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

LeadMagic is the cheaper, simpler way to get a work email or a mobile number. Explorium is the wider data source, with company data, events and intent filters. Neither has a flat price, and only Explorium publishes a price you can multiply out to 1M records.

LeadMagic charges only for hits, and Explorium charges 2 to 5 credits per contact lookup. Credit price and credits per lookup drive the cost gap below.

Verdict

• Pick LeadMagic if the job is finding work emails and mobiles for a known person, and you want a low entry price, free misses and a published plan ladder from $99 a month (LeadMagic pricing, September 2026).
• Pick Explorium if you need company breadth, hiring and funding events, intent filters and phones in one vendor, and you can pay several times more per email (Explorium pricing, October 2026).
• Pick neither if you pull millions of records a month through an API and want one flat bill. LeadOcean is one option: Pro is $499 a month.

Side by side

Data and coverage

Explorium states the bigger database, and LeadMagic states the narrower one. Explorium's homepage cites 767M+ professional profiles and 146M+ business entities, while its hero line rounds to 800M+ people and 150M+ companies (Explorium, October 2026). LeadMagic cites 400M+ profiles, 25M+ companies and 46M+ job posts (LeadMagic, October 2026).

Do not read those as mailable counts. Neither vendor publishes how many records have an email or a phone number. Company count is the clearest gap: 146M+ against 25M+.

Email handling differs. LeadMagic validates every email it finds and returns valid or nothing, with a free miss. Standalone validation costs 0.25 credits (LeadMagic docs, October 2026). Explorium returns valid, invalid or catch-all beside a professional email (Explorium docs, October 2026).

Phones cost the same on both sides, 5 credits, but the credits are priced differently. An email and a mobile from LeadMagic is 6 credits. From Explorium it is 5.

Scope is the other gap. Explorium adds business enrichments, event tracking and Bombora intent filters. LeadMagic adds job-post data and ad search over MCP.

Run the same 500 people through both. Compare find rate and bounces, not database size.

API and developer experience

LeadMagic is one call per email. Explorium is two: match a person to a prospect_id, then enrich that ID.

LeadMagic's Email Finder takes a name and a domain. This is the request from its docs with a placeholder person. A valid email costs 1 credit and a miss costs nothing (LeadMagic docs, October 2026).

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"}'

Explorium matches first. The match endpoint takes a LinkedIn URL, an email, a phone number, or a full name together with a company name. A name on its own always returns a null ID (Explorium docs, October 2026).

curl -X POST "https://api.explorium.ai/v2/prospects/match" \
  -H "API_KEY: $EXPLORIUM_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"prospects_to_match": [{"full_name": "Jane Doe", "company_name": "Acme"}]}'

The enrich call takes the returned ID. Email only is 2 credits (Explorium docs, October 2026).

curl -X POST "https://api.explorium.ai/v2/prospects/contact_information/enrich" \
  -H "API_KEY: $EXPLORIUM_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"prospect_id": "PROSPECT_ID_FROM_MATCH", "parameters": {"contact_types": ["email"]}}'

Rate limits use different units. LeadMagic allows 600 Email Finder requests a minute. Explorium allows 200 queries a minute, and a bulk call of 50 IDs uses 50 (Explorium docs, October 2026). Going over returns a 429 with a 60-second retry.

LeadMagic also has a fair-use rule. A sustained Email Finder find rate below 10% can lead to throttling, even with prepaid credits left (LeadMagic docs, October 2026). Clean your list first.

Both ship a hosted MCP server. LeadMagic's takes OAuth only. Explorium's has 11 tools and takes an API key, and its statistics tools are free, so you can size an audience before you fetch (Explorium MCP docs, October 2026).

Pricing

LeadMagic sells a monthly plan with a shared credit pool. Explorium sells one-off credit packs. Figures use the monthly list price first and the billed-yearly price after it, in USD.

LeadMagic monthly plans are Essential $99 for 5,000 credits, Growth $249 for 20,000, Professional $499 for 50,000 and Ultimate $849 for 100,000. Billed yearly they are $83, $208, $416 and $708 a month. That is $0.0198 down to $0.00849 a credit on monthly billing (LeadMagic pricing, September 2026).

Explorium packs are Lite $29.99 for 500 credits, Starter $149.99 for 5K, Growth $749.99 for 30K and Scale $7,499.99 for 500K. Rates run from $0.06 down to $0.015 a credit, and Enterprise is custom (Explorium pricing, October 2026).

