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

Lusha is the pick if you want a price you can read and an API key today. SalesIntel is the pick if you want human-verified contacts inside one quoted contract. At 1M records a month, neither tool prints a price.

Verdict

• Pick Lusha if you want public plans, a free plan with 40 credits a month, monthly billing and an official MCP server. It suits individual reps, small teams and developers who want to test before they talk to anyone (Lusha pricing, September 2026).
• Pick SalesIntel if your reps want human-verified mobile numbers, intent data and a success manager in one platform, and you accept a quote and an annual term (SalesIntel pricing, October 2026).
• Pick neither if you pull people and company data by API at volume and want one flat monthly bill. LeadOcean is one option, covered below.

Side by side

Data and coverage

Lusha claims the larger database, and SalesIntel sells verification. Lusha states 525M+ contacts, 165M+ emails and 117M+ direct dials (Lusha homepage, October 2026). SalesIntel states 200M+ verified contacts and 54M+ verified mobile numbers (SalesIntel, October 2026). These are vendor claims, and we did not test them.

SalesIntel contradicts its own pages. The homepage says 200M+ verified contacts. Its contacts API page says 120 million machine-verified contacts (SalesIntel API page, October 2026). The gap likely separates human-verified from machine-verified records, but the pages do not say so.

Phones are the clearest split. Lusha's 117M+ direct dials are about 22% of its claimed contacts. SalesIntel's 54M+ mobiles are about 27% of its 200M+, or 45% of 120 million. Different counts, so do not read the ratios as facts.

The human-verified tier is SalesIntel's real feature. Its people API has a verified parameter that returns only human-verified records, and says contacts are re-checked every 90 days (SalesIntel API page, October 2026). We found no equivalent on Lusha.

Depth favors Lusha on signals. It states 78 fields per record and 26 buying signals refreshed weekly (Lusha homepage, October 2026). SalesIntel states 60,000+ intent topics and 42,000+ technologies tracked, with advanced intent sold as an add-on (SalesIntel pricing, October 2026).

Neither vendor publishes how it counts a contact. Run the same 100 lookups in both, then compare match rate and bounce rate.

API and developer experience

Both have a REST API. Lusha gives every plan an API key and a self-serve dashboard. SalesIntel gives you a key through your success team, so setup takes a sales conversation first.

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, and that step spends credits (Lusha API overview, October 2026). The placeholders below stand in for a real person.

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 }
  }'

Lusha's docs disagree on a miss. 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 API guide; billing FAQ, September 2026). Ask Lusha support before you budget for misses.

SalesIntel takes one header and a GET. Email is the preferred identifier. The same endpoint also filters by company, location, size and job level (SalesIntel people API, October 2026).

curl --request GET \
  --url "https://api.salesintel.io/service/people?email=jane.doe@acme.com" \
  --header "X-CB-ApiKey: $SALESINTEL_API_KEY" \
  --header "Accept: application/json"

SalesIntel charges credits per record returned, not per request. A 402 means you are out of credits, and a 403 means your account lacks permission (SalesIntel API docs, October 2026). A /service/people/preview route returns masked contacts and takes no credits.

Rate limits favor SalesIntel on paper. Its 1,800 requests a minute is per user, and heavy overage can trigger a cooldown with no fixed length. Lusha sets limits per key by plan. Free and Starter get 100 requests a day, Pro gets 1,500 a day, and Premium gets 300 a minute and 18,000 a day (Lusha API guide, September 2026). A separate page adds a 25 requests a second ceiling per account (Lusha rate limits, September 2026).

For agents, only Lusha has an MCP server, with 50 tools on the same credit pool. SalesIntel's docs list REST, webhooks and a Snowflake share. Its terms also bar extracting its materials with crawlers, bots, scripts or intelligent agents, so ask whether your API licence covers agent use (SalesIntel terms, October 2026).

Pricing

Lusha prints its prices, and SalesIntel does not. Prices below are monthly list first, billed-yearly after.

