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

Prospeo is the cheaper way to get a work email or a mobile number for a named person. Explorium is the wider data source, with company enrichments and event signals. Both sell credits, and neither has a flat price.

At list price, Prospeo costs less than half as much at 1M emails. The numbers below come from each vendor's own pages, checked in September and October 2026.

Verdict

• Pick Prospeo if you look up people by name, LinkedIn URL or email and want a verified address or mobile in one call. It is cheaper at 10,000 and at 1M records, and a lookup that finds nothing costs nothing (Prospeo help center, September 2026).
• Pick Explorium if you need company data, event signals or a cheap start with no subscription. Lite is $29.99 for 500 credits, and packs do not renew by themselves (Explorium pricing, October 2026).
• Pick neither if you pull data in code at volume and want a flat bill. Both meter every lookup. LeadOcean is built for that case and is covered below.

Side by side

Every cell links to the page it came from. "Not published" means the vendor prints no figure on the pages we checked.

Data and coverage

Explorium claims the larger dataset, and Prospeo publishes the only contact count. Explorium says 767M+ professional profiles and 146M+ business entities. Prospeo says 280M leads and companies, of which 143M are verified emails.

Those are marketing counts, and they measure different things. A profile is not a mailable contact. Explorium prints no email or phone count, so you cannot compare contact coverage on paper. Prospeo prints an email count and no phone count.

Both start from a person but resolve them differently. Prospeo enriches from a name plus a company, a LinkedIn URL, an email or an ID returned by its search (Prospeo enrich docs, September 2026). Explorium matches first, in a fixed order: LinkedIn, then email, then phone, then name plus company (Explorium docs, October 2026). A bare name never matches.

Email status is stated differently. Explorium returns valid, invalid or catch-all beside the professional email (Explorium docs, October 2026). Prospeo lets you ask for verified addresses only, so credits go only to those.

Scope is where Explorium pulls ahead. It lists 17 business enrichments and an events feed for funding rounds, partnerships and M&A (Explorium docs, October 2026). Prospeo is a people and company finder, and we found no event stream in its docs.

Test on your own list before you commit. Run the same 500 people through each and compare match rate and email status.

API and developer experience

Prospeo is one call per lookup. Explorium is two. Prospeo takes a name and a company website and returns the record. Explorium needs a prospect_id from a match call, then a contact call with that ID.

Prospeo, enrich a person from a name and a company website. Placeholders stand in for a real person.

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

The response is synchronous. Add enrich_mobile to spend 10 credits on a mobile, and a repeat lookup within 90 days is free (Prospeo enrich docs, September 2026).

Explorium, first match the person, then fetch the contact details.

curl -X POST "https://api.explorium.ai/v2/prospects/match" \
  -H "API_KEY: $EXPLORIUM_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"prospects_to_match": [{"full_name": "Jane Doe", "company_name": "Acme"}]}'

curl -X POST "https://api.explorium.ai/v2/prospects/contact_information/enrich" \
  -H "API_KEY: $EXPLORIUM_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"prospect_id": "PROSPECT_ID_FROM_MATCH", "parameters": {"contact_types": ["email"]}}'

The second body is priced at 2 credits for email only (Explorium docs, October 2026). The match docs state no credit cost for the match call, so every Explorium figure below covers the contact call only. Ask Explorium before you budget a large job.

Limits matter more than syntax at volume. Prospeo allows 5 enrich requests a second on Starter and 30 on Pro, with a daily cap of 2,000 and 500,000 (Prospeo rate limits, September 2026). Explorium has one limit for the key: 200 queries a minute in a 60-second window. A request with 50 IDs uses 50 queries, and going over returns a 429 with a Retry-After header (Explorium docs, October 2026).

Both have a hosted MCP server that returns records. Prospeo has 8 tools and signs in with OAuth 2.0 or a key. Explorium's AgentSource MCP has 11 tools and uses an API key, and it adds event and statistics tools (Explorium MCP docs, October 2026).

One point is unsettled. Prospeo's pricing table shows no public API on Free. Its help center lists limited API access with 50 requests a day (Prospeo help center, September 2026). The API docs intro says free API access for all users (Prospeo API docs, September 2026). Test a free key before you plan around it.

Pricing

Both tools sell credits, so cost scales with volume. The worked example uses work emails only, every lookup a hit. Prices are monthly list first, billed-yearly after.

