Lusha vs ContactOut (2026): Data, Pricing and API Compared

Lusha and ContactOut both sell work emails and phone numbers, but they bill and ship them very differently. Lusha charges credits and gives every account an API key. ContactOut charges flat monthly seats and sells its API only after a meeting. Neither publishes a price at 1M records.

Verdict

• Pick Lusha if you want signals, CRM apps and an API you can test today. It suits sales teams that budget in credits and want 26 buying signals next to the contact.
• Pick ContactOut if you recruit or prospect from LinkedIn in a browser. A flat seat at $49 or $99 a month is cheap for one person, and its profile count is larger.
• Pick neither if you pull people and company data in code or through an agent at volume. Both stop at a credit meter or a fair-use cap, so look at a flat-priced API such as LeadOcean.

Side by side

Data and coverage

ContactOut claims the bigger people database. Lusha adds signals and more fields per record. ContactOut states 800M people profiles, 200M work emails and 150M personal emails. The source is its data page (ContactOut data, September 2026). Lusha states 525M+ contacts, 165M+ emails and 117M+ direct dials (Lusha homepage, September 2026).

Treat both as vendor claims. ContactOut gives other numbers elsewhere: 350M in its homepage headline, 600M+ on its MCP page and 700M+ on the Team plan card (ContactOut MCP, September 2026; ContactOut pricing, September 2026). Ask which figure your plan reaches.

The data is shaped differently. ContactOut is LinkedIn-first and the only one of the two that publishes a personal-email count. That matters for recruiters, who need a candidate's home address more than a work one.

Lusha is account-first. It lists 78 fields per record and 26 buying signals, such as job changes and funding, refreshed weekly, across 29M+ companies (Lusha homepage, September 2026). ContactOut lists more companies, 40M, and no signals.

ContactOut states 99% accuracy on its data page, and Lusha publishes no accuracy figure on its homepage (ContactOut data, September 2026). A vendor claim is not a measured result, so run your own sample before you commit.

API and developer experience

Lusha is the easier API to start. Every account gets a key, including Free, and the V3 API takes an api_key header. Search returns matches, and you pass the contact id to the enrich endpoint, which is the step that spends credits (Lusha API overview, September 2026).

curl --request POST \
  --url https://api.lusha.com/v3/contacts/search \
  --header "api_key: $LUSHA_API_KEY" \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --data '{
    "contacts": [
      { "clientReferenceId": "my-ref-1", "firstName": "Jane", "lastName": "Doe", "companyDomain": "acme.com" }
    ],
    "options": { "includePartialProfiles": true }
  }'

ContactOut passes the key in a token header. Its profile call takes a LinkedIn URL and returns emails, phones and profile fields (ContactOut API docs, September 2026).

curl "https://api.contactout.com/v1/linkedin/enrich?profile=https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-doe" \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --header "Accept: application/json" \
  --header "token: $CONTACTOUT_API_TOKEN"

The catch is access. The ContactOut docs say to book a meeting to get a key, so you cannot test before a sales call.

Rate limits differ in kind. Lusha caps by plan. Pro gets 50 requests a minute and 1,500 a day, and Premium gets 300 a minute and 18,000 a day (Lusha API guide, September 2026). A separate Lusha page sets a default of 25 requests a second per account (Lusha rate limits, September 2026).

ContactOut caps by endpoint. People Search is 60 a minute and most other APIs are 1,000 a minute. That is more headroom than Lusha Pro, but search is the slow path.

On MCP, both ship an official server. Lusha's has 50 tools, and ContactOut's has 15 and starts you with 600+ free credits. Lusha's MCP calls draw from the same credit pool as its REST API.

Pricing

Lusha charges per credit, and ContactOut charges per seat. The first scales with volume, and the second hits a ceiling.

Lusha list prices, USD, monthly first and billed-yearly after (Lusha pricing, September 2026):

• Free: $0, 40 credits a month.
• Starter: $49.90 a month for 400 credits ($37.45 a month billed yearly).
• Pro: $69.90 a month for 600 credits ($52.45 billed yearly).
• Premium: $399.90 a month for 3,400 credits ($299.95 billed yearly).
• Scale: custom, sold through sales.

