Hunter.io free plan: what 50 monthly credits and 1 mailbox cover
Hunter Free gives 50 credits a month, renewed every month, one Gmail or Outlook mailbox, sequences of up to 500 recipients, the API, the extension and the CRM integrations. No credit card, no time limit, and it never turns into a paid plan without you choosing to. Before July 14, 2025, it gave 25 searches and 50 verifications instead.
What it leaves out: credit packs, extra mailboxes, SMTP mailboxes, link tracking and reports, lead enrichment, and Discover is limited to 100 saved companies. Hunter offers no trial of its paid plans: its free plan plays that role. Capterra’s listing nevertheless shows “Free Trial: Available”. For a one-off job, Hunter says you can take a paid plan for a single month and cancel it.
Emelia has no free plan: it offers a 7-day trial without a credit card, then Start at €37 a month (€30.83 billed yearly).
Free, Starter, Growth, Scale, Enterprise: inboxes, credits, recipients
Per month for the whole team, excluding VAT (Hunter charges none). Yearly billing takes 30% off and hands over the year’s credits upfront.
Free
€0/month
no card, no time limit
- 50 credits a month
- 1 Gmail or Outlook mailbox
- 500 recipients per sequence
- API, extension, CRM integrations
Starter
€49/month
or €34/month billed yearly
- 2,000 credits a month (24,000 a year)
- 3 mailboxes, SMTP/IMAP included
- 2,500 recipients per sequence
- A/B tests, link tracking, AI writing assistant, lead enrichment
Growth
€149/month
or €104/month billed yearly
- 10,000 credits a month (120,000 a year)
- 10 mailboxes
- 5,000 recipients per sequence
- Custom tracking domain
Scale
€299/month
or €209/month billed yearly
- 25,000 credits a month (300,000 a year)
- 20 mailboxes
- 15,000 recipients per sequence
- Dedicated account manager
Above 25,000 credits a month or 50 connected mailboxes, Enterprise is sold on quote, with a minimum term set in the quote. Users are unlimited and free on every plan; they share the plan’s credits.
What a credit buys: finding, verifying, enriching
One pool of credits pays for finding and verifying, shared by the whole team. What each action costs:
The same search or verification is only counted once per billing period (calendar month on yearly plans), except in bulk files. Hunter’s help centre contradicts itself on Domain Search through the API: 1 credit per email in its credits table, 1 credit for 1 to 10 emails in its API article.
- Email Finder (name + domain): 1 credit per email found, already verified; nothing if no email is found.
- Domain Search: 1 credit per email revealed in the app; an email already revealed costs nothing again.
- Bulk Domain Search: 1 credit for 1 to 10 emails of the same domain.
- Email Verifier: 0.5 credit per address; nothing when the result is “Unknown”, and disposable addresses are skipped.
- Enrichment through the API: 0.2 credit per email or company enriched.
- Discover searches and sending: free; revealing an email from Discover costs the usual credit.
Data Platform: credits by the year for API-only use
Hunter’s second price list is for developers and bulk processing: Data Platform gives access to Hunter’s data through the API only, with no sequences, Signals or credit packs. It is sold by the year, renewed automatically, with two separate reserves bought by volume: search credits and verification credits, valid 12 months.
The price per credit of the tier you reach applies to the whole volume, which creates a threshold: 9,000 searches cost €450 a year, 10,000 cost €209. The help centre’s example: 1,000 searches and 1,000 verifications for €61 a year.
- 1,000 searches: €50 a year (€0.05 each) · 1,000 verifications: €11 (€0.011 each)
- 10,000 searches: €209 a year (€0.0209 each) · 10,000 verifications: €110 (€0.011 each)
- 50,000 searches: €475 a year (€0.0095 each) · 50,000 verifications: €370 (€0.0074 each)
- 250,000 searches: €1,875 a year (€0.0075 each) · 250,000 verifications: €925 (€0.0037 each)
- 1,000,000 searches: €6,900 a year (€0.0069 each) · 1,000,000 verifications: €2,800 (€0.0028 each)
Hunter.io pricing in 2025 and 2026: same prices, credits merged, Starter doubled
Hunter’s dollar prices have not moved since at least April 2, 2025: $49, $149 and $299 a month. What changed in 2025 is what they buy (dates of Wayback Machine captures of the pricing page).
- Until July 14, 2025, each plan had two separate allowances: Starter, for example, gave 500 searches and 1,000 verifications a month, and the free plan 25 searches and 50 verifications. Domain Search cost 1 credit per 10 emails, and going over the allowance was billed afterwards.
- By July 30, 2025, the two allowances had merged into one pool of credits, used for searching and verifying alike: 1,000 for Starter.
- By September 1, 2025, Starter included 2,000 credits. Domain Search in the app now costs 1 credit per email revealed, and extra credits come as prepaid packs instead of an overage bill.
- In April 2026, Hunter added two paid add-ons for sending: warm-up (Inbox Protection) and mailboxes bought from Hunter. Extra mailbox slots already existed.
Add-ons: credit packs, extra inbox slots, warm-up, managed inboxes
Add-ons exist on Starter, Growth and Scale, not on the free plan. Credit packs are one-off purchases (not on Data Platform; for Enterprise, Hunter’s pricing table ticks them while its help centre says they are not available), valid 3 months and kept even if you cancel; the price per credit drops with the plan and the volume, and Hunter only publishes three volumes, showing the exact price of any other amount at checkout. Mailbox add-ons are billed every month, per mailbox.
