LinkedIn lead generation tools — and what a credit really buys
9 of the 24 are browser extensions that read the profile you already have open, and the headline price is not what you pay. These sell the contact detail behind a profile or a search result. 8 of them put no LinkedIn account behind the tool at all, because they sell from their own database. The rest overlay the page in your own signed-in session, which is a lower exposure than sending but not a clear one — the User Agreement bars extracting data from LinkedIn’s pages by software. Then there is the meter: at four of these a phone number costs between five and ten times an email out of the same credit pool.
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Where do I get contact details for the people I find on LinkedIn?
Contact data: the email address and the phone number behind a profile or a search result, and what a credit buys.
SDRs, recruiters and founders who already find the right people on LinkedIn and need a way to reach them off it.
Two things, and neither is database size, which every vendor states in billions. The first is whether a LinkedIn account is involved at all — a data vendor sells you a copy and never touches your session, an extension reads the page in front of you. The second is the exchange rate between credits and the thing you actually want, which is usually a mobile number.
The cheap per-seat tiers are email tiers. Every vendor here meters phone numbers far harder than emails, and several restrict Sales Navigator or Recruiter support, API throughput and CRM write-back to a tier above the one the price comparison is built on.
The 9 filed here first, in the order that decides what they cost the account
Least exposure first: the tools that put no LinkedIn account behind them, then the ones that read a page you opened, then the ones that hold your session and act as you. The badge names the route and the second badge names what that route exposes; the colour repeats the word and never replaces it.
Landbase
No LinkedInB2B contact data and AI research agents, sold in credits that are charged only when a lookup returns a verified result.
$499per month
AccountNo account usedMCPNot supportedwww.landbase.comWarmly
Data vendorIdentifies website visitors at person level, then routes them to AI chat, email, LinkedIn Ads audiences, or a LinkedIn sequence run through a separate HeyReach licence.
$10,000per year (also shown at $4,875 per quarter)
AccountNo account usedMCPNot supportedwww.warmly.aiApollo.io
Chrome extensionA contact database with email and phone enrichment, sequencing and a dialer, whose Chrome extension reveals contact data on LinkedIn and Sales Navigator pages.
$49per seat per month, billed annually
AccountExtracts automaticallyMCPSupportedwww.apollo.ioCognism
Chrome extensionSales-led B2B contact database built around phone-verified European mobile numbers, sold by quote with a five-seat minimum.
Quote only
AccountExtracts automaticallyMCPNot supportedwww.cognism.comKaspr
Chrome extensionChrome extension that reveals phone numbers and emails on LinkedIn, Sales Navigator and Recruiter Lite; owned by Cognism since 2022.
€45 / £39 / $49month, per user
AccountExtracts automaticallyMCPNot supportedwww.kaspr.ioLeadIQ
Chrome extensionA Chrome extension that captures contacts into Salesforce, HubSpot, Outreach and Salesloft, with job-change tracking and an AI message writer. Pro starts at $200 a month for 200 credits.
From $200per month
AccountExtracts automaticallyMCPSupportedwww.leadiq.comLusha
Chrome extensionContact database with a Chrome extension that reveals emails and phone numbers on LinkedIn profiles and Sales Navigator.
$49.90month
AccountExtracts automaticallyMCPSupportedwww.lusha.comSeamless.AI
Chrome extensionA contact-data search engine with a Chrome extension, an engagement layer and a set of AI agents. Only the free plan carries a published number; Pro and Enterprise are contact-sales.
Free plan, then quote only
AccountExtracts automaticallyMCPSupportedseamless.aiSurfe
Chrome extensionA Chrome extension that reveals emails and mobile numbers on LinkedIn profiles and writes the contact to a CRM.
$49per user per month, monthly billing ($39/user/mo billed annually)
AccountExtracts automaticallyMCPSupportedwww.surfe.com
15 more serve this heading from another category
One row each rather than a second card. What the tool is, what its own pages prove about the LinkedIn route and the rest of its price ladder are on the page it is filed under, which is where the entry is maintained.
