Hunter.io alternatives: email finders with phone numbers, and outreach tools with LinkedIn

Hunter.io competitors at a glance: how each bills, sends, and covers phone and LinkedIn

Each tool in its own currency and billing unit, from its own pricing page. No winner is marked: a price per licence, a price per team and a price per mailbox do not answer the same question.

Monthly prices excluding tax. Hunter’s plans and extra mailboxes, Emelia and lemlist charge one figure whether you pay in euros or dollars (Hunter’s warm-up excepted); Apollo, Snov.io, Lusha, Instantly and Smartlead bill in dollars only; Kaspr has separate euro and dollar price lists.

Free alternatives to Hunter.io, compared with Hunter’s own free plan

Hunter’s free plan is hard to beat for occasional lookups: 50 credits a month, one mailbox and sequences of up to 500 recipients, with no card and no time limit. Its competitors’ free options:

• Apollo: a free plan with 75 credits a month and one mailbox, and a 14-day trial of Basic or Professional.
• Snov.io: a free plan with 50 credits and 100 recipients a month, and warm-up on one mailbox.
• Lusha: a free plan with 40 credits a month, for one person.
• Kaspr: a free plan with 5 phone numbers a month; work emails are capped at 15 a month on its pricing page, but its help centre lifts the cap after 3 colleagues sign up.
• Instantly and Smartlead: no free plan, but trials without a card (14 days each).
• Emelia: a 7-day trial without a card and no free plan, so Hunter is the more generous of the two here.

Finder plus sequences, like Hunter: Apollo and Snov.io

Two tools that combine an email finder, a B2B database and cold email sequences, as Hunter does, but charge for them differently.

1. 1

   Apollo.io

   Best for: Building lists from a filterable database of contacts

   Apollo starts from a database (240M contacts claimed on its site, 210 million on its Trustpilot profile) rather than a domain, adds phone numbers at 8 credits, and sends sequences. It bills one licence per person ($65 on Basic, $99 on Professional), where Hunter’s users are free.

   From $65/month per licenceHunter.io vs Apollo
2. 2

   Snov.io

   Best for: Unlimited mailboxes with warm-up included, LinkedIn as an add-on

   Snov.io finds and verifies emails in credits (1 per email found, including “unknown” ones; 1 per verification), searches a database (500M+ contacts claimed, “over 50 million leads” on the same page) and sends campaigns from unlimited mailboxes (up to 1,000 per team in its terms), with warm-up included (3 mailboxes at a time on Starter, unlimited from Pro S). Its plans are set by monthly credits and recipients: Starter at $39 gives 1,000 credits and 5,000 recipients. LinkedIn automation is a separate subscription, $69 per account per month ($59 with a paid plan), and phone numbers are paid in enrichment tokens.

   From $39/month

When you also need phone numbers: Lusha and Kaspr

Hunter has no phone tool: it only shows a number when one happens to be in its results. Lusha and Kaspr are built around contact data, emails and mobile numbers, revealed in credits from their own databases.

1. 1

   Lusha

   Best for: Emails and phone numbers revealed from a B2B database, with a Chrome extension

   Lusha bills a plan with licences included (1 on Starter, 2 on Pro), then $49.90 per extra licence, and a pool of credits: 1 credit per email, 5 per phone number. Its free plan gives 40 credits a month; Starter costs $49.90 a month for 400 credits. It sends sequences from each user’s Gmail or Outlook, with no built-in warm-up listed, and does not automate LinkedIn.

   From $49.90/monthLusha
2. 2

   Kaspr

   Best for: Mobile numbers from LinkedIn, with numbers included in each licence

   Kaspr’s Chrome extension reveals work emails and mobile numbers on LinkedIn profiles. Work emails are unlimited on paid plans; numbers are included per licence (100 a month on Starter, 200 on Business), then sold in monthly packs. It sends no email campaigns.

   From €59/month per licenceKaspr

When sending matters more than finding: lemlist, Instantly, Smartlead

Hunter includes 1, 3, 10 or 20 mailboxes by plan, charges €10 per extra one (up to 50) and sells warm-up per mailbox (€6.68 a month). These three are cold email tools first: many mailboxes, warm-up included, and finding emails as an extra.

1. 1

   lemlist

   Best for: Email and LinkedIn sequences in one tool, with lemwarm included

   lemlist’s Email plan is billed per team by monthly volume (€69 for 50,000 emails), with unlimited senders; its Multichannel plan adds LinkedIn at €109 per user. Finding and verifying an email costs 5 credits.

   From €69/monthlemlist
2. 2

   Instantly

   Best for: Large email volumes from many mailboxes

   Instantly connects unlimited mailboxes with warm-up included, and bills by emails sent and contacts loaded (Growth: $47 a month for 5,000 emails). Its lead database and email finder are a separate credit subscription. No native LinkedIn steps.

   From $47/monthInstantly
3. 3

   Smartlead

   Best for: High sending volumes, agencies included

   Smartlead bills per account by monthly sending volume (Base: $39 for 6,000 emails), with warm-up included and mailboxes described as unlimited. Its SmartProspect database is an option on the first plans. No native LinkedIn automation.

   From $39/monthSmartlead

Emelia: finder, verifier, cold email and LinkedIn in one subscription

Emelia covers the two jobs Hunter does, plus LinkedIn, which Hunter leaves out. It finds emails (1 credit per email found and verified, nothing if none is found), verifies lists (0.25 credit), finds phone numbers (50 credits), sends sequences with warm-up included from 3 or 50 mailboxes (no cap on Scale), and runs LinkedIn invitations and messages from 1 to 10 accounts.

Plans start at €37 a month (€30.83 billed yearly) and are not billed per user; emails found each month are paid with credit packs from €19 for 1,000. Emelia has no built-in database: you bring the companies, a CSV or a Sales Navigator search, which its Chrome extension sends to Emelia with an Export with Emelia button (how it works).

Good reasons to stay on Hunter

• Many lookups, few mailboxes: Hunter’s plans include credits every month (2,000, 10,000 and 25,000), so with 3 mailboxes and 2,000 emails to find a month, Starter (€49) costs less than Emelia with a credit pack. Details on the pricing page.
• A whole team on one plan: users are unlimited and free, on every plan.
• Bulk Domain Search: 1 credit for up to 10 emails of the same company.
• The API from the free plan, with 500 search requests a minute, an MCP server and native CRM integrations.
• No VAT on its invoices, since the company is registered in the United States.

Free and phone alternatives to Hunter.io: two answers