7 Best SalesIntel API Alternatives for Developers (2026)

Developers leave SalesIntel's API over four limits. The API bills credits per record returned, and your key comes from your success team (SalesIntel docs, September 2026). Rate limits are per user, at 1,800 requests a minute, with an unpredictable cooldown after heavy overage (SalesIntel docs, September 2026).

The docs also say the API suits enrichment and small discovery sets, and that thousands of contacts in one request may need another route (SalesIntel docs, September 2026). There is no public price and no MCP server in the docs index (SalesIntel pricing, September 2026).

Below are seven alternatives that work in code or through an agent. For a two-column view, see LeadOcean vs SalesIntel. For rep-facing tools, read SalesIntel alternatives.

TL;DR

"1M records" here means 1M work-email lookups that return a result, one credit each where the vendor uses credits. Figures are list-price arithmetic, and where no public plan sells that volume the cell says so. Enterprise quotes may differ, so ask each vendor at your volume.

What we evaluated

• Auth and schema: how you get a key, and how much ceremony sits between you and the first record.
• Rate limit: the default requests allowed, and who can raise them.
• Bulk export: records per request, and whether a search turns into a file.
• MCP: whether an agent can search and enrich through the server, or only read documentation.
• Cost at 1M records a month: list price, plus the limits that change the bill.

We read each vendor's pricing page and docs in September 2026. We ran no find-rate or accuracy test, so we quote no quality numbers.

1. LeadOcean: best for API, agent and volume pulls

LeadOcean is one dataset behind one REST API and one MCP server. It holds 693M people, 366M with an email and 166M with a phone number, plus 63M companies. You search with 50 people filters and 34 company filters, and counts are free.

Auth is one header, x-api-key. You copy the key from the app after sign-up, with no success team in the loop. Enrichment is POST /v1/people/enrich, phones are GET /v2/people/phone, and POST /v1/exports turns a search into a CSV of up to 50,000 rows.

Here is the SalesIntel flow for "marketing directors at companies of 50 to 500 people". You preview first, because the credited call bills every record on the page (SalesIntel docs, September 2026).

curl -G "https://api.salesintel.io/service/people/preview" \
  -H "X-CB-ApiKey: $SALESINTEL_API_KEY" \
  -H "Accept: application/json" \
  --data-urlencode "location_country_codes=US" \
  --data-urlencode "job_levels=dir" \
  --data-urlencode "job_departments=mrkt" \
  --data-urlencode "company_min_size=50" \
  --data-urlencode "company_max_size=500" \
  --data-urlencode "page_size=50"

curl -G "https://api.salesintel.io/service/people" \
  -H "X-CB-ApiKey: $SALESINTEL_API_KEY" \
  -H "Accept: application/json" \
  --data-urlencode "match_ids=$MATCH_IDS"

The same job on LeadOcean is a search and an enrich, with no preview step and no success team.

curl -G "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/search" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  --data-urlencode "country=US" \
  --data-urlencode "jobLevel=Director" \
  --data-urlencode "jobFunction=Advertising & Marketing" \
  --data-urlencode "minEmployees=50" \
  --data-urlencode "maxEmployees=500" \
  --data-urlencode "emailStatus=verified" \
  --data-urlencode "limit=100"

curl -X POST "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/enrich" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d "{\"person_id\":\"$PERSON_ID\",\"reveal_email\":true}"

PERSON_ID comes from meta.source_ids.person_id on a search row. Add count=true and limit=1 to size the audience first, which costs no records. Enrich takes one person per call, so large pulls go through POST /v1/exports. Exports run up to 50,000 rows per request and 500,000 a day.

The price does not move with volume. Pro is $499 a month with unlimited searches, enrichments and lookups, 5 API keys and 100 requests per second per key. A very large month is paced down to one request a minute until the reset, not cut off. More headroom is one email to support.

The MCP server at https://api.leadocean.io/mcp signs in with OAuth 2.1 and exposes 12 tools, from search_leads to find_phone and export_leads. count_leads is free.

