13 Best Cheap or Free Email Finders for 2023

An email finder is a type of software used to identify email addresses for an individual or a target audience, often for sales lead generation. The best email finders make targeting, finding, and verifying email addresses easy. There are also several cheap and free email address finder apps available. To help you choose the right one for your business, we compared dozens of apps based on strengths, ease of use, accuracy, and cost.

• Overall best free email finder for small businesses: Hunter
• Best for guaranteed contact accuracy: UpLead
• Most affordable for bulk email addresses: FindEmails
• Best cheap browser extension email finder: SellHack
• Best email finder for automatic customer relationship manager (CRM) syncing: Lusha
• Best free verification and email finder bundles: Findthat
• Best LinkedIn email finder: AeroLeads
• Largest business and consumer contacts database: RocketReach
• Best for recruiters and hiring professionals: ContactOut
• Best free email address and phone number bundles: Seamless AI
• Best for finding social media profiles: Orbitly
• Best multifaceted features: Voila Norbert
• Best for finding media professionals to boost PR: Prowly

Hunter: Best Email Address Finder Software for Small Businesses Overall

Hunter is the overall best email finder for small businesses as it enables users to search and verify emails for free. It won’t charge you a search or verification credit if there are no results. It’s also one of the few platforms with no limit on the number of users for any plan. While plans include allotted credits for searches and verifications, credits don’t roll over month-to-month.

You get four different tools from Hunter: domain search, email finder, author finder, and an email verifier. To perform individual searches on the Hunter.io website, use the Chrome extension, application programming interface (API), or upload a list of domains, email addresses, or names to find what you need. Hunter also offers a Google Sheets add-on to automate downloading and organization of email addresses as you find them.

Hunter.io Pricing & Plans

*Billed annually, or pay a higher fee month-to-month

Hunter’s free plan gives you 25 searches and 50 verifications each month. If you upgrade to the lowest-priced plan, you’ll get 500 searches and 1,000 verifications for $34 monthly with annual billing or $49 when billed month-to-month. With monthly billing, this equates to a cost-per-search of 10 cents each (or less than 7 cents with an annual plan), making it one of the more affordable email address finders on the market.

SellHack’s entry tier comes out to 3 cents per lead, and AeroLeads’ is 5 cents per lead. However, neither have a free plan, and SellHack doesn’t offer email address verification. Thus, Hunter still has the best value overall, especially for those who need a free business email address finder.

Try Hunter

UpLead: Best for Data Accuracy & Guarantee

UpLead stands out for its accuracy guarantee, making it one of the best email finder software available. It promises 95% accuracy, and if they get data wrong, you get your credits back, which is uncommon, even among the top software. It’s ideal for business-to-business (B2B) companies that need to qualify high-value leads, fill out incomplete contact cards, and verify email addresses.

Use the UpLead platform to filter by industry, location, and even tech stacks, and get back detailed contact cards for a prospect list. You can also upload your incomplete lead list or use an API call to get contact information. The email finder works well for finding a single contact, or you can create bulk lists.

UpLead Pricing & Plans

*Billed annually, or pay a higher fee month-to-month

UpLead is expensive compared to some of its competitors, but you won’t pay for inaccurate info, making it a good value for the cost. If you choose the monthly option, you’ll spend $99 per month for 170 credits, which comes to about 58 cents per contact. The Professional plan offers the best value at 39 cents per contact for the first 1,000 contacts.

On a budget and need more leads? For half the price, you double the number of contacts per month with AeroLeads, and your cost drops even more with FindEmails, especially for bulk email lookups.

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FindEmails.com: Cheapest Email Finder for Bulk Lists

FindEmails.com offers the lowest cost-per-email address found, making it the best email finder for those wanting to build large contact lists quickly and affordably. For example, the cost-per-lead in the Basic plan is less than 3 cents, under 2 cents in the Better plan, and less than a penny in the highest-tier plan.

Find individual email addresses by searching the web app by name, job role, company, and location. Or build lists in bulk by searching the platform, using the free Chrome extension while browsing the internet, or through its developer-friendly API.

The FindEmails.com marketplace also allows users to post ready-to-download email lists to save you time putting them together. Download your lists anytime or send the data to your company’s software through Zapier integrations.

