The true cost of a LinkedIn prospecting stack

How this is calculated, in plain language

You fix a basket: how many leads, how many of them need a verified email, how many need a phone number, how many people are doing the work, and whether you are on monthly or annual billing. Every stack then has to deliver that same basket, and we total what it charges to do so.

What counts as a usable lead

A usable lead is one record that arrives with everything you asked for it to carry. If a stack's published allowance cannot stretch to your whole basket, we do not pretend it can. We work out how many leads its allowance actually reaches, divide the cost by that smaller number, and mark the row. That is why one stack on the default example finishes at more than two dollars a lead: it is not expensive, it is capped.

How we pick the tier

For each vendor we take the cheapest published tier whose stated allowance covers your basket. If no published tier covers it, we use the largest one that is published, show the shortfall, and grey the row. We never extrapolate a price for a tier the vendor does not publish.

How credits are converted into leads

• Apollo: one credit per contact, and a phone costs the same as an email, both from Apollo's own credits page. Credits are granted per user, so three seats means three times the allowance whether you need it or not.
• Lusha: an email is 1 credit and a phone is either 5 or 10, both figures published by Lusha, selectable above. Lusha runs one shared balance, so seats do not multiply the cost.
• LeadIQ: an email is 1 credit, a phone is 10, both together are 11. Only the 200 credit step on LeadIQ's slider renders a price, so that is the only step we cost.
• Kaspr Starter: unlimited business emails plus 100 phone credits per seat per month, so the phone count is what limits you.
• Surfe: separate email and mobile pools. On monthly billing the allowance is stated per month, on annual it is stated as one yearly pool, which we divide by twelve to compare like with like.
• Evaboot: one credit is one lead. Seats are unlimited and free on one shared balance.
• Wiza on annual: reveals are unlimited, but the bulk export cap of 2,500 a month is the real ceiling, and fair use is 500 profiles in 24 hours.

The assumptions we make, which are not prices

Two figures in this calculator are our modelling, not a vendor's number, and they are labelled here so you can disagree with them:

• Clay. Clay does not publish a price per email or per phone number, so we assume one action per row processed and one data credit per enrichment. If your Clay tables run several enrichments per row, your real usage is higher than we show.
• Evaboot email finding. Our source records one credit per lead and does not break out a separate charge for finding the email. If Evaboot charges separately for that, this understates it.

Everything else in the table is a figure a vendor published, with the date we fetched it in the source list below.

What we put a dollar value on, and what we refuse to

Unused credits are only shown as money when the vendor's own wording says they expire. That is Apollo, Surfe and Clay actions. For Kaspr, Lusha paid plans, Wiza monthly, Instantly and LeadIQ we show the unused count and say that the vendor is silent on expiry, because guessing would be the same behaviour we are criticising. Evaboot added credit rollover in 2026 and does not publish the terms, so we show its leftover as a count too. Leadsforlinked lead packs never expire, which is why that row shows none.

What we could not verify, and are not going to fill in

• Apollo publishes annual pricing only on the pages we can read. Its monthly list price does not render, so on monthly billing the Apollo row carries a warning and is left out of the cheapest badge.
• LeadIQ's page says annual is 25 percent off but does not render the figure, and every slider step above 200 credits shows no price.
• Clay prints two prices for the same plan on the same page, 167 dollars on the plan card and 185 in the FAQ below it, and two different data credit counts for Launch. We show the range rather than resolving it for Clay.
• Instantly's page prices the Supersonic credit pack at 97 dollars in one place and 197 in another. We use the figure its own bundle arithmetic supports and record the conflict here.
• Wiza publishes both "20 valid emails and 5 phone numbers" and "25 free credits" for the same free plan.
• Instantly, LeadIQ and Wiza monthly plans do not state whether credits roll over.
• Kaspr publishes dollar and sterling pairs without labelling which figure is monthly and which is annual, so we use its euro ladder, which is unambiguous, and convert at the rate you set.

