How much does Lusha cost per contact?

On Starter, $49.90 a month buys 400 credits. An email costs 1 credit and a phone 5, so about 12.5 cents per email or 62 cents per phone number, as of October 2026. Annual billing at $37.45 a month lowers that by a quarter.

Does Lusha charge when it finds nothing?

Not in the platform or CSV uploads, where misses are free. Its API charges at least 1 credit per request, even when there is no match, according to Lusha's developer documentation.

What is a cheaper alternative to Lusha for emails?

Hunter's Starter plan is $49 a month for 2,000 credits and does not charge when no email is found. Apollo Basic includes 30,000 credits a year per seat. Both cost a few cents per email.

Which Lusha alternative is best for phone numbers?

Cognism, for European mobiles, with phone-verified data. Kaspr is a cheaper self-serve option with 1,200 phone credits a year on Starter.

Lusha alternatives compared on cost per contact

What Lusha does well, and why people still leave

Lusha has some of the fairest policies in this market. Misses are free in the platform and in CSV uploads, unused credits roll over up to 2x, and even the free plan includes the browser extension and CRM integrations. If you look up a handful of people a week, it is hard to beat.

People leave when volume grows, because the allowances are small:

Starter: $49.90 a month (or $37.45 billed annually) for 400 credits.
Pro: $69.90 a month for 600 credits.
Premium: $399.90 a month for 3,400 credits.

An email is 1 credit and a phone number 5 (all as of October 2026). That makes the unit maths the reason to switch, so this page is organised around it. The second reason is narrower: if you call Lusha's API, it charges at least 1 credit per request even with no match.

What does each contact cost?

Here is the effective price per email and per phone on each tool's entry paid plan, monthly billing unless stated.

Tool	Plan (Oct 2026)	Per email	Per phone
Lusha	Starter $49.90, 400 credits	12.5 cents	62 cents
Hunter	Starter $49, 2,000 credits	2.5 cents	Not offered
Apollo	Basic $49/seat annual, 30,000/yr	About 2 cents	About 16 cents
Kaspr	Starter $49/mo annual	Unlimited B2B emails	1,200 phone credits a year
Sluice	Directory reveal	5 cents per person scoring 70+	Waterfall lookup, priced before running
Cognism	Unpublished, annual	1 credit per revealed contact	Included in reveal

Apollo's per-phone figure assumes 8 credits per phone (third-party). These are list prices with full use of the allowance; if you use half your credits, double the unit cost.

Cheapest per email is not the same as cheapest per meeting. A 2-cent email to the wrong person costs more than a 5-cent email to the right one, once you count your time and your domain's reputation.

If you mainly need emails

Hunter

Suits: people who know the company and need the email of the right person there, verified.
Price: free with 50 credits a month; Starter $49 a month for 2,000 credits ($34 billed annually); Growth $149 for 10,000 (as of October 2026). A found email is 1 credit; a verification is half a credit. No credits are used when no email is found.
Weakness: no phone numbers, and people search is much weaker than Lusha's prospecting filters.

Apollo.io

Suits: small teams who want emails, sequences and a dialer in one place.
Price: Basic $49 per seat a month billed annually with 30,000 credits a year; Professional $79 (as of October 2026).
Weakness: reported bounce rates of 15 to 35% and weaker international accuracy (third-party). See our Apollo alternatives.

If you mainly need phone numbers

Kaspr

Suits: reps prospecting from LinkedIn profiles, especially in Europe.
Price: free with 15 B2B email credits, 5 phone credits and 5 direct email credits a month; Starter $49 a month billed annually ($65 monthly) with unlimited B2B emails and 1,200 phone credits a year; Business $79 annually ($99 monthly) with 2,400 (as of October 2026).
Weakness: like Lusha, it is a one-profile-at-a-time tool. It will not build a list or a sequence for you.

Cognism

Suits: teams calling into EMEA at volume.
Price: not published; 5 seats on Standard and Pro; contracts reportedly $15,000 to $60,000+ a year.
Weakness: an annual enterprise contract is a big jump from Lusha's $49.90. Our Cognism alternatives page covers this.

If your real problem is who to look up

Lusha answers "what is this person's number". It does not answer "who should I be calling". Two alternatives start there.

Sluice

Suits: founders and small teams whose best leads come from activity: people who commented on a competitor's post, reviewed a rival on G2, or work at a company hiring the role you sell to.
Price: Starter $9 a month, Working $39, Agency $149, credits at one cent; directory previews are free and only people scoring 70 or more are revealed, at 5 cents each (as of October 2026). See pricing.
Weakness: no browser extension for looking up a profile you are viewing, no dialer, mobile numbers are expensive, HubSpot is the only CRM, and Sluice is new without public reviews.

Clay

Suits: an operator building list logic from many sources, with a waterfall over 150+ providers.
Price: free tier with 500 actions and 100 data credits; Launch $167 a month (as of October 2026).
Weakness: far more setup than Lusha. Third-party reviews put the learning curve at 20 to 40 hours.

How to choose

Count last month's lookups, split into emails and phones.
Multiply by the per-unit costs in the table above.
If phones dominate, compare Kaspr and Cognism. If emails dominate, Hunter or Apollo.
If most lookups went to people who never replied, the problem is the list, not the price. Read what a lead actually costs and try a source-first tool like Sluice or the Clay alternatives.