Once found, emails are verified with advanced techniques, including mail server tests, and you are welcome to enrich your existing contact lists. The process includes assigning a confidence score to limit campaigns to only the highest-quality contact information and avoid high bounce rates or the risk of being perceived as spam.

FindEmails.com Pricing & Plans

Unlike the other providers on this list, FindEmails.com doesn’t lock advanced features behind higher tiers. Packages are differentiated only by the number of credits included. As such, the plans are easy to understand, and you can simply upgrade to the next plan if you need more credits. For a scalable plan with advanced features, however, Findthat’s custom tier plan is a better choice.

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SellHack: Best Cheap Email Finder Extension

SellHack makes it easy for you to find email addresses using its Chrome email finder extension or native Prospect List Builder. It’s also very affordable, as the Lite plan reduces the cost-per-email to a mere 3 cents each, with 100 credits included for $3 per month with annual billing. This makes SellHack the best choice for those wanting a cheap email finder extension.

However, just because it’s affordable doesn’t mean you are sacrificing quality. SellHack’s 12-step real-time email verification process ensures you generate high-quality email leads through the platform. Once found, you can send emails from your inbox using SellHack’s Replyify integration, which lets you send automated cold email campaigns. You can also export email addresses to an Excel spreadsheet or export them to other software through Zapier.

SellHack Pricing & Plans

*Billed annually, or pay a higher fee month-to-month

SellHack only offers a Salesforce integration on its highest-plan tier, which is helpful for businesses needing extra help on sales and customer relationship management (CRM). However, all tiers can integrate with Replyify for cold email campaigns from Outlook and Gmail, similar to Hunter.io. Replyify is free for up to 25 active contacts or ad-free from $1 a month and allows you to deploy drip email campaigns for cold emails and lead nurturing.

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Lusha: Best Email Finder for Automatic CRM Syncing

The Lusha email finder gathers contact information from LinkedIn profiles. This makes it an excellent email-finding tool for those who want to build targeted prospect lists for sales, marketing, or recruiting. Integrations include top customer relationship management (CRM) systems like HubSpot, Zoho, Salesforce, and Pipedrive, email service providers Gmail and Outlook, and other software through Zapier.

While AeroLeads is the best email locator for LinkedIn profiles, managing new and existing contacts is simpler on Lusha since information is automatically synced to your CRM. AeroLeads, on the other hand, requires manual exporting and updating.

You can find email contacts using Lusha’s prospecting platform or Chrome extension. The platform lets you search by name and company or by applying filters such as location and company size to build targeted prospect lists. If you use the web extension, you can visit a profile on LinkedIn, click on the Lusha extension, and get contact details instantly. Plus, you can use Lusha’s API to enrich your existing data.

Lusha Pricing & Plans

*Billed annually, or pay a higher fee month-to-month
**Based on an annual allotment, upfront credit allotment with annual plans is 480 and 960, respectively

Try Lusha free with five credits per month (each credit equals one contact). When you pay for a premium plan annually, you save 20% on the regular price. Also, when comparing platforms, remember that Lusha’s plan credits are capped annually instead of monthly.

For the Professional plan, you’d pay $348 total ($29 per month) with annual billing. With 2,400 credits for the year, each contact costs about 15 cents each. The Premium plan reduces the cost per contact to around 13 cents each. While this is only slightly more than you’ll pay with Hunter.io, AeroLeads and FindEmails are both cheaper options.

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Findthat: Best Free Email Address Finder & Verification Bundle

Findthat offers the best free email finding and verification bundled plan. It’s the most generous free email address finder on this list, with 50 find and 100 verify credits each month at no cost. Beginning with the first paid plan, you can access its more than 500 Zapier integrations, including top CRMs such as HubSpot, Zoho, Pipedrive, and Salesforce, as well as email marketing software like Mailchimp.

Using the free Chrome extension, you can instantly find one or many email addresses from social media profiles. Build your list and export it, or send the data to your preferred software through Zapier integration.

Already have a list? Upload it for verification. Findthat removes duplicates and performs direct server validation to filter out invalid servers, role-based emails, and spam-trap honeypots. It also eliminates typos and cross-checks data with at least two sources.

