--- title: "Crustdata API review: credits, add-ons and rate limits" description: "What the Crustdata API charges in credits per search result, profile and contact field, its per-endpoint rate limits, the MCP server, and what is unpublished." url: https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/enrichment-apis/crustdata-api-review updated: 2026-11-12 --- # Crustdata API review Search wide for pennies of a credit, then pay only for the fields you keep Reviewed by **Frontal** *·*Updated October 2026 ## On this page 1. What a call costs 2. Pricing and plans 3. Rate limits 4. API key and access 5. Request example 6. Docs and reference 7. Video walkthrough 8. Strengths and limits 9. Verdict 10. Before you build 11. Top alternatives [Visit Crustdata](https://crustdata.com/) **From** Quote only **Unit cost** Sold in credits; no public dollar price for a credit **Billing** Credit packs Subscription Free tier **Best for** Search wide for pennies of a credit, then pay only for the fields you keep one-prospect-list.txt Crustdata's own worked example ``` search 1,000 people x 0.03 # 30 credits enrich 35 people x 2 # profile + work email, 70 credits # an empty search costs nothing # every response carries X-Credits-Used ``` 200 OK Total for the list 100 credits The Crustdata API sells people, company, job and social post data from its own index and from live lookups, and prices every call in credits by what comes back. A search result costs 0.03 credits and a search with no results costs nothing. A person profile costs 1 credit, and the work email, personal email and phone are add-ons you pay for only when you ask for them. That model rewards a search-wide, enrich-narrow pipeline, and Crustdata says so on its own pricing page: its worked example searches 1,000 people for 30 credits and enriches 35 of them for 70. The catch is the unit. Crustdata publishes the credit price of every endpoint and never the dollar price of a credit, so the only dollar figures on its pages are the $20 of free credits and enterprise plans "from four figures a month". Rate limits are set per endpoint rather than per account. The defaults are 15 requests a minute on person and company enrich, 30 on search and 10 on the live endpoints, which is low for single-record calls and the reason the batch endpoints and the 25-profile enrich call exist. The rest of the category is in the [Enrichment APIs](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/enrichment-apis) listing. Nothing here is paired against Crustdata yet, so the [compare hub](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/compare) is the place to start. ## What each Crustdata endpoint costs in credits These are Crustdata's standard list prices in credits, read from its pricing docs. Batch versions cost the same as single calls, and a contract account can carry its own prices, which GET /account/endpoints returns for free. | Endpoint | What it does | Credits | | --- | --- | --- | | /person/search | People from the index, by filter or relevance. | 0.03 a result, plus premium field groups | | /company/search | Companies from the index. | 0.03 a result, plus premium field groups | | /job/search | Indexed job postings. | 0.03 a result | | /person/enrich | A full profile from a profile URL, up to 25 at once. | 1 base; +1 work email, +2 personal email, +2 phone | | /company/enrich | A company profile from a domain, URL, name or ID. | 2, or 4 with technographics | | /person/contact/enrich | Contact fields only, no base profile. Enterprise plans. | 1 to 5.5 per matched person | | /person/professional\_network/enrich/live | A fresh profile fetched at call time. Enterprise plans. | 7 a profile | | /web/search/live | Web, news and academic search. | 1 a query | | /watch/person/search | A saved search that reports new matches. | 0.5 a new person on the 30-day SLA, 150 a new person on a 1-day SLA | | Autocomplete, /company/identify, account calls | Typeahead, company resolution, balance and usage. | Free | Crustdata names three common patterns: 2 credits for sales outreach (profile and work email), 4 for full outbound with a phone, and 5 for recruiting with personal contact data. The most one person record can cost is 9 credits, because two add-ons sit outside the table: developer platform data at +1 and research profiles at +2, the second enabled on request. Premium fields bill on both sides of a search A search pays 0.03 a result for the basic profile, and premium field groups such as experience, education or headcount add 0.1 to 2.5 credits a result each. Filtering on a premium group is one charge and receiving it in the response is another, so a search that filters and returns experience pays for it twice. A person result that touches every returnable group costs 2.03 credits, nearly 68 times the base rate. ## Crustdata API pricing, plan by plan Crustdata API pricing is a prepaid credit balance, with every endpoint priced in credits and the dollar rate of a credit shown only inside the dashboard. ### Free $0 $20 in credits, once - Every new account - The self-serve In-DB endpoints - Enough to test your own use case ### Self-serve Credits packs bought in the dashboard - Search, enrich, jobs and web endpoints - Packs valid 12 months, or auto top-up - Dollar rate not printed on the public pages ### Enterprise Custom from four figures a month - Live people and company endpoints - Contact enrich and recurring credit grants - A lower rate per credit as volume grows Purchased credits are valid for 12 months from the purchase that added them, and usage draws on the earliest-expiring credits first. Crustdata says contract plans cost less per credit than self-serve, and that the more you use the less each credit costs, but it does not say by how much. A credit table is half a price Every figure on Crustdata's pricing page is in credits, and the page that sells the credits is behind a login. This review compares Crustdata on credits per record and leaves the dollar comparison open, because no public page states one. Before you commit, read the rate in the dashboard and call GET /account/endpoints, which returns the prices on your own account for nothing. Built in Clay ### Building this yourself? *Start in Clay.