Find CEO Email Addresses
Search by job title, company or industry, and Cleanlist AI looks up the work email and phone number of each person. On our 500-lead benchmark it returned 98% verified work emails and 85% phone numbers.
Cleanlist AI People Search. The sentence "CEOs (exact title) with 10+ years' experience, at private equity backed professional services firms with 201-500 employees and $25M-$100M revenue, in the US. Not in my lists." becomes 9 filters (Job title: CEO, Title match: Exact, Total years experience: More than 10 years, Industry: Professional Services, Company headcount: 201-500, Funding stage: Private Equity, Annual revenue: $25M-$100M, Country / region: United States, Exclude people already in my Cleanlist: In any of my lists), previews about 240 people and adds them to the list PE-backed services CEOs.
10,000+ users, from founders to full sales teams
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How does Cleanlist AI find CEO email addresses?
Cleanlist AI queries 25+ data providers in a waterfall sequence to locate verified CEO email addresses. The waterfall stops at the first deliverable result, and every address gets an SMTP check and a catch-all check before it reaches you. Search by company name, domain or LinkedIn URL. If no provider has a deliverable CEO email, the lookup costs nothing.
Why this is hard to do by hand
CEOs are the hardest B2B contacts to reach. Gartner says fewer than 24% of cold emails to C-suite executives get opened, and an assistant or an inbox rule screens most CEO mail first. Pattern guessing fails because CEOs at mid-size and large companies often skip the firstname.lastname format for an initials-only address, a vanity domain or a private alias. LinkedIn InMail gets a 10-25% response rate from C-level buyers (LinkedIn Sales Solutions, 2025), but it needs a paid seat and goes out one message at a time.
Why 62% of cold emails to CEOs never reach the inbox
A 2025 Validity study on executive email deliverability found that 62% of cold emails to CEOs are stopped before the CEO sees them. Assistant triage accounts for 31% of those interceptions, security tools that quarantine unknown senders for 22%, and catch-all domains that accept the message and drop it for 9%. Guessed addresses do the most damage: every bounce lowers your sender score, and a lower score sends your mail to spam for everyone else on the list. Cleanlist AI checks each CEO address before you send and flags catch-all domains, which keeps bounces from dragging down the rest of your outreach.
What a lookup costs
Each lookup walks 25+ providers in cost order, and you're charged once for what comes back: 1 credit for a verified work email, 10 for a phone number, 11 for both. Validation is 0.5 and AI qualification is 5. A lookup that finds nothing is free, and the whole team pays from one wallet.
- Verified work emails25 leads searched23 × 123
- Phone numbersVerified before anyone calls18 × 10180
- Qualification agentFit score with reasons25 × 5125
- 25+Providers queried in cost order on a single lookup
- 98%Verified work emails on our 500-lead benchmark
- 85%Phone numbers found on that same benchmark
- 0Credits for a lookup that finds nothing
How it works.
- 01
Enter the company name or domain
Type the company name or website domain, or paste its LinkedIn company URL. Cleanlist AI matches it to the right company before the waterfall runs.
- 02
Filter by CEO title
Pick the CEO title filter. Cleanlist AI also matches Chief Executive, Managing Director and General Manager, so the same seat under another name still shows up.
- 03
Review the verified results
Each row shows the CEO's name, the email, its verification status and the date it was last verified. The SMTP check runs when you search.
- 04
Add a phone number
Turn on phone append for the CEO's office or mobile number. A phone number costs 10 credits, charged only when one is found.
- 05
Export or push to your CRM
Download a CSV, or sync to HubSpot or Salesforce. Each record keeps the date it was verified.
What you get.
Verified work emails
Cleanlist AI checks each email for deliverability before it comes back, so your rep doesn't waste a send on a dead inbox.
Search by company or industry
Filter by company name, domain, industry, location or employee count.
Phone numbers too
Mobile and office numbers that ring the person's own phone, at 10 credits per number found.
Work contacts only
Cleanlist AI returns work contact data for B2B sales research. It isn't a people finder for private individuals.
14-day Pro trial
Run your first list on Pro: 14 days, 250 credits, 3 seats.
Manual process vs Cleanlist AI.
| Feature | Manual | Cleanlist AI |
|---|---|---|
| Email accuracy | A pattern guess nobody checked | 98% verified work emails on our 500-lead benchmark |
| Time to find one CEO email | 15-30 min (Google + LinkedIn) | One lookup across 25+ providers |
| Catch-all domain handling | Marked as valid (false positive) | Flagged as catch-all |
| Phone number included | Rarely (requires separate tool) | Office and mobile numbers when available |
| Cost per contact | An InMail credit per message | 1 credit per verified work email, 0 for a miss |
| Bulk search | One at a time | Upload a CSV of companies |
How accurate is Cleanlist AI's data?
