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

RocketReach and Crustdata both sell people data over an API, but they sell it to different buyers. RocketReach is a contact finder: you look up a person and get an email and a phone, billed on seats and Universal Credits. Crustdata is a people and company graph with live endpoints, billed only in credits.

Neither publishes a price at 1M records. Both publish credit costs, so you can count credits even where you cannot count dollars.

Verdict

• Pick RocketReach if you need a work email, a personal email and a phone for named people, and you want a seat price you can read. Pro is $119 a month on monthly billing, as G2 reports it (G2, reported, September 2026).
• Pick Crustdata if you build on search, live web data or change alerts. Search is 0.03 credits per result, and watchers flag job changes (Crustdata pricing docs, September 2026).
• Pick neither if you pull people and companies in bulk at a fixed bill. Neither has a public 1M price. LeadOcean is one option: Pro is $499 a month, flat.

Side by side

Data and coverage

Crustdata claims the bigger index. Its homepage says 1B people (Crustdata, September 2026). RocketReach says 700M+ professionals (RocketReach API docs, September 2026). Both are vendor claims, and neither tells you how many of those people have an email or a phone.

Company counts are a mess on both sides. RocketReach's docs home says 60M+ companies, while its API account page says 35M. Crustdata's homepage gives 60M in one place and 200M+ in another. Do not pick a vendor on a company count.

The two start from different places. RocketReach starts from a person and returns contact details: you pass a LinkedIn URL, an email or a name plus an employer. Crustdata starts from a graph. It indexes people, companies, jobs and posts, and its search filters over many fields in nested and/or groups (Crustdata docs, September 2026).

Contact data is where they differ most. RocketReach prices a professional email at 2 credits, a personal email at 3 and a phone at 6, per profile (RocketReach docs, September 2026). It charges nothing when no data is found, or when the email grades B or F (RocketReach FAQ, September 2026).

Crustdata prices a business email at +1 credit, a personal email at +2 and a phone at +2 on top of a 1-credit base profile (Crustdata pricing docs, September 2026). Its dedicated contact endpoint needs an enterprise plan, and self-serve keys get a 403 (Crustdata contact docs, September 2026).

API and developer experience

Both are plain REST. RocketReach is a GET with query parameters. Crustdata is a POST with a JSON body and a version header. The bigger difference is who can start: Crustdata hands out a sandbox key on its homepage, while RocketReach sends API buyers to an email address.

RocketReach looks up a person by name plus employer, LinkedIn URL or email. Placeholders stand in for a real person (RocketReach docs, September 2026).

curl -G "https://api.rocketreach.co/api/v2/person/lookup" \
  -H "Api-Key: $ROCKETREACH_API_KEY" \
  --data-urlencode "name=Jane Doe" \
  --data-urlencode "current_employer=Acme"

A lookup can return a status of progress. You then poll the status endpoint or register a webhook. Throttled calls return a 429 with a Retry-After header (RocketReach rate limits, September 2026).

Crustdata enriches by profile URL, up to 25 per request (Crustdata docs, September 2026).

curl --request POST \
  --url https://api.crustdata.com/person/enrich \
  --header "authorization: Bearer $CRUSTDATA_API_KEY" \
  --header "content-type: application/json" \
  --header "x-api-version: 2025-11-01" \
  --data '{"professional_network_profile_urls": ["https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-doe"]}'

By default this returns the base profile and social handles only. The enrich reference points to Contact Enrich for emails and phones (Crustdata docs, September 2026). The pricing page lists business email as +1 credit on /person/enrich. Test which route returns the address on your own key before you size a job.

Limits differ in kind. RocketReach layers minute, hourly, daily and monthly caps by plan. Crustdata sets a per-minute limit per endpoint, 15 on person enrich, and batch jobs run in a pool of 5 active jobs by default (Crustdata rate limits, September 2026).

On MCP, both ship a hosted server. RocketReach's signs in with OAuth 2.1 and exposes 9 tools. Search is free there, and a person lookup costs one lookup credit plus one export credit (RocketReach MCP docs, September 2026). Crustdata's publishes its usage guide as MCP resources the agent reads first, and every request reports the credits it spent (Crustdata MCP docs, September 2026).

