--- title: "Lusha vs UpLead: which one, and why" description: "Lusha and UpLead compared on unit cost, billing model, data returned, license and MCP support. Verified pricing, October 2026." url: https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/compare/lusha-vs-uplead updated: 2026-10-25 --- Head to head · Verified 8 Oct 2026 # Lusha vs *UpLead* ## Lusha Best published credit costs for contact data $37.45/mo annual vs ## UpLead One credit for the email and the mobile together $99/mo Short answer Lusha vs UpLead is closer on price than it looks and not close at all on access. For a contact where you want email and mobile, the two land within a few cents of each other. The difference that decides it is the API, and for anything automated that is the whole comparison. Side by side ## Where they actually differ Every value comes from the same record that drives the [Enrichment APIs](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/enrichment-apis) listing, so this table cannot disagree with the cards. Accented tags are data one provider returns and the other does not. | Compare | [Lusha](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/enrichment-apis/lusha-api-review) | [UpLead](https://www.uplead.com/) | | --- | --- | --- | | What it is | Every credit cost published, no rate limit published | A credit buys the whole contact, but the API is quote only | | Entry price | $37.45/mo annual | $99/mo | | Unit cost | $0.087 per credit | $0.582 per contact | | Billing model | Credit packs Subscription Per seat Free tier | Credit packs Subscription Per seat | | Free tier | Free plan, 40 credits a month, 1 seat, no card. API is rate limited strictly. | 7-day free trial with 5 credits. No ongoing free tier. | | GTM motion covered | Source Enrich Signal | Source Enrich | | Data returned | Work email Mobile phone Firmographics Technographics Intent and news Job changes | Work email Mobile phone Firmographics Technographics Intent and news | | MCP server | Yes https://mcp.lusha.com | No | | Interfaces | REST API MCP server Webhooks Bulk or async | REST API Bulk or async | | Auth | API key in the api\_key header, generated in the Lusha dashboard | API key, per the UpLead API docs | | Rate limits | Per plan, across minute, hour and day windows. Numbers are not published. | Not published. Credits are the binding constraint. | | Coverage | Global | Strongest in NA | | Compliance | GDPR DPA CCPA | GDPR DPA CCPA | | Best for | Best published credit costs for contact data | One credit for the email and the mobile together | Cost modeling ## The same workload, priced both ways Computed from each provider's published entry-plan rate. The monthly floor is shown separately, because at low volume the floor is the bill. | Workload | Lusha | UpLead | Difference | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 10,000 verified work emails | $870.00 $0.087 per email | $5,820 $0.582 per email | **Lusha** by 6.7x | | 2,000 mobile numbers | $874.00 $0.437 per mobile | $1,164 $0.582 per mobile | **Lusha** by 33% | | Monthly floor at entry | $37.45/mo annual | $99/mo | Lusha is lower | | Charged on a miss | No | No | Neither | Rates read from each vendor's own pricing page on 8 October 2026. Bulk figures assume the entry-plan rate holds at that volume, which in practice means moving up a plan tier. The decision ## Pick each one when ### Lusha - You want to buy API access at a published price today. - Email-only enrichment, where the 1-credit rate is cheap. - An MCP server and webhooks are useful. ### UpLead - You want the email and mobile bundled into one predictable credit. - The work happens in the app and the Chrome extension, not in code. - Suppression list uploads and bi-directional CRM sync matter. The test that settles it Neither vendor publishes a match rate you could hold them to, so the rate card only tells you half the story. Take 500 rows from the segment you actually sell into, run them through one free tier and one trial, verify both result sets, and divide spend by survivors. Half a day and about $20, and on a close pair it changes the answer often enough to be worth it. Plan by plan ## What each one costs, tier by tier Both publish a full rate card, so this comparison runs on numbers rather than on adjectives. Lusha lists 5 tiers and UpLead lists 4. Every figure is read off the vendor's own pricing page, and the pages they came from are listed at the foot of this one. | The short version | Lusha | UpLead | | --- | --- | --- | | Cheapest paid plan | Starter, $37.45 | Essentials, $99 | | Tiers published | 5 | 4 | | Free tier | Free plan, 40 credits a month, 1 seat, no card. API is rate limited