Pros

• Flat $499 a month at any volume, with no credit meter.
• One header for auth. REST and MCP on every plan, including Free.
• 100 requests per second per key, against 30 a second per user for SalesIntel.
• Email status on every record, from verified to spam_trap. A miss on enrich is a free 404.

Cons

• Enrich is one person per call. Bulk goes through exports.
• No human verification tier, intent data or rep workspace. No sequencer, dialer, CRM or Chrome extension.
• One dataset, so a niche source needs another tool.

Best for: engineers, RevOps and agents that need volume and a fixed bill.

Pricing: Free is 1,000 records, one-off, no card. Pro is $499 a month, flat (LeadOcean pricing, September 2026).

2. People Data Labs: best for licensed data and per-match enrichment

People Data Labs (PDL) is a person and company data API with bulk dataset licences. It charges per match: a request that returns a person costs one credit, and a miss costs none (PDL docs, September 2026). Auth is an API key, and you can sign up without a sales call.

The entry price is high per record. Pro starts at $98 a month for 350 credits, and PDL puts Pro at about $0.20 to $0.28 a profile (PDL blog, February 2026). The Free plan gives up to 100 records a month with contact data hidden (PDL pricing, September 2026). Above about 100,000 profiles a year it is quote only.

Enrichment allows 1,000 calls a minute on paid plans (PDL docs, September 2026). Person Search defaults to 10 requests a minute (PDL docs, September 2026). We found no official MCP server in PDL's docs index (PDL docs, September 2026).

Pros

• Whole datasets as licensed files, delivered to S3, GCP or Azure (PDL docs, September 2026).
• 1,000 enrichment calls a minute on paid plans, with self-serve keys.
• ISO and SOC 2 Type 2 shown on the pricing page.

Cons

• About $0.20 to $0.28 a profile on Pro, and above about 100,000 profiles a year it is quote only, so there is no public 1M price.
• Search defaults to 10 requests a minute.
• No official MCP server found, so agents need a wrapper you host.

Best for: teams that license data or need compliance paperwork and accept per-record pricing.

Pricing: Free up to 100 records a month. Pro from $98 a month for 350 credits. Enterprise custom (PDL pricing, September 2026).

3. Coresignal: best for raw employee, company and job data

Coresignal sells employee, company and job records on credits. A Base record costs 10 credits, a multi-source record 20, a job posting 1 and a contact enrichment 20 (Coresignal docs, September 2026). Auth is an apikey header (Coresignal docs, September 2026).

The $499 plan is small. Pro is 35,000 credits and 10 requests per second. Elite is $5,000 a month for 10M credits (Coresignal pricing, September 2026). For 1M work-email lookups Coresignal bills 20 credits each, so 1M is 20M credits. No single public plan covers that, because Elite holds 10M credits. The derived figure is about $10,000, two Elite months at $0.0005 a credit. The $5,000 figure is 1M Base records at 10 credits, and Base employee records carry no email.

Bulk Collect stops at 10,000 records a request, and rate limits run from 5 to 100 requests a second by plan (Coresignal docs, September 2026). The MCP server signs in with OAuth 2.1 and has 5 tools, and entity_search costs 20 credits a call (Coresignal docs, September 2026).

Pros

• Job postings at 1 credit each, which SalesIntel's contact credits do not cover.
• Hosted MCP server with OAuth 2.1.
• Rate limits reach 100 requests a second and above on higher plans (Coresignal docs, September 2026).

Cons

• Multi-source employee records carry professional emails and an email status, and no phone field appears in the data dictionary (Coresignal docs, September 2026). Base employee records list no email field.
• Lower plans cap at 5 to 10 requests a second.
• Bulk is asynchronous and capped at 10,000 records a request.

Best for: analytics and AI teams that need profiles and jobs, not phone numbers.

Pricing: Plans from $49 to $5,000 a month (Coresignal pricing, September 2026).

