# Hunter.io vs LeadMagic

Updated 2026-10-15. Compared from independent Reddit comments only. Methodology: https://gtmranked.com/methodology/

**Is Hunter.io or LeadMagic better?** Independent users prefer LeadMagic (68/100 from 21 rated comments) over Hunter.io (46/100 from 19 rated comments). LeadMagic is best for Budget teams running their own enrichment waterfall; Hunter.io is best for Finding the work email of a specific, already-identified person.

**Is Hunter.io or LeadMagic cheaper?** Hunter.io: Free plan with 50 credits a month. Starter from $34/mo billed yearly ($49 monthly) for 2,000 credits a month; Growth $104/mo yearly ($149 monthly) for 10,000; Scale $209/mo yearly ($299 monthly) for 25,000; Enterprise is custom. One credit pool covers finding (1 credit) and verifying (0.5 credit), with unlimited users on every plan. An API-only Data Platform sells search and verification credits separately. Figures are USD list prices; UK visitors are shown GBP (Starter £28/mo billed yearly). LeadMagic: Essential is $99/mo billed monthly for 5,000 credits, or $990/yr (about $83/mo); tiers run up to Ultimate at $849/mo for 100,000 credits, with Enterprise from $2,490/quarter. No free plan or free credits; a paid plan is required at signup, and failed lookups cost nothing. Prices are from each vendor's pricing page and change often.

| | Hunter.io | LeadMagic |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 46/100 | 68/100 |
| Rank in category | #2 | #1 |
| Rated comments | 19 | 21 |
| Best for | Finding the work email of a specific, already-identified person; Checking a company's email pattern and verifying addresses before sending; Low-volume, hand-built prospect lists | Budget teams running their own enrichment waterfall; Finding work emails and mobiles for contacts scraped from Apollo or LinkedIn; A second-pass check on unknown or failed emails |
| Starting price | $34/mo | $83/mo |

## #2 Hunter.io

Hunter.io finds and verifies professional email addresses by name, company or domain, and adds a B2B lead database and built-in cold email sequences. Website: hunter.io. Category: [B2B Data & Enrichment](https://gtmranked.com/best/b2b-data-enrichment/). Score 46/100 (11 positive, 4 mixed, 4 negative of 19 independent comments).

**Verdict:** Independent users mostly treat Hunter as a narrow, cheap tool: punch in a name and domain, get the work email or the company's email pattern, and run its verifier before sending. About 19 non-promotional comments carry an opinion, most of them brief; the detailed ones put accuracy around 70 to 80 percent, better at large companies than small startups, and two buyers who tried bulk list enrichment report poor yields and refused refunds. A large share of Reddit mentions are promotional, including several 2026 comments from different accounts pushing Hunter's own MailTracker extension, repeated plugs for unrelated tools that name Hunter in passing, and a reply from a Hunter employee.

**What users like:**
- Reliable for the classic use: take a name from LinkedIn and get the person's work email or the company's email pattern [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/LeadGeneration/comments/1cdlsdl/_/l1ctqb6/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/sales/comments/8tqx1h/_/e19ip45/) [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/SaaS/comments/1iykuoa/_/mev7iiq/) [4](https://www.reddit.com/r/coldemail/comments/1snhacv/_/ogloufh/)
- Its built-in verifier is used to check addresses before sending; a two-year user says it saved them from many bounces [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/coldemail/comments/1snhacv/_/ogloufh/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/LeadGeneration/comments/1cdlsdl/_/l1ctqb6/) [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/SaaS/comments/1pw8j9f/_/nw6e3u9/)
- Holds up for low-volume, targeted outreach and for domain lookups at known organisations, such as company or school domains [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/coldemail/comments/1rphefp/_/o9n6c9b/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/coldemail/comments/1tjkd4l/_/on6vg4l/) [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/growmybusiness/comments/1spv96y/_/oh8ytx6/) [4](https://www.reddit.com/r/coldemail/comments/1pfac10/_/nsj2jxa/)

**What users complain about:**
- Accuracy is decent but not dependable: a two-year user estimates 70 to 80 percent of emails work and says it does better at big companies than startups, and another calls its pattern guesses fairly but not entirely accurate [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/coldemail/comments/1snhacv/_/ogloufh/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/coldemail/comments/1q1xqcz/_/nx8uj32/) [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/coldemail/comments/1tdkvj5/_/om6barw/)
- Weak on bulk lists: one buyer says only about 7% of an uploaded list came back usable after hours of manual cleanup, and another found too few verified addresses in its database and the interface clunky [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/agency/comments/1ec3xlv/_/oknad87/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/agency/comments/1ec3xlv/_/oiynf5s/)
- Two dissatisfied buyers say refund requests were refused; one was offered credits instead and filed a chargeback [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/agency/comments/1ec3xlv/_/oknad87/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/agency/comments/1ec3xlv/_/oiynf5s/)
- Relies on published web data and email patterns, so critics say it misses contacts that are not public and returns generic addresses for small businesses [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/coldemail/comments/1tkmnew/_/on9wghf/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/coldemail/comments/1tv22t6/_/opdwfn2/)
- Credits get expensive for bulk searches, and the free tier is limited [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/coldemail/comments/1snhacv/_/ogloufh/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/salesdevelopment/comments/1m885qp/_/n4x9i7y/)