strictly. | 7-day free trial with 5 credits. No ongoing free tier. | | Unit cost at entry | $0.087 per credit | $0.582 per contact | The cheapest paid plan is rarely the plan you end up on, because what moves you up a tier is usually volume rather than a feature. The two rate cards below are what you are choosing between. ### Lusha Lusha publishes 5 tiers, one of them free, and the paid ladder runs from $37.45 to Quote. #### Free $0 /month - 40 credits a month, 1 seat - No credit card required - API access, but strictly rate limited #### Starter $37.45 /mo billed yearly - 4,800 credits a year, granted up front - 1 seat. Works out at $0.094 a credit - API still strictly rate limited #### Pro $52.45 /mo billed yearly - 7,200 credits a year, at $0.087 each - 2 free seats, full API, webhooks, CSV enrichment - Credits roll over to twice the monthly cap #### Premium $299.95 /mo billed yearly - 40,800 credits a year, at $0.088 each - 5 free seats, API Advanced, team management - Credit allocation across the team #### Scale Quote only - Custom annual credit volume - SSO and a dedicated customer success team - No rollover: the cap does not apply ### UpLead UpLead publishes 4 tiers, one of them free, and the paid ladder runs from $99 to Quote. #### Free trial $0 7 days, 5 credits - Verified emails and mobile direct dials - Chrome extension - No ongoing free tier #### Essentials $99 /mo, 170 credits - $74 a month billed annually - $0.582 a credit at the monthly rate - CRM integrations, no API #### Plus $199 /mo, 400 credits - $149 a month billed annually - $0.498 a credit - Data enrichment, technographics, advanced filters - Still no API access #### Professional Quote annual billing only - The only tier with full API access - Custom seats and custom credits - Buyer intent and bi-directional CRM sync Cost model ## What Lusha and UpLead cost at your volume Put your own volume in. The model picks the cheapest published plan that covers it on each side, which is the question a rate card cannot answer and the one that decides the bill. ### Lusha Priced on the volume you use, so the plan that covers a normal month is the one that decides the bill. Plan that covers it **Past the published ladder** Largest published **Premium, 3,400 credits** At your volume **Quoted** Ask for **the per-credit rate above 3,400** ### UpLead Priced on the volume you use, so the plan that covers a normal month is the one that decides the bill. Plan that covers it **None with API access** Monthly **Quoted** Why **every published tier that carries the API is quote-only** Ask for **the entry price on the tier that includes API access** Plans are read from each vendor's own pricing page and the model picks the cheapest one that covers you, so these are list prices before any discount you negotiate and before annual billing, which most of these vendors discount. Twelve months ## What a year costs at three volumes The same plan-fit arithmetic as the model above, run out to a year, because an annual number is what a budget actually asks for. Every column moves with volume, because all of these meter usage rather than seats. | A year at | Lusha | UpLead | | --- | --- | --- | | 1,000 a month | $3,599 Premium | Quoted | | 10,000 a month | Quoted | Quoted | | 50,000 a month | Quoted | Quoted | 1 of the 2 providers here publish enough to be put in this table. These are list prices on the published plan that covers each volume, so they are the number before you negotiate and before annual billing, which most of these vendors discount by between a fifth and a half. In practice ## How this plays out once it is running UpLead charges one credit per contact and that credit covers the email and the mobile direct dial together: $99 a month for 170 credits is about 58 cents a contact, or about 44 cents on annual billing. [Lusha](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/enrichment-apis/lusha-api-review) charges 1 credit for the email and 5 for the phone, which at the Pro rate is about 52 cents for both. Lusha puts a real API on every tier, throttled below Pro and unrestricted from $52.45 a month, with published credit costs and an MCP server. UpLead puts full API access only on Professional, which is annual billing and quote only, so you cannot buy UpLead programmatically without a sales conversation. Strengths ## What each one is genuinely good at Not a feature list. These are the things that make somebody keep paying after the novelty has worn off, which is a different question from what the marketing page leads with. ### Lusha #### You can buy API access today, at a published price This is the comparison. Lusha publishes a cost for every operation