Hunter

Name: Hunter
Brand: Hunter
Price: 05049 USD

The email finder that charges nothing when it finds nothing

Hunter is a B2B email finding, verification, and outreach platform that indexes email addresses published on the open web, lets you search them by company domain or by a person's name, verifies deliverability before you send, and now bundles a cold email sending tool; credits are consumed only when a search returns a result, and the product is entirely self-serve from a free 50-credit tier.

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Overview

Hunter is the oldest well-known name in this category and, unusually for the category, still an independent bootstrapped company. Antoine Finkelstein and Francois Grante launched it as Email Hunter in 2015 on a simple premise: a very large number of professional email addresses are published somewhere on the public internet, on team pages, in press releases, in conference programmes, in code repositories, and if you index those and learn the pattern each company uses, you can answer the question 'what is this person's work email' most of the time without buying a scraped contact database.

That sourcing decision still defines the product a decade later. Hunter does not sell you a list of people. You bring a domain or a name, and Hunter tells you what it knows, along with a confidence score and, on the domain search, the actual public sources where the address was seen. That provenance trail is close to unique in this market and it is the single most useful thing about the product when someone asks where the data came from, because Hunter can point at a URL rather than at a vendor agreement.

The company has since widened out from a lookup tool into what it calls an all-in-one outreach platform: leads lists, Campaigns for cold email sending, an AI assistant that drafts sequences, and a Discover company search that finds accounts matching a description. There is also a separately priced Data Platform for API-heavy buyers who want search and verification credits without the outreach layer. Hunter reports more than seven million user accounts and 81 million websites indexed, with Semrush, Vimeo, Cisco, and Canva among cited customers.

For a small business the economics are straightforward and free of the usual traps. The Free tier gives 50 credits a month, Starter is 49 euros a month for 2,000 credits, Growth is 149 euros for 10,000, and Scale is 299 euros for 25,000, with roughly 30 percent off for annual billing. Team members are unlimited on every plan, which quietly removes the per-seat tax that makes Lusha or RocketReach expensive for a five-person team. The hard limitation is equally clear: Hunter does not sell phone numbers at all.

Best for

Small teams and solo founders who need reliable work email addresses for named people at named companies, want to see where each address came from, and would rather pay a flat monthly fee with unlimited seats than a per-seat contact database subscription.

Not the right fit for

Anyone who needs mobile phone numbers; Hunter does not sell them in any tier, at any price, and no amount of upgrading changes that.
Teams that want to build a prospect list from filters rather than from a list of companies they already have; Hunter's Discover is thin next to Apollo's search and it is not a people database.
Buyers targeting industries where nobody publishes contact details on the open web, such as much of manufacturing, trades, and local services; Hunter's coverage tracks the web's coverage.
Teams that need consumer or personal email addresses; Hunter is deliberately work-email only.
Organisations that want a single vendor covering intent data, technographics, org charts, and dialler workflow; Hunter is a narrow tool that has grown a sending layer, not a revenue platform.

How it works

1
The starting point is usually Domain Search. You give Hunter a company domain and it returns the email addresses it has indexed for that company, each with a confidence score, a job title where known, and the public web sources where the address appeared. It also infers the company's email pattern, which is what makes the next step work.
2
Email Finder takes a person's name plus a company domain or name and returns the single most likely address, combining the inferred pattern with any directly observed address. If Hunter cannot produce a result, no credit is charged, which is the behaviour that quietly determines your real cost per contact.
3
Email Verifier runs a multi-step deliverability check: format, domain and MX records, disposable and role-address detection, and an SMTP-level check where the receiving server allows it. Catch-all domains are flagged as accept-all rather than being passed off as valid, which is the honest answer and also the annoying one.
4
From there the platform side takes over. Leads lists hold what you found with custom attributes, Discover finds companies matching a description, and Campaigns sends the cold email sequence from your own connected mailbox with follow-ups, tracking, and unsubscribe handling. The AI assistant drafts sequences and suggests search angles, metered separately per plan.
5
Developers skip the interface. The v2 API exposes Domain Search, Email Finder, Email Verifier, Email Count, Discover, and email, company, and combined enrichment endpoints, with published per-second and per-minute rate limits, plus a set of free management endpoints for leads, lists, and campaigns.

