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

People Data Labs (PDL) and RocketReach both sell B2B contact data through an API, but they bill it differently. PDL is a self-serve data API priced per match. RocketReach is a prospecting app with an API, priced by plan and credits.

Verdict

• Pick People Data Labs if you are a developer who wants raw profiles, phone counts and an API key today. You pay per match, a miss is free, and it has the larger published dataset.
• Pick RocketReach if one person or a small team prospects by hand and also wants an official MCP server. Its entry plan is about $69 a month on monthly billing (reported), and it sells an email verification endpoint.
• 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 publishes bigger numbers. It lists 2.47B person profiles and 76.6M companies. RocketReach claims 700M+ professionals and 60M+ companies on its docs home.

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, its mobile dataset is 470M, and 764M profiles have any phone.

RocketReach publishes no email or phone count. It does publish match claims: 87% of lookups return a profile, and LinkedIn URLs return data 99% of the time (RocketReach FAQ, September 2026). Those are vendor claims, not a test.

Email quality is handled differently. RocketReach grades emails A, A-, B and F, and charges only for A or A- (RocketReach FAQ, September 2026). PDL bills any match, so you check deliverability yourself.

Company data is a separate question. PDL's company plan starts at $100 a month for 1,000 records (PDL pricing, September 2026). RocketReach charges 2 credits per page of company search and 1 credit per company lookup.

Test on your own list before you buy. Run the same 500 people through both and compare match rate and email status. PDL's Free plan obscures contact data, and RocketReach's free account is 5 lookups, so neither free tier shows much.

API and developer experience

Both are REST APIs with a one-person lookup call. The difference is flow. PDL answers in one response. RocketReach can answer with a status of progress, so you poll or register a webhook.

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"

RocketReach uses an Api-Key header and GET /api/v2/person/lookup. You can look up by LinkedIn URL, email, or name plus current employer (RocketReach docs, September 2026).

curl --request GET \
  --url "https://api.rocketreach.co/api/v2/person/lookup?linkedin_url=www.linkedin.com/in/jamesgullbrand" \
  --header "Api-Key: $ROCKETREACH_API_KEY"

If the status is progress, you fetch the result later with the lookup status call or a webhook. Bulk lookup needs a webhook too, and takes up to 100 people per batch (RocketReach docs, September 2026).

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

RocketReach stacks several windows. On top of a global 10 requests a second, Ultimate allows 100 lookups a minute, 3,000 a day and 50,000 a month. The highest published tier, Custom, stops at 200,000 lookups a month (RocketReach rate limits, September 2026).

On MCP, only RocketReach has an official server. It signs in with OAuth 2.1 and needs an account with API access. Search is free through it, and lookups spend credits. PDL lists no MCP server, and only community servers exist (RocketReach MCP docs, September 2026; PDL llms.txt, September 2026).

Pricing

PDL charges per credit, and one credit is one matched profile. RocketReach charges a plan fee for the app, and its API spends Universal Credits. 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, February 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).

At 10,000 a month you are at 120,000 a year. PDL's blog sends buyers above about 100,000 profiles a year to Enterprise, though its docs word the ceiling as per month (PDL blog, September 2026).

For RocketReach, the API route is 10,000 verified professional emails at 2 credits each, so 20,000 Universal Credits. RocketReach publishes no dollar price for a credit, so there is no dollar figure (RocketReach credits, September 2026). A phone adds 6 credits per profile.

The app route has list prices. On monthly billing, G2 reports Essentials at $69 for 100 exports, Pro at $119 for 250 and Ultimate at $209 for 1,000 (G2, reported, September 2026). G2 shows Ultimate at 1,000 exports in its headline and 500 in one paragraph, and RocketReach's own pricing page cannot be read, so the allowance is not confirmed.

Take Ultimate at G2's headline 1,000 exports. 10,000 / 1,000 = 10 seats x $209 = $2,090 a month. If the allowance is 500, it is 20 seats and $4,180. That is seat stacking, our own arithmetic, and RocketReach does not say it sells that many self-serve seats. Annual prices are not published: rocketreach.co/pricing shows a bot check, so see RocketReach's pricing page for current prices.

On paper the two land close together at 10,000 records, $2,000 to $2,800 against $2,090 (or $4,180 if Ultimate is 500 exports). The unit differs. A PDL credit returns a full profile, while a RocketReach export returns one person's contact data.

At 1M records a month

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

For RocketReach: no public 1M price. The API has no published dollar price per credit. 1M professional emails is 2,000,000 Universal Credits, and the highest published person lookup cap is 200,000 a month (RocketReach rate limits, September 2026).

That cap means a 1M job takes at least five months on the published tiers. Ask api@rocketreach.co for a custom plan if you need it faster. Ask PDL sales for an Enterprise quote at your volume.

Where People Data Labs wins

• A bigger published dataset. 2.47B profiles, 592M with an email and 764M with any phone, by PDL's own stats.
• Self-serve API on day one. A Free key works with no email to an API team, though the Free plan obscures contact data.
• Faster enrichment. 1,000 requests a minute on paid plans against 100 lookups a minute on RocketReach Ultimate.
• Bulk files. An annual Data License delivers person data to S3, GCP or Azure (PDL docs, September 2026).
• One answer per call. No status of progress, no webhook for a single lookup.

Where RocketReach wins

• An official MCP server. Connect it to Claude or Cursor with OAuth, and search costs no credits.
• A low entry price for one person. About $69 a month on monthly billing (G2, reported), against PDL Pro at $98 for 350 credits.
• Email grades. Credits are charged only for A or A- emails, and re-lookups are free while your plan is active (RocketReach FAQ, September 2026).
• Email verification and healthcare data. It sells a verify endpoint at 300 requests a minute, and looks up US healthcare professionals by NPI number.

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, a price preview and CSV download (LeadOcean exports docs, September 2026). There is no sequencer, dialer or Chrome extension. Compare it on a third line of your test, next to PDL and RocketReach.

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