and sells API access on its paid plans. UpLead puts Full API Access only on Professional, which is annual billing and quote only, so for anything automated one of these two has a price and the other has a form. #### Every operation is priced separately An email is 1 credit, a phone number is 5, a company profile is 1, a recorded call is 8, at about 8.7 cents a credit on Pro. UpLead bundles the contact into one credit at $0.582 on Essentials, so if you only want emails, Lusha's unbundled rate is far cheaper. #### An MCP server and webhooks Lusha publishes both. UpLead publishes neither, so an agent-driven or event-driven build has one option here rather than two. ### UpLead #### One credit buys the whole contact Email and mobile direct dial together for a single credit, where Lusha charges 1 plus 5. At UpLead's $0.582 on Essentials against Lusha's six credits at roughly 52 cents, a contact with both lands within a few cents, and UpLead's is the simpler number to forecast. #### Suppression lists and bi-directional CRM sync Upload the contacts you already own so you do not buy them twice, and keep the CRM in step both ways. For an app-and-extension motion run by a sales team rather than by code, those are the two features that actually save money. #### A 95% data accuracy claim with real-time verification Published on the plan comparison rather than buried, and it is the basis UpLead sells on. Lusha does not make an equivalent published commitment. Limits ## Where each one falls down Every provider on this site has a case it handles badly, and the people who find out are the ones who bought it for that case. These are the ones worth knowing before you sign rather than after. ### Lusha #### The allowance is annual and the pricing page does not shout it Four thousand eight hundred credits a year on Starter is 400 a month; Pro's 7,200 is 600. Comparing those against a monthly figure overstates Lusha by twelve, and this is the most common mistake made on this page. #### No published rate limits Every price and no limits, which is the inverse of what an integrator needs. You size the integration by hitting the API and seeing what happens. #### A phone number is five credits Roughly 44 cents at the Pro rate. On a mobile-heavy motion that single line dominates the bill, and UpLead's bundled credit becomes the cheaper structure. ### UpLead #### Full API access is quote-only, on an annual plan Essentials at $99 and Plus at $199 are published and neither carries it. The only tier with the API is Professional, which is annual billing with custom seats and custom credits. For a programmatic buyer, UpLead's published prices describe a product you cannot use. #### Small allowances at the published tiers A hundred and seventy credits on Essentials and 400 on Plus. At $0.582 a credit that is the most expensive per-contact rate in this directory, and the plans are sized for an individual prospector rather than a pipeline. #### No free tier, no MCP server, no webhooks Seven days with 5 credits and then a paid plan. There is no ongoing free allowance to measure match rate on, and neither of the integration surfaces Lusha publishes has an equivalent here. Both ## Using Lusha and UpLead together A two-way comparison assumes the answer is one of them. On this pairing it often is not, and the arrangement below is what teams actually end up running. Both are general-purpose contact providers, so running both is duplication rather than a waterfall, and the overlap in coverage is high enough that the second one rarely earns its place. If both are already in the building, the split that makes sense is by interface rather than by data: UpLead for the reps working in the app and the Chrome extension, Lusha for anything programmatic, because UpLead's API is behind a quote and Lusha's is not. Keep a suppression list flowing from the app side so the pipeline does not buy contacts the team already pulled. Decide ## Lusha or UpLead, for you Five questions, answered from the same records as the rest of this page. Nothing is sent anywhere and there is no result to email yourself. Will an agent be calling this? Which market is most of your list in? Do you need job changes? Are you buying one step or the whole motion? Is there budget approved for this yet? Answer the questions above Each answer leans one way. The recommendation appears here once you have picked at least two. A tool like this can only weigh what is on the page. It does not know your segment, and the one test that does is the bake-off further down: real rows, cheapest entry on each side, spend divided by survivors. Where an answer leans on a certification or an