Findthat Pricing & Plans

*Custom pricing up to $2,499 per month for 100,000 find credits and 500,000 verify credits

The cost-per-email for Findthat’s starter plan is about 11 cents each, which is considerably less than UpLead and Lusha, but more than email address finders like SellHack and FindEmails.com. It’s one of the few platforms to accommodate unlimited users and publicize custom pricing tiers that extend up to 100,000 find credits and 500,000 email address verification credits, which makes it a good option for larger teams.

Overall, there’s little risk to trying the platform. Not only can you start with ample credits to get a feel for what Findthat can do, but you can also use it free forever or opt for a monthly paid plan backed by a 14-day money-back guarantee.

Try Findthat

AeroLeads: Best LinkedIn Email Finder

AeroLeads is a prospecting and sales intelligence tool that makes finding and managing contact information easy. It’s cost-effective, especially if you need comprehensive data, including names, titles, corporate emails, company name, company size, social media profiles, and business phone numbers. It’s a good starting point for small businesses in the business-to-business (B2B) space—particularly those whose target audience includes startups—that need to build sales prospect lists.

You can upload your prospect lists to verify email addresses or search AeroLeads’ sizeable database of 650-plus million records. Among your search options, you can use the Chrome extension to scrape sites like LinkedIn, startup-focused platforms like Crunchbase and AngelList, and recruiting-oriented Xing. There’s also an API to automate contact information extraction and a Google Sheets add-on for instant email verification.

AeroLeads integrates with multiple CRM systems, but only for importing contacts—it doesn’t automatically update contact information. If you’re looking for email-finding software that integrates with your CRM and automatically syncs leads to your contacts, try Lusha instead.

AeroLeads Pricing & Plans

If you decide to go with AeroLeads, make sure you use correct formatting with your uploads, or you may lose credits. For a credit-back guarantee, UpLead is best. Likewise, with the Hunter.io email finder, you won’t need to pay for insufficient data. You have to subscribe to the $499 plan for unlimited users; however, large teams can get a plan with unlimited users through Findthat for just $149 a month.

AeroLeads offers a free trial of its app, so you can test if it works for your industry. The lowest-priced plan is $49 monthly for 1,000 credits, which comes down to about 5 cents per contact. However, data accuracy isn’t guaranteed, so it’s fair to expect that the cost per accurate contact record will be slightly higher.

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RocketReach: Largest Database of Professional Contact Records

RocketReach is the best email finder app to use if you want access to the largest database of professional or personal (consumer) contacts. It contains more than 1.8 billion profiles, over 700 million professional contacts, and upward of 35 million companies.

The vast amount of data makes it appropriate for nearly any type of business, including B2B and direct-to-consumer sales, marketing teams, and recruiters. Like AeroLeads, it scrapes information from sites like Crunchbase and AngelList, making it a good platform for finding email addresses and phone numbers for startups and established companies.

Find emails by searching the RocketReach database, its Chrome browser extension, through bulk lookups, or with the API. Advanced search filters and artificial intelligence (AI) to predict, verify, and score records help to ensure you only pay for records that fit well with your ideal customer profiles and target audiences.

RocketReach Pricing & Plans

*Billed annually at a 33% savings, or pay a higher fee month-to-month

RocketReach’s pricing that was displayed to us differed when we were using incognito mode vs when signed in to Google on the Chrome browser. When signed in, the cost of the Essentials plan was $39 per month with 1,200 lookups annually. When in incognito mode, however, prices were slightly higher with more lookups available.

RocketReach offers scalable pricing plans, but they are still more costly than those on this list, like Findthat or Hunter. However, it has some of the broadest databases available with helpful tools and CRM integrations. Alternatively, you can get a team plan for up to five users for $149 per month and 8,000 credits with AeroLeads, or have unlimited users with the best email finder app overall, Hunter.io.

Try RocketReach

ContactOut: Best Email Finder for Recruiters

ContactOut is the best email finder for recruiters and human resources professionals involved in the hiring process. Depending on your plan, you can source qualified candidates on LinkedIn, LinkedIn Recruiter Lite or Pro, Sales Navigator, and GitHub.

Find emails by searching the ContactOut database of over 250 million email records or using the Chrome extension. Emails are triple-verified, and while there is no accuracy guarantee, the website claims an accuracy rate of 99%. Once added to your list, you can export them to a spreadsheet or directly to your applicant tracking software (ATS).