Source: Lusha pricing, September 2026. An email costs 1 credit, a phone number 5 and company info 1. A bulk request adds 1 credit per 25 results, up to 100 per request (Lusha credits, September 2026). Scale is custom, with no published per-credit rate.

SalesIntel's pricing page lists unlimited export and enrichment credits per user, a dedicated success manager and add-ons for advanced intent, ads and visitor identification (SalesIntel pricing, October 2026). Vendr reports a median of $17,599 a year, with deals from $8,670 to $41,380, a 12-month standard term and 5 to 10 percent renewal increases (Vendr, updated February 2026). The terms cap each user at 3,000 companies or contacts revealed per month (SalesIntel terms, October 2026).

At 10,000 records a month

• Lusha, work emails by bulk API: 10,000 email credits + 10,000 / 25 = 400 request credits = 10,400 credits. The largest monthly step is 10,000 credits for $977.40 a month billed monthly, or about $794.93 a month billed yearly ($9,539.10 / 12). The other 400 credits have no published price.
• Lusha, email and phone: 10,000 x (1 + 5) + 400 = 60,400 credits. That is about six times the largest monthly step.
• SalesIntel: no public 10,000 price. At 3,000 reveals per user, 10,000 / 3,000 = 3.3, so at least 4 users. The docs do not say whether the cap applies to API use.

At 1M records a month

• Lusha: No public 1M price. 1,000,000 work emails need 1,000,000 + 1,000,000 / 25 = 1,040,000 credits. The top public step is 10,000 credits a month, so that is 104 times larger. Scale is custom and has no published per-credit rate, so get a written quote (Lusha pricing, September 2026).
• SalesIntel: No public 1M price. At 3,000 reveals per user, 1,000,000 / 3,000 = 334 users. That is a floor on seats, not a quote, and volume deals are negotiated. Vendr reports contact overages of $0.50 to $2.00 per contact, which is a negotiated figure, so do not multiply it out (Vendr, February 2026).

Throughput is the other cost. Lusha at 100 records per request needs 10,000 calls, about 5.6 hours at Premium's 1,800 an hour. SalesIntel at 50 per page needs 20,000 calls, about 11 minutes at 30 a second. But a result set stops at 10,000 records, so you need at least 100 separate searches.

Ask both for a written price at your volume, your term and your renewal increase.

Where Lusha wins

• A price you can read. You can size a 10,000-record month from a public page, and the free plan has 40 credits a month.
• Monthly billing. Monthly plans, with 25% off for paying yearly, and no 12-month term.
• An API key on every plan. Free included, plus an official 50-tool MCP server.
• Published API limits. Per-key limits by plan, so you can plan a job before you buy.
• A larger claimed database. 525M+ contacts and 117M+ direct dials against SalesIntel's 200M+ and 54M+.

Where SalesIntel wins

• Human-verified contacts. A verified filter in the API, a claimed 95% accuracy and a 90-day refresh cycle. These are vendor claims we have not tested.
• Intent and technographics. 60,000+ intent topics and 42,000+ technologies tracked in one contract.
• No credit counting for reps. Unlimited export and enrichment credits per user in the app.
• Support. A dedicated success manager, onboarding and a Chrome extension on the core plan (SalesIntel pricing, October 2026).
• A free preview endpoint. It checks a match before you spend credits.

If you need volume through an API

Neither tool prints a 1M price, and both gate volume behind credits, seats or a quote. LeadOcean is a data API and MCP server with a flat price. The Free plan gives 1,000 records, one-off, with no card. Pro is $499 a month with no credits and no per-record price.

It is REST plus a 12-tool MCP server on both plans, at 100 requests per second per key. POST /v1/exports returns up to 50,000 rows per request (LeadOcean exports docs, September 2026). LeadOcean holds 693M people and 63M companies. It has no human-verified tier, intent data, Chrome extension or sequencer, so it is a data source for code and agents. See LeadOcean as a Lusha alternative or the pricing page.

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