Cleanlist AI returned 98% verified work emails and 85% phone numbers on our 500-lead benchmark, pulling from 25+ data providers. Each lookup stops at the first deliverable result, meaning a verified or likely-valid email.
What do I get when I sign up?
A 14-day Pro trial: 250 credits, 3 seats, and every Pro feature. After it, the Free plan gives you 50 credits a month. A verified work email costs 1 credit, a phone number 10, and a miss nothing.
What data providers does Cleanlist AI use?
Cleanlist AI runs a waterfall across 25+ B2B data providers. For each record it asks one, moves to the next when that one has no match, and stops at the first deliverable result.
Can I connect my CRM?
Yes. HubSpot and Salesforce sync both ways on the Pro and Enterprise plans, and Salesloft and Lemlist take a one-way push. You can also upload a CSV, or use the REST API from Pro.
Is this data GDPR compliant?
Cleanlist AI returns work contact data for B2B sales research and isn't a people finder for private individuals. Whether your outreach meets GDPR depends on how you use the data, so check your program with counsel.
What is the average response rate for cold emails to CEOs?
SalesHacker's 2025 outreach benchmarks put the reply rate at 3-7% when the CEO's address is verified and the subject line is personal. A guessed address drops it under 1%, because bounces hurt your sender reputation and your next emails land in spam.
Why don't email pattern generators work well for CEO emails?
CEOs at companies over 50 people often skip the standard format: initials only, an alias their assistant manages, or a separate executive domain. A 2024 Hunter.io study found pattern guessing was right 38% of the time for C-level executives and 72% for mid-level staff. Cleanlist AI skips the guess and asks 25+ providers in sequence.
Can I search for CEO emails across an entire industry?
Yes. Filter People Search by industry (SaaS, financial services, healthcare), narrow by company size and location, or upload a CSV of company names or domains. Thousands of companies run as one batch. There is no revenue-range filter.
Describe the job once. An agent runs it every week.
Clu turns one sentence into an agent. It searches 1B+ profiles, finds verified emails and phone numbers across 25+ providers, adds the people to your sequence and posts each run to Slack.
Weekly ICP outbound
Built by Clu from: “Every week, find 500 new people who match my ICP, get their emails and phones, and add them to Series B outbound.”
- Searched 1B+ profiles for new ICP matches500 foundPeople Search
- Ran the waterfall across 25+ providers487 emails · 412 phonesWaterfall
- Verified every email and phoneSMTP + catch-allVerification
- Added them to Series B outbound500 peopleSequences
- Posted the run to #pipelineSlackAgents
Friday 4:52 PM15 replies · 5 calls booked
Everything in the 14-day Pro trial
- Clu and agentsDescribe the job in one sentence. Clu builds the agent, runs it on a schedule or a CRM trigger and posts every run to Slack.
- People and Company SearchFind your buyers in 1B+ profiles from one sentence. Searching costs 0 credits.
- Waterfall enrichmentAsk 25+ providers in order and stop at the first verified email or phone number. 98% verified work emails and 85% phone numbers on a 500-lead benchmark.
- Email verificationRun SMTP and catch-all checks on every address before it reaches a sequence, at half a credit an email.
- ICP scoringScore every lead 0 to 100 against your ICP, with the reasons written down. The Research and Qualification skills do the digging.
- SequencesSend email from your reps' own inboxes, with call tasks. A reply stops the sequence. Sending costs 0 credits.
- CRM syncTwo-way sync with HubSpot, Salesforce and Pipedrive. Push finished lists to Outreach, Salesloft and Lemlist.
- Chrome extensionGet a verified email and phone number in one click on LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, Salesforce and HubSpot.
- MCP and APIRun the same search and waterfall from Claude or ChatGPT with 36 MCP tools, or from your own code with the REST API.
Agents that run this job
- Account briefsWrites a short, sourced brief on each new target account every Monday and sends it to the account owner.
- Weekly ICP leadsEvery Monday, finds new people who match your ICP, checks their work emails and posts the verified ones in Slack.
- New hires at target accountsEvery morning, finds sales and marketing leaders who started at your target accounts in the last 90 days, with their emails and phone numbers.
14 days of Pro, free: 250 credits, 3 seats, agents, Sequences and Clu in Slack. Then Free at 50 credits a month, or Starter at $49 and Pro at $89 a seat a month.
Hand the job to an agent.
Upload a CSV or connect HubSpot, Salesforce or Pipedrive, and run it on your own data today.
14 days of Pro, free.
Get 14 days of Pro, free.
250 credits and 3 seats. Sign up with your work email for 100 more.