9 Best Cheap or Free Email Finders in 2022

Growing email marketing lists and finding the email addresses of decision-makers can be challenging. The best email finders make it easy to target, find, and verify email addresses. There are a number of cheap and free email address finder apps available. To help you choose the right one for your business, we found the best email finders based on strengths, ease of use, accuracy, and cost.

• Hunter: Overall best email finder software for small businesses and best free email finder for sales agents and small sales teams
• SellHack: Great choice for those wanting a low-cost browser extension app for finding emails
• Lusha: Best for business-to-business (B2B) sales and marketing teams wanting contact information to automatically sync with customer relationship management (CRM) software
• UpLead: Top choice for companies wanting accurate contact information backed by a guarantee
• Findthat: Best for budget-conscious teams needing a free email address finder and verification bundle
• FindEmails.com: Cheapest option for businesses wanting high-volume, bulk email address finding
• AeroLeads: Top choice for B2B prospecting on LinkedIn
• RocketReach: Best for those wanting the largest database of business and consumer contacts to search
• ContactOut: Top email finder tool for recruiters and hiring professionals

Best Email Finder Tools at a Glance

*Pricing reflects annual billing; monthly plans are available at a higher cost
**Based on plan credits per month or calculated by dividing total credits per year by 12 months

Hunter: Best Email 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 that doesn’t limit 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 so that you can 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 is still the best value overall, especially for those who need free email locator software.

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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 are generating high-quality email leads through the platform. Once found, you can send emails from your inbox using the Replify integration, 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

While Salesforce integration only comes in the highest-plan tier, all SellHack users can integrate email via Replify to create and send cold emails from Outlook and Gmail, just like with Hunter.io. Replify is free 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 a good 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.

It’s simple to manage new and existing contacts since information is automatically synced to your CRM. AeroLeads is the best email locator for LinkedIn, but leads don’t automatically sync to your CRM and instead require manual export and updates.

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 annual allotment; upfront credit allotment with annual plans is 480 and 1,680, 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, keep in mind that Lusha’s plan credits are capped annually instead of monthly.

For the Professional plan, with annual billing, you will pay $348 total ($29 per month). With 2,400 credits for the year, this makes each contact 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.com are both cheaper options.

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UpLead: Best for Data Accuracy & Guarantee

UpLead stands out for its accuracy guarantee, making it one of the best email finders available. It promises 95% accuracy, and if they get data wrong, you get your credits back, which is uncommon, even among the best email finders. It’s an ideal choice 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 to get contact information or use an API call. 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 information, making it a good value for the cost. If you choose the monthly option, you’ll pay $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.com, especially for bulk email lookups.

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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 favorite software through a Zapier integration.

Already have a list? Upload it for verification. Findthat removes duplicates, performs direct server validation to filter out invalid servers, role-based emails, and spam-trap honeypots, and eliminate typos and cross-check 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

Findthat’s cost-per-email in the 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 an ample number of 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.

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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 easily and affordably. For example, the cost-per-lead in the Basic plan is just less than 3 cents, just 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 any time 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 also welcome to enrich your existing contact lists. The process includes assigning a confidence score so that you can choose to limit campaigns to only the highest-quality contact information to avoid high bounce rates or risk being perceived as a spammer.

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 quantity 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 better.

Try FindEmails.com

AeroLeads: Best LinkedIn Email Finder

AeroLeads is a prospecting and sales intelligence tool that makes finding and managing contact information easy. It’s affordable, 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 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 425-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 you can implement to automate contact information extraction.

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, UpLeads is best. Likewise, with the Hunter.io email finder, you don’t pay for bad data. You have to subscribe to the $499 plan for unlimited users, but large teams can get a plan for unlimited users with 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 shakes out 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 a bit 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 and marketing teams as well as recruiters. Like AeroLeads, it also scrapes information from sites like Crunchbase and AngelList, making it a good platform for finding email addresses and phone numbers for startups as well as 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

The pricing displayed to us was different when we were using incognito mode vs being signed in to Google on the Chrome browser. When signed in, the cost of the Essentials plan was $39 per month but only included 120 lookups, and the number of lookups included in each plan was less than when viewed in incognito mode.

Keep in mind that the plans above are for individual users. For shared team plans, you’ll need to contact RocketReach’s sales team for Teams or Enterprise pricing and plan specifics. Alternatively, you can get a team plan for up to five users for $149 per month 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 immense ContactOut database of over 1.2 billion email records or by 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, or pay a higher fee month-to-month

The free version of ContactOut allows up to 50 contacts 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 that 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.

Try ContactOut

How We Evaluated the Best Email Finders

To be considered, email finding software had to be affordable for small businesses, so we gave preference to reputable companies offering low-cost and free plans. We also considered the value for the money, such as the number of searches included, whether email verification was offered, and the integration available. 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 hit 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. Contact lists quickly get outdated and rarely come with a quality guarantee. The best way to get the contacts you need is to build prospect and lead lists organically through content marketing efforts or by using 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 finders have multistep and multisource 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 spamtrap email addresses that can get your domain blacklisted.

How do I get bulk email address lists?

The first step to building a large list of email addresses is to use a trustworthy email finder. You want to choose one that follows the 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 accuracy guarantee.

Visit Hunter.io

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