Feature breakdown

27 features in 5 modules

Finding email addresses

The original product, and still the reason people pay.

Domain Search: Enter a company domain and get back every email address Hunter has indexed for it, with names, job titles, department and seniority filters, and confidence scores.
Public source citations: Each indexed address lists the public URLs where it was found and the date it was last seen there, so you can answer a provenance question with evidence rather than with a vendor's assurance.
Email Finder: Give a full name plus a company domain or company name and Hunter returns the single most likely address, blending directly observed data with the company's inferred email pattern.
Email pattern detection: Hunter infers the naming convention a company uses, for example first.last or first initial plus last, which is what allows it to answer for people it has never directly seen.
Bulk finder: Upload a CSV of names and domains and get results back as a downloadable file, with the same no-result-no-charge rule as single lookups.
Chrome and Firefox extension: Look up the company you are browsing, or find a person's email from their profile, without leaving the tab.

Verification and list hygiene

Deliverability checks that are honest about what they cannot know.

Multi-step Email Verifier: Checks syntax, domain and MX records, disposable providers, role addresses such as info@ and sales@, and performs an SMTP-level check where the receiving server permits it.
Accept-all flagging: Catch-all domains are returned as accept-all rather than as valid, which is the correct answer and the reason Hunter's headline valid rate looks lower than vendors that guess.
Bulk verification: Verify an uploaded list in one job; verification credits are counted separately from search credits, and the Data Platform sells them in very large blocks.
Confidence scoring: Every result carries a numeric score derived from the number and recency of the sources supporting it, which is a better filter than a binary valid flag.
Duplicate suppression within a period: Repeating the same search or verification inside a billing period is counted once, so re-running a workflow does not double-charge you.

Lead management and outreach

The platform layer Hunter grew after 2020.

Leads lists with custom attributes: Save found contacts into lists with your own fields; capacity runs from 100,000 saved leads on Free to 30 million on Scale.
Campaigns: Cold email sequences sent from your own connected mailboxes with follow-ups, open and reply tracking, and unsubscribe handling, included in the plan price rather than sold separately.
Connected email accounts: One mailbox on Free, three on Starter, ten on Growth, twenty on Scale, which is the practical ceiling on sending volume per plan.
AI assistant: Drafts sequences and suggests search angles, metered per plan as AI searches and suggestions rather than sold as an unlimited feature.
Discover company search: Find companies matching a plain-language description or firmographic filters, then run Domain Search against the results.
Unlimited team members: Every plan including Free allows unlimited users sharing one credit pool, which is the pricing decision that most separates Hunter from per-seat vendors.

API and integrations

A well documented API with published limits, which is rarer than it should be.

Documented rate limits: Domain Search, Email Finder, and the enrichment endpoints run at 15 requests per second and 500 per minute; Email Verifier at 10 per second and 300 per minute; Discover at 5 per second and 50 per minute.
Enrichment endpoints: Email enrichment, company enrichment, and a combined endpoint return firmographic and person attributes from an address or a domain.
Free management endpoints: Leads, lists, tags, custom attributes, campaigns, and account endpoints do not consume credits at all.
Data Platform credit packs: A separate purchase path for API-first buyers who want large search and verification credit blocks without the outreach features, quoted per volume.
Native CRM and workflow connectors: HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Google Sheets, Zapier, and Make, plus availability as a provider inside Clay and other waterfall tools.

Cost control and compliance

The mechanics that determine what you actually pay and what you can defend.

No charge on a failed search: Email Finder and Domain Search consume a credit only when a result is returned, which makes the advertised per-credit price close to a true per-found-email price.
Twelve-month credit validity: Purchased credits remain usable for up to twelve months, so an annual plan behaves like a pool rather than a use-it-or-lose-it monthly allowance.
Public-web sourcing statement: Hunter states that addresses come from emails published on the public web and exposes the sources per result, which is a materially stronger position for a GDPR question than an undisclosed aggregation chain.
Claim and opt-out flow: Individuals can claim or request removal of their address through Hunter's own form, and removals propagate to search results.
GDPR posture: Hunter publishes a GDPR page, offers a data processing agreement, and employs a dedicated privacy function; it does not claim to be a controller of a purchased contact database because it does not operate one.

