ContactOut vs SalesQL
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Editorial assessmentSalesQL compared with ContactOut
ContactOut is the incumbent in the recruiter niche SalesQL targets, with deeper personal email coverage and a large candidate-side database, but it charges per seat, its advertised prices assume an annual commitment, and it declines to state whether a failed lookup consumes a credit. SalesQL is cheaper, includes seats, and publishes the rule ContactOut will not. ContactOut wins on coverage depth; SalesQL wins on economics and disclosure.
Choose ContactOut if
Recruiters and talent sourcing teams who work inside LinkedIn all day, need personal email addresses and mobile numbers to reach passive candidates, and value SOC 2 certification and ATS integration enough to accept per-seat annual pricing.
Choose SalesQL if
Salespeople and recruiters who prospect inside LinkedIn across profiles, Sales Navigator, and Recruiter, who need personal email addresses and mobile numbers alongside work emails, and who want a single credit pool with an explicit no-match-no-charge rule.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | ContactOut | SalesQL |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Data | Data |
| Starting price | $0 (Free), then about $99 per month per seat on annual billing (email plan) (free plan available) | $0 (Free, 50 credits), then $39 per month (Basic) (free plan available) |
| Pricing model | Per-seat subscription across published tiers with separate email and phone credit pools, separate export quotas, monthly fair-use caps set in the terms of use, and advertised prices that assume annual billing. | Freemium subscription priced by monthly credits drawn from a single pool covering emails and phone numbers alike, with included seats, a separate verification allowance, and roughly 25 percent off for annual billing. |
| Free plan | Five emails, five phone numbers, and five exports per day at no cost. | 50 credits and 100 email verifier credits per month for one user, limited to three folders, with email addresses only and no phone numbers, no CSV enrichment, and no API. |
| Free trial | The free plan serves as the evaluation path rather than a time-limited trial | No time-limited trial; the permanent free tier is the evaluation path |
| Best for | Recruiters and talent sourcing teams who work inside LinkedIn all day, need personal email addresses and mobile numbers to reach passive candidates, and value SOC 2 certification and ATS integration enough to accept per-seat annual pricing. | Salespeople and recruiters who prospect inside LinkedIn across profiles, Sales Navigator, and Recruiter, who need personal email addresses and mobile numbers alongside work emails, and who want a single credit pool with an explicit no-match-no-charge rule. |
| Setup time | Ten minutes: install the extension, sign in, open a LinkedIn profile. ATS or CRM integration takes an hour or two and is where the value of the paid tiers actually lands. | Under ten minutes. Install the Chrome extension, sign in, open a LinkedIn profile. CRM connection adds fifteen minutes; API integration is a day or two depending on scope. |
| Learning curve | Low on the extension, but the metering deserves an hour of attention before anyone starts working. Teams that do not understand that exports are a separate and much smaller quota than lookups will hit a wall in the first fortnight and conclude the product is broken. | Very low, and lower than most competitors because there is only one credit type to understand. The one thing to internalise is that the free tier will not return phone numbers, so a free evaluation does not test the capability most buyers care about. |
| Platforms | Chrome extension, Web search portal, Gmail integration, ContactSheets bulk enrichment, REST API on the Team tier | Chrome extension, Web application, REST API, MCP server |
| Compliance | SOC 2 certified, GDPR with opt-out and suppression support, CCPA | GDPR and CCPA referenced in the vendor's policies |
| Founded | 2015 | 2018 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States | Not publicly disclosed; the Chrome Web Store publisher is registered as SalesQL Ltd |
| Ownership | Privately held, lightly funded | Privately held and independent |
Strengths and limitations
ContactOut
Strengths
- Personal email coverage at roughly 150 million addresses is the standout asset and the reason recruiters choose it over sales-oriented vendors.
- Separate email and phone credit pools are more flexible than a single shared allowance, since running out of one does not block the other.
- SOC 2 certification, which no other vendor in this batch publishes, is frequently the deciding factor in a corporate security review.
- GDPR and CCPA compliance with opt-out and suppression support means objections can be applied as a list rather than handled record by record.
Limitations
- Three separate meters, lookups, phone credits, and exports, with only one of them prominent on the pricing page; the export quota is usually the binding limit and it is much smaller than buyers expect.
- The terms of use cap fair use at 2,000 email and 1,000 phone credits per account per month unless separately agreed, which is a real ceiling on any high-volume plan.
- Advertised prices assume annual billing, so monthly buyers pay a premium the pricing page does not lead with.
- Per-seat licensing makes it expensive for teams, at several times the cost of unlimited-seat vendors for the same volume.
SalesQL
Strengths
- An explicit written rule that a non-match costs nothing, applied to the API as well as the interface, which is the most important disclosure a vendor in this category can make.
