LocalLeads vs Hunter.io
Hunter is an email-finder — you bring a domain, it returns addresses. LocalLeads is upstream of that: we find the businesses and ship their emails together.
Pick Hunter.io if
- You already have a list of company domains and just need emails.
- You're verifying addresses you scraped or bought elsewhere.
- You need bulk email verification with a clean API.
Pick LocalLeads if
- You don't have a domain list yet — you start from a niche × city.
- You want one tool that goes from search to enriched, scored lead.
- You want the AI stack integration (MCP) on top.
Pricing models
Hunter is per-search-or-verification credit, with plans starting around $34/mo. LocalLeads bundles search + enrichment in one credit system, with success-billed email enrichment (failed = free).
See LocalLeads pricingFeature-by-feature
| Feature | LocalLeads | Hunter.io |
|---|---|---|
| Step in funnel | Find → score → enrich | Verify / find by domain |
| Starts from a domain | Optional | Required |
| Starts from a niche × city | ||
| Quality Score on businesses | N/A | |
| MCP for Claude | ||
| Success-billed enrichment | Per-attempt |
Switching from Hunter.io
- 1List which steps of the funnel you currently use Hunter for.
- 2Where Hunter starts from a domain, LocalLeads starts from a search.
- 3Keep Hunter if your input is already a clean domain list; switch to LocalLeads if you build lists from scratch.
Other comparisons
Real questions, real answers
The objections people actually email us about.
How is this different from Outscraper, Apify, or Apollo?
Outscraper and Apify are pay-per-business scrapers. They give you raw rows and leave the qualification work to you. Apollo focuses on global B2B contact databases — strong for enterprise titles, weak for the local SMB long tail. LocalLeads is built for the local long tail and ships every lead with a deterministic 0–100 Quality Score so you can gate credit spend on the businesses worth contacting. Bonus: native MCP server for Claude, Cursor, and the AI sales stack — none of the others have that yet.
What is the Quality Score and how does it work?
Every lead lands in your dashboard with a 0–100 Quality Score and a High / Medium / Low badge. The score is computed deterministically from data we already have on the record: phone present, email confidence, website live status, Google review count and rating, photos on the listing, and data freshness. You can sort, filter, or auto-export by tier before you spend a single credit on enrichment. The score is free — it costs no extra credits and no extra wait.
Can I use this with Claude, Cursor, or other AI tools?
Yes. We ship a native MCP (Model Context Protocol) server, so Claude.ai, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Claude Code, and any MCP-compatible agent can search, enrich, and verify leads directly from chat or your editor. One-click OAuth for Claude.ai users; stdio config for desktop tools. See /integrations/claude for setup, or /docs/api/mcp for the full tool spec.
Is this legal? Is it GDPR-compliant?
LocalLeads extracts publicly accessible business listing data — the same information any visitor to Google Maps can see. For downstream use such as cold email to EU contacts, you are responsible for establishing a lawful basis (typically 'legitimate interest' for B2B outreach to professional addresses) and including a clear unsubscribe mechanism. We recommend consulting your own counsel for high-volume EU outreach, and we publish a soft-bounce / unsubscribe guide in the docs.
What happens if a search returns garbage results?
If a search returns no results, you are not charged credits. If the results contain a high rate of duplicates or businesses outside your search radius, you can report a bad search from the dashboard and we will refund the credits within one business day. We also publish a Fair Credit Policy: failed enrichments (no email found) cost zero credits.
Do credits roll over? Can I buy without a subscription?
Monthly subscription credits do not roll over — they reset on your billing date. But credit packs do not require a subscription: anyone with a free account can buy 250, 500, 1,000, or 2,500-credit packs (from €3.75 / $4.49 / £3.49) that never expire. Subscription credits stay cheaper per-credit on volume — packs are the right tool for trying without committing, or for topping up the month you blow through your monthly allowance. Prices charged in your local currency (EUR / USD / GBP) via PayPal.
Can I cancel anytime?
Yes. No contract, no minimum term. Cancel from the dashboard in one click. You keep access to your account and exports until the end of the current billing period.
What's the API rate limit?
100 requests per minute on the standard API, with bursts allowed up to 200/min. Search endpoints are async (you submit, we return a query ID, you poll) so the 60-second job runtime does not eat into your rate budget. Full docs at /docs/api.
Start with a free search
See real leads in 60 seconds.
20 preview leads, no signup, no credit card. Decide afterwards if it's worth a credit.
20 preview leads. No credit card. No signup wall.