Use cases

4 documented

Founder doing the first hundred cold emails personally

A list of 120 target companies exists in a spreadsheet, the right person at each is identifiable on LinkedIn, and there is no budget for a data platform.

Starter at 49 euros gives 2,000 credits, Email Finder resolves the names against domains, the Verifier clears the list before sending, and Campaigns sends the sequence from the founder's own mailbox without a second subscription.

Recruiter sourcing from company team pages

Target companies are known, engineers are named on the site, and the recruiter needs to reach them without a LinkedIn InMail budget.

Domain Search returns the engineering team with source URLs, confidence scores filter out the guesses, and the leads list carries custom attributes for the role being sourced.

Agency answering a client's data provenance question

A client's legal team asks where the contact data in a campaign came from before approving the send.

Hunter's per-result source citations produce actual URLs and dates for each address, which is a defensible answer, unlike a general statement that a vendor aggregates from public and licensed sources.

Developer wiring enrichment into an internal tool

A signup form captures a work email and the product needs the company and role attached before routing the lead.

The combined enrichment endpoint returns person and company attributes at 15 requests per second, the management endpoints are free, and the Data Platform sells verification credits in the volume the workload needs.

Pricing

from 0 euros (Free, 50 credits per month), then 49 euros per month (Starter)

Freemium monthly or annual subscription priced in euros by credit allowance, with unlimited team members on every plan and a separately quoted Data Platform for API-heavy buyers.

Plan	Price	Includes
Free	0 euros per month	50 credits per month 1 connected email account 100,000 saved leads Unlimited team members Full API access at the same rate limits Genuinely usable for a founder testing a hundred-company list over two months.
Starter	49 euros per month (34 euros on annual billing)	2,000 credits per month 3 connected email accounts 2 million saved leads 50 AI searches and 150 AI suggestions Unlimited team members The tier most small businesses should start on; annual billing takes it to 408 euros a year.
Growth	149 euros per month (104 euros on annual billing)	10,000 credits per month 10 connected email accounts 10 million saved leads 150 AI searches and 450 AI suggestions Unlimited team members
Scale	299 euros per month (209 euros on annual billing)	25,000 credits per month 20 connected email accounts 30 million saved leads 300 AI searches and 900 AI suggestions Unlimited team members
Enterprise	Custom annual	Custom credit volume Custom connected accounts and lead capacity Priority support

Add-ons

Data Platform credit packs (Quoted by volume): Search and verification credits sold separately from the outreach platform; a published sample quotes 1,000 search credits plus 200,000 verification credits at 6,500 dollars.

Billing notes

Annual billing cuts roughly 30 percent off the monthly rate: Starter drops from 49 to 34 euros a month, Growth from 149 to 104, Scale from 299 to 209. The advertised headline number does not require an annual commitment, unlike ContactOut or RocketReach, where the small number is the annual price.
Credits remain usable for up to twelve months from purchase rather than expiring at the end of each month, so an annual plan is a pool you can spend unevenly.
A search that returns no result costs nothing, and repeating the same search or verification inside a billing period counts once, which means the advertised per-credit price is close to the true cost per found email.
Team members are unlimited on every tier and share one credit pool, so a five-person team on Starter pays 49 euros total rather than 49 per seat.
Prices are quoted in euros and Hunter is VAT-registered in the EU; a valid VAT number reverse-charges the tax for EU business buyers.

Value assessment: At Growth, 10,000 credits for 149 euros works out at roughly 0.015 euros per found email, and because failed searches are free that number holds in practice rather than in theory. At Starter, 2,000 credits for 49 euros is about 0.025 euros each. Both are competitive with Anymail Finder and cheaper than credit-metered platforms once you account for unlimited seats and the bundled sending tool, which alone would cost 30 to 50 dollars a month elsewhere. The catch is scope: there are no phone numbers, so a team that needs to call as well as email is buying a second tool regardless, and at that point the bundled Campaigns feature is less of a saving than it looks.