ContactOut list prices, global coverage, USD (ContactOut pricing, September 2026):

• Free: $0, 5 emails, 5 phones and 5 exports a day.
• Email: $49 a month ($39 billed yearly), unlimited emails, 300 exports a month.
• Email + Phone: $99 a month ($79 billed yearly), unlimited emails and phones, 600 exports a month.
• Team / API: Contact Us, no price.

The page shows $99 and $199 struck through beside the $49 and $99 prices. It gives no end date for the discount.

Worked example: 10,000 records a month

Take 10,000 work emails.

• Lusha: an email is 1 credit, so 10,000 emails is 10,000 credits. That is the top public monthly step of Premium, $977.40 billed monthly, or about $794.93 a month on the 120,000-credit yearly plan ($9,539.10 / 12). Through the bulk API, add 1 credit per 25 results: 10,000 + 400 = 10,400 credits, above the top step (Lusha credit docs, September 2026). Add phones and each one is 5 credits.
• ContactOut: paid plans are capped at 2,000 email credits and 1,000 phone credits per account per month (ContactOut terms, September 2026). 10,000 emails / 2,000 = 5 months on the $49 plan, so 5 x $49 = $245. 10,000 phones / 1,000 = 10 months on the $99 plan, so 10 x $99 = $990.

On list price ContactOut is cheaper, but one account needs five months to deliver the emails. Lusha delivers all 10,000 in one month, at the top public step.

Worked example: 1M records a month

There is no public 1M price for either tool.

• Lusha: 1M work emails by bulk API is 1,000,000 email credits plus 1,000,000 / 25 = 40,000 request credits, so 1,040,000 credits. The top public tier holds 10,000 credits a month, so 1M is 104 times the largest listed plan. Scale is custom, and Lusha says only "50%+ off" per credit.
• ContactOut: 1,000,000 / 2,000 emails a month = 500 account-months. Self-serve plans are one user per company, so you cannot add accounts. Volume means the Team / API plan, priced on request.

Lusha's docs also disagree on misses. The API guide says a request costs at least 1 credit even with no data. The V3 billing FAQ says no credit is deducted for a no-match request (Lusha billing FAQ, September 2026). Ask Lusha support before you budget for a low match rate.

Where Lusha wins

• An API you can test today. A key comes with the free account, so you can run real calls before you talk to anyone.
• Signals and lookalikes. 26 buying signals and lookalike search sit next to the contact. ContactOut lists neither.
• Credit-step pricing you can read. Every plan from Starter to Premium has a published price and a credit ladder. See our Lusha alternatives page for how it compares with other credit tools.
• More MCP tools. Lusha's server has 50 tools against ContactOut's 15, and it shares the credit pool with the API.

Where ContactOut wins

• Cheap seats for one person. $49 a month for unlimited emails inside the fair-use cap is hard to beat for a solo recruiter.
• More companies listed. 40M company profiles against Lusha's 29M+.
• Personal emails. It publishes 150M personal emails, and Lusha publishes no such split. For recruiting, that is the line that counts.
• A bigger people count. 800M profiles against 525M+ contacts, if you accept vendor figures.
• Higher limits on most endpoints. 1,000 requests a minute beats Lusha Pro's 50, once you have a key.

For other head-to-heads, see Lusha vs SalesIntel, Lusha vs Dealfront and ContactOut vs Wiza.

If you need volume through an API

LeadOcean is a data API with a hosted MCP server. It holds 693M people and 63M companies, with 366M people that have an email and 166M with a phone number. Pro is $499 a month, flat, with no credits and no per-record price. The rate limit is 100 requests per second per key. Export runs 50,000 rows per request through POST /v1/exports, so a 1M-row pull is 20 calls over two days.

Free gives you 1,000 records, one-off, with no card, on the same API and MCP server as Pro. It has no Chrome extension, so reps who live in a browser should stay with Lusha or ContactOut. See the pricing page or the Lusha alternative page.

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