THE LUSHA ALTERNATIVE
Lusha's API Is a Premium Feature. Ours Is the Whole Product.
Lusha is a contact database built to reveal work emails and direct dials, sold by seats and credits, with API keys only available to Admins and Managers on Premium and Scale. Datamagnet is an API from the first request: POST a public LinkedIn URL, get the profile as it exists at that moment, on credits with no seats.
- Datamagnet credits on signup, no card
- 10 freeDatamagnet credits on signup, no card
- Lusha Premium — its cheapest plan that can create an API key
- $399.90/moLusha Premium — its cheapest plan that can create an API key
- Bundled into that Premium plan whether or not you need them
- 5 seatsBundled into that Premium plan whether or not you need them
Datamagnet vs Lusha: the short answer
Lusha is a seat-based B2B contact database: you reveal verified work emails and direct-dial phone numbers from stored records, through a Chrome extension, native CRM apps, or an API key that only Premium and Scale plans can create. Datamagnet is an API from the first request — POST a public LinkedIn URL and get that profile as it exists at that moment, at one credit. Choose Lusha if reps need dialable contact details inside their CRM. Choose Datamagnet if the consumer of the data is code and you need current profiles, posts, engagement and job-change signals.
Our verdict
Lusha is a good buy for a sales team and an awkward one for an engineering team. Verified emails and direct dials are the whole reason people buy it, and Datamagnet returns neither. But Lusha documents API keys as a Premium and Scale capability rather than the product itself, its credits documentation lists a one-credit minimum for an API request that returns no results, and every record is a stored one. Datamagnet inverts all three: API first, charged only on success, fetched live. If your reps need phone numbers, buy Lusha. If your pipeline needs current profile data, Datamagnet is the closer fit.
Which one should you pick?
Straight guidance, including the cases where we're the wrong answer.
Choose Datamagnet if
- The caller is your product, a pipeline or an agent, and you would rather not buy a Premium seat bundle to get an API key
- You need the profile as it is right now, not the version written to a database at last refresh
- You want post content, commenters, reactors and reposters as structured lead data
- You would rather not pay for requests that come back empty
- You work from LinkedIn and Sales Navigator URLs rather than a licensed contact list
- You want to start this afternoon on 10 free credits, with no card and no seat count to negotiate
Choose Lusha if
- Your reps need verified work emails and direct-dial phone numbers — Datamagnet returns neither
- The workflow that actually gets used is a Chrome extension revealing contact details while a rep browses; Datamagnet has no extension
- You want enrichment landing on Salesforce or HubSpot records through a native app rather than code you maintain
- Coverage is the purchase: Lusha publishes 300M+ verified contacts refreshed daily, which reaches people who never appear on public profiles
- You want buying-interest alerts, technology-change tracking or company-level website visitor identification on your account lists, none of which we track
- Conversation intelligence on sales calls matters to you — Lusha acquired Novacy in January 2025 for that, and we do not enter the category
- You want the sequence sent from the same tool that revealed the contact: Lusha Engage does email outreach, and Datamagnet has no sending layer
Datamagnet vs Lusha, feature by feature
What each tool actually returns, how fresh it is, and what it costs to run.
Data & API coverage
| Feature | Datamagnet | Lusha |
|---|---|---|
| Data collected at the moment of request | Yes | Database records |
| API on the entry-level paid plan | Yes | Premium & Scale only |
| Per-seat pricing | None | 1–5 seats by plan, expandable |
| Person & company enrichment | From LinkedIn URL, live | From stored contact & company records |
| Post content, stats & engagement (commenters, reactors, reposters) | Yes | No |
| Sales Navigator URL search | Yes | No |
| ICP / people search | 25/page live, 50/page database | Prospecting API |
| Job-change & engagement signals | 6 signal types | Job change, hiring, funding, growth |
| Signal delivery | Webhook (optional HMAC) or email digest | Signals API, plus weekly alert summaries |
| Verified work email addresses | No | Yes |
| Direct-dial phone numbers | No | Yes |
| Chrome extension | No | Yes |
| Native Salesforce & HubSpot apps | No | Yes |
| Email sequencing & outreach | No | Lusha Engage |
| Website visitor identification | No | Website Visitors API |
Freshness & billing
| Feature | Datamagnet | Lusha |
|---|---|---|
| Update model | Fetched live per request | Database refreshed daily |
| Request returns nothing | No credit charged | 1-credit minimum on an API request with no results |
| Reading the same record again | 1 credit, fetched again | Revealed data points not charged twice |
| Unused credits | PAYG credits valid 12 months | Roll over up to 2× the monthly limit |
| Bulk shape | Search pages of 25 or 50 results | Up to 100 records per bulk call |
Lusha capabilities are summarized from their public documentation and pricing pages, last checked July 2026. Products change — verify against their current offering before you buy.
A reveal is not a fetch
Lusha's unit of work is a reveal. You ask for a contact and it returns what its database already holds for that person — an email, a phone number, a title — and its credits documentation lists a one-credit minimum for an API request that returns no results. Datamagnet's unit of work is a fetch. There is no row waiting. You POST a public LinkedIn URL, we read the profile at that moment, and nothing is charged if the request does not succeed.
