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

People Data Labs (PDL) and Lusha both sell B2B contact data, but to different buyers. PDL is a data API priced per match. Lusha is a rep tool with a Chrome extension, an API and an MCP server, priced in credits.

Verdict

• Pick People Data Labs if you are a developer who needs raw profiles, big phone counts or licensed bulk files. You pay per match, and a miss is free.
• Pick Lusha if reps reveal contacts in a browser or CRM, or if you want buying signals and an MCP server with 50 tools. Its credits are cheap at small scale.
• Pick neither if you need volume through an API at a price you can read. Lusha has no public 1M price, and neither does PDL. 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. Lusha lists 525M+ contacts and 29M+ companies. The two counts are not like for like.

PDL's 2.47B is its full person dataset, and only part of it carries contact data. Its email dataset is 592M profiles and its mobile dataset is 470M. Lusha counts 165M+ emails and 117M+ direct dials, and it calls all 525M+ contacts verified.

Phone coverage is the widest gap on paper. PDL says 764M profiles have any phone number. Lusha's 117M+ direct dials are a narrower label, so do not read the gap as a like-for-like ratio.

Test on your own list before you buy. Run the same 500 people through each free plan and compare the match rate. PDL's Free plan obscures contact data, so you need to pay to see its emails and phones. Lusha's Free plan has 40 credits, enough for about 40 emails.

Company data is a separate question. PDL lists 76.6M company records, and its company plan starts at $100 a month for 1,000 records (PDL pricing, September 2026). Lusha lists 29M+ companies and charges 1 credit for company info (Lusha API guide, September 2026).

API and developer experience

Both are REST APIs with bulk calls of 100 records. The real differences are how each one bills, how fast you can call it, and what an agent can reach.

Lusha authenticates with an api_key header. Its search-and-enrich endpoint takes up to 100 contacts and reveals emails, phones or both (Lusha docs, September 2026):

curl --request POST \
  --url https://api.lusha.com/v3/contacts/search-and-enrich \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --header "api_key: $LUSHA_API_KEY" \
  --data '{"contacts":[{"linkedinUrl":"https://www.linkedin.com/in/shmulikwillinger"}],"reveal":["emails"]}'

The response carries a billing block with the credits charged. An email is 1 credit and a phone is 5. Email plus phone is 7 through a single API request: 5 for the phone, 1 for the email and 1 for the request (Lusha API guide, September 2026).

Does a miss cost a credit? Lusha's docs disagree, so there is no single published answer. The API guide says a request costs at least 1 credit even when no data returns. The billing FAQ says no credit is deducted for a request with no match (Lusha billing FAQ, October 2026). Send one test miss and read the billing block before you budget a large run.

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 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).

Lusha limits are per key and rise with the plan: Free 40 a minute, Pro 50 and Premium 300. Free also caps at 100 requests a day and Pro at 1,500 (Lusha API guide, September 2026). A separate page adds a default ceiling of 25 requests a second per account (Lusha rate limits, September 2026).

On MCP, only Lusha has an official server. It has 50 tools, from enrichment to lookalikes and CRM export. Chat clients use OAuth and others use an API key header (Lusha MCP docs, September 2026). PDL lists no MCP server, and only community servers exist (PDL llms.txt, September 2026).

Pricing

PDL charges per credit, and one credit is one matched profile. Lusha charges per credit too, but a credit buys one field, not a profile. To compare them, convert both to cost per record.

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 exact rate near 10,000 credits a month. Its pricing page shows only the entry tier, and the credit selector sits behind the login dashboard (PDL pricing).

Note that 10,000 a month is 120,000 a year. PDL sends 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).

For Lusha, take 10,000 work emails by bulk API. That is 10,000 email credits, plus 1 credit per 25 results: 10,000 / 25 = 400. The total is 10,400 credits.

The largest public monthly step is 10,000 credits at $977.40 billed monthly, about $0.0977 a credit. So 10,400 credits is just over the top step. As an illustration only, 10,400 x $0.0977 is about $1,016. On yearly billing the lowest published rate is about $0.0795 a credit, so 10,400 x $0.0795 is about $827 (Lusha pricing, September 2026).

Phones change the picture. A Lusha phone is 5 credits, about $0.40 to $0.62 at entry and top rates. The unit matters here: a PDL credit returns a whole profile, while a Lusha email credit returns one email.

At 1M records a month

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.

For Lusha: no public 1M price. 1,000,000 work emails by bulk API is 1,000,000 email credits plus 1,000,000 / 25 = 40,000 request credits, which is 1,040,000 credits. The top public step holds 10,000 credits a month, so 1M is 104 times the largest listed plan.

Lusha's Scale plan is custom. The page says it gives 50%+ off price per credit against Premium, with no figure published (Lusha pricing, September 2026). Ask both vendors for a quote at your volume.

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 S3, GCP or Azure (PDL docs, September 2026).
• A free miss. A 404 is not billed. Lusha's own docs disagree on whether an empty API request costs a credit.
• No seats or extension to manage. It is an API, built for pipelines.

Where Lusha wins

• Reps in a browser. Lusha ships a Chrome extension and CRM integrations (Lusha homepage, September 2026). PDL is an API.
• Official MCP server. 50 tools on Lusha, none from PDL.
• Cheap at small scale. Starter is $49.90 a month, and an email credit is about $0.12 at that plan. PDL's entry profile is $0.28.
• Signals and compliance. It lists 26 buying signals refreshed weekly, SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27701 (Lusha homepage, September 2026).

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 Chrome extension, sequencer or dialer. See the PDL alternatives page for a wider list.

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