Strengths & limitations

Strengths

Credits are only consumed on results, so the advertised price is close to the real cost per found email rather than a ceiling you never reach.
Per-result public source citations are close to unique in this category and are the strongest available answer to a provenance or GDPR question.
Unlimited team members on every plan, including Free, removes the per-seat tax that makes comparable tools expensive for small teams.
The API is properly documented with published per-second and per-minute limits, free management endpoints, and stable behaviour, which is why Hunter appears as a provider inside so many waterfall tools.
Bootstrapped, independent, and profitable-looking after a decade, with no acquisition or private equity ownership to change the terms underneath you.
The bundled Campaigns sending layer means a small team can run cold outreach end to end on one 49 euro subscription.
Verification is honest about accept-all domains rather than reporting them as valid to flatter the headline number.

Limitations

No phone numbers at all, in any tier, which rules Hunter out entirely for teams that cold call.
Coverage is a function of what companies publish on the open web, so it is strong for tech, agencies, media, and education and noticeably weaker for manufacturing, trades, healthcare, and privately held mid-market firms.
It is not a prospecting database: Discover finds companies, but you cannot filter a hundred million people by title and seniority the way you can in Apollo or UpLead.
Confidence scores and pattern inference mean some returned addresses are educated guesses; the pattern is usually right but the individual result can be wrong, and a wrong result still consumed a credit.
The AI assistant is metered in small allowances that run out quickly, which makes it feel like a demo rather than a feature.
The Data Platform pricing path is quoted rather than published, so the API-heavy option loses the transparency the main product is known for.
Campaigns is a competent basic sequencer, not a match for a dedicated cold email platform on deliverability tooling, inbox rotation, or warmup.

Head-to-head comparisons

6 alternatives

Hunter vs Anymail Finder

from $29 per month (Starter, 400 credits)

The two products solve the same problem with almost the same billing philosophy, both charging only for verified finds. Anymail Finder is cheaper per credit at every volume, rolls credits over indefinitely while you stay subscribed, and publishes a 97 percent delivery guarantee. Hunter gives you source citations, a bundled sending tool, and a real API ecosystem. Pick Anymail Finder if finding emails is the whole job and price per credit is the metric; pick Hunter if you want the provenance trail and a platform around the lookup.

Full Hunter vs Anymail Finder comparison

Hunter vs Dropcontact

from 79 euros per month (Starter)

Both refuse to sell you a scraped contact database, but for different reasons: Hunter indexes what companies publish, Dropcontact generates and tests addresses algorithmically on EU servers and stores nothing. Dropcontact is the stronger answer for a French or EU buyer with a CNIL-shaped compliance question and for CRM hygiene work. Hunter is cheaper at entry, better documented, better covered outside France, and includes sending. EU-first compliance goes to Dropcontact; everything else goes to Hunter.

Full Hunter vs Dropcontact comparison

Hunter vs Icypeas

from $19 per month (Basic, 1,000 credits)

Icypeas is dramatically cheaper per credit, at 19 dollars for 1,000 and 89 dollars for 10,000 against Hunter's 49 and 149 euros, with credits that never expire. Hunter has a decade of index depth, source citations, an outreach layer, and a support organisation. Take Icypeas if you are volume-sensitive and comfortable with a seven-person vendor; take Hunter if you need the provenance trail, the integrations, or a company that will still be there in three years.

Full Hunter vs Icypeas comparison

Hunter vs RocketReach

from $329 per seat per year (Essentials, about $27 a month), or $49 a month billed monthly

RocketReach sells a 700 million profile database with mobile numbers on Pro and above; Hunter sells lookups against the public web with no phones at all. RocketReach's advertised prices assume an annual commitment and it charges per seat, so a three-person team pays three times. Choose RocketReach when you need phone numbers and people search; choose Hunter when work email is the deliverable and you want unlimited seats on a monthly plan.

Full Hunter vs RocketReach comparison

Hunter vs Findymail

from $49/mo (Basic, 1,000 finder + 1,000 verifier credits)

Findymail is built for the cold email crowd, with verified-only billing, strong Sales Navigator and Apollo list extraction, and native sequencer integrations. Hunter is broader, older, and better for domain-first research where you do not already have a LinkedIn list. If your workflow starts in Sales Navigator, Findymail fits better; if it starts with a list of company domains, Hunter does.