Pricing

Figures use the monthly list price first, with the billed-yearly price after it. RocketReach's pricing page shows a bot check to automated reads, so its monthly prices come from G2, which reports them (G2, reported, September 2026). Crustdata publishes no plan prices, so there is nothing to put first or second. RocketReach's billed-yearly prices could not be verified, so we leave them out.

At 10,000 records a month

Take 10,000 work emails. RocketReach, self-serve: Ultimate is $209 a month and includes 1,000 exports a month, as G2 reports it. 10,000 exports is 10 seats, so 10 x $209 = $2,090 a month. That is our arithmetic on reported prices, not a RocketReach quote.

RocketReach, by API: a professional email costs 2 Universal Credits, so 10,000 emails is 20,000 credits. RocketReach publishes no dollar price per credit, so the cost comes from a quote (RocketReach docs, September 2026).

Crustdata: a work email is 1 base credit plus 1 for the business email, so 10,000 x 2 = 20,000 credits (Crustdata pricing docs, September 2026). Crustdata publishes no price per credit either. Its blog says the lowest tier starts at $95 a month, which is a reported figure and not on the pricing page (Crustdata blog, September 2026).

At this size the credit counts match: 20,000 on both sides. The dollar figure is a quote either way, so ask both for it.

At 1M records a month

RocketReach: no public 1M price. A million professional emails is 2,000,000 Universal Credits, with no dollar price published. The highest published person lookup cap is 200,000 a month on Custom, so 1M lookups takes at least five months at that cap (RocketReach rate limits, September 2026).

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

Crustdata: no public 1M price. 1,000,000 x (1 + 1) = 2,000,000 credits on /person/enrich. On the enterprise-only contact endpoint, a business email is 1 credit, so 1,000,000 credits (Crustdata pricing docs, September 2026). Multiply by the price per credit you are quoted. Purchased credits expire 12 months after purchase, per its docs (Crustdata credits docs, September 2026). A July 2026 Crustdata blog post says 6 months, so confirm the term before you buy.

Time matters as much as money. At 15 requests a minute and 25 URLs per request, person enrich tops out at 375 profiles a minute, so 1,000,000 / 375 is about 2,667 minutes, or 44 hours. That is our arithmetic on default limits. Batch jobs of 10,000 profiles would take 100 jobs, and the default cap is 5 active at once.

Where RocketReach wins

• Phones and personal emails in one lookup. One call can return all three contact types, priced at 2, 3 and 6 credits.
• A seat price you can read. Monthly list prices of $69, $119 and $209 are reported by G2. Crustdata publishes no plan price.
• Cheap for one rep. For a single person doing manual lookups, a $119 Pro seat is far below any API contract.
• Standalone email verification. POST /api/v2/email/verify runs at 300 a minute on every plan (RocketReach rate limits, September 2026).
• No charge on weak results. No credit is taken when no data is found or the email grade is B or F.

Where Crustdata wins

• A larger claimed index. 1B people against RocketReach's 700M+, on each vendor's own claim.
• Cheap discovery. Search is 0.03 credits per result, and company identify and autocomplete are free (Crustdata pricing docs, September 2026).
• Live data and signals. Job search, social posts, web fetch and watchers on people and companies. RocketReach has none of these.
• Larger batch jobs. 10,000 profile URLs per batch job against RocketReach's 100 per bulk lookup.
• Pay per use. No seats. You buy credits and spend them, with no per-person licence.

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 MCP. 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, so a 1M-row pull is 20 requests over two days. The app also has an Exports page with a filter builder, a price preview and CSV download (LeadOcean exports docs, September 2026). The MCP server has 12 tools and signs in with OAuth 2.1. LeadOcean has no extension, sequencer or live web endpoints, so keep RocketReach or Crustdata for those.

The RocketReach alternative page and the RocketReach alternatives roundup have the line-by-line version. More RocketReach matchups: vs UpLead, vs SalesIntel and vs LeadIQ. See all comparisons.

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