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

Lusha and LeadMagic both sell B2B contact data by the credit, but they sell different products. Lusha is a data platform with a Chrome extension, CRM apps and buying signals. LeadMagic is an enrichment layer built around an email finder that bills only for valid results.

Verdict

• Pick Lusha if your reps work in LinkedIn and a CRM, and you want a browser extension, a free plan, published email and phone counts and the larger contact base.
• Pick LeadMagic if you enrich in code or through an agent and want the lower price per email and per mobile, with misses billed at nothing.
• Pick neither if you need millions of records a month through an API at a price you can read. Neither publishes a 1M price. LeadOcean is one option: Pro is $499 a month, flat.

Side by side

Data and coverage

Lusha claims the bigger base: 525M+ contacts against LeadMagic's 400M+ people. Company counts are 29M+ and 25M+. Both are the vendors' own numbers, not audited ones.

Only Lusha publishes how many contacts carry an email or a phone. It claims 165M+ emails and 117M+ direct dials, which is about 31% and 22% of its contacts (Lusha homepage, September 2026). LeadMagic prints no email or phone count, so coverage cannot be compared on paper.

Accuracy claims also differ. Lusha states 98% email accuracy and 86% phone accuracy across its database (Lusha homepage, September 2026). LeadMagic validates every email it finds before it returns one, and returns nothing, free, when it cannot (LeadMagic email finder docs, September 2026).

The products differ beyond the data. Lusha adds 26 buying signals refreshed weekly, a Chrome extension and Salesforce and HubSpot apps. LeadMagic adds 46M+ job posts and search over companies and people (Lusha homepage; LeadMagic homepage, September 2026).

Test on your own list before you buy. Lusha's free plan gives 40 credits a month. LeadMagic has no free plan, but a 14-day money-back guarantee on the first payment (LeadMagic help, September 2026). Run the same 30 people through each and compare the match rate.

API and developer experience

Both are REST APIs with an official MCP server. The differences are the call pattern, the credit rules and the rate limits.

Lusha's V3 API passes the key in an api_key header. Search and Enrich finds contacts by name and domain, LinkedIn URL or email. It reveals emails or phones in the same call (Lusha search and enrich docs, September 2026):

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

The call takes up to 100 contacts. An email is 1 credit, a phone is 5, and a bulk request adds 1 credit per 1 to 25 results. One contact with email and phone is 7 credits through a single API request (Lusha API guide, September 2026).

LeadMagic's email finder is one contact per call. The key goes in an X-API-Key header. You send a name plus a domain (LeadMagic email finder docs, September 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"}'

It costs 1 credit per valid email, and nothing when no email is found. A mobile is 5 credits and a standalone validation is 0.25 (LeadMagic pricing explained, September 2026).

Misses are where Lusha's docs disagree. The API guide says a request costs at least 1 credit even with no data (Lusha API guide, September 2026). The V3 billing FAQ says no credit is deducted for a no-match request (Lusha billing FAQ, September 2026). Ask Lusha which rule applies to your plan.

Rate limits scale in different ways. Lusha's are per key by plan. Free and Starter get 40 a minute and 100 a day. Pro gets 50 a minute and 1,500 a day, and Premium gets 300 a minute and 18,000 a day (Lusha API guide, September 2026).

LeadMagic's email finder runs at 600 requests a minute on standard plans. Most other endpoints run at 300 a minute (LeadMagic email finder docs, September 2026). Search is zero-credit only on Professional (5 a second) and Ultimate (10 a second). On Essential and Growth it bills about 1 credit per person returned (LeadMagic people search docs, September 2026).

On MCP, both run hosted servers. Lusha's has 50 tools and draws from the same credit pool as its REST API. LeadMagic's accepts OAuth sign-in only, with no static API key (Lusha MCP docs; LeadMagic MCP page, September 2026).

Pricing

Both bill in credits. Convert each to the cost of the record you actually want, and the gap is large.

At 10,000 records a month

Take 10,000 work emails. LeadMagic charges 1 credit per valid email, so 10,000 credits. Essential holds 5,000, so the cheapest fit is Growth: $249 a month for 20,000 credits, or $2,490 billed yearly, about $208 a month (LeadMagic pricing, September 2026). That assumes every lookup finds an email. Misses are free, so a lower find rate does not raise the bill.

