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

RocketReach and ContactOut both sell emails and phone numbers for people, but they fit different jobs. RocketReach is a database with an API, bulk lookup and a published credit table. ContactOut is a LinkedIn-first finder for recruiters and reps, with a Chrome extension and a sales-gated API.

Verdict

• Pick RocketReach if you want a documented API with published rate limits and credit costs, and you can email for an API plan. Its public plans start at $69 a month.
• Pick ContactOut if your reps or recruiters work from LinkedIn in a browser and want phones included. It lists more contact counts and cheaper seats, and its Email + Phone plan is $99 a month.
• Pick neither if you need volume through an API at a price you can read. Neither has a public price at 1M records. LeadOcean is one option: Pro is $499 a month, flat.

Side by side

RocketReach's own pricing page showed a bot check to automated reads on 30 September 2026, so its plan prices here come from G2, which copies them from the public page (RocketReach pricing, September 2026). Check it before you buy.

Data and coverage

ContactOut publishes more about what it holds. Its data page claims 800M people profiles, 200M work emails, 150M personal emails, 100M direct dials and 40M companies. The source is ContactOut data, September 2026. Its homepage headline says 350 million and its MCP page says 600 million plus, so the profile count moves by page. Treat every one of these as the vendor's own claim.

RocketReach claims 700M+ professional profiles and prints no email or phone count (RocketReach MCP docs, September 2026). Its company count is unsettled: the docs home says 60M+ companies and the API account page says 35M (RocketReach docs, September 2026).

The two are built differently. ContactOut starts from a LinkedIn profile and its API takes a profile URL as the main input. RocketReach is a search database you query by name, employer, title or location, then look up for contact data.

Both vendors grade their emails, and neither publishes an audited match rate. RocketReach's FAQ also says LinkedIn URLs return data most often, which is the input ContactOut is built around. RocketReach grades A, A-, B and F and charges nothing on B or F (RocketReach FAQ, September 2026).

Run the same 30 people through both before you commit. RocketReach's free account gives a handful of lookups, and G2 does not settle whether they renew each month. ContactOut Free gives 5 emails and 5 phones a day (ContactOut pricing, September 2026). Score each tool on how many of the 30 return a work email with a good grade, and how many return a direct phone.

API and developer experience

RocketReach has a documented API with a lookup, a search, a bulk endpoint and an email verifier, but access is set up by email. ContactOut needs a sales meeting to give you a key. Neither is self-serve in the way a developer expects.

RocketReach authenticates with an Api-Key header. A lookup is a GET and can answer with a status of progress, so you poll or register a webhook (RocketReach docs, September 2026).

curl -G "https://api.rocketreach.co/api/v2/person/lookup" \
  -H "Api-Key: $ROCKETREACH_API_KEY" \
  --data-urlencode "linkedin_url=https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-doe"

ContactOut passes the key in a token header. Its profile call takes a LinkedIn URL and returns emails, phones and profile fields (ContactOut API docs, September 2026).

curl "https://api.contactout.com/v1/linkedin/enrich?profile=https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-doe" \
  --header "Accept: application/json" \
  --header "token: $CONTACTOUT_API_TOKEN"

Rate limits point in different directions. RocketReach caps everything at 10 requests per second, then adds plan caps. On Ultimate, person lookups run 100 a minute and 50,000 a month (RocketReach rate limits, September 2026). ContactOut allows 1,000 a minute on most endpoints but only 60 a minute on People Search.

On MCP, both have official OAuth servers. RocketReach exposes 9 tools, including person_search, person_lookup and email_verify. ContactOut exposes 15 and starts you with 600+ free credits.

Pricing

RocketReach sells plans for the app and credits for the API, with no dollar price for a credit. ContactOut sells flat monthly plans that stop at fair-use caps, and its API has no public price. Convert both to records to compare them.

At 10,000 records a month

For RocketReach, take 10,000 exports. Monthly billing gives 100 exports on Essentials at $69, 250 on Pro at $119 and 1,000 on Ultimate at $209 (G2, reported, September 2026). Ultimate is the cheapest per export: 10,000 / 1,000 = 10 seats x $209 = $2,090 a month. That is arithmetic on list prices, not a quoted plan.

The API route is credits. A professional email is 2 credits and a phone is 6, so 10,000 emails is 20,000 credits (RocketReach credits, September 2026). RocketReach publishes no dollar price per credit, so there is no total to print.

For ContactOut, there is no public price at 10,000. Paid plans follow a fair-use line of 2,000 email credits per account per month, and every self-serve plan is one user per company (ContactOut terms, September 2026). The top public tier is Email + Phone at $99 a month, or $79 billed yearly, with 600 exports a month. A 10,000 record month sits above that, so it needs a team or API agreement.

At 1M records a month

For RocketReach: no public 1M price. The highest published person-lookup cap is 200,000 a month on the Custom tier, so 1M is five months at that cap (RocketReach rate limits, September 2026). On the API, 1M professional emails is 2,000,000 credits at no published price.

Seats are not a public path at this volume either. We do not multiply a seat price out to 1M, so ask api@rocketreach.co for a quote.

For ContactOut: no public 1M price. At 2,000 emails an account, 1M is 500 account-months. One user per company rules out 500 accounts, and Team / API shows Contact Us with no price (ContactOut pricing, September 2026). We do not multiply a rate out to 1M.

Where RocketReach wins

• A documented API. Credit costs, rate limits per plan and a bulk endpoint are all in the public docs.
• Published API caps. You can plan around 200,000 person lookups a month on Custom before you talk to anyone.
• Email verification. POST /api/v2/email/verify runs at 300 a minute on every plan (RocketReach rate limits, September 2026).
• No charge on a miss. Nothing is billed when no data is found, or when the email grades B or F (RocketReach FAQ, September 2026).

Where ContactOut wins

• Cheaper seats for one person. Email is $49 a month against $69 for RocketReach Essentials.
• Phones included. Email + Phone at $99 a month lists unlimited phones under fair use, while RocketReach charges 6 credits a phone on the API.
• Published contact counts. It states 200M work emails, 150M personal emails and 100M direct dials.
• Higher request limits. 1,000 a minute on most endpoints, against RocketReach's 10 a second global cap and smaller plan caps.
• More MCP tools. 15 against 9, and 600+ free credits to try them.

If you need volume through an API

We build LeadOcean, so weigh this section accordingly. LeadOcean holds 693M people and 63M companies, reachable over REST and an MCP server with 12 tools. Free is 1,000 records, one-off, with no card. Pro is $499 a month, flat, with no credits 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 has an Exports page with a filter builder and CSV download (LeadOcean exports docs, September 2026). There is no sequencer, dialer or Chrome extension, so reps who live in either tool should keep it. See the RocketReach alternative page for a line-by-line version.

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