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

People Data Labs (PDL) and LeadMagic both sell B2B contact data over an API, but they sell different things. PDL returns a full person profile per match. LeadMagic returns one verified email or mobile per credit.

Verdict

• Pick People Data Labs if you are a developer who needs raw profiles, the largest phone counts or licensed bulk files. You pay per match, and a miss is free.
• Pick LeadMagic if you need verified work emails and mobiles from a name and domain, at 5,000 to 100,000 credits a month. Failed lookups are free, and its MCP server lists 43 tools.
• Pick neither if you need volume through an API at a price you can read. Neither publishes a price at 1M records. LeadOcean is one option: Pro is $499 a month, flat.

Side by side

Data and coverage

PDL lists 2.47B person profiles and 76.6M companies. LeadMagic lists 400M+ people, 25M+ companies and 46M+ job posts. The counts are not like for like.

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. LeadMagic publishes no count for emails or mobiles, so you cannot compare contact coverage on paper.

LeadMagic's edge is what it checks, not how much it holds. Every email it returns is validated, and you pay only for a valid one. It also sells job posts, job change checks and ad search, which PDL's person plan does not include.

Test on your own list before you buy. PDL's Free plan gives 100 credits but obscures emails and phones, so you can see a match but not the contact. LeadMagic has no free plan or trial credits, only a 14-day money-back guarantee on the first subscription payment (LeadMagic help, September 2026).

Match rate depends on the input. A profile URL or a work email matches more reliably than a name alone. LeadMagic accepts a name plus domain for emails, and a profile URL or email for mobiles. PDL accepts a profile URL, email, phone or name with company, and more inputs raise the match chance (PDL docs, September 2026).

Read the claims with care. Each vendor's headline number is its own, and neither has been tested against the other on one list. A 500-person sample from your own CRM settles it faster than any table.

API and developer experience

Both are REST APIs with one-person lookups, and neither bills a miss. The differences are what a call returns, how fast you can search, and what an agent can reach. Both requests below come from each vendor's own docs.

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"

LeadMagic sends an X-API-Key header to POST /v1/people/email-finder with a name and domain. A valid email costs 1 credit. No email found returns a null status and costs nothing (LeadMagic docs, September 2026).

curl -X POST "https://api.leadmagic.io/v1/people/email-finder" \
  -H "X-API-Key: $LEADMAGIC_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"first_name":"John","last_name":"Doe","domain":"company.com"}'

Mobiles are a separate call. POST /v1/people/mobile-finder takes a profile URL, work email or personal email, and costs 5 credits per mobile found (LeadMagic docs, September 2026). PDL returns contact fields in the same profile on Pro.

Rate limits shape how each one scales. PDL limits are per key, in a fixed one-minute window. Enrichment allows 1,000 a minute on paid plans, but Person Search allows only 10 a minute by default (PDL usage limits, September 2026).

LeadMagic's email finder allows 600 requests a minute (LeadMagic docs, September 2026). Its search API is zero-credit only on Professional and Ultimate. On Essential and Growth it bills about 1 credit per returned person (LeadMagic people search docs, September 2026). A sustained email find rate below 10% can get an account throttled.

On MCP, only LeadMagic has an official server. It signs in with OAuth, takes no API key, and spends the same credits as the API. PDL lists no MCP server in its docs, and only community servers exist (LeadMagic MCP, September 2026; PDL llms.txt, September 2026).

Pricing

PDL charges per credit, and one credit is one matched profile. LeadMagic charges a monthly plan that holds a pool of credits, and one credit is one valid email. To compare them, convert both to cost per record.

At 10,000 records a month

For LeadMagic, 10,000 work emails is 10,000 credits at 1 credit each. Essential holds only 5,000, so you need Growth: $249 a month for 20,000 credits. Billed yearly it is $208 a month, or $2,490 a year (LeadMagic pricing, September 2026).

Mobiles cost more. 10,000 mobiles is 50,000 credits, which is Professional at $499 a month, or $416 billed yearly. LeadMagic charges only for valid results, so misses do not spend credits. Your real bill depends on your find rate.

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 its rate at 10,000 credits a month. That price sits in the credit selector behind the dashboard login, so these two figures are the ends of PDL's stated range, not a quote.

The unit matters here. A PDL credit returns a whole profile, often with an email and phone. A LeadMagic email credit returns one verified email. For email alone, LeadMagic's list price is roughly eight times lower at 10,000 a month: $249 against $2,000 to $2,800.

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 a month

For LeadMagic: No public 1M price. The top public plan is Ultimate at $849 a month for 100,000 credits, which is one tenth of 1M. Top-up prices and Enterprise rates are not published (LeadMagic pricing, September 2026). Enterprise starts at $2,490 a quarter, paid upfront, with custom volume pricing.

For PDL: No public 1M price. Self-serve Pro stops near 100,000 profiles, and above that PDL quotes Enterprise only (PDL pricing, September 2026).

Do not multiply either rate out to 1M and call it a quote. Ask both for a written price at your volume and your miss rate.

Where People Data Labs wins

• Bigger dataset and phone counts. 2.47B profiles, 592M with an email and 764M with any phone, by PDL's own stats.
• Bulk files. An annual Data License delivers person data to your cloud storage (PDL docs, September 2026).
• A free plan. 100 credits a month with API access, where LeadMagic has none.
• Bigger batches. Bulk enrichment takes 100 people per request.

Where LeadMagic wins

• Cheaper emails at small scale. A valid email costs $0.0198 on Essential and $0.00849 on Ultimate. You pay only when one is found.
• Verified by default. Every email it returns is validated. A lookup that finds nothing costs zero credits.
• An official MCP server. 43 tools, OAuth sign-in, and the same credits as the API.
• Jobs and ads data. 46M+ job posts and a job change detector, which PDL's person plan lacks.

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 with 12 tools. Free is 1,000 records, one-off, with no card. Pro is $499 a month, flat (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). If you only buy a few thousand emails a month, LeadMagic costs less. See the PDL alternatives and the LeadMagic alternative page for line-by-line versions.

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