Hunter.io vs Lusha
 Hunter.io |  Lusha | |
|---|---|---|
| Sentiment | ||
| Score | 46/100 | 43/100 |
| Rank in category | #2 | #4 |
| 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 | Individual reps doing occasional lookups on a budget; A secondary source alongside another database; Small teams starting on a free plan |
| Skip it if | Bulk enrichment of large uploaded lists; Small startups and contacts that are not published anywhere on the web | Enterprise or Fortune 500 prospecting; Large list building with fine-grained filters; Teams that cannot absorb bounces from unverified emails |
| Starting price | $34/mo | $37.45/mo |
| Pricing (vendor-stated) | 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). | Free plan with 40 credits per month. Paid plans per the pricing page's plan data: Starter $37.45/mo billed annually ($49.90 monthly) for 400 credits per month, Pro $52.45/mo annually ($69.90 monthly) for 600, Premium $299.95/mo annually ($399.90 monthly) for 3,400; Scale is custom. An email reveal costs 1 credit and a phone number 5. The page does not state whether prices are per user; teams above 5 users are sent to sales. No free trial beyond the free plan. |
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.
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][2][3][4]
- Its built-in verifier is used to check addresses before sending; a two-year user says it saved them from many bounces[1][2][3]
- Holds up for low-volume, targeted outreach and for domain lookups at known organisations, such as company or school domains[1][2][3][4]
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][2][3]
- 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][2]
- Two dissatisfied buyers say refund requests were refused; one was offered credits instead and filed a chargeback[1][2]
- 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][2]
Independent users see Lusha as a budget-friendly lookup tool that some find more accurate than Apollo for emails and phone numbers, useful as a second source or for one-off lookups. The trade-off is uneven accuracy (users report invented emails, invalid numbers and roughly 50/50 hit rates), thin coverage for enterprise and EMEA work, and weak filtering and credit terms. More than half of the Reddit mentions were promotional: one cluster of comments repeats 'Lusha for accuracy, Apollo for volume' in vendor terms, and many replies to Lusha complaints exist to plug alternatives (Bookyourdata, UpLead, ContactOut, FullEnrich and others), so this rests on about 21 independent opinions, most of them brief.
Users like
- Budget friendly, with free credits that make it easy to start and combine with Apollo[1][2][3]
- Some users find its emails and numbers more accurate than Apollo's or ZoomInfo's, though it returns fewer results[1][2][3][4]
- Phone numbers, including mobiles, work fairly well for some teams despite occasional misses[1][2]
- Useful as one of two sources: users pair it with Apollo, and one found it surfaced far more decision makers than Apollo for the same companies[1][2][3]
Users complain about
- Accuracy is unreliable for some: users report about 50/50 accuracy, invalid numbers that hurt domains, and one domain owner traced made-up email addresses sent to his company back to Lusha[1][2][3][4]
- Falls short against premium providers: it lost to ZoomInfo and Cognism in US and EMEA tests and was not enough for Fortune 500 IT prospecting[1][2][3]
- Filtering and user experience are weak, and one user calls the UX horrible enough to make it 2 to 3 times more expensive in practice[1]
- Credit terms frustrate users: no refunds for bad data, CRM saving gated on the first paid tier, and a search limit that appeared without notice[1][2]