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

Lusha suits code and agents better, and LeadIQ suits reps who work in a browser. Both sell contact data on credits, and neither prints a price at 1M records. Lusha publishes more: a long credit ladder, per-key API limits and coverage counts.

Verdict

• Pick Lusha if you pull data through an API or an agent and want to read the limits and prices before you buy. It gives every plan an API key, publishes per-key rate limits and runs a 50-tool MCP server.
• Pick LeadIQ if your reps prospect from LinkedIn and sync to Salesforce. Its credits are cheaper at the sizes it publishes, it claims the bigger database, and Pro includes 5 users.
• Pick neither if you need volume through an API at a price you can read. Neither Lusha nor LeadIQ has a public 1M price. LeadOcean is one option: Pro is $499 a month, flat, with no credits.

Side by side

Data and coverage

LeadIQ claims the bigger database. It says 750M+ professional profiles, refreshed monthly, with up to 200M re-verified. Lusha says 525M+ contacts and 29M+ companies (LeadIQ pricing, October 2026; Lusha homepage, October 2026). Both are vendor claims, and neither defines what counts as a contact.

Lusha publishes the split inside that number. It says 165M+ emails and 117M+ direct dials. That is about 31% of its contacts with an email and 22% with a direct dial. Those ratios are ours, and an email count may count addresses, not people. LeadIQ publishes no email count and no company count on the pages we checked.

On phones, each vendor quotes its own accuracy. LeadIQ claims an 85% global mobile match rate, 70% in EMEA, and over 90% accuracy on verified numbers. It does not say what the match rate is measured against (LeadIQ pricing, October 2026).

Lusha calls its contacts verified but prints no accuracy percentage on its homepage (Lusha homepage, October 2026).

Test on your own list. Run the same 30 people through both free plans and compare match rate and email status.

API and developer experience

Both have an API and a hosted MCP server. Lusha is REST with a key in a header. LeadIQ is GraphQL, with search and enrichment as queries.

Lusha's V3 API takes the key in an api_key header. Search finds contacts by name and domain, LinkedIn URL or email. Revealing the email or phone is a second call to enrich, and that step spends credits (Lusha API overview, October 2026). This request uses the shape in Lusha's quickstart with placeholder data:

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 }
  }'

V2 stays live until November 18, 2026 (Lusha migration guide, September 2026).

LeadIQ has one GraphQL endpoint, https://api.leadiq.com/graphql. Its docs show this paged people search:

query {
  flatAdvancedSearch(input: {
    companyFilter: {
      locations: [
        { country: "United States", areaLevel1: "California" }
      ]
    }
    limit: 50
  }) {
    totalPeople
    people { id name title }
    after { key value }
  }
}

Send it as a POST body to the endpoint. The developer docs point to a separate Public API Guide for authentication and do not name the header. For one known person, searchPeople matches on name and company, LinkedIn profile or email (LeadIQ developer docs, October 2026).

Paging differs. LeadIQ offset paging (skip plus limit) is rejected past 10,000. Past that you page with a cursor, passing the after value back unchanged (LeadIQ developer docs, October 2026).

Rate limits are the clearest gap. Lusha sets limits per key by plan. Free and Starter get 40 requests a minute and 100 a day. Pro gets 50 a minute and 1,500 a day. Premium gets 300 a minute and 18,000 a day (Lusha API guide, September 2026). A separate page adds a default ceiling of 25 requests a second per account (Lusha rate limits, September 2026).

LeadIQ's developer docs publish no rate limit (LeadIQ developer docs, October 2026).

On MCP, Lusha has 50 tools and draws on the same credit pool as the REST API (Lusha MCP tools, September 2026). LeadIQ has 23 tools, including list management and a Salesforce export. Paid tools bill for data actually returned, and a failed email verification is not returned and costs nothing (LeadIQ developer docs, October 2026).

Pricing

Both charge in credits, and both print a ladder you can read up to a point. Monthly list price comes first below, then the billed-yearly figure. Both offer 25% off for yearly billing (Lusha pricing, September 2026; LeadIQ pricing, October 2026).

Lusha's public plans, in USD (Lusha pricing, September 2026):

Scale is custom. Pro and Premium let you raise credits in steps. Premium monthly runs from 3,400 credits at $399.90 to 10,000 at $977.40 (Lusha pricing, September 2026).

LeadIQ's slider runs from 200 credits at $20 a month to 6,750 credits at $290.25 a month. Billed yearly, those are $15 and $217.69 a month. Above the slider the page says Enterprise, with no price (LeadIQ pricing, October 2026).