At 10,000 records a month

Assume every lookup finds a valid email. LeadMagic charges only for finds, so a lower hit rate costs less.

• LeadMagic, 10,000 emails: 10,000 credits at 1 credit each. Essential has 5,000, so you need Growth: $249 a month, or $208 a month billed yearly ($2,490 a year for 240,000 credits).
• LeadMagic, 10,000 mobiles: 10,000 x 5 = 50,000 credits, which is Professional at $499 a month, or $416 billed yearly.
• Explorium, 10,000 emails: 10,000 x 2 = 20,000 credits. Four Starter packs give 20,000, so 4 x $149.99 = $599.96, paid once.
• Explorium, 10,000 with phone: 10,000 x 5 = 50,000 credits. One Growth pack plus four Starter packs is $749.99 + $599.96 = $1,349.95, paid once.

LeadMagic is cheaper at this size, $249 against $599.96 for emails. The Explorium figures are a floor, because its docs do not price the match step (Explorium docs, October 2026). A pack is a one-off purchase, so the monthly view only holds if you buy every month.

At 1M records a month

• LeadMagic: No public 1M price. The top self-serve tier is Ultimate, $849 a month for 100,000 credits, which is one tenth of 1M. Top-up prices and Enterprise credit rates are not published. Enterprise starts at $2,490 a quarter, paid upfront, with custom volume pricing (LeadMagic pricing, September 2026).
• Explorium, 1M emails: 1,000,000 x 2 = 2,000,000 credits. At Scale, 2,000,000 / 500,000 = 4 packs, and 4 x $7,499.99 = $29,999.96. With phone, 5,000,000 credits is 10 packs, or $74,999.90 (Explorium pricing, October 2026).

Explorium's number is list price at its cheapest rate. Enterprise adds volume discounts, so a real quote could be lower. We do not extrapolate LeadMagic's rate to 1M, because no plan sells it.

Rate limits set the schedule at 1M. LeadMagic's 600 a minute is 1,667 minutes, about 28 hours. Explorium's 200 queries a minute is 10,000 minutes, nearly 7 days, if each person needs a match query and an enrich query.

Where LeadMagic wins

• Price per email. $0.00849 to $0.0198 a credit at 1 credit per email, against $0.03 to $0.12 on Explorium at 2 credits.
• You pay for hits. A miss on Email Finder is free. Explorium's docs return a MISS status and do not say whether it costs credits (Explorium docs, October 2026).
• One call. A name and a domain return a validated email. No match step.
• A published ladder. Four self-serve plans with prices, and a 14-day money-back guarantee on the first payment (LeadMagic help, September 2026).
• Roll-over. Monthly credits roll over up to 2x the allocation. Explorium credits expire after 12 months (LeadMagic pricing explained, September 2026).
• Speed. 600 requests a minute is three times Explorium's 200 queries.

Where Explorium wins

• Company breadth. 146M+ business entities against LeadMagic's 25M+, plus 17 business enrichments (Explorium docs, September 2026).
• Events and intent. Funding, hiring, mergers and role changes, with Bombora intent filters at 2 credits per result (Explorium MCP docs, October 2026).
• A free trial. 100 credits, where LeadMagic has no free plan.
• Free sizing. The statistics tools on the MCP server cost nothing.
• Waterfall enrichment. The async contact endpoint retries unmatched prospects against an external provider (Explorium docs, October 2026).
• Priced at 1M. You can budget a 1M pull from the pricing page. With LeadMagic you must ask for a quote.

If you need volume through an API

We build LeadOcean, so weigh this section accordingly. Both tools above meter by the credit, so cost grows with every record. LeadOcean holds 693M people and 63M companies behind REST and a 12-tool MCP server with OAuth sign-in. Free is 1,000 records, one-off, with no card. Pro is $499 a month, flat, with unlimited searches and lookups at 100 requests per second per key (LeadOcean pricing, September 2026).

For bulk work, POST /v1/exports returns up to 50,000 rows per request, and the app has an Exports page with a CSV download (LeadOcean exports docs, September 2026). A very large month is paced down rather than cut off. LeadOcean has fewer companies than Explorium and no event stream. See the LeadMagic alternative page for a line-by-line version.

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