People Data Labs vs Hunter.io (2026): Data, Pricing and API Compared

People Data Labs (PDL) and Hunter.io both sell contact data by API, but they sell different things. PDL returns a full person profile per match. Hunter finds and verifies a work email, usually starting from a company domain.

Verdict

• Pick People Data Labs if you need raw person profiles, phone numbers or licensed bulk files. You pay per match, and a miss is free.
• Pick Hunter.io if you need verified work emails for a known domain or a known name, at a low price per email. It has an official MCP server on every plan and a public price at 1M credits.
• Pick neither if you want to search people by title, seniority and country across a whole database, with phones, and no credits. LeadOcean is one option: Pro is $499 a month, flat.

Side by side

Data and coverage

PDL has far more records, and Hunter has fewer records with more proof behind each email. The counts are not like for like. PDL counts person profiles. Hunter counts verified email addresses.

PDL's 2.47B is its full person dataset, and only part of it has contact data. Its email dataset is 592M profiles and its mobile dataset is 470M (PDL datasets, September 2026). Hunter's homepage cites 150,430,313 verified emails (Hunter, September 2026).

Hunter shows its work. Emails come from public pages, and the API returns up to 20 source URLs with the date each was first and last seen. Each email found is verified as valid, accept_all or unknown (Hunter API docs, September 2026). PDL returns a likelihood score from 1 to 10 instead (PDL docs, September 2026).

Phones are where they split. PDL says 764M profiles have any phone number. Hunter publishes no phone count and documents no phone endpoint. Its responses carry a phone_number field, which is null in the docs examples.

Inputs differ too. Hunter's Email Finder wants a domain or company name plus a person's name, or a LinkedIn handle. PDL matches on a LinkedIn profile, an email, a phone, or a name plus a company, school or location.

Test both on your own list before you buy. Run the same 500 people through each free plan. Hunter's Free plan gives 50 credits a month. PDL's Free plan gives 100 but obscures contact data, so you will need Pro to see emails.

API and developer experience

Both are REST APIs with a one-person call that charges only on a hit. Hunter starts from a domain. PDL starts from a person. The other differences are error codes, speed and what an agent can reach.

Hunter takes the key in an X-API-KEY header, an api_key query parameter or a Bearer token (Hunter API docs, September 2026). Email Finder is GET /v2/email-finder:

curl -G "https://api.hunter.io/v2/email-finder" \
  -H "X-API-KEY: $HUNTER_API_KEY" \
  --data-urlencode "domain=reddit.com" \
  --data-urlencode "first_name=Alexis" \
  --data-urlencode "last_name=Ohanian"

If nothing is found, no credit is charged. The call can run up to 10 seconds by default to refine the result, and max_duration accepts 3 to 20. Hunter's codes are unusual: 403 means you hit the rate limit, and 429 means you used your credit quota.

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/seanthorne"

Rate limits shape how each scales. Hunter limits are per endpoint: Email Finder and Domain Search allow 15 a second and 500 a minute, and Discover allows 50 a minute. PDL enrichment allows 1,000 a minute on paid plans, but Person Search allows only 10 a minute by default (PDL usage limits, September 2026).

Both have bulk routes. PDL enriches 100 people per request. Hunter's Bulk Email Finder takes up to 50,000 rows per file, in the app.

On MCP, only Hunter has an official server. It uses an API key header or OAuth, works on every plan and spends plan credits (Hunter MCP, September 2026). PDL lists no MCP server in its docs, and only community servers exist (PDL llms.txt, September 2026).

Pricing

Hunter sells cheap email credits. PDL sells pricier full profiles. To compare, convert both to cost per record, and keep the unit in mind. A Hunter credit returns one email. A PDL credit returns a whole profile.

At 10,000 records a month

Take 10,000 work emails from Hunter. That is 10,000 Email Finder credits at 1 credit each. Growth includes 10,000 credits a month for $149 on monthly billing, or $0.0149 a credit (Hunter pricing, September 2026).

On yearly billing, Growth is $104 a month, or $1,248 a year, for 120,000 credits. That is also 10,000 a month. The Data Platform calculator priced 10,000 Search credits at $209, paid once. It priced 5,000 credits at $250, so its ladder does not rise in a straight line (Hunter Data Platform, September 2026). Check the live calculator before you buy.

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, February 2026). PDL does not publish the Pro price at 10,000 credits a month. Its credit selector sits behind the dashboard login, so treat these as a range, not a quote (PDL pricing, September 2026).

At this volume Hunter is 13 to 19 times cheaper per credit. That gap is partly the unit. PDL's credit buys a profile with work history and often a phone. Hunter's buys one email.

PDL also points buyers above about 100,000 profiles to Enterprise. Its docs and blog disagree on whether that is per month or per year (PDL blog, September 2026).

At 1M records

For Hunter, 1,000,000 work-email lookups is 1,000,000 Search credits. The Data Platform calculator prices that at $6,900, or $0.0069 a credit. It is one purchase, valid 12 months, not a monthly bill (Hunter Data Platform, September 2026).

The all-in-one route costs more. Scale is $299 a month for 25,000 credits. The other 975,000 credits come as packs at up to $0.02 each, which is $19,500. Total: about $19,799. Packs also cap at 180,000 per purchase (Hunter help center, September 2026). Verification credits are extra, from $11 per 1,000.

For PDL: no public 1M price. Self-serve Pro stops near 100,000 profiles, and above that PDL quotes Enterprise only. Do not multiply the Pro rate out to 1M and call it a quote.

Where People Data Labs wins

• Full profiles. One credit returns title, work history, location and contact data, not only an email.
• Phone coverage. 470M mobile and 764M any-phone profiles, by PDL's own stats.
• Person-first matching. You can match on a LinkedIn URL, phone or name plus company, with no domain needed.
• Bulk files. An annual Data License delivers person data to S3, GCP or Azure (PDL docs, September 2026).

Where Hunter.io wins

• Price per email. About $0.012 to $0.025 a credit on all-in-one plans, and $0.0069 at 1M on the Data Platform.
• A public price at 1M. You can budget a million lookups without a sales call.
• Official MCP on every plan. Connect it to Claude or Cursor, even on Free.
• Verification and sources built in. Each email found is verified, and the API shows where it was seen.
• Outreach in the same product. Hunter also sells Sequences and a Chrome extension. PDL is an API only.

If you need volume through an API

We build LeadOcean, so weigh this section accordingly. LeadOcean holds 693M people and 63M companies, and you reach them over REST and MCP. Free is 1,000 records, one-off, with no card. Pro is $499 a month, flat, with unlimited searches and lookups 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 or extension. See the Hunter alternative page and the PDL alternative page for line-by-line versions.

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