per request. The MCP server has 12 tools. Past the fair-usage line a very large month is paced down, not cut off. See pricing.

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