7 Best Lusha API Alternatives for Developers (2026)

Developers leave Lusha's API when a rep tool is asked to run a pipeline. Every request spends credits: 1 for an email, 5 for a phone and 1 more for the request itself. One contact with both costs 7 (Lusha API guide, September 2026).

The caps bite next. Free and Starter keys allow 100 requests a day and Pro allows 1,500. Premium allows 18,000 a day, so 1M single-record calls would take about 56 days. A bulk call stops at 100 records, and API data may not train AI or ML systems, with exceptions in Lusha's terms. Lusha publishes no price at 1M. The top public tier is Premium at 10,000 credits a month ($977.40 billed monthly), or 120,000 a year ($9,539.10 billed yearly, about $0.0795 a credit) (Lusha pricing, September 2026).

This page ranks seven alternatives on rate limits, auth, bulk export, MCP and cost at 1M records. LeadOcean is first because it is an API and MCP server on one flat price. For a two-column view, see LeadOcean vs Lusha. For a wider list, read Lusha alternatives.

TL;DR

"1M records" here means 1M work-email lookups that return a result, one credit each where the vendor uses credits. Figures are list-price arithmetic. Where a vendor sells no plan at that volume, the cell says so and names its top public tier. Lusha sells none either: its top public tier is Premium at $9,539.10 billed yearly for 120,000 credits. Enterprise quotes differ, so ask each vendor at your volume.

What we evaluated

• Rate limits: the default requests per second or minute, and the daily or hourly caps on top.
• Auth and schema: the header your key goes in, and whether one call returns a flat profile or a nested one.
• Bulk export: records per request, and whether a search can become a file.
• MCP: whether an agent can search and enrich through the server, or only read documentation.
• Price model: flat, credits or seats, and what 1M records a month costs at list price.

We read each vendor's pricing page and docs in September 2026. We ran no find-rate or accuracy test, so we quote no quality numbers.

1. LeadOcean: best for API, agent and volume buyers

LeadOcean is one dataset behind one REST API and one MCP server. It holds 693M people, 366M with an email and 166M with a phone number, plus 63M companies. You search with 50 people filters and 34 company filters. Counts are free. Enrichment is POST /v1/people/enrich and phones are GET /v2/people/phone.

Auth is one header, x-api-key. The limit is 100 requests per second per key on every plan, Free included. That is 6,000 a minute, against 300 a minute on Lusha Premium. Pro is $499 a month with unlimited searches, enrichments and lookups and 5 API keys. There are no credits and no overage invoice. Past fair use, a very large month is paced down rather than cut off.

Here is the same lookup on both APIs, Lusha's first. Its search-and-enrich endpoint takes up to 100 contacts and returns nested emails[] with a confidence score and phones[] with a doNotCall flag (Lusha docs, September 2026). It bills the search and each revealed field.

curl -X POST "https://api.lusha.com/v3/contacts/search-and-enrich" \
  -H "api_key: $LUSHA_API_KEY" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{"contacts":[{"linkedinUrl":"https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-doe"}],"reveal":["emails"]}'

The LeadOcean equivalent:

curl -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","reveal_email":true}'

The LeadOcean call takes one person and returns a flat profile with an email status, 13 values from verified to spam_trap. A person we hold nothing for is a free 404. Lusha's separate enrich step accepts only IDs from its own search (Lusha docs, September 2026).

For volume, skip the loop. Send any people search to POST /v1/exports and get a CSV of up to 50,000 rows per request. A 1M-row pull is 20 requests over two days, against 10,000 bulk calls on Lusha.

curl -X POST "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/exports" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name":"CTOs in Germany","filters":{"title":["CTO"],"country":["DE"],"emailStatus":["verified"]},"limit":5000,"preset":"full"}'

The MCP server at https://api.leadocean.io/mcp signs in with OAuth 2.1 and exposes 12 tools, from search_leads to find_phone and export_leads. count_leads is free, so an agent can size an audience before it pulls.

