How Hunter finds an email: Domain Search, Email Finder, Bulk
Hunter’s email finder does not guess addresses at random: it indexes emails published on the public web (Hunter counts 81M websites indexed) and shows the sources behind every result. A search costs nothing when no email is found.
Domain Search: every address at one company
Type a domain, for example a prospect’s website, and Hunter lists the emails it knows at that company, with the pages where it found them. In the app, each email you reveal costs 1 credit; an address already revealed stays available without spending a credit again.
Email Finder: one person, one address
Give a first name, a last name and a domain, and the Email Finder returns the most likely address, already verified, for 1 credit, or nothing if it finds nothing. This is the search people mean by “hunter email finder”. Emelia bills the same search 1 credit per email found and verified, and nothing otherwise.
Hunter’s FAQ says it can’t find emails from LinkedIn profiles; its API documentation lets the Email Finder start from a LinkedIn handle.
Bulk: lists of names or domains
Domain Search and the Email Finder also run on files. The Bulk Email Finder costs the same 1 credit per email found; Bulk Domain Search is Hunter’s cheapest route, at 1 credit for 1 to 10 emails of the same domain, so up to 10 times cheaper per email when you want everyone at a company.
Every plan, Free included, opens Discover, a database of companies and people with filters and an AI assistant (10 AI searches a month on Free, 50 to 300 on paid plans, which add advanced filters and weekly lookalike suggestions), and Signals (fundraising, hiring, technologies, job changes). Searching Discover is free; revealing an email costs the usual credit.
The Hunter extension reads the company website, not the LinkedIn profile
The Hunter extension, for Chrome, Firefox and Edge, shows the emails Hunter has indexed for the domain of the website you are visiting, and finds an address from a name: 600,000 users and 4.7/5 from 12,500 ratings on the Chrome Web Store.
It reads the company’s domain, not the page: it does not work on LinkedIn profiles, and Hunter does not automate anything on LinkedIn (“Hunter cannot be integrated with LinkedIn”, says its help centre).
Emelia’s Chrome extension starts from LinkedIn instead: an Export with Emelia button in a Sales Navigator search sends the search to Emelia, which extracts the leads; you then find their emails in credits or add them to a campaign (how it works).
The Email Verifier: half a credit, free when the result is “unknown”
Hunter’s verifier checks whether an address accepts mail, one at a time or by file, for 0.5 credit per address. When it cannot conclude, it returns “Unknown” and charges nothing; disposable addresses are skipped without spending a credit. Emails returned by the finder are already verified, so the verifier mostly serves lists that come from elsewhere.
On paid plans, Hunter also re-verifies saved leads every month at no cost. Emelia’s verifier uses 0.25 credit per address, against 0.5 at Hunter (a credit does not cost the same on both tools).
Hunter API, MCP server and native CRM integrations
The Hunter API is open on every plan, Free included: Domain Search, Email Finder (from a name and a domain), Email Verifier, enrichment of an email or a company (0.2 credit by the API), Discover, leads and sequences. Limits are set per key or IP, not by plan: 500 requests a minute for search and enrichment, 300 for verification. Emelia, by contrast, sets its limit by plan: 100 requests a minute on Start, 300 on Grow, 1,000 on Scale.
Hunter also runs an MCP server, with connectors for Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, a Google Sheets add-on and a Snowflake integration. Its native CRM integrations (HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive and Zoho CRM) are included on every plan; Close and Copper connect through Zapier, and Make and Clay are supported too.
Hunter.io reviews: what Capterra and Trustpilot users report
Hunter’s home page shows 4.7 out of 5 from “5,000+ reviews”, and its pricing page’s structured data 4.5 from 1,575: neither matches G2, Capterra or Trustpilot. G2 blocks automated checks: Hunter shows 4.4/5 for it, which we could not verify.
What users praise
- Accurate email search and verification
- A simple interface (ease of use: 4.8/5 on Capterra) and the browser extension
- Fast, friendly support (customer service: 4.7/5 on Capterra)
- An affordable price for small teams, and the API documentation
What users criticise
- Too few free credits, and costs that climb with volume
- Gaps in some countries or segments, outdated emails, no personal emails
- Warm-up billed separately, described as hidden (Trustpilot)
- Friction at sign-up (verification, access to the free plan)
Sequences: up to 50 connected mailboxes, warm-up sold per inbox
Hunter’s Sequences, formerly called Campaigns, send cold emails from your own Gmail or Outlook mailboxes, and on paid plans from any SMTP/IMAP mailbox. The plan sets how many mailboxes are included; paid plans can add more.
