ContactOut
ContactOut finds email addresses and phone numbers for professionals. Its Chrome extension reveals contact details on LinkedIn profiles, including Recruiter and Sales Navigator, and on company websites. A search portal with more than 20 filters, an API, bulk enrichment, a Google Sheets add on, an MCP server and a tool that turns a Gmail signup into a named person cover the other routes in. The database covers about 800 million people and 40 million companies, with 200 million work emails, 150 million personal emails and 100 million direct dials, built from crawling public web pages, partner datasets and information its users submit.
Around the data sit an email verifier, email campaigns sent from the user's own Gmail or Outlook mailbox, a cloud phone dialer reaching more than 170 countries with call recording, and AI features that draft personalized emails from a person's profile for the user to review. Contacts push one way into Salesforce and HubSpot custom fields and into the Lever, Greenhouse and Bullhorn applicant tracking systems, and Zapier and an API with batch lookups and callbacks reach the rest.
Recruiters and sales teams are the two core buyers, and customers include Spreetail, GroupM and WarnerMedia among more than a million users. The free plan gives one user per company 40 contacts a month on standard LinkedIn. Unlimited sales users cost $299 a month for work emails only, within fair use caps of 2,000 email and 1,000 phone credits per account a month, and team and API plans are quoted.
People can remove their profile through an opt out form, with deletion promised within 24 hours, and ContactOut is registered as a data broker in California. Founded in 2015 by Rob Liu and based in San Francisco, it contracts as ContactOut Limited under Hong Kong law.
Capability Axes
Capability grades
17 of 17 axes rated · 4 graded A or B
AI drafts personalized emails from a person's profile, writes inside Gmail and powers a plain language lead search still in beta. The product people buy is the contact database and the tools that reveal, verify and export it, which work the same without the models.
AI drafted emails wait for the user to review, copy or send them. Email campaigns run as sequences from the user's mailbox, and anyone added to a running campaign receives its first step automatically. Stopping or capping a campaign is not described.
The models behind the email writer, Gmail assistant and AI lead search are not named, and how the AI chooses what to say from a profile is not explained. Whether recipients learn that an email was written by AI is not addressed.
Spreetail reports 20 hires in three months and more than 50 candidates a week, WarnerMedia says it tripled its InMail yield, and BDEX credits the product with doubling sales output. Data claims, such as triple verified emails at 99 percent confidence and direct dials for about 70 percent of professionals, carry no stated method, and no bounce rates are given.
People in the database can verify their email through an opt out form and have their profile deleted within 24 hours, and ContactOut is registered as a data broker in California. The email campaign tool and the cloud dialer with call recording carry no described unsubscribe handling, consent checks or recording notices, and CCPA and GDPR compliance comes without detail on how suppression works.
Processing of the people in the database rests on legitimate interest and on the data having been made manifestly public. Rights requests are answered within a month, with complaints routed to the UK ICO. A DPA, a subprocessor list, a transfer mechanism and an EU or UK representative are not offered. A 2022 UK tribunal decision records an access request to ContactOut that went unanswered and found the ICO could not enforce against it as a controller outside the UK.
The data comes from crawling billions of public web pages, partner datasets, government records and information users submit, and free users grant a perpetual, irrevocable license to the contacts they submit for use by other customers. Work emails are found or constructed from patterns and checked by SMTP, and matching runs on LinkedIn member IDs. The partners behind the data and the legal footing for user contributed contacts are not named.
The Chrome extension reveals emails and phone numbers on LinkedIn profiles, Recruiter and Sales Navigator, matches records to LinkedIn member IDs and collects browsing history and page content. How it operates against LinkedIn's terms, which bar automated data extraction, is not addressed.
Whether customer data, drafted emails or the profiles in the database train AI models is not addressed. Data is kept for as long as necessary, with no retention periods, while opt outs are deleted within 24 hours.
AI drafted emails go out under the user's own name and mailbox through the campaign tool or by hand. Whether recipients learn the email was written by AI, and any position on the disclosure duties in Article 50 of the EU AI Act, are not addressed.
Contacts push one way into custom fields in Salesforce and HubSpot without overwriting existing values, and into the Lever, Greenhouse and Bullhorn applicant tracking systems, with Zapier for other tools. The API offers token authentication, rate limits by endpoint and tier, batches of up to 1,000 profiles with a callback for results, and endpoints for people and company search, decision makers, verification, campaigns and hashed emails. A Google Sheets add on adds reveal and enrich functions, and an MCP server opens the data to AI assistants. Two way sync is not offered.
The service runs on AWS with keys managed in AWS KMS. Regions, where profile and customer data is stored and any residency choice are not stated.
SOC 2 certification is stated without a report type, auditor or date, and there is no trust center or route to request the report. The ISO and FedRAMP credentials in play belong to AWS rather than to ContactOut. Multi factor authentication and Google and Microsoft single sign on are supported.
Team and API plans are quoted. Unlimited sales users cost $299 a month for work emails only, subject to conditions, and the terms cap that offer at 2,000 email and 1,000 phone credits per account a month. The free plan gives one user per company 40 contacts a month on standard LinkedIn. Prices for individual paid plans, credit costs and annual terms are not available without a sales call.
Subscriptions cancel immediately from the account page, contacts export to CSV, and ContactOut may close an account at any time for any reason, with liability capped at A$50. Refunds, renewal terms, credit expiry and the right to keep exported contacts after the subscription ends are not stated.
Emails are verified by SMTP checks, with no bounce guarantee or credit back for bounces. The campaign tool sends from the user's connected Gmail or Outlook mailbox, and warmup, daily limits and monitoring of sender reputation are not described.
Recruiters and sales teams are the two core buyers, with use cases for marketing and revenue operations, and named customers include Spreetail, GroupM, Ivy Exec, BDEX and WarnerMedia. ContactOut puts its base at 1.4 million users in more than 100 countries and about three quarters of the Fortune 500, without a breakdown by region or language.
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Ordered by how closely the graded profiles match across the seventeen axes, inside the same categories. See how each axis is graded in the methodology.
Pricing
What this vendor charges, what it commits to in writing, and where the bill can move. Figures the vendor publishes itself are labeled Vendor Published. Figures labeled Estimated come from other sources and the vendor has not confirmed them.
- ›ContactOut has a free plan that gives one user per company 40 contacts a month on standard LinkedIn. Unlimited sales users cost $299 a month for work emails only, within fair use caps of 2,000 email and 1,000 phone credits per account a month. Team and API plans, which add Salesforce and applicant tracking integrations and an account manager, are quoted.
How the price works
What you are charged for, and what makes the bill go up.
Credit based plans with a free tier; unlimited sales users offer under fair use caps; Team and API plans quoted
What the contract says about your data
What the vendor commits to in writing once your data is in the product.
No BAA tier listed; no DPA available.
Getting started
What it costs and what is included before the product is running.
No setup fee listed; a managed enrichment service is quoted.
What to watch for
Where this pricing can surprise a buyer who has not read it closely.
Team and API plans are quoted. The unlimited offer covers work emails only and is subject to conditions; the terms cap unlimited plans at 2,000 email and 1,000 phone credits per account a month. Individual plan prices, renewal terms and credit expiry are not available without a sales call.