The short version
ContactOut is a contact finder built around a Chrome extension and a search portal, and it is popular with recruiters. It is a real product that its users rate well: 4.4 out of 5 on Capterra. Its Trustpilot score is 1.2, and most of those reviews come from people angry that their own contact details are in its database. The self-serve Email plan is $49 a month, shown as a sale price beside a struck-through $99, with unlimited emails, 300 exports a month and one user per company, so the export cap sets the real price at about 16 cents per exported contact. It fits a single recruiter or seller working profile by profile. It fits a sales team less well. We make Cleanlist, a data enrichment tool, so read this as a vendor's review. Our own plans are on the pricing page.
This is a pricing, fit and user-evidence review. We did not run a list through ContactOut for it, so there is no "our test" section and no accuracy score. Every ContactOut fact below comes from ContactOut's own pages or dated user reviews, and each one is linked where it is used.
| ContactOut in 2026 | |
|---|---|
| What it is | A contact finder: Chrome extension, search portal, email campaigns and an API |
| Best for | Recruiters and individual sellers who look people up one profile at a time |
| Self-serve plans | Email, $49 a month, and Email + Phone, $99 a month, both shown as sale prices on October 1, 2026 |
| What caps it | 300 exports a month on Email, 600 on Email + Phone. Emails are listed as "Unlimited" |
| Seats | One user per company on self-serve. Teams go to a Team or API plan priced by sales |
| Free option | 5 emails, 5 phones and 5 exports a day |
| Stated coverage | "350M professionals" on the homepage, 800M people profiles on the data page |
| User rating | 4.4 out of 5 from 15 reviews on Capterra. 1.2 out of 5 from 132 reviews on Trustpilot (read October 1, 2026) |
What ContactOut does
ContactOut finds email addresses and phone numbers for people, and it does most of that inside the browser. Its extension page promises "emails and phone numbers for 75% of people on LinkedIn" and works on company websites as well (ContactOut). Around the extension sit a search portal that searches "20+ data points," email campaigns with an AI personalizer, Gmail enrichment, a cloud phone dialer, integrations, an API and an MCP server.
ContactOut's own numbers describe a large dataset: "350M professionals" on the homepage, and on its data page "800M People Profiles, 150M Personal Emails, 200M Work Emails, 100M Direct Dials, 40M Company Profiles" (ContactOut). It says contacts are "Triple-verified with 99% Confidence," that data updates hourly, and that it is SOC 2 certified and GDPR and CCPA compliant. Those are ContactOut's claims, and it publishes no method behind the 99%.
How the data is gathered is stated plainly on the same page: "We scan the entire internet for emails and phone numbers. Our servers crawl billions of webpages daily," and AI matches what it finds to each person. That sourcing explains both the coverage and the Trustpilot page.
ContactOut's audience leans to recruiting. Its homepage says it is "Trusted by 1.4M recruiters and sales reps," and its Team plan lists Salesforce and ATS integrations.
What ContactOut costs, and what the export caps mean
ContactOut's pricing page draws its plan cards in the browser from plan data the page serves. Prices checked October 1, 2026, from that data (US pricing, monthly billing) (ContactOut):
| Plan | Price | What it includes |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 5 emails, 5 phones and 5 exports a day |
| $49 a month ($39 a month billed annually) | Unlimited emails, 300 exports a month, email campaigns, list builder, 1 user per company | |
| Email + Phone | $99 a month ($79 a month billed annually) | Unlimited emails and phones, 600 exports a month, data enrichment, 1 user per company |
| Team / API | Contact sales | Team plan, API access, Salesforce and ATS integrations |
Each paid price sits beside a struck-through higher one: $99 for Email and $199 for Email + Phone on monthly billing. Our September 1, 2026 read recorded these as limited-time sale prices, and the page gives no end date, so check the price on the day you buy. Unlimited emails and phones are subject to ContactOut's fair use policy.
The word that matters is export. Emails are listed as unlimited, and exports are capped. Taking contacts out of ContactOut, for example to a CSV file or a CRM, is what the cap meters. So the Email plan's real unit is 300 exported contacts a month, about 10 a day. At $49, that is about $0.16 per exported contact, or $163.33 per 1,000. Email + Phone works out the same per export: $99 for 600, about $0.165 each.
