Prospeo vs BetterContact (2026): Data, Pricing and API Compared

Prospeo is the cheaper way to find work emails at 10,000 a month. BetterContact is the better pick when you already hold a list of named people and want the most mobiles found. At 1M records a month only Prospeo prints prices you can add up.

Verdict

• Pick Prospeo if you want a database you can search yourself, the lowest list price per work email and a hosted MCP server. At 10,000 emails a month it costs $189 against BetterContact's $399, both on monthly billing (Prospeo pricing, September 2026; BetterContact pricing, September 2026).
• Pick BetterContact if you have names and company domains and need emails and mobiles filled in across 20+ data providers. It also has 28 native integrations and credits that roll over (BetterContact pricing, September 2026).
• Pick neither if you pull people and company data by API at volume. Seats, credits, per-minute caps and sales quotes all get awkward at the top of both price lists. LeadOcean is one option, covered below.

Side by side

Data and coverage

Prospeo is a database you search and then enrich. BetterContact is a service you send a list to. That difference shapes every other row.

Prospeo's own pages do not agree on its size. The homepage claims 280M leads and companies and 143M verified emails. The API docs say 200M+ contacts and 30M+ companies (Prospeo, September 2026; Prospeo API docs, September 2026). BetterContact publishes no size because it does not hold a contact database. It routes each lead through 20+ providers (BetterContact, September 2026).

Email is where they overlap. Both charge 1 credit for a valid email and nothing for a miss. BetterContact's waterfall asks the next provider when the first finds nothing, so on a list you already own it can reach people Prospeo's single database lacks. Neither publishes a find rate we can check.

Phones are where the price jumps. Each mobile is 10 credits on both tools. Prospeo claims a 30% pick-up rate on its mobiles. BetterContact scores numbers by likelihood to connect and prices a mobile at 10 credits. Its API docs say phone enrichment needs a phone add-on, and no add-on price is published (BetterContact pricing, September 2026; API docs). Both claims are vendor claims. We did not test them.

The way you find people differs too. Prospeo lets you search by title, company and filters, then enrich the results with person_id. A search request costs 1 credit when it returns results, and the results carry no contact data until you enrich them (Prospeo help center, September 2026). BetterContact starts from a name plus a company or domain you supply.

Verification is built in on both. Prospeo bills only for verified emails when you ask for them with only_verified_email. BetterContact bills only for valid results and includes Bouncer verification in the credit (BetterContact pricing, September 2026). Catch-all addresses need care on either side, so check the status field before you send.

API and developer experience

Prospeo enriches one person in one synchronous call with POST /enrich-person. BetterContact accepts up to 100 leads in an asynchronous POST /async and answers later. Placeholders below stand in for real people.

Prospeo, enrich a person by name and company website.

curl --request POST \
  --url "https://api.prospeo.io/enrich-person" \
  --header "X-KEY: $PROSPEO_API_KEY" \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --data '{
    "only_verified_email": true,
    "data": {
      "first_name": "Jane",
      "last_name": "Doe",
      "company_website": "acme.com"
    }
  }'

A found email costs 1 credit and a mobile costs 10. A miss is free, and so is re-enriching the same record within 90 days (Prospeo enrich docs, September 2026). Prospeo advises its bulk endpoint, up to 50 people per request, for speed.

BetterContact, submit one lead for work email enrichment.

curl --request POST \
  --url "https://app.bettercontact.rocks/api/v2/async" \
  --header "X-API-Key: $BETTERCONTACT_API_KEY" \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --data '{
    "data": [{
      "first_name": "Jane",
      "last_name": "Doe",
      "company_domain": "acme.com"
    }],
    "enrich_email_address": true,
    "webhook": "https://example.com/bettercontact/results"
  }'

A 201 only means the batch was accepted. You read the result from your webhook or from GET /async/{request_id}. Submissions are not idempotent, so retrying a post that succeeded spends credits twice (BetterContact API docs, September 2026).

Rate limits differ in shape. Prospeo limits per second and per day by plan: enrich is 2,000 a day on Starter, 5,000 on Growth and 500,000 on Pro (Prospeo rate limits, September 2026). BetterContact allows 100 requests a minute on Starter and 200 on Pro per key, and over the limit it returns 429 (BetterContact API docs, September 2026). At 100 leads per call, 200 calls a minute is up to 20,000 leads a minute.

Free plan API access is the one place Prospeo's sources conflict. The pricing table shows none, while the help center lists 50 requests a day (Prospeo help center, September 2026). Test a free key before you plan around it.

Pricing

Prospeo bills per user, and credits expire at the end of each cycle (Prospeo help center, September 2026). BetterContact bills credits on a monthly step plan and rolls unused credits over, capped at twice the plan (BetterContact pricing, September 2026).

The worked example is work-email lookups only, one credit each, at list price.

At 10,000 a month Prospeo costs $189 against $399, about 53% less on monthly billing. Add mobiles and both get expensive fast: 10,000 mobiles are 100,000 credits on either tool. Prospeo's 100,000-credit add-on is $1,200 on top of a paid plan (Prospeo pricing, September 2026). BetterContact prints no price for 100,000 credits.

At 1M the Prospeo figure is arithmetic on list prices, not a quote. Seats add credits ($249 for 15,000) and the add-on slider stops at 350,000 credits a month and 500,000 a year. Higher volumes need support to enable extended pricing (Prospeo help center, September 2026).

BetterContact publishes no 1M price. The top public step is 50,000 credits for $1,999 a month, or $0.03998 a credit. Enterprise is listed from $799 a month on a custom quote (BetterContact pricing, September 2026). At 1M credits a month, ask for an Enterprise quote.

Plan against your hit rate. Both tools charge only for what they find, so real cost per contact sits below the list rate. A list with a low find rate spends fewer credits than its row count.

Seats change the Prospeo maths for teams. Plan credits are added per seat into one shared pool, so five reps on Growth hold 25,000 credits between them (Prospeo help center, September 2026). BetterContact's pricing page lists steps by credits, not by seat, so compare cost per credit rather than cost per user.

Where Prospeo wins

• Cheaper work emails at small and mid volume: $189 for 10,000 against $399.
• A price you can add up at 1M, even if it is $14,456 a month.
• A database with search, plus a hosted MCP server with 8 tools. BetterContact has none that we found.
• A synchronous enrich call, and a Chrome extension on every plan (Prospeo pricing, September 2026).
• Higher rate limits on Pro: 30 enrich calls a second.

Where BetterContact wins

• Find rate on a list you already own. A waterfall over 20+ providers reaches people one database misses.
• Cheaper to start: Starter is $15 a month and Pro starts at $49 for 1,000 credits (BetterContact pricing, September 2026).
• Credits roll over, capped at twice the plan, and for 12 months on annual plans. Prospeo credits expire each cycle.
• 28 native integrations, including HubSpot and Clay, for teams that do not write code (BetterContact, September 2026).

If you need volume through an API

LeadOcean is the data layer only: 693M people and 63M companies over REST and MCP. Pro is $499 a month flat with no seats and no credits, and Free gives you 1,000 records, one-off, with no card. The limit is 100 requests per second per key, and POST /v1/exports takes up to 50,000 rows per request. LeadOcean has no sequencer, dialer, CRM or Chrome extension, so it replaces neither tool for reps. See pricing.

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