**Best for:** Finding the work email of a specific, already-identified person; Checking a company's email pattern and verifying addresses before sending; Low-volume, hand-built prospect lists.
**Skip it if:** Bulk enrichment of large uploaded lists; Small startups and contacts that are not published anywhere on the web.
**Pricing (vendor-stated, checked 2026-10-14):** Free plan with 50 credits a month. Starter from $34/mo billed yearly ($49 monthly) for 2,000 credits a month; Growth $104/mo yearly ($149 monthly) for 10,000; Scale $209/mo yearly ($299 monthly) for 25,000; Enterprise is custom. One credit pool covers finding (1 credit) and verifying (0.5 credit), with unlimited users on every plan. An API-only Data Platform sells search and verification credits separately. Figures are USD list prices; UK visitors are shown GBP (Starter £28/mo billed yearly).

Full review: https://gtmranked.com/tools/hunter/

## #1 LeadMagic

LeadMagic sells verified B2B contact and company data, including work emails, email validation and mobile numbers, through an app, API, CLI and MCP server that draw on one shared credit pool. Website: leadmagic.io. Category: [B2B Data & Enrichment](https://gtmranked.com/best/b2b-data-enrichment/). Score 68/100 (18 positive, 1 mixed, 2 negative of 21 independent comments).

**Verdict:** Independent users describe LeadMagic as a cheap, pay-as-you-go email and mobile finder that slots into a waterfall, usually alongside Apollo or inside Clay, and that also works as a second-pass verifier. About 21 non-promotional comments carry an opinion, mostly brief and positive, centred on price and on finding emails and phones Apollo misses. The criticism is thinner but specific: one user says it has been failing them lately, and its handling of catch-all addresses is contested, with one user calling its 'valid catch-all' results unreliable and another praising its catch-all marking. Promotional comments are a smaller share than for most tools here, mostly plugs for other scrapers and verifiers plus a same-day cluster of Prospeo plugs, one of which knocks its mobile numbers.

**What users like:**
- Cheap and pay-as-you-go; users call it the low-cost option for volume, one putting it at a tenth of Apollo's cost [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/b2bmarketing/comments/1vfjjaq/_/p1qkvxy/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/coldemail/comments/1l3tk3b/_/mwjuxsq/) [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/sales/comments/1i3mzs0/_/m8edysy/) [4](https://www.reddit.com/r/sales/comments/1khzwhh/_/mrb450g/)
- Finds emails other sources miss, such as a contact's new address after a job change when Apollo still had the old one [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/coldemail/comments/1qq6vlu/_/o3l2d1u/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/LeadGeneration/comments/1k4bcll/_/mogv1i6/) [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/coldemail/comments/1juuhec/_/mnkcour/)
- Used for mobile numbers too, with users reporting better mobile coverage than Apollo [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/salesdevelopment/comments/1hwe6np/_/m60z2p9/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/LeadGeneration/comments/1jx9yi1/_/mnha5sa/) [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/SaaS/comments/1eftatb/_/lfs1x9m/)
- Doubles as a verifier: users run it as a second pass on unknown emails, then use its finder to replace invalid ones [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/b2bmarketing/comments/1v8vyp3/_/p128ive/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/coldemail/comments/1heeei7/_/m230nqt/) [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/coldemail/comments/1juuhec/_/mnkcour/)
- Plugs easily into Clay and other waterfall setups for LinkedIn-sourced contacts [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/coldemail/comments/1qq6vlu/_/o3l2d1u/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/coldemail/comments/1rl8ljj/_/obzdqu4/) [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/coldemail/comments/1o4u2vi/_/njhbovf/)

**What users complain about:**
- One user says it charges for 'valid catch-all' results that are not reliable, forcing either lower coverage or a separate catch-all verifier (another user disputes this and praises its catch-all marking) [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/LeadGeneration/comments/1k4bcll/_/momkk72/)
- Consistency is questioned: one user says it has been failing them recently [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/coldemail/comments/1pfmgrr/_/nskx8wx/)
- Lacks the phones and emails that big databases like ZoomInfo collect from customer CRMs, so coverage trails them [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/sales/comments/1i3mzs0/_/m8edysy/)

**Best for:** Budget teams running their own enrichment waterfall; Finding work emails and mobiles for contacts scraped from Apollo or LinkedIn; A second-pass check on unknown or failed emails.
**Skip it if:** Teams that need ZoomInfo-level coverage from one source; Senders who cannot add a separate catch-all verifier.
**Pricing (vendor-stated, checked 2026-10-14):** Essential is $99/mo billed monthly for 5,000 credits, or $990/yr (about $83/mo); tiers run up to Ultimate at $849/mo for 100,000 credits, with Enterprise from $2,490/quarter. No free plan or free credits; a paid plan is required at signup, and failed lookups cost nothing.

Full review: https://gtmranked.com/tools/leadmagic/