Emelia counts differently: 3 mailboxes on Start, 50 on Grow and unlimited on Scale, warm-up included, and LinkedIn accounts in the same plan. Hunter costs less when you need many lookups from few mailboxes, because its plans include monthly credits; Emelia costs less as soon as mailboxes or warm-up are what you pay for, as the table below and the pricing page show.
- Mailboxes: 1 on Free, 3 on Starter, 10 on Growth, 20 on Scale, then €10 per extra mailbox per month on paid plans (“from” that price on its pricing page), up to 50 in all (beyond, Enterprise on quote).
- Sending pace: 15 emails per mailbox per day by default, which you can raise to 400 on Google or 250 on Microsoft and SMTP; no plan changes these ceilings, and Hunter does not charge for sending.
- Sequences: automated follow-ups, plus A/B tests, link tracking and reports on paid plans, and 500 to 15,000 recipients per sequence depending on the plan.
- Warm-up: an add-on called Inbox Protection, €6.68 per mailbox per month (€5.34 on yearly billing). For its first 30 days, sequence sending from that mailbox is blocked, unless you unlock it, which Hunter advises against.
- Mailboxes bought from Hunter: €5.34 per mailbox per month, domain extra, starting at 3 emails a day.
Hunter Web Services: founded by two Toulouse Business School students, registered in Delaware, run remotely
Email Hunter was launched in 2015 by Antoine Finkelstein and François Grante, then final-year students at Toulouse Business School in France, before being renamed Hunter. The company that sells it today is Hunter Web Services, Inc., registered in Wilmington, Delaware, and its terms are governed by Delaware law. Its CEO is Matthew Tharp.
Hunter describes a small team working remotely since the start, across Europe, the Americas and Asia (23 people on its About page). Hunter claims 7 million users on its pricing and About pages, and “over 5M professionals” in its help centre. Because the company is registered in the United States, it charges no VAT, wherever you are based.
Hunter.io or Emelia: Hunter for many lookups, Emelia for many mailboxes
Two tools that find emails and send sequences from your mailboxes, compared on the same need, monthly. Hunter includes credits every month; Emelia’s plans give credits once at signup, so monthly lookups are added as a credit pack.
Same need, billed monthly
3 mailboxes, no monthly lookups
3 mailboxes + 2,000 emails found a month
10 mailboxes + 10,000 emails found a month
10 mailboxes, warm-up on each
50 mailboxes + 10,000 emails found a month
Features
LinkedIn automation
Phone number finder
B2B database
Free option
Credits to verify an address
Hunter bills in dollars, euros or pounds depending on your billing country, without VAT. Its plans, extra mailboxes and credit packs carry the same figure in euros and in dollars, like Emelia; its warm-up does not (€6.68 or $7.50 per mailbox per month).
Signing in to Hunter.io, its free plan, LinkedIn and the GDPR
You sign in from the “Sign in” link at the top of hunter.io (hunter.io/users/sign_in). Hunter allows one account per person: to work as a team, the owner invites members for free, and they share the plan’s credits.
Yes, Hunter has a free plan with no time limit and no credit card: 50 credits a month, 1 connected mailbox and 500 recipients per sequence. Paid plans start at €49 a month; details on the pricing page.
Not from the profile itself, according to Hunter’s FAQ, although its API documentation accepts a LinkedIn handle as the starting point for an Email Finder search. The extension works on company websites, not on LinkedIn, and Hunter sends no invitations or messages there.
Hunter says it complies with the GDPR: it only indexes data from the public web, shows the source of each email, lets people remove their data, includes a data processing agreement in its terms and hosts its data on Google Cloud servers in Belgium. It gives 14 days’ notice before adding a sub-processor.
Emelia is a Hunter.io competitor. We have tried to stay fair: every figure about Hunter.io comes from its own website or public review sites.