Pros

• Flat $499 a month at any volume, with no credit meter.
• 100 requests per second per key on every plan, Free included.
• REST and MCP on every plan, including Free.
• Exports of 50,000 rows per request, against Lusha's 100 per bulk call.

Cons

• No Chrome extension, rep workspace, sequencer, dialer or CRM. You work in the app's Exports page, the API or MCP.
• No buying signals or lookalike scoring. It is a data source.
• One dataset, so a niche source needs another tool.

Best for: engineers, RevOps and agents that need volume and a fixed bill.

Pricing: Free is 1,000 records, one-off, no card. Pro is $499 a month, flat (LeadOcean pricing, September 2026).

2. BlitzAPI: best for flat-price search and enrichment by API

BlitzAPI sells B2B data as an API on flat monthly plans: search, enrichment and jobs data (BlitzAPI, September 2026). It is the closest rival to LeadOcean on price model.

Core is $399 a month and leaves out emails and phones. Plus is $499 and adds verified work emails. Full is $599 and adds US phone numbers (BlitzAPI pricing, September 2026).

Auth is an x-api-key header (BlitzAPI docs, September 2026). The 50 requests per second and 15,000,000 monthly results are tied to accounts opened by September 30, 2026. The standard limit is 5 per second, per endpoint (BlitzAPI docs, September 2026).

Its MCP server gives an assistant the API documentation, not the data (BlitzAPI docs, September 2026). We found no bulk export endpoint in its docs index (BlitzAPI docs, September 2026).

Pros

• Flat monthly price, with a fair-use line of 15,000,000 results a month for accounts opened by September 30, 2026 (BlitzAPI terms, September 2026). Limits for accounts opened later are not published.
• Jobs data sits next to people and company search.
• A free trial of 1,000 credits with no card.

Cons

• Three paid tiers, and phones need the top one.
• Phone numbers are US only on Full.
• The MCP server reads docs. An agent cannot search or enrich through it.
• The fast rate limit depends on when the account opened.
• No bulk export endpoint found.

Best for: teams that want a flat-price search and enrichment API and run their own code.

Pricing: Core $399, Plus $499, Full $599 a month (BlitzAPI pricing, September 2026).

3. Coresignal: best for fresh employee, company and job records in bulk

Coresignal sells employee, company and job records on credits, through REST, Elasticsearch DSL search and an MCP server. The rate limit climbs with the plan: 5 requests per second on Mini and Starter, 10 on Pro, 50 on Premium and 100 on Scale (Coresignal docs, September 2026). Auth is an apikey header (Coresignal docs, September 2026).

The credit meter is the catch. A Base employee or company record costs 10 credits, a multi-source record 20, a job posting 1 and a contact enrichment 20 (Coresignal pricing, September 2026). Pro is $499 a month for 35,000 credits, which is 1,750 contact enrichments. Elite is $5,000 for 10,000,000 credits, or $0.0005 each.

Bulk Collect stops at 10,000 records a request (Coresignal docs, September 2026). The MCP server uses OAuth 2.1, and its entity_search tool bills 20 credits a call (Coresignal docs, September 2026). 1M lookups at 20 credits each is about $10,000 at the Elite rate, above one Elite plan.

Pros

• Rate limit rises to 100 requests per second or more on the top plans.
• Bulk Collect takes 10,000 records per request, 100 times Lusha's bulk cap.
• Job postings cost 1 credit, so hiring signals are cheap.

Cons

• A contact enrichment costs 20 credits, so the $499 plan buys 1,750 lookups.
• Pro allows 10 requests per second. 100 needs Scale at $3,000 a month.
• The MCP search tool spends credits on every call.

Best for: teams that need fresh employee, company and job records in bulk and accept credits.

Pricing: Mini $49, Starter $199, Pro $499, Growth $1,000, Premium $1,500, Scale $3,000, Elite $5,000 a month (Coresignal pricing, September 2026).

4. People Data Labs: best for data licences and per-match enrichment

People Data Labs (PDL) is a long-running person and company data API with bulk licences. It is ISO and SOC 2 Type 2 compliant (PDL pricing, September 2026). A request that returns a person costs one credit, and a miss costs none.