10,000 records a month

• Prospeo: 1 credit per email, so 10,000 credits. One Growth seat gives 5,000 credits for $99, and the 5,000-credit add-on is $90. That is $99 + $90 = $189 a month. Billed yearly, 2 Growth seats at $74 a month ($888 a year each) give 120,000 credits for $1,776, or $148 a month (Prospeo pricing, September 2026).
• Explorium: 2 credits per email, so 20,000 credits. Four Starter packs of 5,000 at $149.99 give exactly that: 4 x $149.99 = $599.96. Packs are one-off, and that price excludes any cost for the match step (Explorium pricing, October 2026).

At 10,000 emails a month Prospeo is $410.96 cheaper on monthly billing ($599.96 - $189). Explorium is a one-off purchase and Prospeo is a subscription, so a single pull narrows the gap but does not close it.

Phones change the picture. Explorium charges 5 credits for a phone lookup, so 10,000 lookups are 50,000 credits: one Growth pack ($749.99) plus four Starter packs ($599.96) is $1,349.95. Prospeo charges 10 credits for a mobile, so 100,000 credits: a Starter seat ($49, 2,000 credits) plus the 100,000-credit add-on ($1,200) is $1,249 a month. The two are not like for like, because neither prints its hit rate.

1M records a month

• Prospeo: no single tier reaches 1M. On monthly billing, (1,000,000 - 350,000 add-on credits) / 15,000 = 43.3, so 44 Pro seats at $249 = $10,956, plus the 350,000-credit add-on at $3,500. That is 1,010,000 credits for $14,456 a month. Billed yearly, 3 Pro seats at $2,241 plus the 500,000-credit yearly add-on at $4,500 is $11,223 once, with 1,040,000 credits upfront (Prospeo pricing, September 2026).
• Explorium: 1,000,000 x 2 = 2,000,000 credits. At Scale, 2,000,000 / 500,000 = 4 packs, and 4 x $7,499.99 = $29,999.96. With phone, 5,000,000 credits is 10 packs, or $74,999.90 (Explorium pricing, October 2026).

Compare like with like. Prospeo's $11,223 and Explorium's $29,999.96 are both one purchase for 1M emails, so Prospeo is $18,776.96 cheaper. Against Prospeo's monthly path of $14,456, the gap is $15,543.96.

Neither number is a ceiling. Explorium's Enterprise tier is a custom quote with volume discounts, so a negotiated price could be lower. Prospeo publishes nothing past 350,000 add-on credits a month or 500,000 a year, and extended pricing is enabled on request (Prospeo help center, September 2026).

Time is the other cost. At 200 queries a minute, 1M enrich rows take 5,000 minutes, about 3.5 days. If each person also needs a match query, it is 10,000 minutes, about 6.9 days, unless you buy more capacity.

Expiry. Explorium credits last 12 months and cannot be refunded. Prospeo credits do not roll over: unused plan and add-on credits expire at the end of each cycle (Prospeo help center, September 2026).

Where Prospeo wins

• Price at every size we priced. $189 against $599.96 at 10,000 emails, and $11,223 against $29,999.96 at 1M.
• One call per lookup. Name plus company website goes in and a record comes out, with no match step first.
• A published email count. 143M verified addresses, where Explorium prints no contact count.
• Verified-only spending. only_verified_email means credits go to verified addresses only, and a miss is free.
• A higher API ceiling. Pro allows 30 enrich requests a second and 500,000 a day, against Explorium's 200 queries a minute.

Where Explorium wins

• Company and signal data. 146M+ business entities, 17 business enrichments and events such as funding rounds and M&A. We found no event stream in Prospeo's docs.
• A larger claimed people count. 767M+ professional profiles against Prospeo's 280M leads and companies, by each vendor's own count.
• A cheap, no-subscription start. Lite is $29.99 against $49 a month, and packs never renew on their own.
• No seats. Credits are bought per pack, so a team does not pay per user.
• An MCP server with more tools. 11 tools against 8, including statistics and event tools.

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 a 12-tool MCP server that returns records, with OAuth sign-in. Free is 1,000 records, one-off, with no card. Pro is $499 a month, flat, with unlimited searches and lookups and 100 requests per second per key (LeadOcean pricing, September 2026).

For bulk work, POST /v1/exports returns up to 50,000 rows per request, to a ceiling of 500,000 rows a day. The app also has an Exports page with a CSV download (LeadOcean exports docs, September 2026). LeadOcean has no event stream and is smaller than Explorium on companies. See the Prospeo alternative page and Prospeo alternatives for line-by-line versions.

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