Credit packs (one-off)
100 credits
1,000 credits
10,000 credits
Most credits in one purchase
Per mailbox, per month
Extra mailbox slot (up to 50 mailboxes in all)
Warm-up (Inbox Protection)
Mailbox bought from Hunter
Hunter’s “Credit packs” article (September 2026) prices 100 credits at €10, €7.50 or €5 depending on the plan; two older help-centre articles still describe a €10 pack of 100, 300 or 500 credits. The figures here follow the most recent article. The Starter cap (9,000 credits per purchase) sits below the 10,000-credit pack the same article prices; auto-purchase can buy a pack when the balance hits zero, under a monthly cap you set. Hunter’s pricing page says “from €10/month” per extra mailbox, its help centre €10/month. Warm-up ramps up over 30 days, during which sequence sending from that mailbox is blocked, and is not refundable once started. Mailboxes bought from Hunter come with SPF, DKIM and DMARC set up and their slot included; the domain costs extra (from $16.51 a year) and they start at 3 emails a day. Add-ons keep running during a pause and are cancelled one by one. With Emelia, warm-up is included and the plan sets the mailboxes: 3 on Start, 50 on Grow, unlimited on Scale.
Monthly lookups or extra mailboxes: when Hunter costs less than Emelia, and when it costs more
Same need on both sides: sending mailboxes, and emails found every month. Hunter’s plans come with fresh credits each month; Emelia only credits an account once, when you subscribe, so each month’s lookups are covered by a monthly credit pack. A Hunter pack lasts 3 months; here, one is bought each month.
Sending only, billed monthly
1 mailbox
3 mailboxes
10 mailboxes
50 mailboxes
10 mailboxes, warm-up on each
Mailboxes + emails found every month, billed monthly
3 mailboxes + 2,000 emails
3 mailboxes + 3,000 emails
10 mailboxes + 10,000 emails
20 mailboxes + 25,000 emails
50 mailboxes + 10,000 emails
50 mailboxes + 25,000 emails
Billed yearly (Emelia packs stay monthly)
3 mailboxes
10 mailboxes + 10,000 emails
Hunter wins with one mailbox (its free plan) and when many lookups come from few mailboxes, because its credits are included every month. Emelia wins as soon as mailboxes or warm-up drive the bill. No VAT is added on Hunter’s side, and the currency it bills in (dollar, euro or pound) follows your billing country. Plans, extra mailbox slots and credit packs carry one figure in euros and dollars, as Emelia’s plans do; warm-up is the exception, at €6.68 or $7.50 per mailbox per month.
50 mailboxes and 10,000 emails found a month
€549/month- Growth plan · €149
- 40 extra mailboxes · €400
€196/month- Grow plan, 50 mailboxes · €97
- 10,000-credit pack · €99
Your inboxes, your monthly lookups: the estimate
Set the mailboxes you send from and the emails you need to find each month. Turn on warm-up if you want every mailbox warmed up.
Starter (€49)Start+ 1,000-credit pack (€19)With this setup, Hunter.io is cheaper by €7 per month.
How each tool charges
Hunter charges one plan for the team: Free €0, Starter €49, Growth €149 and Scale €299 a month, with 50, 2,000, 10,000 and 25,000 credits and 1, 3, 10 and 20 mailboxes. Extra mailboxes cost €10 each, warm-up €6.68 per mailbox, and missing credits are bought in packs.
Emelia charges by plan, not per user: Start €37 (3 mailboxes, 1 LinkedIn), Grow €97 (50 mailboxes, 3 LinkedIn), Scale €297 (unlimited mailboxes, 10 LinkedIn), then €29 per extra LinkedIn account. Warm-up is included. Emails found are paid with monthly credit packs, from €19 for 1,000 credits; the credits given once at signup are not counted.
Excluding VAT. Hunter’s pack prices between the published volumes (100, 1,000 and 10,000 credits) are shown as a range; the total uses the low end. Missing credits are bought as one pack a month, although a pack lasts 3 months. Above 50 mailboxes, Hunter only sells Enterprise, on quote; above 35,000 emails found a month, bigger packs are only priced at checkout. Mailboxes bought from Hunter, the free plan’s limits (500 recipients per sequence, no SMTP) and the cost of the mailboxes themselves are not counted.
Pausing, cancelling and refunds
- Cancelling: the subscription owner can cancel at any time from the billing page; the plan stays active until the end of the paid period, then the account goes back to Free, with its data kept and sequences paused. Add-ons are cancelled one by one.
- Refunds: none. Hunter’s terms say it “does not provide refunds to users who request cancellation of Services, regardless of the reason”; the exceptions are an unauthorised charge, or Hunter closing a paid account.
- Pausing: on monthly plans only, for 1, 2 or 3 months; the account runs on Free meanwhile, and the first payment after the pause is 30% off.
- Yearly plans: paid upfront for 12 months; you can only switch back to monthly at renewal. Hunter gives 30 days’ notice before changing a price (terms of May 23, 2024).
Hunter.io invoices: VAT, currency and discounts
Because Hunter Web Services, Inc. is registered in the United States: Hunter says all its prices are VAT-free, wherever your business is based, and it cannot issue VAT invoices. Customers in some US states pay sales tax.
In USD, EUR or GBP, depending on your billing country. Seen from France on October 9, 2026, the pricing page shows the same figures in euros as in dollars for the plans (€49 or $49 for Starter), but not for warm-up (€6.68 against $7.50 per mailbox per month).
Hunter hands out no public discount code. Hunter’s pricing FAQ offers registered nonprofits 30% off monthly plans, then says the discount applies to all plans. Pausing a monthly plan gives 30% off the first payment when it resumes, and the yearly plan is 30% cheaper than monthly.
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.