Auth is an X-Api-Key header, and limits are per key in a fixed window (PDL docs, September 2026). Enrichment allows 1,000 calls a minute on paid plans, and Bulk Person Enrichment takes 100 people per request (PDL docs, September 2026). Person Search defaults to 10 requests a minute, so a search-heavy job queues (PDL docs, September 2026).

The entry price is high per record. Pro starts at $98 a month for 350 credits, or $0.28 each, and PDL says profiles cost about $0.20 to $0.28 by volume. Free gives up to 100 records a month with contact data hidden. Volume above 100,000 records goes through sales (PDL docs, September 2026). We found no official MCP server in PDL's docs index (PDL docs, September 2026).

Pros

• A fast enrichment API with a stated 1,000 calls a minute on paid plans.
• Search on any field in a documented person schema.
• Dataset licences for your own warehouse.

Cons

• $0.20 to $0.28 a record on self-serve Pro, and no public price at 1M, so volume needs a sales call.
• No official MCP server found, so agents need a wrapper you host.

Best for: teams that license data or need compliance paperwork and accept per-record pricing.

Pricing: Free up to 100 records a month. Pro from $98 a month for 350 credits. Enterprise custom (PDL pricing, September 2026).

5. LeadMagic: best for a low per-credit price on valid emails

LeadMagic is a credit-based enrichment API with REST, CSV, a command-line tool and a hosted MCP server (LeadMagic, September 2026). Failed lookups cost nothing.

Essential is $99 a month for 5,000 credits. Professional is $499 for 50,000. Ultimate is $849 for 100,000, or $0.00849 a credit (LeadMagic pricing, September 2026). A valid email costs 1 credit and a mobile costs 5.

The base URL is api.leadmagic.io and auth is an X-API-Key header. Search runs at 5 requests a second on Professional and 10 on Ultimate, with up to 50 rows a page, or 25 on that zero-credit lane (LeadMagic docs, September 2026). The Email Finder endpoint allows 600 requests a minute, and a sustained find rate below 10% can lead to throttling (LeadMagic docs, September 2026). The MCP server uses OAuth, and a preview_cost call shows the price of a large job first (LeadMagic docs, September 2026).

Pros

• The lowest per-credit list price in this group.
• No charge when an email is not found.
• Hosted MCP with a cost preview before large operations.

Cons

• The top self-serve plan is 100,000 credits, so 1M a month needs an Enterprise quote.
• Daily search and export caps by plan, from 10,000 rows on Essential to 100,000 on Ultimate.
• A minimum find-rate policy can throttle lists with poor match rates.

Best for: teams that enrich a few hundred thousand valid emails a month and want the cheapest credits.

Pricing: Essential $99, Growth $249, Professional $499, Ultimate $849 a month (LeadMagic pricing, September 2026).

6. FullEnrich: best for waterfall emails and mobiles behind an API

FullEnrich queries 25+ sources for each contact, and you pay only for data it finds (FullEnrich pricing, September 2026). Pro includes API access, search and an MCP server.

A work email costs 1 credit, a personal email 3 and a mobile 10. Search costs 0.25 credits per person returned (FullEnrich docs, September 2026). Pro starts at $29 a month for 500 credits, or $0.058 each. The 1,000-credit tier is $55 a month, or $0.055 each. The top monthly tier is 100,000 credits for $3,500 a month, or $0.035 each (FullEnrich pricing, September 2026).

Bulk enrichment is asynchronous and takes Bearer auth (FullEnrich docs, September 2026). The API allows 60 calls a minute with up to 100 contacts per bulk request, which is 6,000 contacts a minute. Higher limits are for technology partners (FullEnrich docs, September 2026). The MCP server can search, enrich and export, and it asks before it spends credits (FullEnrich help, September 2026).

Pros

• Waterfall across 25+ sources, so one call can cover several vendors.
• Search, enrichment and export in the MCP server.
• Bulk requests of 100 contacts, up to 6,000 a minute.