The concession

Evaboot is better than us on one thing that matters here, and it is not a small one: unlimited free seats on a single shared credit balance. Add a tenth person to an Evaboot account and the bill does not move. Add a tenth person to most tools on this page, ours included, and it does. Evaboot's ceiling is that it requires Sales Navigator to run at all, which is where its real cost lives, but the seat model itself is the most customer friendly one in this table.

And on the headline question, we are not the answer for everyone. If your basket needs verified emails and phone numbers, a data vendor on its own usually beats Leadsforlinked plus a separate enrichment tool, and the table above will show you that on the default settings. Where Leadsforlinked wins is the lead records: unlimited scraping and unlimited CSV export from 2.99 euros a month billed yearly, from your own LinkedIn searches, post commenters, event attendees and group members rather than from a vendor database. Set the email and phone fields to zero and the table reorders completely.

Sources, with the date each was fetched

Prices in this category move. If you are reading this long after the date above, treat every figure as a starting point and check the vendor page before you commit. We re-verify these quarterly.

Frequently asked questions

What does a LinkedIn prospecting stack actually cost per month?

There is no single answer, which is why this page is a calculator rather than a number. On the example loaded by default, 2,000 leads a month with 1,200 verified emails and 300 phone numbers across 3 seats on annual billing, the sourced stacks on this page run from about 135 dollars a month to about 500 dollars a month, and one of them cannot supply that volume at any price it publishes. The spread is wider than most teams expect because seat minimums and credit allowances move the total far more than the headline price does.

Why does Evaboot cost more than its own price list?

Because Evaboot requires an active Sales Navigator subscription, stated in its own FAQ. Sales Navigator Core is 119.99 dollars per seat per month, or 89.99 dollars per seat per month on annual billing at 1,079.88 dollars a year, verified on LinkedIn's compare-plans page on 5 September 2026. On three seats that is 269.97 dollars a month before a single Evaboot credit is bought. Evaboot itself is inexpensive and its seats are unlimited and free on one shared balance, which is genuinely better than most tools in this category offer.

Do unused credits cost me money?

Yes, when the vendor says they expire. Apollo states that credits expire at the end of each billing cycle and do not roll over. Surfe's terms state that credits you fail to use before the end of a subscription period cannot be rolled over and are not refunded on early termination. Clay states that actions reset each billing cycle and do not roll over, although Clay data credits do roll over up to twice your monthly amount. This calculator puts a dollar value on unused credits only for those three, because those are the only three whose own wording we can quote. For every other vendor it shows the unused count and says plainly that the vendor is silent on expiry.

Why is a phone number more expensive than an email?

Because most data vendors meter them differently. On LeadIQ a phone number costs 10 credits and an email costs 1, so a record with both costs 11, published on LeadIQ's pricing page and reworked into Universal Credits on 24 August 2026. Lusha's own site gives two different figures for a phone number, 5 in its documentation and 10 on its pricing page, so this calculator lets you pick and shows how much the answer moves. If you need a lot of phone numbers, the credit arithmetic rather than the subscription price decides which stack is cheapest.

Is Leadsforlinked always the cheapest option here?

No. Leadsforlinked is the cheapest way to get the lead records themselves, because Basic is 4.99 euros a month, or 2.99 euros a month billed yearly, for unlimited scraping and unlimited CSV export. It does not find verified emails or phone numbers, so if you need those you still pay a data vendor, and a data vendor on its own is often cheaper than Leadsforlinked plus a separate enrichment tool. On the default example loaded on this page, Kaspr and Apollo both come out cheaper than Leadsforlinked plus Surfe. The calculator shows that instead of hiding it.

Keep going

Related free tools: the Sales Navigator cost calculator for the seat maths on its own, and the LinkedIn outreach ROI calculator for what happens to those leads once you have them. The full set is at free tools.