- A single credit pool covering work email, personal email, and mobile numbers, which is far simpler and usually cheaper than the multi-meter models used by Kaspr and Tomba.
- Coverage of all four LinkedIn surfaces including Recruiter and Recruiter Professional Services, which most competing extensions do not handle.
- Personal email addresses alongside work ones, which Skrapp, GetProspect, and Hunter do not sell at all and which recruiting workflows depend on.
Limitations
- Entirely dependent on LinkedIn: there is no meaningful standalone database to search, so the product is only as available as your LinkedIn account is.
- The free tier excludes phone numbers, so the capability most buyers want to evaluate is precisely the one the free plan will not let them test.
- No API on Free or Basic, so developer evaluation starts at 79 dollars a month.
- The promised email sequencing feature is announced rather than shipped, and buying on the expectation of it is buying a roadmap.
Pricing compared
ContactOut
Per-seat subscription across published tiers with separate email and phone credit pools, separate export quotas, monthly fair-use caps set in the terms of use, and advertised prices that assume annual billing.
- Free$0
- EmailAbout $99
- Email plus PhoneAbout $199
- Team and APIQuoted
At the email plus phone tier, roughly 199 dollars a month per seat against 600 exports gives an effective cost near 33 cents per exported contact, and considerably more if you never approach the quota. That is an order of magnitude above Hunter, Anymail Finder, or Icypeas. The premium buys three things those vendors cannot supply: personal email addresses at scale, direct dial numbers, and a SOC 2 certification that lets a security team say yes. For a full-time recruiter whose placements depend on reaching passive candidates, the arithmetic works easily. For a sales team enriching known accounts, it does not, and the per-seat structure plus the export quota make it worse as the team grows.
SalesQL
Freemium subscription priced by monthly credits drawn from a single pool covering emails and phone numbers alike, with included seats, a separate verification allowance, and roughly 25 percent off for annual billing.
- Free$0
- Basic$39
- Professional$79
- Organization$119
SalesQL is priced very well for what it does, and the single credit pool is why. At 1,000 lookups a month, Basic's 2,000 credits for 39 dollars is 0.0195 dollars per contact whether that contact is an email or a mobile number, and because misses are free that is a real figure. Compare it to a mobile number bought on Kaspr Business at roughly 0.40 euros or on Tomba at five credits, about 0.0445 dollars, and SalesQL is dramatically cheaper for phone-heavy work. At 10,000 a month, Organization's 12,000 credits for 119 dollars is roughly 0.0099 per contact, which is close to the cheapest credible per-mobile price published anywhere self-serve, and it comes with fifteen seats. The caveat is coverage rather than price: a cheap credit is only cheap if it matches, and SalesQL publishes no match-rate commitment, so a low unit price with poor hit rates on your particular segment is a worse deal than it looks. Test the free tier against your own list, remembering that the free tier withholds the phone numbers you most want to test.
Editorial verdict on each
ContactOut
ContactOut is a recruiting tool that happens to sell contact data, and it should be judged on that basis. Personal emails at scale, direct dials in a separate credit pool, an extension that works everywhere a sourcer works, campaigns and a dialler included, ATS and Recruiter Pro compatibility, and a SOC 2 certification no other vendor here publishes make it a straightforward purchase for a full-time sourcing desk. The pricing is where care is required: three separate meters, an export quota far smaller than the lookup allowance, a fair-use ceiling buried in the terms of use, advertised prices that assume an annual commitment, and per-seat licensing that compounds with every hire. Buy it for recruiting, buy the phone tier because the email tier misses the point, and read the quota clauses before you sign. For sales teams enriching known accounts, this is several times the market rate for capabilities you will not use.
Read the full ContactOut profileSalesQL
SalesQL is the best-structured LinkedIn extraction tool in this batch, and the reason is two decisions rather than any single feature. One credit buys any data type, so a phone-heavy month costs the same as an email-heavy one, and misses cost nothing, which SalesQL states in writing where five of the biggest names in this category will not. Add coverage of Recruiter and RPS, personal email addresses, fifteen seats on a 119 dollar plan, and an MCP server, and the value per dollar is genuinely hard to beat, particularly for anyone who needs mobile numbers. The reservations are about disclosure rather than product. Almost nothing is published about who runs the company, where the data comes from, or what legal basis supports it, there is no match-rate commitment behind the attractive unit price, and the free tier withholds phones so you cannot test the thing you are buying. Take it if LinkedIn is already your list and you want the cheapest honest credit in the category. Do not take it if a procurement questionnaire is coming, or if you need to build lists when LinkedIn is not available.
Read the full SalesQL profileContactOut profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; SalesQL last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.