Three consequences for buyers:
- Volume work does not fit. A list of 2,000 prospects is more than six months of Email-plan exports, or more than three on Email + Phone.
- Teams cannot stack self-serve plans. The self-serve plan is limited to one user per company, so a team is a sales conversation.
- The free tier is a trial in practice. Five exports a day suits testing. One Capterra reviewer said it plainly, and that review is quoted below.
What users say about ContactOut
Two review sites tell two different stories, because two different groups are writing.
Users rate it well. Capterra shows 4.4 out of 5 from 15 reviews, with 4.5 for ease of use and 3.8 for customer service (Capterra).
"Verified emails that actually land, a Chrome extension that takes two seconds to use" (Membership manager, investment management, 5 stars, April 10, 2026)
"The free tier is pretty limited so you'll hit the ceiling fast if you're prospecting regularly" (Same review, April 10, 2026)
"The leads I get are often not as accurate" (3 stars, July 27, 2022)
People in the data rate it badly. Trustpilot shows 1.2 out of 5 from 132 reviews, 88% of them one star, and notes that ContactOut "Hasn't replied to negative reviews" (Trustpilot). Most of the recent one-star reviews are from people who found their own details on ContactOut:
"They put my personal data online without my consent!!" (1 star, April 29, 2026)
"ContactOut got hold of my data somewhere and made it publicly available." (1 star, February 2, 2026)
A few are from customers. One wrote: "Every time I connect my email to contactout for outreach, my emails get labeled as spam after a while" (1 star, March 10, 2026).
Where ContactOut is strong
- Speed on a single profile. A Capterra reviewer calls it "a Chrome extension that takes two seconds to use" (April 10, 2026).
- Personal emails and phones. ContactOut sells personal emails alongside work emails, which recruiters value for reaching candidates.
- Unlimited email lookups. Emails are listed as unlimited, and the plan is metered on exports.
- A clear free tier. Five emails, five phones and five exports a day.
Where ContactOut falls short
- The export cap. 300 exports a month on Email and 600 on Email + Phone limit list building.
- One user per company on self-serve. Teams have to buy through sales.
- Sale pricing. The self-serve prices are shown against higher struck-through prices with no end date, so the bill can change.
- Personal data questions. The Trustpilot page shows how many people object to being in the database. Rules on emailing personal addresses are stricter than rules on work addresses in several countries, so check where your prospects live before you use them.
- Numbers that do not line up. 350M professionals on one page and 800M people profiles on another, with no method behind the "99% confidence."
- Support scores. 3.8 out of 5 for customer service is the weakest sub-rating on its Capterra page.
Is ContactOut legit?
Yes, as a business and a product. Its users rate it 4.4 out of 5 on Capterra, and it has a published free tier. Its 1.2 on Trustpilot is real too, and it mostly measures how people feel about a company that crawls the web for contact details and sells access to them. Whether that matters to you depends on how you use the data. For recruiting outreach to individuals, personal emails are the point. For B2B sales at scale, a verified work email is the safer default.
Is ContactOut free?
Partly. The free plan gives 5 emails, 5 phones and 5 exports a day, as shown on ContactOut's pricing page on October 1, 2026. That is enough to try the extension. Regular prospecting needs the Email plan, and team use needs a sales quote.
Is ContactOut worth it?
For one recruiter or one seller who researches people individually and needs personal contact details, it can be. A Capterra reviewer describes the extension as fast, and emails are listed as unlimited. For a sales team that builds lists in bulk, the 300 or 600 export cap and the one-user limit mean the self-serve plans do not fit, and the price of the Team plan is not published. Our sales prospecting tools comparison covers tools built for team list building.
How we reviewed ContactOut
- What this review is. A pricing, fit and user-evidence review. We did not run our own contacts through ContactOut, and nothing on this page is a measured result of ours about ContactOut.
- What we read, and when. ContactOut's homepage, data page, extension page and pricing page, and its Capterra and Trustpilot pages, on October 1, 2026. Our pricing index first recorded ContactOut's prices on September 1, 2026.
- What we could not read. G2 and Reddit blocked our reader when this was written. ContactOut's pricing page draws its figures in the browser, so prices were read from the plan data the page serves. Quotes are copied exactly, with the date and star rating and without names.