| Tool | Filed under | Route and exposure | Cheapest published tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Artisan | LinkedIn AI Sales Tools | No LinkedIn — exposure none | Quote only |
| Instantly | LinkedIn AI Sales Tools | No LinkedIn — exposure none | $47 per month, monthly billing ($37.60/mo billed annually) |
| Unify | LinkedIn AI Sales Tools | No LinkedIn — exposure none | $20 per seat per month, billed monthly |
| Clay | LinkedIn Research Tools | Data vendor — exposure none | $167/mo billed annually, or $185/mo billed monthly month |
| Persana AI | LinkedIn Research Tools | Data vendor — exposure none | $750 per month |
| Trigify | LinkedIn Research Tools | Data vendor — exposure none | $40 per month |
| Amplemarket | LinkedIn AI Sales Tools | Chrome extension — exposure high | $600/mo annual term |
| Waalaxy | LinkedIn Automation AI | Chrome extension — exposure high | €19 per user / month |
| Closely | LinkedIn Outreach AI | Vendor cloud — exposure high | $49 per month, billed monthly |
| Expandi | LinkedIn Automation AI | Vendor cloud — exposure high | $99 per month, per LinkedIn account |
| La Growth Machine | LinkedIn Outreach AI | Vendor cloud — exposure high | €60 per identity per month, billed annually (2 months free) |
| PhantomBuster | LinkedIn Research Tools | Vendor cloud — exposure high | $69 USD monthly, or $56 USD per month billed annually month |
| Common Room | LinkedIn Research Tools | Not established — exposure not established | $2,500 per month, billed annually |
| lemlist | LinkedIn Outreach AI | Not established — exposure high | $69/mo billed monthly, or $55/mo billed yearly month, flat (unlimited users) |
| ZoomInfo Copilot | LinkedIn AI Sales Tools | Not established — exposure not established | Published but unreadable |
Every figure above is the cheapest paid tier the vendor published on 20 September 2026, in the currency and on the meter the vendor printed it — per seat, per LinkedIn account, per identity and per licence all appear, so two figures are rarely comparable without the unit beside them. A free tier is not shown as a price. Nothing here recommends automating a LinkedIn account, and no entry treats a vendor’s assurance about pacing as a statement of LinkedIn’s policy. Where a tool’s own architecture breaches the User Agreement, the entry says so rather than working around it.
4 of the 24, on the rows that decide it
Three published ladders and one quote-only vendor, all four reaching LinkedIn the same way. When the route is identical, the comparison is about what a credit buys and which tier hides the feature you came for.
| Apollo.ioChrome extension | LushaChrome extension | CognismChrome extension | SurfeChrome extension | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| How it reaches LinkedIn | Chrome extension | Chrome extension | Chrome extension | Chrome extension |
| What it does with your account | Extracts automatically | Extracts automatically | Extracts automatically | Extracts automatically |
| Account exposure | Medium | Medium | Medium | Medium |
| Cheapest paid tier the vendor publishes | $49 | $49.90 | Quote only | $49 |
| What that figure is per | per seat per month, billed annually | month | No published figure | per user per month, monthly billing ($39/user/mo billed annually) |
| Free plan or free credits | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Works with Sales Navigator | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not established |
| Works with Recruiter | No | Not established | Yes | No |
| Callable MCP server | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Setup | Easy | Easy | Moderate | Easy |
No column is marked as the pick, because the rows that matter most are not the ones a ranking would score. Sales Navigator, Recruiter and MCP cells read Supported where the vendor documents it on its own pages, Partial where it is bounded by a tier, a beta or a waitlist, Not supported where it was looked for and absent, and Not established where the vendor neither states it nor rules it out. That last one is not a no.
The situation decides this, and there are only a few situations
Each of these is a real shape of work rather than a persona. Find yours and the shortlist is two or three rather than 24.
Lusha, Kaspr, Surfe, Apollo.io, LeadIQ and Seamless.AI all run a permanent free plan with a monthly credit allowance, and each of those allowances is an evaluation rather than a working month — Lusha’s is 40 credits, Surfe caps adding to a CRM at one contact a day, and Seamless.AI’s free tier locks out its AI features entirely. They are enough to test hit rate on your own list, which is the only test worth running.
Divide the credit allowance before comparing anything. A phone reveal costs five credits against one for an email at Lusha, ten against one at LeadIQ and Linked Helper, and Surfe’s Pro tier gives ten times more email credits than mobile ones. Cognism is built around phone-verified European mobiles and sells on a quote with a five-seat floor, so a team of two pays for five.
Cognism’s positioning is compliance-led — it publishes screening against UK TPS and CTPS and do-not-call registers across fifteen countries, and registration with the UK Information Commissioner’s Office. That is a statement about its own process, not a warranty for your use of the data, and the lawful basis for what you do with a bought record remains yours.
Check which tier. LeadIQ’s whole design is capture-to-CRM with Outreach and Salesloft attached; Surfe sells its CRM connector as a separately priced module, which its own pricing footnote states is bought independently of the plan it appears in; Unify’s CRM sync is read-only until its top tier. A reveal tool that cannot write back is a re-typing job with extra steps.
