ContactOut
ContactOut · Ranked #12 of 12 in AI Candidate Sourcing Tools
Contact-data API with a public reference (endpoints, auth, per-endpoint rate limits, webhooks) but API access is sales-gated to a custom Team/API plan, and an unusually high outage count and Trustpilot privacy complaints weigh on it.
LinkedIn-based email and phone lookup for recruiters and sales
Overview
ContactOut is a contact-discovery product best known for a Chrome extension and search portal that return personal and work emails and phone numbers tied to LinkedIn profiles; it markets 700M+ profiles. Its API at api.contactout.com offers LinkedIn profile enrichment, email-based lookup, people and company search, decision-maker discovery, email and phone verification, and v1 and v2 bulk jobs (up to 100 and 1,000 profiles, with webhooks for async v2). Boolean search is supported and a free People Count endpoint estimates email and phone availability for paid users. The buyer is a recruiter or sales team first, with an API aimed at teams that want to automate lookups.
Where it wins is a concrete public API reference: token header auth, endpoint-level credit rules, and published rate limits (People Search 60/min, Contact Checker 150/min, other endpoints 1,000/min). Work email accuracy is generally rated reliable by reviewers, and G2 is about 4.4/5 from roughly 109 reviews.
Where it loses is access, operations and trust. The API is not on the self-serve plans; the pricing page routes Team/API to a custom quote, so a developer cannot get an API key and pay by card. The free app plan (5 emails, 5 phones, 5 exports a day) does not include API access. StatusGator reports 962 outages affecting ContactOut users over the past year (an aggregated count that includes warning-level events) and a minor Data sync outage on the verification date, and no SLA is published. Trustpilot is about 1.2-1.4/5 with complaints about personal data being listed without consent and slow removals, "unlimited" plans carry undisclosed fair-use caps, and personal-email outreach carries GDPR risk. No official SDK or first-party MCP server was found; MCP access is through third-party toolkits such as Composio and viaSocket. Net: a usable API for teams that will negotiate a contract; a poor fit for self-serve developers.
How this score is derived
The APIbenchmarks Index is a weighted sum of four dimensions, each scored on an absolute 0–100 reference scale. See the methodology for every mapping.
| Dimension | Score | Weight | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Documentation & DXapi.contactout.com documents endpoints, token authentication, per-endpoint credit consumption, rate limits by endpoint, v1/v2 bulk jobs with webhooks and Boolean search, but no OpenAPI spec, SDK reference, quickstart tutorial or llms.txt was found and contactout.com/api returns a 404; scored 70, below Apollo (80), for the missing machine-readable spec and onboarding material. | 70 | 30% | 21.0 |
| ReliabilityStatusGator reports 962 outages affecting ContactOut users over the past year (aggregated, includes warning-level events) against 50+ for PDL, and showed a minor outage on the Data sync component on 2026-10-07; an official status page exists per StatusGator but we could not retrieve it directly, and no uptime SLA is published; scored 58, well below PDL (82), because the incident count is an order of magnitude higher even after discounting for aggregator noise. | 58 | 25% | 14.5 |
| Ecosystem & SDKsNo official language SDKs, OpenAPI spec or first-party MCP server were found; MCP access is via third-party Composio and viaSocket, and Salesforce/ATS integrations and a Chrome extension are listed only on the Team plan or the app; scored 50, well below Apollo (78) and PDL (80), because verified first-party developer tooling is limited to a REST reference and webhooks. | 50 | 25% | 12.5 |
| AccessibilityAPI access requires a quoted Team/API plan (not on self-serve plans), the free app plan excludes API, 'unlimited' paid plans carry fair-use caps (2,000 emails and 1,000 phones per month) and Trustpilot is about 1.2-1.4/5 on consent and removal complaints; scored 35, just above ZoomInfo (30), because individual plans are priced publicly and a free app plan exists, but the API itself is sales-gated, unlike PDL (90) or Apollo (78) where a developer can start without a contract. | 35 | 20% | 7.0 |
| APIbenchmarks Index (ABI) | 55.0 | ||
Table 1. Derivation of the ABI for ContactOut. Contribution = score × weight; the index is their sum.