Credit costs differ. Lusha charges 1 credit for an email, 5 for a phone and 1 for company info. A bulk request adds 1 credit per 25 results (Lusha API guide, September 2026; Lusha credits, September 2026). LeadIQ charges 1 for an email, 10 for a phone and 3 for a company, so a person with both costs 11. Those are MCP rates. The GraphQL API runs on its own ratesheet, and exact rates vary by plan (LeadIQ developer docs, October 2026).

Lusha's docs disagree on a miss. The API guide says a request costs at least 1 credit even with no data. The billing FAQ says no credit is deducted for a no-match request (Lusha API guide, September 2026; Lusha billing FAQ, September 2026). Budget for the 1 credit until Lusha settles it.

At 10,000 records a month

Take 10,000 work emails. At Lusha, a bulk pull is 10,000 email credits plus 10,000 / 25 = 400 request credits, so 10,400 credits. The top Premium step is 10,000 credits for $977.40 a month, or $9,539.10 a year (about $794.93 a month). The extra 400 credits have no listed step, so there is no public price at 10,400. A pull of 9,600 emails is 9,984 credits and fits that step.

At LeadIQ, 10,000 emails is 10,000 credits at 1 credit each. The slider stops at 6,750, so there is no public price at 10,000. The top step, 6,750 credits, is $290.25 a month, or $217.69 billed yearly.

Compare the per-credit rate at each top monthly step. LeadIQ is $290.25 / 6,750 = $0.043 a credit. Lusha Premium is $977.40 / 10,000 = $0.0977 a credit. Lusha's lowest published rate is about $0.0795, on Premium billed yearly at 120,000 credits. LeadIQ's rate is lower on the same billing basis.

Now price 1,000 people at those monthly rates:

• Email only: LeadIQ is 1,000 credits x $0.043 = $43. Lusha by bulk is 1,000 + 40 = 1,040 credits x $0.0977 = $101.65.
• Email and phone: LeadIQ is 1,000 x 11 = 11,000 credits x $0.043 = $473. Lusha by bulk is 1,000 x 6 + 40 = 6,040 credits x $0.0977 = $590.35.

LeadIQ is cheaper on both lists, and the gap narrows with phones because it charges 10 credits for a phone. Scale up the phone list to 10,000 people and LeadIQ needs 110,000 credits, about 16 times its largest step. Lusha needs 60,400, six times its largest.

At 1M records a month

Lusha: no public 1M price. One million work emails by bulk API need 1,000,000 + 1,000,000 / 25 = 1,040,000 credits. The top public step holds 10,000 a month, so 1M is 104 times larger. Scale is a custom quote with no published rate (Lusha pricing, September 2026).

LeadIQ: no public 1M price. One million emails is 1,000,000 credits, about 148 times the top slider step. Enterprise is a quote. We do not multiply a slider rate out to 1M and call it a price (LeadIQ pricing, October 2026).

Get a written quote from each at your volume.

Where Lusha wins

• A price and limits you can read. Lusha prints plans up to 10,000 credits a month and per-key API limits by plan. LeadIQ prints no rate limit in its developer docs.
• An API key on every plan. Free is included, and the 50-tool MCP server shares the same credit pool.
• Cheaper phones per credit. A phone costs 5 credits at Lusha and 10 at LeadIQ, and email plus phone is 6 credits in the platform against 11.
• Published coverage. Lusha states email and direct-dial counts. LeadIQ states a mobile match rate only.
• Signals and lookalikes. Lusha's API and MCP server expose buying signals, lookalikes and buying-group search (Lusha MCP tools, September 2026).

Where LeadIQ wins

• Cheaper credits at its sizes. $0.043 a credit at 6,750 credits a month, against $0.0977 at Lusha's top monthly step.
• A cheap start. Pro begins at $20 a month for 200 credits, with up to 5 users and shared credits. Lusha Starter is $49.90 for 400 credits and one seat.
• A bigger claimed database. 750M+ profiles, against 525M+ contacts at Lusha.
• A rep workflow. A Chrome extension, job-change tracking, an AI message writer and Salesforce export, aimed at reps who prospect one person at a time (LeadIQ pricing, October 2026).

If you need volume through an API

We build LeadOcean, so weigh this section accordingly. Neither Lusha nor LeadIQ prints a price at 1M records. LeadOcean is a data API and MCP server for 693M people and 63M companies. Free is 1,000 records, one-off, with no card, and Pro is $499 a month, flat, with no credits and 100 requests per second per key (LeadOcean pricing, September 2026).

REST and MCP are on every plan. POST /v1/exports returns up to 50,000 rows per request, so a 1M-row pull is 20 calls over two days (LeadOcean exports docs, September 2026). The app also has an Exports page with a filter builder and CSV download. There is no Chrome extension, sequencer or dialer, so keep Lusha or LeadIQ for reps.

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