How to Enrich Leads for Free (9 Free Plans, Compared and Stacked)

TL;DR

• Start with LeadOcean. Free is 1,000 records for life, no card, every feature, and counting a list costs nothing.
• Fill gaps with the monthly free tiers below. Together they add a few hundred lookups a month, not thousands.
• Takes about 30 minutes and spends about 25 LeadOcean records.

Prerequisites

• A free LeadOcean key from app.leadocean.io, exported as $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY.
• curl and jq.
• A target: this guide uses the title "Founder", country US, companies of 1-10 people. Swap in your own.

Free tiers change often. These figures were read from each vendor's pages in September 2026. Re-check before you plan around one.

Step 1: List the nine free allowances

Only LeadOcean's allowance is a lump sum. The rest reset, so they suit steady small volume.

Step 2: Size the list for free

Count before you spend anything. Counts cost no records on any LeadOcean plan.

curl -s -X POST "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/search?count=true" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"title":["Founder"],"country":["US"],"employeeRange":["1-10"],"limit":1}' | jq .meta

count=true goes in the query string, not the body. meta.total is capped at 100,000. If the total is far above what you can contact, narrow the filters now. Company lists can be sized with GET /v1/companies/count, also free.

Step 3: Pull one small page

A search page of 25 is 25 records. Pull one and keep it.

curl -s -X POST "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/search" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"title":["Founder"],"country":["US"],"employeeRange":["1-10"],"limit":25}' > page1.json
jq '.meta' page1.json

The body is flat JSON, filters are arrays, limit runs 1 to 100, and the next page uses cursor. Free allows 5 requests a second.

Step 4: Enrich only rows you will contact

Enrich takes exactly one of linkedin_url, email, phone or person_id. A person we hold nothing for is a 404 and costs nothing.

curl -s -X POST "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/enrich" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"person_id":"1234567890","reveal_email":true}'

Check email_status before sending. Mailable means verified, catch_all_valid or catch_all. Bounces are not refunded.

Step 5: Fill gaps from the monthly free tiers

Some rows will lack a phone or email. Use one free tier per gap type, not all nine at once.

• Work emails: Hunter (50 a month) or Prospeo (100 a month).
• Phones: Lusha (40 credits) or Kaspr (5 phone credits). ContactOut gives 5 a day.
• Spreadsheet-style waterfalls: Clay Free, within 200 rows a table.
• Programmatic checks: Apollo and People Data Labs, both with API access on Free per their docs.

Pick by the field you are missing. Running four tools on the same 40 rows wastes the few credits you have.

Step 6: Write the spend rule

1. Count in LeadOcean (free).
2. Spend LeadOcean records on the first 1,000 contacts.
3. Fill phone and email gaps from one monthly free tier.
4. Move to a paid plan only when a free tier runs out in under a month.
5. LeadOcean Solo is $97 a month when you need bulk CSV export or more records.

What you get

A free count run on 2026-10-21 through the LeadOcean MCP tool leadocean_count_leads for title Founder, country US, headcount 1-10:

{
  "total": 248901,
  "totalIsExact": true,
  "totalAll": 666558,
  "distinctCompanies": 218698,
  "credits": 0
}

total is the mailable count: the tool counts verified, catch_all_valid and catch_all by default. totalAll has no email condition. Cost: 0 records.

A search row has this shape (response shape from the API reference, api.leadocean.io/openapi.json, October 2026). Values are placeholders:

{
  "success": true,
  "data": [
    {
      "profile_data": {
        "profile_full_name": "Jane Doe",
        "profile_headline": "Founder at Acme"
      },
      "contact_data": {
        "has_email": true,
        "email_status": "verified"
      },
      "meta": { "source_ids": { "person_id": "1234567890" } }
    }
  ],
  "meta": { "count": 1, "limit": 25, "nextCursor": "CURSOR" }
}

Troubleshooting

FAQ