ContactOut vs Prospeo
 ContactOut |  Prospeo | |
|---|---|---|
| Sentiment | ||
| Score | 44/100 | 12/100 |
| Rank in category | #3 | #15 |
| Rated comments | 18 | 9 |
| Best for | Recruiters who need personal email addresses; Pulling emails for contacts found on LinkedIn | Teams that will test it as one source alongside other finders |
| Skip it if | Sending to its emails without a separate verification step; Users who only want a simple LinkedIn lookup | Buyers who want to rely on Reddit testimonials to judge accuracy |
| Starting price | $39/mo | $37/user/mo |
| Pricing (vendor-stated) | Limited-time free tier (5 emails, phones and exports a day, one user). Email plan $49/mo monthly or $39/mo billed annually; Email + Phone $99/mo monthly or $79/mo billed annually; both single-user. Cheaper regional plans exclude US data (from $19/mo billed annually). Team and API plans are sales-led. | Free plan with 100 credits a month. Paid plans are per user: Starter $49/mo monthly or $37/mo billed yearly (2,000 credits/mo), Growth $99 or $74 (5,000 credits/mo), Pro $249 or $187 (15,000 credits/mo). Yearly billing saves 25% and delivers credits upfront; larger credit volumes go through sales. |
About 18 first-hand, non-promotional comments, many from recruiters, give a mixed but mostly favourable picture: ContactOut is rated for personal emails and for pulling contacts from LinkedIn profiles, while several senders report that not every email is verified and bounces follow, and views on its phone numbers are split. Promotion is heavy: the corpus filter already dropped 81 repeat-promoter comments, an Apollo employee called out astroturfing for ContactOut in one r/coldemail thread where several accounts praised it within days in February 2026, a September and October 2025 burst of 'tried it, tech team was great' testimonials was excluded, and many criticisms came only inside pitches for Prospeo, FullEnrich and other tools, so those are not counted either.
Users like
- Strong on personal email addresses; a tech recruiter who tried it alongside RocketReach found it the stronger of the two for personal emails[1][2]
- Works well for LinkedIn-sourced lists; one user who has used a dozen data tools says it stands out across almost every vertical when starting from LinkedIn[1][2][3]
- Email accuracy is rated well by some users, including one team reporting under 2% bounces on LinkedIn-sourced lists[1][2]
- Helps recruiters find hard-to-reach passive candidates[1]
Users complain about
- Not every email it returns is verified; several users report bounces and say results need a separate verification pass[1][2][3]
- Phone coverage was poor for SaaS contacts in one user's experience, and another found its numbers less accurate than ZoomInfo's (other users rate its mobiles well)[1][2]
- Has grown from a lookup tool into a broader sales platform; a user who only needed LinkedIn lookups found it overkill and left, and another barely used it because the interface was confusing[1][2]
- You are locked into its credit-based pricing model, which one user cites as a reason to build their own sourcing instead[1]
Most of the Prospeo discussion on Reddit is promotional: a large cluster of 'switched from ZoomInfo/Apollo/Lusha and bounces dropped' stories repeats the same talking points (connect rates, weekly refresh, pay only for verified), includes word-for-word duplicate comments from different accounts, and several users openly accuse the company of posting from fake accounts. Set that aside and independent evidence is thin and split: a few users rate it well as one source in a multi-tool stack, while others report a refund dispute or say it did not solve their data problem.