For Lusha, 10,000 work emails by bulk API is 10,000 email credits plus 10,000 / 25 = 400 request credits. That is 10,400 credits (Lusha API guide, September 2026).

The largest public monthly step is Premium at 10,000 credits, $977.40 billed monthly, or 120,000 credits a year at $9,539.10 billed yearly (about $794.93 a month). So 10,400 credits is just above the top listed step (Lusha pricing, September 2026). At that step's rate of $0.09774 a credit, the arithmetic is 10,400 x $0.09774, about $1,017 a month. That is an illustration, not a Lusha price.

Phones change the sums. For 10,000 mobiles, LeadMagic needs 10,000 x 5 = 50,000 credits. Professional covers it at $499 a month for 50,000 credits. For 10,000 contacts with email and phone, it is 60,000 credits, which fits Ultimate at $849 a month for 100,000 (LeadMagic pricing, September 2026).

At Lusha, 10,000 contacts with email and phone is 10,000 x 6 = 60,000 credits plus 400 request credits, or 60,400. That is six times the top public monthly step. Scale is custom, so you would need a quote.

Per credit, LeadMagic runs from $0.0198 on Essential to $0.00849 on Ultimate, billed monthly. Lusha runs from about $0.0795 (Premium yearly, top step) to about $0.125 (Starter monthly). On a mobile at 5 credits, that is about $0.04 to $0.10 against $0.40 to $0.62.

At 1M records a month

For Lusha: no public 1M price. The same pull of 1,000,000 work emails is 1,000,000 email credits plus 40,000 request credits, or 1,040,000 credits. The top public step holds 10,000 credits a month, so 1M is 104 times the largest listed plan. Scale is custom and Lusha gives no per-credit figure for it (Lusha pricing, September 2026).

For LeadMagic: no public 1M price. 1,000,000 valid emails is 1,000,000 credits. Ultimate holds 100,000 credits a month, so 1M is 10 times the largest self-serve plan. Enterprise starts at $2,490 a quarter paid upfront with no published credit price. LeadMagic sells extra credits as top-ups at checkout, and publishes no top-up price (LeadMagic pricing; LeadMagic help, September 2026).

We do not multiply a list rate out to 1M and call it a quote. For both tools, 1M a month is a sales conversation.

Where Lusha wins

• Published coverage. It states 165M+ emails and 117M+ direct dials, and the larger contact base.
• A free plan with API access. 40 credits a month and a key on every plan. LeadMagic has no free plan.
• Reps in a browser. The Chrome extension and the Salesforce and HubSpot apps put a reveal one click from LinkedIn (Lusha homepage, September 2026).
• Signals and 50 MCP tools. Buying signals and prospecting are exposed to agents (Lusha MCP docs, September 2026).
• Bigger batches. 100 contacts per request, against one contact per email finder call.

Where LeadMagic wins

• Lower cost per record. About $0.00849 to $0.0198 an email credit, against about $0.0795 to $0.125 at Lusha.
• Billing on success. An email miss and a mobile miss cost nothing, and email validation is 0.25 credits.
• Faster enrichment. 600 email finder requests a minute, against 300 a minute at Lusha's Premium.
• Jobs and integrations. 46M+ job posts, plus Clay, Apollo, Smartlead, Instantly and Zapier connections (LeadMagic homepage, September 2026).
• Zero-credit search. On Professional and Ultimate, API search spends no credits.

If you need volume through an API

We build LeadOcean, so weigh this section accordingly. LeadOcean holds 693M people and 63M companies, reachable over REST and an MCP server with 12 tools. Free is 1,000 records, one-off, with no card. Pro is $499 a month, flat, with no credits and a limit of 100 requests per second per key (LeadOcean pricing, September 2026).

For bulk work, POST /v1/exports returns up to 50,000 rows per request. The app also has an Exports page with a filter builder and CSV download (LeadOcean exports docs, September 2026). There is no sequencer, dialer or Chrome extension, so keep Lusha if your reps need those. See the Lusha alternative page for a line-by-line version.

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