ContactOut Pricing & Plans

*Billed annually; same fees apply month-to-month

The free version of ContactOut allows up to 40 emails and three phone numbers a month, which could be plenty for a small business with limited hiring needs. Alternatively, those hiring for multiple positions can opt for a paid plan to source more leads. However, AeroLeads’ Chrome and Firefox extensions also allow you to find potential candidate emails on LinkedIn and Xing and communicate with them through email integration in lower-cost plans.

Larger teams will need to contact the sales team for custom pricing, which will also allow for team collaboration. This is essential for staffing agencies, especially when multiple recruiters are sourcing candidates for large companies or large-scale temporary employment projects.

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Seamless AI: Best Free Email & Phone Number Bundles

Seamless AI is the best software for finding both email addresses and contact numbers under the same plan, making it a valuable tool for sales-geared businesses. Besides an email and contact number finder, Seamless AI also offers sales features, including a real-time search engine that ensures every contact is up to date and an automatic pipeline builder that saves you the trouble of manually building prospect lists.

To use the tool, simply type in the companies and positions of the prospects you’re targeting in the search bar. The software automatically generates a list of contacts that fit your criteria and their contact information. It also offers a Chrome extension that lets you find contacts on any webpage you visit and import them into a CRM of your choice.

Seamless AI Pricing & Plans

While Seamless AI offers a free plan with up to 50 credits for finding email addresses and contact numbers, its higher plans are still more costly compared to others on this list. Its free plan also offers a real-time search engine, enterprise-level security and compliance, email support, and integrations with basic sales CRMs. On the other hand, its basic plan starts at $147 monthly and offers all of the above plus a higher bandwidth of 250 credits per month.

Seamless AI also offers Pro and Enterprise plans for larger teams requiring contacting their sales team for custom pricing. These plans offer unlimited integrations, organization management, data enrichment, and priority customer support through live chat and phone. This makes it a good choice for larger teams with large sales quotas.

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Orbitly: Best for Finding Social Profiles

Orbitly is a comprehensive contact data finder that lets you input any piece of user data, such as an email address or contact number. Then, it fills in the rest of the information available attached to that data, from their name and location to their Instagram account. This makes it a valuable tool for lead enrichment and works great for teams needing several points of contact with customers beyond the usual email and phone.

Orbitly also offers data enrichment in bulk by uploading a CSV file directly onto the platform. It also has a mail merge feature that lets you find several email addresses, then send an email blast to those addresses simultaneously. Finally, it also integrates with Zapier to send all your enriched leads, but the integration process isn’t automated—you’ll need to follow a step-by-step process.

Orbitly Pricing & Plans

Orbitly offers a simple and scalable credit-based pricing scheme that doesn’t lock in customers to a monthly subscription, making it an excellent choice for small but steadily growing businesses. It’s pay-as-you-go with all its features available on all plans—prices only increase based on the number of credits you use.

While it doesn’t offer a free plan, Orbitly has a low cost per credit for an extensive lead enricher that offers more than the usual details (it can even fetch Twitter, Snapchat, and Reddit accounts, among others) on a scalable pricing plan. Because of this, we recommend it for steadily growing businesses that benefit from having several points of contact with customers, or businesses with a focus on social media marketing.

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Voila Norbert: Best Email Finder With Multifaceted Features

Voila Norbert offers multiple features according to your needs, including an email finder, an email verifier, and a contact data enricher. Each of its tools functions independently and has its own pricing model, making it a good choice for businesses with multiple specific contact data needs.

Since each tool functions separately under a single software, Voila Norbert is best for businesses with multiple objectives. For example, you can use the email finder to search for new leads, while its data enricher tool can attach social profiles and other additional data to your pre-existing contacts. Its email finder also allows for bulk searching by uploading a CSV file and integrates with CRM and marketing tools, including Salesforce and HubSpot.

Voila Norbert also offers an API for real-time email verification and enrichment, as well as a Chrome extension. Its biggest drawback, however, is that it doesn’t offer plans that bundle all its features together—you’ll pay separately for each tool.

Voila Norbert Pricing & Plans

*Billed annually, or pay a higher month-to-month fee

*Voila Norbert also offers custom verification services for over 1 million emails by contacting their team

*Voila Norbert also offers data enriching for over 1,000 emails with a separate pricing scheme

Voila Norbert offers several pricing plans for each of its tools, all of which are highly scalable. Its email finder starts with a free trial of 50 credits, and its paid plans range from 1,000 credits at $39 per month to 50,000 credits at $399, all of which allow for credit rollovers.