- Our own figure. Cleanlist's 98% verified work email and 85% direct dial is our own benchmark on our own 500-lead sample. It is not a test of ContactOut.
Verdict: who should buy ContactOut, and who should not
Buy it if you are a recruiter or a solo seller who works profile by profile, values personal emails and phones, and exports a few hundred contacts a month at most.
Skip it if you build prospect lists in bulk, if several people on your team need access, or if your outreach policy sticks to work addresses. The export cap and the single-user limit are built for the first group.
Where Cleanlist fits next to ContactOut
Cleanlist is built for the list-building case. It runs a waterfall across 25+ data providers to find a verified work email and a direct dial for each contact, and charges only when data comes back: a miss costs nothing and search is free. Plans include seats, 2 on Starter, 5 on Pro and 10 on Scale, and an extra seat is $20 a month. The finished list syncs both ways with HubSpot, Salesforce or Pipedrive. The sales teams use case shows the workflow, the waterfall enrichment page explains how the provider sequence works, and our B2B contact database comparison and data enrichment tools roundup cover the wider field.
Our product
Cleanlist
Best for: B2B teams under 300 people who want verified emails and direct dials from 25+ providers in one waterfall, paying only for results.
Cleanlist publishes this page. Accuracy figures are from our own benchmark, not a third-party test.
Cleanlist runs waterfall enrichment across 25+ data providers in sequence and stops at the first verified hit, at 1 credit per verified work email and 10 per direct dial. Search is free and unlimited, and a miss costs nothing. It returns 98% verified work email and 85% direct dial on the Cleanlist 500-Lead Enrichment Benchmark, which is our own test run on a 500-lead sample. Plans start at $79 a month with 2 seats included.
- Plans
Free plan 30 credits a month. Starter $79, Pro $229, Scale $599 a month. 25% off on annual billing.
- Credits
- Verified work email1
- Direct dial10
- Both on one row11
- Validation0.5
- AI qualification5
- Trial
14 days on Scale, 250 credits, 3 seats.
- Fits when
- You build prospect lists in bulk and need a verified work email and a direct dial on each row
- Several people on your team need access, with seats included in the plan
- Pairs with
- Your sequencer or inbox, which the finished list syncs to
- Your intent or signal vendor, if buying-stage scoring is part of your motion
Frequently asked questions
What is ContactOut used for?
ContactOut is used to find email addresses and phone numbers for individual people, mostly through its Chrome extension on profiles and company websites. Recruiters use it to reach candidates, and sellers use it to reach prospects.
How much does ContactOut cost?
The self-serve Email plan is $49 a month, with unlimited emails, 300 exports a month and one user per company, and Email + Phone is $99 a month with 600 exports. Both are shown as sale prices beside higher struck-through prices (October 1, 2026). The free plan gives 5 emails, 5 phones and 5 exports a day. Team and API plans are priced by ContactOut's sales team.
What counts as an export in ContactOut?
An export is taking a contact out of ContactOut, for example to a CSV file or a CRM. Emails are listed as unlimited on the Email plan, and exports are capped at 300 a month (600 on Email + Phone).
Why is ContactOut's Trustpilot rating so low?
Most of its 132 Trustpilot reviews are from people who found their own personal details in ContactOut's database and object to it. Trustpilot also notes that ContactOut has not replied to negative reviews. Its customer ratings on Capterra are 4.4 out of 5.
Does ContactOut have phone numbers?
Yes. ContactOut's data page claims 100M direct dials, the free plan includes 5 phone lookups a day, and the Email + Phone plan ($99 a month) lists unlimited phones with 600 exports a month. The $49 Email plan has no phone allowance.
Can a team share one ContactOut account?
The self-serve plan is limited to one user per company. Teams buy a Team plan through ContactOut's sales team.
Sources
- ContactOut, homepage and Our Data, read October 1, 2026
- ContactOut, Pricing, read October 1, 2026, and recorded in our pricing index on September 1, 2026
- Capterra, ContactOut reviews, read October 1, 2026
- Trustpilot, ContactOut reviews, read October 1, 2026
- Cleanlist, B2B data pricing index, September 2026
Run your own contacts through Cleanlist
Take the contacts you would hand any other vendor, run them through the multi-provider waterfall, and compare the match rates yourself. 250 credits, 3 seats, 14 days.
250 credits, 3 seats, 14 days.