4. Crustdata: best for live signals and change watchers

Crustdata is a credit-based API for people, companies, jobs and posts, with watchers that alert you to changes. Person search costs 0.03 credits per result and person enrichment 1 to 7 (Crustdata docs, September 2026). Auth is a Bearer key plus an x-api-version header.

The docs list credits, not dollars, so you cannot price 1M records from the site (Crustdata pricing, September 2026). Purchased credits expire after 12 months (Crustdata docs, September 2026).

Volume is the catch. Person enrich defaults to 15 requests a minute and search to 30, and higher limits go through support (Crustdata docs, September 2026). The contact endpoint needs an enterprise plan (Crustdata docs, September 2026). The MCP server at install.crustdata.com/mcp signs in with OAuth (Crustdata docs, September 2026).

Pros

• Live endpoints and change watchers for hiring, funding and profile changes.
• Cheap discovery at 0.03 credits a result, so 1M search results is 30,000 credits.
• Hosted MCP server with sign-in.

Cons

• No public price per credit.
• Default limits of 15 to 30 requests a minute.
• Contact data sits behind an enterprise plan.

Best for: AI SDR and signal workflows that need fresh data more than raw volume.

Pricing: Credit based, with no public price list. Per-call credit costs are in the docs (Crustdata docs, September 2026).

5. BlitzAPI: best for flat-price search by API

BlitzAPI sells B2B data as an API on flat monthly plans. Core is $399 a month and leaves out emails and phones. Plus is $499 and adds verified work emails. Full is $599 and adds US phone numbers (BlitzAPI pricing, September 2026). Auth is an x-api-key header.

Check the rate limit before you commit. The 50 requests per second and 15,000,000 monthly results are tied to accounts opened by September 30, 2026, against a standard 5 per second. Limits also apply per endpoint (BlitzAPI docs, September 2026).

Search pages hold 50 results and stop at 50,000 results per query (BlitzAPI docs, September 2026). We found no bulk CSV export. We found no bulk or CSV export in BlitzAPI's pricing page, docs index or v2 OpenAPI spec. Data comes through the JSON API with cursor pagination (BlitzAPI docs). Its MCP server gives an assistant the API documentation, not the data (BlitzAPI docs, September 2026).

Pros

• Flat monthly price. The stated fair-use line is 15,000,000 results a month for accounts opened by September 30, 2026; limits for later accounts are not published (BlitzAPI Terms, September 2026).
• A plain header for auth and no credit meter on paid plans.
• A free trial of 1,000 credits with no card.

Cons

• Three paid tiers, and phones need the top one, US only.
• The MCP server reads docs. An agent cannot search or enrich through it.
• The fast rate limit depends on when the account opened.

Best for: teams that want a flat-price search and enrichment API and run their own code.

Pricing: Core $399, Plus $499, Full $599 a month (BlitzAPI pricing, September 2026).

6. LeadMagic: best for a low per-credit price on valid emails

LeadMagic is a credit-based enrichment API. It lists 400M+ people profiles and 25M+ companies, and reaches them through REST, CSV, a command-line tool and a hosted MCP server (LeadMagic, September 2026). Failed lookups cost nothing.

The credit price falls as you climb the plans. Essential is $99 a month for 5,000 credits. Professional is $499 for 50,000. Ultimate is $849 for 100,000, or $0.00849 a credit (LeadMagic pricing, September 2026). A valid email costs 1 credit and a mobile 5.

Email Finder allows 600 requests a minute. LeadMagic also states that a sustained find rate below 10% can lead to throttling or suspension (LeadMagic docs, September 2026). The MCP server uses OAuth, and a preview_cost call shows the price of a large job first (LeadMagic docs, September 2026).

Pros

• The lowest per-credit list price in this group, apart from Coresignal's Elite rate.
• No charge when an email is not found.
• Hosted MCP with a cost preview before large operations.

Cons

• The top self-serve plan is 100,000 credits, so 1M a month needs an Enterprise quote.
• A smaller stated database: 400M+ people profiles.
• A minimum find-rate policy can throttle lists with poor match rates.

