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

People Data Labs (PDL) and Icypeas both sell contact data by API, but they sell different things. PDL returns a full person profile for each match. Icypeas finds and checks an email, starting from a name and a domain.

The short version: PDL is the deeper database, Icypeas is the cheaper email source. Neither publishes the same kind of price at 1M records.

Verdict

• Pick People Data Labs if you need person profiles, search across a schema, phone numbers or licensed bulk files. You pay per match, and a miss is free.
• Pick Icypeas if you already have names and domains and need emails, at a low and published price per email. It has a hosted MCP server 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 no credits. LeadOcean is one option: Pro is $499 a month, flat.

Side by side

Both vendors change plans and counts often. Check the linked pages before you buy.

Data and coverage

PDL is the larger database by a wide margin. It lists 2,466,510,427 person profiles and 76,606,079 company records (PDL datasets, September 2026; PDL company stats, September 2026). Icypeas quotes 575M business professionals and 62M companies.

On email, the two numbers do not measure the same thing. PDL counts 592M profiles that hold at least one email. Icypeas counts 1.8B email addresses, which can sit several to a person.

Use the PDL figure when you ask how many people you can reach. Use the Icypeas figure only as a sign of how many addresses it has seen.

Phones are where you should test before you commit. PDL lists 470M mobile numbers and 764M profiles with any phone. Icypeas quotes 280M phone numbers on its features page, yet its own credit docs list Phone Finder as coming soon. Ask what the API returns today.

The two also differ in how you get at the data. PDL lets you query the person schema and enrich from a profile URL, an email, a phone or a name with a company. Icypeas takes a first name, a last name and a domain or company, and answers with an email.

API and developer experience

PDL is one synchronous call. You send the person you know and get the profile back, or a 404 that costs nothing. The key goes in the X-Api-Key header (PDL docs, September 2026).

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

Icypeas is two calls. The first submits the search and returns an _id. You then read the result with that id a few seconds later (Icypeas docs, September 2026).

curl -X POST "https://app.icypeas.com/api/email-search" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: $ICYPEAS_API_KEY" \
  -d '{"firstname":"Jane","lastname":"Doe","domainOrCompany":"acme.com"}'

For one-off lookups the extra step is minor. For a pipeline that runs thousands of lookups, you need a poll loop or a webhook. Icypeas offers a webhookUrl field for that.

Icypeas docs tell you not to use the single route for many searches. Use bulk search instead, which takes up to 5,000 rows per call (Icypeas docs, September 2026).

Rate limits differ in kind. PDL allows 1,000 enrichment requests a minute on paid plans, but only 10 a minute on Person Search. Icypeas allows 10 calls a second on email search, about 600 a minute.

Icypeas also has find-people and find-companies routes. They cost 0.02 credit per result, counts are free, and they allow 30 calls a second (Icypeas docs, September 2026). Reading results is capped at 30 a minute, so a large job should go through bulk search, not one poll per id (Icypeas docs, September 2026).

On MCP, only Icypeas has an official server. PDL's docs and llms.txt list none, and only community servers exist, which PDL does not run.

Pricing

Both vendors sell credits. The unit differs: PDL bills one credit per person matched, and Icypeas bills one credit per email found. A search that finds nothing costs nothing on either side. Icypeas credits also roll over with no expiry, even after a downgrade or cancellation, so a quiet month carries into a busy one (Icypeas pricing, September 2026).

PDL Pro starts at $98 a month for 350 credits, which is $0.28 a credit. Billed yearly it is $940 a year, or $78 a month (PDL pricing, September 2026). PDL says Pro person profiles cost about $0.20 to $0.28 each, depending on volume (PDL blog, September 2026).

Icypeas Basic is $19 a month for 1,000 credits, Premium $39 for 4,000, Advanced $89 for 10,000 and Hypergrowth $499 for 100,000. All prices are plus VAT (Icypeas pricing, September 2026).

Worked example at 10,000 records a month

• PDL: 10,000 x $0.20 = $2,000 and 10,000 x $0.28 = $2,800. That is the Pro range per PDL, not a quote. 10,000 a month is 120,000 a year, above the roughly 100,000 a year where PDL points buyers to Enterprise (PDL blog, September 2026).
• Icypeas: 10,000 credits at 1 credit per found email is the Advanced plan, $89 a month, or $74.17 a month billed yearly ($890 a year). This assumes every lookup finds an email. A lower find rate costs fewer credits.

At this size Icypeas costs about 3 to 4.5 percent of the PDL range, but it returns an email and PDL returns a profile.

Worked example at 1M records a month

• PDL: No public 1M price. Self-serve stops near 100,000 profiles, and above that PDL quotes Enterprise only. Ask PDL for a quote at your volume.
• Icypeas: 1,000,000 credits is a published tier at $3,992 a month ($0.003992 a credit). Billed yearly, 12M credits cost $39,920, which is $3,326.67 a month for 1M credits. Prices are plus VAT (Icypeas pricing, September 2026).

The Icypeas selector lists monthly tiers from 20,000 credits at $178 up to 10,000,000 credits at $34,930. The tiers sit in the page's credit selector, so check the live page before you plan around them.

Where People Data Labs wins

Profile depth and schema search

PDL returns a full person profile, not only an email. You can query the person schema and enrich from a profile URL, an email, a phone or a name plus company.

Scale and bulk files

2.47B person profiles beat 575M business professionals. PDL also licenses data as files, delivered to cloud storage, which is the route when you want to own the data (PDL docs, September 2026).

Phone coverage you can read today

PDL lists 470M mobile numbers in its datasets. Icypeas lists a phone count on its features page but labels Phone Finder as coming soon.

Where Icypeas wins

A low and public price

$19 for 1,000 credits, a published tier at 1M credits and rollover with no expiry. PDL gives no 1M price and starts at $98 for 350 credits.

An official MCP server

Icypeas has a hosted MCP server with 21 tools on every plan. PDL's docs list none, so an agent needs a community wrapper or your own glue code.

Email verification and catch-all handling

Icypeas sells verification at 0.1 credit per check and says it handles catch-all domains (Icypeas pricing, September 2026). If you need clean emails for a list you already hold, it fits better than a profile database.

If you need volume through an API

LeadOcean is a people and company data API with a hosted MCP server. Pro is $499 a month, flat. There are no credits and no per-record price, and a Free plan gives you 1,000 records, one-off, with no card.

You search 693M people and 63M companies over REST or MCP, and POST /v1/exports turns any search into a CSV, 50,000 rows per request. It is not a verifier for lists you bring, and it has no dataset licence. See pricing.

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