Full Hunter vs Findymail comparison

Hunter vs Prospeo

from $0 (Free, 100 credits/mo); paid from $37/mo per user billed yearly

Prospeo is cheaper and includes mobile number lookups, which Hunter simply does not offer, and its LinkedIn and Sales Navigator extraction is stronger. Hunter wins on the API, the source citations, unlimited seats, and the bundled outreach layer. A team that needs phones alongside email should not be choosing Hunter at all.

Full Hunter vs Prospeo comparison

Implementation & onboarding

Setup time: Under ten minutes for the lookup product: create an account, run a domain search, install the extension. Campaigns takes another twenty to thirty minutes because you have to connect and authenticate a sending mailbox and set up tracking and unsubscribe handling.
Learning curve: Very low. Domain Search and Email Finder are self-explanatory, and the only concept that needs learning is the difference between a valid result, an accept-all result, and a pattern-inferred guess. Teams that ignore the confidence score and treat every result as verified are the ones who complain about bounces.
Onboarding: Entirely self-serve on every published tier. There is a help centre, an API reference with worked examples, and email support; no implementation call is offered or needed below Enterprise.
Migration notes: Nothing to migrate on the way in beyond a CSV of domains. On the way out, leads and lists export cleanly to CSV and the free management endpoints let you pull everything through the API without spending credits, which is a materially friendlier exit than vendors that gate export behind a plan tier.

Platform, API & security

Platforms: Web applicationChrome extensionFirefox extensionGoogle Sheets add-onREST API v2
API: Documented v2 REST API covering Domain Search, Email Finder, Email Verifier, Email Count, Discover, and email, company, and combined enrichment. Published limits are 15 requests per second and 500 per minute on search, finder, and enrichment; 10 per second and 300 per minute on verification; 5 per second and 50 per minute on Discover. Lead, list, tag, campaign, and account management endpoints are free and do not consume credits.
Compliance: GDPR with a data processing agreementCCPAPublished individual claim and removal process
Data residency: No customer-selectable regional hosting is advertised; Hunter is a US-incorporated company operating a remote team across Europe, America, and Asia.
SSO: Google sign-in on all tiers; SAML single sign-on is not advertised outside Enterprise arrangements.
Security notes: Addresses are described as sourced from emails published on the public web, with the supporting source URLs exposed per result. Individuals can claim or request deletion of their address directly. Hunter maintains a dedicated privacy function and publishes its GDPR position rather than deferring to a generic vendor statement.

Support & resources

Channels: Email supportIn-app chatPriority support on Enterprise
Documentation: Help centre plus a detailed API reference at hunter.io/api-documentation with per-endpoint rate limits, credit behaviour, and language examples.
Community: No formal user forum, but a long-running content operation on cold email and deliverability, and heavy third-party coverage given the product's age.

Company

Founded: 2015
Headquarters: Wilmington, Delaware, United States (fully remote team across Europe, America, and Asia)
Ownership: Bootstrapped and independent
Founders: Antoine Finkelstein, Francois Grante
Employees: Roughly 38 (2026)
Funding: No outside funding raised; the company has been bootstrapped since launch and has not been acquired.

Timeline

2015Founded by Antoine Finkelstein and Francois Grante as Email Hunter, indexing email addresses published on the public web.
2016Rebrands to Hunter and grows through the individual professional and small business channel rather than enterprise sales, staying bootstrapped.
2019Ships the v2 API with documented rate limits and enrichment endpoints, becoming a standard provider inside third-party enrichment stacks.
2021Launches Campaigns, adding cold email sending from connected mailboxes and turning a lookup tool into an outreach platform.
2023Adds Discover company search and lead management with custom attributes, plus AI assistance for sequence drafting.
2025Separates a Data Platform purchase path for API-heavy buyers who want search and verification credits without the outreach layer.
2026Reports over seven million user accounts and 81 million websites indexed, with roughly 38 staff and no outside funding.