Best for: teams that enrich a few hundred thousand valid emails a month and want cheap credits.

Pricing: Essential $99, Growth $249, Professional $499, Ultimate $849 a month (LeadMagic pricing, September 2026).

7. Apollo: best for reps who want a database and a sequencer

Apollo is a sales platform with a contact database attached. It lists 240M+ contacts and 30M+ companies, sequences, a dialer and a Chrome extension (Apollo MCP page, September 2026). It ranks last here because pricing is built around seats, not volume.

Basic is $49 per seat a month with 30,000 credits a year. Professional is $79 with 48,000. Organization is $119 with 72,000 and a three-seat minimum, all billed annually (Apollo pricing, September 2026). An email costs 1 credit and a phone number 8. Enrichment through the API costs 1 to 9 credits a person (Apollo docs, September 2026).

General endpoints allow 200 requests a minute on Basic and Professional, with 2,000 a day. Enrichment endpoints allow 1,000 a minute on paid plans (Apollo docs, September 2026). The MCP server works on any plan, including Free. Apollo says its standard plans are for internal business use only.

Pros

• Database, sequences, dialer and CRM sync in one tool.
• MCP server on every plan, with OAuth sign-in.
• Seat prices far below a platform quote for a small team.

Cons

• Seats and credits both scale your bill, and credits expire each cycle.
• 200 requests a minute and 2,000 a day on general endpoints.
• Internal use only, so you cannot build a product on it.

Best for: sales reps who prospect and send from one workspace.

Pricing: Free. Basic $49, Professional $79, Organization $119 per seat a month, billed annually (Apollo pricing, September 2026).

Comparison table

Sources are linked in each tool section, all checked in September 2026. Vendors change plans often, so confirm on the pricing page before you buy. The 1M column is list-price arithmetic on email lookups. Apollo is 400 Basic seats at $49 on yearly billing, or 250 Professional seats at $99 on monthly billing. PDL has no public 1M price, so its cell gives the Pro per-profile range. Coresignal bills 20 credits an email, so its figure is 20M credits at the Elite rate, derived because no public plan covers it. LeadMagic's $8,490 is 1,000,000 x $0.00849, an extrapolation and not a public plan.

For reference, SalesIntel authenticates with an X-CB-ApiKey header issued by your success team. It allows 1,800 requests a minute per user, pages 50 records at a time and stops at 10,000 records deep (SalesIntel docs, September 2026). It publishes no price, and its terms cap each user at 3,000 reveals a month (SalesIntel terms, September 2026). At that cap, 1M reveals a month is 334 users. Its pricing page says "Request Pricing" and lists unlimited credits per user. No price per API credit or per verification tier is published (SalesIntel pricing, October 2026).

How to choose

• You pull data in code or with an agent, at volume: LeadOcean. One header, one flat price, REST and MCP on every plan, 100 requests per second.
• You need a licensed dataset or compliance paperwork: People Data Labs.
• You need jobs, employee history or raw profiles: Coresignal.
• You need fresh signals and change alerts: Crustdata, with a rate-limit conversation first.
• You want a second flat-price API: BlitzAPI Plus, if you can live with a docs-only MCP server.
• You buy valid emails by the hundred thousand: LeadMagic, at $0.00849 a credit on Ultimate.
• Your reps live in the tool: Apollo, or stay with SalesIntel's web app.
• You want to keep SalesIntel for named accounts: build lists in LeadOcean and spend SalesIntel reveals only where a human-verified mobile number earns it.

Verdict

LeadOcean wins for developers and agents that pull people and company data at volume. It has one header for auth, a public flat price and an MCP server that returns records. BlitzAPI is the flat-price runner-up for your own code. Coresignal wins on job data, PDL on licensed datasets, Crustdata on live signals and LeadMagic on cheap valid emails. Apollo wins for reps who want a sequencer. Stay on SalesIntel if you need human-verified mobiles, intent data or its web app. Otherwise start on the free plan and run your own filters.

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