Cons

• Mobiles cost 10 credits each, so phone-heavy pulls get expensive fast.
• The default API limit is 60 calls a minute.
• A credit meter at volume. There is no public price at 1M work emails, and the top monthly tier stops at 100,000 credits.

Best for: teams that want waterfall contact data, mostly emails and mobiles, through an API or an agent.

Pricing: Pro from $29 a month for 500 credits, $55 for 1,000, up to $3,500 for 100,000. Above that, contact sales (FullEnrich pricing, September 2026). Enterprise custom (FullEnrich pricing, September 2026).

7. Apollo: best for reps who want a database and a sequencer in one

Apollo is a sales platform with a database and a sequencer (Apollo MCP page, September 2026). It ranks last here because the pricing is built around seats, not volume.

Basic is $49 per seat a month with 30,000 credits a year. Professional is $79 with 48,000. Organization is $119 with 72,000 and a three-seat minimum, all billed annually (Apollo pricing, September 2026). An email costs 1 credit and a phone number 8. Unused credits expire each cycle.

Auth is an x-api-key header (Apollo docs, September 2026). Enrichment endpoints allow 1,000 requests a minute on paid plans, and search allows 200 a minute and 50,000 a day (Apollo docs, September 2026). The API is on every plan, including Free, and so is the MCP server. Apollo says its plans are for internal business use only.

Pros

• Database, sequences, dialer and CRM sync in one tool.
• MCP server on every plan, with OAuth sign-in.

Cons

• Seats and credits both scale your bill, and credits expire each cycle.
• Record selection caps of 25, 1,000, 2,500 and 10,000 by plan.
• Internal use only, so you cannot build a product on it.

Best for: sales reps who prospect and send from one workspace.

Pricing: Free. Basic $49, Professional $79, Organization $119 per seat a month, billed annually (Apollo pricing, September 2026).

Comparison table

Sources are linked in each tool section, checked in September 2026. Confirm on the pricing page before you buy. The 1M column is list-price arithmetic on email lookups. Apollo is 250 Professional seats on monthly billing or 400 Basic seats on yearly billing, one credit per email. Coresignal uses 20 credits at the Elite rate. PDL publishes no 1M price. LeadMagic, FullEnrich and Lusha sell no plan at 1M, so their cells name no price. Each top public tier is in its tool section.

For reference, Lusha uses an api_key header, allows 40 to 300 requests a minute by plan and caps a bulk call at 100 records (Lusha API guide, September 2026). Its MCP server has 50 tools and shares the REST credit pool (Lusha MCP docs, September 2026).

Lusha's API guide says every user gets an API key on every plan including Free (Lusha API guide, September 2026). The pricing page lists API as a named feature from Pro and API Advanced on Premium (Lusha pricing, September 2026).

How to choose

• You pull data in code or with an agent, at volume: LeadOcean. One flat price, REST and MCP on every plan, 100 requests per second.
• You want a flat-price API from a second vendor: BlitzAPI Plus, if you can live with a docs-only MCP server and no bulk export.
• You need fresh employee and job records in bulk: Coresignal, and budget 20 credits per contact lookup.
• You need compliance paperwork or a licensed dataset: People Data Labs, and plan around 10 searches a minute.
• You buy valid emails by the hundred thousand: LeadMagic, at $0.00849 a credit on Ultimate.
• Lusha misses too many mobiles: FullEnrich, and budget 10 credits per mobile.
• Your reps live in the tool, or you need signals and lookalikes: Apollo for a sequencer, or stay on Lusha for signals.

Verdict

LeadOcean wins for developers who pull data through an API, an agent or at volume. It has a flat price, emails and phones in one plan, 100 requests per second and an MCP server that returns records. BlitzAPI is the flat-price runner-up if you run your own code. Coresignal wins for bulk employee and job records, PDL for licensed datasets, LeadMagic for cheap valid emails and FullEnrich for waterfall mobiles. Apollo wins for reps. Stay on Lusha if your team reveals contacts in its extension or needs its signals. Otherwise start on the free plan and compare the same lookups.

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