ContactOut vs the AI Candidate Sourcing Tools field
APIbenchmarks Index · higher is better
Build quality vs accessibility
ContactOut (dark dot) among AI Candidate Sourcing Tools APIs
At a glance
- Vendor
- ContactOut
- Pricing model
- Credits (search, email, phone) on a quoted API plan
- Free tier
- 5 emails, 5 phones, 5 exports/day in the app; API not included
- Official SDKs
- 4 languages
Pricing
| Free | $0 | 5 emails, 5 phones and 5 exports per day in the app; no API access. |
| ~$49-$99/mo (sources conflict) | App plan with 300 exports per month; fair-use cap of 2,000 emails per month. | |
| Email + Phone | ~$99-$199/mo (sources conflict) | App plan with 600 exports per month; fair-use cap of 1,000 phones per month. |
| Team / API | Custom quote | The only plan reported to include API access; custom limits, Salesforce/ATS integrations and an account manager. |
Key features
- •LinkedIn profile enrichment by URL or email
- •People search with Boolean operators and company search
- •Decision-maker identification within companies
- •Bulk contact retrieval: v1 (100 profiles) and v2 async with webhooks (1,000 profiles)
- •Email, work-email and phone verification
- •People Count endpoint (free for paid users)
- •Company enrichment by domain with funding details
- •Credit model: search, email and phone credits
Official SDKs
Strengths & trade-offs
- +Public API reference with auth, endpoint credit rules and per-endpoint rate limits
- +Bulk enrichment up to 1,000 profiles per v2 job with webhook delivery
- +Boolean search, decision-maker and company endpoints plus email and phone verification
- +Free People Count endpoint estimates data availability before spending credits
- +Work-email accuracy is generally rated reliable in reviews
- +G2 about 4.4/5 from roughly 109 reviews
- –API is not on self-serve plans; Team/API requires a custom quote
- –Free app plan (5/5/5 per day) does not include API access
- –962 outages tracked by StatusGator over the past year, with a minor outage on the verification date
- –Trustpilot about 1.2-1.4/5, dominated by consent, privacy and data-removal complaints
- –'Unlimited' plans have undisclosed-in-marketing fair-use caps (2,000 emails and 1,000 phones per month)
- –No official SDK, OpenAPI spec or first-party MCP server found; accuracy weaker for personal emails and non-North-American contacts
What developers say
G2 ~4.4/5 (~109 reviews); Trustpilot ~1.2-1.4/5 (113-132 reviews)
G2 users like work-email accuracy and speed; Trustpilot is dominated by data subjects complaining that their personal data is listed without consent, and G2 cons cite weak personal-email and international accuracy.
“They put my personal data online without my consent.”
Key figures
| Rate limit: People Search | 60 requests/minute | ContactOut API docs ↗ |
| Rate limit: Contact Checker | 150 requests/minute | ContactOut API docs ↗ |
| Rate limit: other endpoints | 1,000 requests/minute | ContactOut API docs ↗ |
| Bulk limits | v1 up to 100 profiles; v2 async up to 1,000 with webhooks | ContactOut API docs ↗ |
| Outages tracked (past year) | 962 (aggregated, includes warnings) | StatusGator ↗ |
| Trustpilot rating | ~1.2-1.4/5 from 113-132 reviews | Review roundups ↗ |
Compare ContactOut head to head
Sources
- https://api.contactout.com/
- https://contactout.com/pricing
- https://statusgator.com/services/contactout
- https://prospeo.io/s/what-is-contact-out
- https://fullenrich.com/content/contactout-pricing
- https://www.cleanlist.ai/blog/2026-10-01-contactout-review
- https://composio.dev/toolkits/contactout/framework/hermes-agent
- https://viasocket.com/mcp/contactout
Figures last verified 2026-10-07. Spotted an error? corrections@apibenchmarks.com