integration, it means that vendor publishes it on the pages this directory read, which is not the same as the other one lacking it. The sources are listed at the foot of the page. Provenance ## Where the data comes from, and what you may do with it The question that arrives late and expensively is not how good the data is, it is who is allowed to hold it. These are the fields each one returns, the coverage it claims and the compliance it publishes. | Provider | Fields returned | Coverage | Compliance | Redistribution | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | [Lusha](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/enrichment-apis/lusha-api-review) | Work email, Mobile phone, Firmographics, Technographics, Intent and news, Job changes | Global | GDPR DPA CCPA | Not stated | | [UpLead](https://www.uplead.com/) | Work email, Mobile phone, Firmographics, Technographics, Intent and news | Strongest in NA | GDPR DPA CCPA | Not stated | None of these states a redistribution position on its pricing or docs pages. Internally that never matters. Put the rows in something your customers can see and it becomes the question your legal team asks first. Two practical notes that apply to every provider on this page. A compliance badge describes the vendor, not your use of it, so a GDPR DPA does not give you a lawful basis for the outreach you send. And every one of these vendors runs its own opt-out, which means a person who asks you to delete their record has to be removed from your copy as well as from theirs. Migration ## Moving between Lusha and UpLead Most readers of this page are already on one of these two. A swap is four hours of code and a month of watching, and the order below is the one that catches the expensive mistakes while they are still free. 01 ### Measure the thing you are about to lose Run 500 rows you already have through Lusha and record the match rate, the fields that came back populated and the cost. Without that number a migration cannot be judged, because every provider looks cheaper per unit than the one you are paying for today. 02 ### Check the fields, not the field count UpLead does not return Job changes, which Lusha does. If anything downstream reads job changes, that is a change to your pipeline and not just to your vendor. 03 ### Rewrite the auth and the limits, in that order Lusha authenticates with API key in the api\_key header, generated in the Lusha dashboard. UpLead uses API key, per the UpLead API docs. The limits are the part that bites later. Lusha rate: Per plan, across minute, hour and day windows. Numbers are not published. UpLead rate: Not published. Credits are the binding constraint. A loop tuned to the first will either crawl or get throttled on the second. 04 ### Run both for one billing cycle Keep the old key live and route a slice of real traffic to the new one. A month is the shortest honest test, because credit expiry, rollover and the overage rate only show up at renewal and those are where the surprises live. 05 ### Cancel on the renewal date, not before Credits on most of these plans do not survive a downgrade. Check what happens to the balance you have already paid for, and time the switch so you are not buying the same records twice. The step people skip is the first one, and it is the only one that cannot be done after the fact. Once the old key is off you have nothing to compare the new match rate against, so a provider that is quietly worse on your segment looks like a provider that is fine. If neither fits ## The wider field for both A two-way comparison assumes the answer is one of these two. Often it is not, and the reason you are comparing them at all points somewhere else entirely: [Lusha alternatives](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/alternatives/lusha-alternatives) both start from the reason people leave. [Lusha alternatives 4 A phone number costs five credits, volume buys no discount, and the rate limits are not published. Those are the three reasons people look. See the alternatives →](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/alternatives/lusha-alternatives) [Everything in Enrich 13 The full category these two sit in, filtered by data returned, billing model and entry price. Browse the category →](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/enrichment-apis) Keep comparing ## Related comparisons The 26 providers behind every pairing here are in the [main listing](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis). Pairings that share a side with this one: [Lusha vs RocketReach](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/compare/lusha-vs-rocketreach), [Cognism vs