On the other hand, its email verification tool starts at an affordable $2 for 500 emails and can go up to a million emails for over $1000 on a pay-as-you-go basis. This makes it a good choice for small and growing businesses that must regularly update their contacts.

Finally, Voila Norbert’s data enricher starts at $4 for the first 100 emails and ranges up to $40 for 1,000 emails. For over 1,000 emails, Voila Norbert also offers data enriching at 40 cents per email for up to 2,000 emails, 20 cents per email for up to 50,000 emails, and 1.5 cents for any higher.

Voila Norbert’s multifaceted software offering the most essential email finder tools is its most unique feature. We like that it allows users to use only what they need on a scalable pricing plan. This makes it best suited for businesses with multiple contact data needs, from email searching and email authentication to contact data enrichment.

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Prowly: Best for Finding Media Contacts

Prowly, which is owned by Semrush, is media relations and press release software with an extensive database of global media contacts. This gives you an accessible journalist contact list building and email and press release sending all under the same software.

Unlike the others on this list, Prowly is built exclusively for building media relations, which makes it a robust tool for PR strategies. However, conversely, it’s also limited to finding contacts exclusively in the media industry.

Besides an advanced media contact list builder, Prowly’s most unique feature is its press release builder and distributor. You can create press release documents and send them to targeted media contacts, all within the same software. While it doesn’t offer any other handy email finder tools such as bulk email verifiers or lead enrichers, Prowly is an excellent platform if you want to reach journalists, editors, and other media professionals.

Prowly Pricing & Plans

*Billed annually; Prowly also offers monthly pricing at a higher cost
**Prowly allows users to add new contacts from their database at an additional cost for both plans

Prowly’s plans are priced at $119 monthly for the Essential plan and $189 monthly for the Professional plan, and both come with a seven-day free trial. Both plans have similar features; however, the Professional plan offers a greater monthly email allowance of 15,000 over the Essential plan’s 3,000. It also allows for more users and offers phone support and live chat.

It’s also important to note that while both plans allow users search access to Prowly’s media contact database, there’s an additional cost for adding them to your Prowly CRM and performing actions, such as sending them emails and press releases within the software. Overall, while its features differ from usual email contact finders, Prowly is a helpful tool for easy and effective PR marketing and for building media relationships.

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How We Evaluated the Best Email Finder Apps

To be considered, email finders have to be affordable for small businesses, so we gave preference to reputable companies offering cheap and free plans. We also considered the value for the money, such as the number of searches included and whether they offered email verification and additional integrations. Finally, we looked for strengths that make an app stand out for specific use cases.

Based on our research, Hunter.io is the best email finder for small businesses. It hits all the right notes by providing a free plan, free Chrome extension, and verification services in addition to low-cost plans for unlimited users. There’s no risk to trying Hunter.io since you can use it for free—get started today.

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Is it better to use an email finder or buy contact lists?

Using an email locator is far better than buying contact lists. Purchased lead lists quickly get outdated, and few come with a quality guarantee. Also, many have “spam trap” addresses that can get your email domain blacklisted, and most email marketing software prohibits the use of purchased lists. Thus, it’s better to use professional email tools (like email finders) that provide highly accurate data and follow compliance laws.

How do I check if an email address is legitimate?

The best email lookup tools have multi-step and multi-source verification processes, so you can enter an email address to check its legitimacy. It’s always a good idea to verify business email addresses before sending cold emails from your domain to avoid wasting efforts on bounced emails or sending emails to spam trap emails that can get your domain blacklisted.

How do I get bulk email address lists?

The first step to building an extensive list of email addresses is to use a trustworthy email finder. You want to choose one that follows laws regarding data sharing and selling. In addition to using data mining apps and email finders, read our article to learn more about other ways to organically build an email list for email marketing campaigns.

Bottom Line

Trying to find email addresses for sales and marketing outreach can seem like searching for a four-leaf clover. The best email finders clear the weeds so that you can find the most accurate and valuable contacts for your company. Overall, Hunter.io offers the best value for the cost, including a free plan and an accuracy guarantee.

Visit Hunter.io