People Data Labs vs Dropcontact (2026): Data, Pricing and API Compared

People Data Labs (PDL) is a database you query. Dropcontact is a cleaning service you send contacts to. PDL returns a full person profile from 2.47B records. Dropcontact returns a verified business email, and says it holds no contact database.

Verdict

• Pick People Data Labs if you need person profiles, phone numbers or company data at scale. You can match on a LinkedIn URL, email or phone, and a miss is free.
• Pick Dropcontact if you already have names and companies, mostly in Europe, and want a verified email or a CRM cleanup. It has an official MCP server and a public price per credit up to 150,000 credits a month.
• Pick neither if you want to search people by title, seniority and country first, then pull them with no credits. LeadOcean is one option: Pro is $499 a month, flat.

Side by side

Data and coverage

PDL holds the data and Dropcontact rebuilds it on request. That is the biggest difference on this page. You cannot ask Dropcontact how many VPs of Sales exist in Germany. You can ask PDL.

PDL's 2.47B is its full person dataset, and only part of it has contact data. Its email dataset is 592M profiles, its mobile dataset is 470M, and any-phone is 764M (PDL datasets, September 2026). The company dataset is 76.6M records.

Dropcontact says it works only with its own algorithms and no contact databases. It also runs its own email verification and claims 99% validity (Dropcontact pricing, October 2026). Those are its own claims, and it publishes no coverage count.

Inputs differ too. Dropcontact needs a first name, last name and company, or a LinkedIn URL, or an email (Dropcontact API docs, October 2026). PDL matches on a LinkedIn profile, an email, a phone, or a name plus a company, school or location (PDL docs, September 2026).

Phones are thin at Dropcontact. The docs list phone and mobile_phone response fields, but they describe the phone feature as finding a company phone number. The credits policy charges only for a found or verified email (Dropcontact API docs, October 2026). The pricing page mentions mobile numbers from signature extraction inside its CRM product. Coverage is not published.

Test both on your own list. Run the same 500 contacts through each, on a paid month, because the free plans are small. PDL's Free plan gives 100 credits but obscures contact data, so you need Pro to see emails. Dropcontact gives 50 free credits.

API and developer experience

Both are REST APIs and both charge only on a hit. PDL answers one person per call. Dropcontact takes a batch and makes you come back for the result.

PDL sends a key in the X-Api-Key header to GET /v5/person/enrich. A match returns 200 and is billed. A miss returns 404 and is not (PDL docs, September 2026).

curl -G "https://api.peopledatalabs.com/v5/person/enrich" \
  -H "X-Api-Key: $PDL_API_KEY" \
  --data-urlencode "profile=https://linkedin.com/in/jane-doe-acme"

Dropcontact takes a token in X-Access-Token. You POST up to 250 contacts to /v1/people/enrich/all, get a request_id, then GET the result. If the batch is still running, the answer says to try again in 30 seconds (Dropcontact API docs, October 2026).

curl -X POST "https://api.dropcontact.com/v1/people/enrich/all" \
  -H "X-Access-Token: $DROPCONTACT_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"data":[{"first_name":"Jane","last_name":"Doe","website":"acme.com"}],"language":"en"}'

You can skip polling with custom_callback_url, which sends the result to a webhook. The result carries each email with a qualification such as nominative@pro, catch_all or generic.

Rate limits shape how each scales. PDL enrichment allows 1,000 requests a minute on paid plans, but Person Search allows only 10 a minute by default (PDL usage limits, September 2026). Dropcontact allows 60 requests a second, and each request can carry 250 contacts.

On MCP, only Dropcontact has an official server. It enriches a contact from a name and company or a LinkedIn URL, or validates an email. It does not search. PDL lists no MCP server in its docs, and only community servers exist (PDL llms.txt, September 2026).

Pricing

Both bill per credit, but a credit means a different thing. A PDL credit returns a profile. A Dropcontact credit returns one verified email. Compare cost per record only with that gap in mind. Dropcontact prices are in euros and PDL prices in dollars, so nothing below is converted.

At 10,000 records a month

For PDL, 10,000 profiles is 10,000 credits. PDL says Pro profiles cost about $0.20 to $0.28 each, depending on volume and plan. So 10,000 x $0.20 = $2,000 and 10,000 x $0.28 = $2,800 (PDL blog, September 2026). PDL does not publish the Pro price at 10,000 credits a month. The credit selector sits behind the login, so treat this as a range, not a quote.

For Dropcontact, 10,000 found emails fit the 11,000-credit tier. Starter is €199 a month on monthly billing, or €166 a month billed yearly. Growth is €303 monthly, or €253 billed yearly (Dropcontact pricing, October 2026). That is €199 / 10,000 = about €0.02 per found email on Starter.

Dropcontact is far cheaper per record here. Part of that is the unit: one email, not a profile. Misses are refunded, and unused credits roll over only on Growth (Dropcontact pricing, October 2026).

At 1M records

Neither vendor publishes a price at 1M records a month, so do not multiply a rate out to one.

PDL: self-serve Pro stops near 100,000 profiles, and above that PDL quotes Enterprise only. Its docs say 100,000 records, and its blog says 100,000 a year, so ask which applies (PDL blog, September 2026).

Dropcontact: the largest self-serve tier is 150,000 credits a month, at €2,245 on Starter monthly or €1,871 billed yearly. Enterprise starts at 200,000 credits a month on a custom quote (Dropcontact pricing, October 2026). One million a month is 5 times that Enterprise floor, so it is a sales conversation at both vendors.

Where People Data Labs wins

• A database you can query. 2.47B profiles, with company data on 76.6M companies, from one API.
• Phone coverage. 470M mobile and 764M any-phone profiles, by PDL's own stats.
• Free misses. A 404 costs nothing, and the Free plan gives 100 credits a month.
• Person-first matching. A LinkedIn URL, phone or email is enough. You do not need a company.
• Search. Person Search and Company Search exist, though they run at 10 requests a minute by default.

Where Dropcontact wins

• Price per email. About €0.02 per found email at 10,000 a month, well below PDL's $0.20 to $0.28 per profile.
• Official MCP server. Connect it to Claude or Cursor with OAuth, or a bearer token.
• Pay on success with verification included. A credit is charged only for a verified email, and a miss is refunded.
• CRM and European fit. It lists HubSpot, Pipedrive and Salesforce integrations, plus EU-based processing, per its own pricing page.
• A higher request rate. 60 requests a second, with 250 contacts per request.

If you need volume through an API

We build LeadOcean, so weigh this section accordingly. LeadOcean holds 693M people and 63M companies behind one REST API and one 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).

Unlike Dropcontact, it searches. Unlike PDL, it has no per-record price. For bulk work, POST /v1/exports returns up to 50,000 rows per request. The app has an Exports page with a filter builder and CSV download (LeadOcean exports docs, September 2026). It does not take a name plus a company as input, so it does not replace Dropcontact for list cleaning.

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