UpLead](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/compare/cognism-vs-uplead) and [Lusha vs ZoomInfo](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/compare/lusha-vs-zoominfo). And: [Apollo vs UpLead](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/compare/apollo-vs-uplead) and [Cognism vs Lusha](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/compare/cognism-vs-lusha). Every comparison in the directory is on the [compare hub](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/compare). [vs Apollo API vs Lusha A seat with credits bundled against a published price for every single operation. Compare them →](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/compare/apollo-vs-lusha) [vs Cognism vs Lusha Neither publishes the number you need, but they withhold opposite halves. Compare them →](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/compare/cognism-vs-lusha) [vs Lusha vs RocketReach Five credits for a phone number against one export for the whole contact. Compare them →](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/compare/lusha-vs-rocketreach) [See all 67 comparisons](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/compare) ## Comparison pages end at the rate card. *Your list does not.* We run the bake-off on your actual data, pick the provider order, and build the pipeline behind it: waterfall routing, credit ceilings and the write-back that puts a verified contact in front of a rep the same day. [Book a call](https://book.frontal.so) [See the stacks](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/stacks) Worked with 300+ companies. A senior operator runs your account. FAQ ## Lusha and UpLead, answered Read from the same records that drive the table above. **Is Lusha or UpLead cheaper?** On the entry plan it is Lusha, $37.45/mo annual against UpLead at $99/mo. Per unit it is $0.087 per credit against $0.582 per contact, which is the figure that decides it at volume. **Can I try Lusha and UpLead for free?** Lusha: Free plan, 40 credits a month, 1 seat, no card. API is rate limited strictly. UpLead: 7-day free trial with 5 credits. No ongoing free tier. **What are the rate limits on Lusha and UpLead?** Lusha: Per plan, across minute, hour and day windows. Numbers are not published. UpLead: Not published. Credits are the binding constraint. **Do Lusha and UpLead both have MCP servers?** One of them. Lusha ships one (https://mcp.lusha.com); UpLead documents none. **Which is better, Lusha or UpLead?** Lusha vs UpLead is closer on price than it looks and not close at all on access. For a contact where you want email and mobile, the two land within a few cents of each other. The difference that decides it is the API, and for anything automated that is the whole comparison. **What are the downsides of Lusha and UpLead?** Measured against each other rather than in general. Lusha: none of the structural gaps in this answer; the limits section carries its operational ones. UpLead: there is no free tier, only a trial, so test your own list inside its limits before paying; there is no documented MCP server, so an agent has to go through your own code. **Can you use Lusha and UpLead together?** Both are general-purpose contact providers, so running both is duplication rather than a waterfall, and the overlap in coverage is high enough that the second one rarely earns its place. **Can I migrate from Lusha to UpLead without losing data?** Not without losing a field. UpLead does not return job changes, which Lusha does, so anything downstream that reads it has to change. Either way, measure your match rate on 500 rows before you switch, because that number is the one you cannot recover afterwards. Published by ## [Frontal](https://frontal.so/) Frontal is the go-to-market partner for B2B tech companies past product-market fit. It publishes this directory. Every price, tier requirement and rate limit on this page was read from the vendor's own pricing page, developer documentation or knowledge base on the date below. Nothing on it is restated from a press release or a third-party listing. Where a vendor publishes no public figure, this page says so rather than estimating. [How we checked](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis#method). Reviewed by [Kenny Damian](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenny-damian-90aba221a/) Co-founder & Head of GTM, Frontal **Verified** 8 Oct 2026 **Sources** 4 vendor documents Read from - [lusha.com/pricing](https://www.lusha.com/pricing/) - [docs.lusha.com/apis](https://docs.lusha.com/apis) - [uplead.com/pricing](https://www.uplead.com/pricing/) - [docs.uplead.com](https://docs.uplead.com/)