- Find — ICP search, live people search, or a Sales Navigator search URL returns net-new matches
- Enrich — one call returns the live person or company profile at 1 credit, with funding history from the Company API
- Watch — six signal types push job changes and engagement to a webhook or an email digest
Pricing, side by side
What you pay Lusha versus what you pay us, for the same work.
Lusha
Self-serve plans priced on seats and credits together. API keys can only be created by Admins and Managers on the Premium and Scale plans.
- Free40 credits/mo
- $0
- Starter400 credits/mo · 1 seat
- $49.90/mo
- Professional600 credits/mo · 2 seats, expandable to 10
- $69.90/mo
- Premium3,400 credits/mo · 5 seats, expandable to 25 · API access
- $399.90/mo
- ScaleUnlimited seats, sales-led · API access
- Custom
Datamagnet
Credits, not seats. Charged only on successful requests, and 10 free credits to test before you pay anything.
- FreeOn signup, no card
- 10 credits
- Starter1,000 credits/mo
- $39/mo
- Pro10,000 credits/mo
- $99/mo
- Scale25,000 credits/mo · webhooks + bulk export
- $199/mo
- Pay-as-you-go200 credits $10 → 100,000 credits $2,000
- from $0.02/credit
Lusha's published annual prices are lower — $449.10, $545.22 and $3,119.21 a year for Starter, Professional and Premium. Monthly credits roll over up to twice the plan limit; annual plans get a full-year pool instead, and anything unused at the end of the term does not carry into renewal. Lusha's credits documentation also lists a one-credit minimum for an API request that returns no results. Competitor pricing is taken from their public pricing page and was last checked July 2026; list prices change and negotiated rates differ. See Datamagnet pricing for our current plans.
Where each tool genuinely wins
No tool wins everywhere. Here's the honest split.
Where Lusha wins
- Verified work emails and direct-dial phone numbers — the reason most teams buy Lusha, and Datamagnet returns neither
- A Chrome extension that reveals contact details while a rep is already browsing, which we do not build at all
- Native Salesforce and HubSpot apps that push enriched contacts onto CRM records with no code written
- A published 300M+ verified contacts refreshed daily, at 98% email accuracy and 85% US phone accuracy — coverage that reaches past what a public profile contains
- Lusha Engage sends automated email sequences from the same tool that revealed the contact, at no extra charge to any Lusha user, so prospecting and outreach never leave one screen
- Buying-interest alerts, technology-change tracking and a Website Visitors API that resolves traffic on your domain to companies — none of which we track
- Conversation intelligence on sales calls, added with the January 2025 Novacy acquisition, extending past prospecting into the deal itself
- A hosted MCP server with OAuth connections for Claude, ChatGPT and Codex, so an assistant can search and enrich against Lusha data without anyone writing API calls
- Already-revealed data points are not charged again, which is cheaper for teams that reopen the same contacts repeatedly
- A free tier of 40 credits a month and a first paid plan at $49.90, which is a low bar for a team testing contact data
Where Datamagnet wins
- The API is the product, not a top-plan capability — every paid plan calls the same core endpoints
- Every profile fetched live at request time rather than read from a stored row
- Charged only on successful requests: a call that returns nothing costs nothing
- Post content, commenters, reactors and reposters as structured data, which Lusha does not sell
- Sales Navigator search by URL, plus live ICP and people search
- Six job-change and engagement signal types delivered by webhook or email digest rather than a weekly summary
- Credits, never seats — the price does not move because more teammates or more services call the API
- 10 free credits on signup with no card, and published per-endpoint credit costs
Datamagnet vs Lusha: FAQ
Sources
Every competitor claim on this page traces back to one of these.
- 1.Lusha — Plans & Pricing (plan prices, monthly credit allowances, credit rollover) — checked July 2026
- 2.Lusha docs — All there is to know about Lusha's API (API keys on Premium and Scale, endpoints, 100-record bulk limit) — checked July 2026
- 3.Lusha docs — How credits work in Lusha (per-reveal costs, 1-credit minimum per API request, rollover rules) — checked July 2026
- 4.Lusha docs — How to upgrade your plan (seats included per plan, Scale unlimited seats) — checked July 2026
- 5.Lusha — Homepage (300M+ verified contacts refreshed daily, 98% email and 85% US phone accuracy, extension, CRM apps) — checked July 2026
- 6.Lusha — Sales alerts for buying signals (weekly alert summaries, buying-interest and technology-change tracking) — checked July 2026
- 7.Lusha — Engage (email sequencing built into the platform, included for all users) — checked July 2026
- 8.Lusha — Lusha × Clay integration (signal types: job changes, hiring, funding, company growth) — checked July 2026
- 9.Lusha — Lusha acquires Novacy (conversation intelligence, announced 21 January 2025) — checked July 2026
- 10.Lusha docs — MCP Server (OAuth clients Claude, ChatGPT and Codex; API-key clients Cursor, n8n, VS Code) — checked July 2026
- 11.Lusha docs — API changelog (Website Visitors API v2.3.0, Decision Makers API v2.4.0, Tables API v2.5.0) — checked July 2026
Try Datamagnet against Lusha on your own data
10 free credits, no credit card. Run the same lookups through both and compare the JSON yourself.
- Live data at request time
- Charged only on success
- No seats, no annual contract
Interactive Demo
~15 minutes
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1 minEnrich a test record
2 minWire into your stack
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