Integrations

HubSpot
Salesforce
Pipedrive
Google Sheets
Zapier
Make
Clay (as a waterfall provider)
Chrome and Firefox extensions
Gmail and Outlook mailbox connection for Campaigns
REST API v2 for custom integration

Frequently asked questions

10 questions

What is Hunter and what does it actually do?

Hunter finds and verifies work email addresses. You give it a company domain or a person's name plus a company, and it returns the addresses it has indexed from the public web along with a confidence score and the source URLs where each address was seen. It also verifies deliverability and, since 2021, sends cold email sequences from your own mailbox.

How much does Hunter cost?

The free tier gives 50 credits a month with unlimited team members. Starter is 49 euros a month for 2,000 credits, Growth is 149 euros for 10,000, and Scale is 299 euros for 25,000. Annual billing cuts about 30 percent, taking Starter to 34 euros a month. Enterprise is quoted. Unlike several competitors, the monthly price is the advertised price and does not require an annual commitment.

Does a failed search consume a credit?

No. Hunter charges a credit only when Email Finder or Domain Search returns at least one result, and repeating the same search inside a billing period counts once. That is the single most consequential billing difference between vendors in this category, and Hunter is on the right side of it. It means 10,000 credits on Growth is roughly 10,000 found emails, not 10,000 attempts.

Does Hunter provide phone numbers?

No, and this is the hard limit of the product. Hunter sells work email addresses and company data only. There are no mobile numbers, no direct dials, and no phone credit type on any plan. Teams that need to call should look at Datagma, Prospeo, FullEnrich, or ContactOut, all of which sell phone data as a separate and much more expensive credit type.

Where does Hunter's data come from?

Hunter indexes email addresses published on the public web: team pages, press releases, conference listings, code repositories, and similar sources. It then infers each company's email naming pattern to answer for people it has not directly observed. Crucially, Domain Search shows the actual source URLs and last-seen dates for each address, so you can answer a provenance question with evidence rather than with a vendor assurance.

Is Hunter GDPR compliant for contacting people in Europe?

Hunter publishes a GDPR position, offers a data processing agreement, and provides a direct claim and removal route for individuals, with removals propagating to search results. Because it indexes published addresses rather than operating a purchased contact database, its exposure is narrower than an aggregator's. That said, GDPR compliance for cold outreach rests on your legitimate interest assessment and your handling of objections, not on your vendor's certification, and Hunter cannot carry that for you.

What are the Hunter API rate limits?

Domain Search, Email Finder, and the enrichment endpoints run at 15 requests per second and 500 per minute. Email Verifier is 10 per second and 300 per minute. Discover is 5 per second and 50 per minute. Lead, list, tag, campaign, and account management endpoints are free and do not consume credits at all. API access is available on every tier including Free.

Do Hunter credits roll over or expire?

Credits remain usable for up to twelve months from purchase rather than resetting to zero each month, so an annual plan behaves like a pool you can spend unevenly. This is more generous than the standard monthly reset used by most credit vendors, though less generous than Icypeas, whose credits never expire, or Anymail Finder, which rolls over with no cap while you stay subscribed.

How many seats does a Hunter plan include?

Unlimited, on every plan including Free. All users share one credit pool. For a five-person team this is worth more than the headline price suggests: RocketReach and ContactOut charge per seat, so the same team pays five times there and once here.

Is Hunter a prospecting database like Apollo?

No. Hunter answers questions about companies and people you already know about. Discover will find companies matching a description, but you cannot filter a hundred million people by title, seniority, headcount, and technology the way you can in Apollo, UpLead, or Lusha. If your problem is 'who should I contact', Hunter is the wrong tool; if it is 'what is this person's email', it is one of the best.

Editorial verdict

Hunter is the safest choice in this category for a small business that needs work email addresses and nothing else. Credits are charged only on results, seats are unlimited, credits last a year, the API is properly documented, and every address comes with the public URLs it was found at, which is the best answer anyone in this market gives to the provenance question. A decade of bootstrapped independence means the terms are unlikely to change underneath you. Buy it if your workflow starts with a list of companies and ends with a sent email. Do not buy it if you need phone numbers, because there are none at any price, or if you need to discover who to contact rather than how to reach them, because that is Apollo's job and not Hunter's.

Written by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Awards, when shown, are judged against the published criteria in our methodology.