Every route has a ceiling, and it belongs to the route rather than the tool
The table is the hard part: whatever a vendor in this category ships next, these limits do not move, because they are properties of how the software reaches LinkedIn at all.
A data vendor sells a copy of the public record, as current as its last refresh. Your connections, your inbox, your saved searches and your InMail credits are behind your account and stay there. That is the trade for carrying no account risk.
The extraction clause in LinkedIn’s User Agreement covers software-assisted collection from its pages, so an overlay is not risk-free under a strict reading even when it sends nothing. Separately, what you may do with a bought mobile number is a question for the telephone-consent and data-protection rules where the person lives, and every vendor here leaves it with the buyer.
| Route | Tools here | What the route cannot do, however good the tool is |
|---|---|---|
| No LinkedIn | 4 | Everything on LinkedIn is outside them. Covering LinkedIn as well means buying, paying for and running a second product, and moving data between the two. |
| Data vendor | 4 | No account of yours can be restricted, because no account of yours is used. What it sells is a copy, as current as its last refresh — and nothing behind your login: not your network, not your inbox, not your saved lists. |
| Chrome extension | 9 | It reaches whatever the page in front of you shows, and nothing while the browser is closed. LinkedIn’s Prohibited Software and Extensions policy names extensions that automate the site, and enforcement lands on the member account. |
| Vendor cloud | 4 | The widest reach of any class and the highest exposure. It runs without you, the credential sits with somebody else, and every action is attributable to your account — which is also the thing LinkedIn can restrict. |
| Not established | 3 | Unknown, which is the point. Nothing in this directory treats an unread claim as a capability, and nothing treats an unanswered question as a reassurance. |
Section 8.2 bars developing, supporting or using software that scrapes LinkedIn or copies profiles and data, and bars bots and other automated methods of access. It does not distinguish between a slow tool and a fast one, and it carves out nothing for well-paced automation.
The Prohibited Software and Extensions policy names browser extensions and third-party automation services and states that LinkedIn may restrict or permanently restrict accounts that use them. The vendor keeps its subscription revenue either way.
Read from LinkedIn's own legal and help pages, quoted in substance rather than verbatim because LinkedIn edits them without announcement. The ceilings that apply to you as a member — invitations a week, InMail allowances, the search cap — are separate, apply whether or not a tool is involved, and are on the LinkedIn limits page.
The questions people arrive with, answered from the vendors' own pages
How do I find someone’s email from their LinkedIn profile?
The tools that do it are browser extensions that read the profile you have open and match it against their own database — 9 of the 24 here work that way. LinkedIn itself does not hand the address over: it is not on a profile you are not connected to, and no LinkedIn permission returns it. The hit rate is the whole product, which is why every vendor listed here runs a free tier you can test your own list against.
Do LinkedIn email finders break LinkedIn’s rules?
They sit in a narrower part of the rulebook than sending tools do. They fire no invitation and no message, so the ceilings and the behavioural detection that restrict accounts are not in play. The clause that does apply is the one on extracting data from LinkedIn’s pages with software, which the User Agreement bars by any means. In this registry that is why 7 of these are rated medium exposure rather than high: automated reading the terms prohibit, with nothing going out under your name.
Which LinkedIn lead generation tool is cheapest?
20 of the 24 publish a figure, and the cheapest published paid tiers cluster closely — Apollo.io at $49 per seat, Surfe at $49 per user and Lusha at $49.90. The figure stops meaning much at the second question: how many phone numbers that buys. Cognism and Landbase sit at the other end, one quote-only with a five-seat floor and one with a $499 monthly entry above its free credits.
Do any of them work with Sales Navigator?
9 of the 24 document Sales Navigator support, generally meaning the extension also overlays Sales Navigator pages and lead lists. Several gate it: Kaspr withholds Sales Navigator from its free plan, and Surfe does not claim support anywhere on its site. A Sales Navigator seat is a separate LinkedIn subscription from $119.99 a month, verified 12 September 2026.
Can these tools send the message too?
7 of these 24 also send, and they are filed here because the same subscription does both — Waalaxy, Amplemarket, Expandi, Closely, La Growth Machine, PhantomBuster and lemlist. That changes the exposure from reading to acting, which is the step from medium to high on every card. If the sending is the part you want, the route matters more than the data does.
Divide the credits before comparing the price
24 tools in this category, 7 of them acting under your name and 8 putting no LinkedIn account behind them at all. Every figure printed above was read from the vendor's own page on 20 September 2026, and the 4 that publish no readable price say so instead.