* Clay runs a waterfall across 150+ data providers from one table, without a separate contract with each. A lookup that finds nothing costs no data credit. **150+** data providers **500** free actions a month **$0** for a miss [Try Clay](https://go.frontal.so/clay) Frontal is a Clay Elite Studio Partner. A Clay waterfall **Clay** ## Per endpoint, per minute Crustdata API rate limits are set endpoint by endpoint, in requests per minute, and Crustdata says the defaults apply to most accounts. Every response carries X-RateLimit-Limit, X-RateLimit-Remaining and X-RateLimit-Reset, and the reset header counts down the seconds to the next window. | Endpoint | Default limit | Note | | --- | --- | --- | | /person/enrich, /company/enrich | 15 a minute | Up to 25 profiles a call | | /person/search, /company/search, /job/search | 30 a minute | Billed per result | | Live endpoints and web search | 10 a minute | Raising them is constrained | | Batch live endpoints | 5 a minute | Plus the in-flight job cap | | Autocomplete, /account/credits | 300 a minute | Free | | Usage endpoints | 60 a minute, shared | All four share one budget | | Watch management | 10 a minute per watch path | Each path keeps its own budget | ### Two limits on a batch job A per-minute rate, and a cap on jobs in flight. - Batch jobs count in two pools, live and standard. - Each pool's cap is your highest limit in it divided by six, held between 5 and 30. - On default limits that is 5 active jobs per pool. - A 429 on the job cap is checked before credits, so it costs nothing. ### What 15 a minute means Single-record enrich is the slow path. - One profile per call is 900 profiles an hour. - Twenty-five per call is 22,500 an hour on the same limit. - Contact enrich sits with the live endpoints, not with search. - Write to Crustdata with your volume to raise a limit. A 402 is the balance, not the rate When credits run out, billable calls return 402 with insufficient\_credits. An admin can also cap what one API key spends in a month, and that cap returns the same 402 with a different message, so read the message before you top up. A batch the key cannot afford is refused before it starts, and nothing is charged. The limits are per endpoint, which is generous on search and tight on enrich. Design around the batch calls from the start: a pipeline that enriches one profile per request will meet the 15-a-minute ceiling long before it meets the credit bill. ## How to create a Crustdata API key A Crustdata API key comes from the dashboard, and every request sends it as a Bearer token in the authorization header. Every request also sends x-api-version, currently 2025-11-01, and Crustdata's docs tell you to pin it rather than take the latest. ### Getting a key Self-serve, with $20 of credits to test on. - Create an account at app.crustdata.com. - Copy the key from the API keys page. - Send authorization: Bearer YOUR\_API\_KEY. - Add x-api-version: 2025-11-01 to every call. ### Keys share one balance Every key on the account draws on the same credits. - An admin can cap a single key's monthly spend. - The cap resets on the 1st of each month, UTC. - Use one for a teammate, a customer or an unattended job. - GET /account/credits shows the balance, free. The key is simple; the version header is the part to get right. Crustdata's introduction says a request without it can default to the latest version, which may introduce breaking changes, and its credits page says such a request returns 400. Either way the answer is to send the header on every call. ## What a Crustdata API call looks like Enrich is a POST with a JSON body naming the profiles to look up. Leave out the add-ons and you pay the 1-credit base profile; ask for fields and you pay for each one that comes back. crustdata.sh 1 credit, base profile ``` # 1. enrich a person, base profile only POST https://api.crustdata.com/person/enrich authorization: Bearer $CRUSTDATA_KEY x-api-version: 2025-11-01 { "professional_network_profile_urls": ["..."] } # 2. the balance, free GET https://api.crustdata.com/account/credits ``` 429 Over the endpoint limit Wait for X-RateLimit-Reset ## Where the Crustdata API documentation lives The Crustdata API docs are at docs.crustdata.com, organized by dataset: company, person, job, web and social post, each with search, enrich and autocomplete pages, plus watchers, batch jobs and account endpoints. The docs publish an llms.txt index, and every page is served as Markdown, which suits an agent reading them directly. | Surface | Where | What it answers | | --- | --- | --- | | Pricing in credits | docs.crustdata.com/general/pricing | Every endpoint, every premium field and every watcher SLA. | | Rate limits | docs.crustdata.com/general/rate-limits | The default limit per endpoint and the batch job caps. | | Credits and keys | docs.crustdata.com/general/credits | Balance, expiry, auto top-up and per-key caps. | | MCP server | install.crustdata.com/mcp | Claude, Cursor, VS Code, ChatGPT, Codex and others. | | Pricing page | crustdata.com/pricing | The free credits and the enterprise floor. | Crustdata also ships a Claude Code plugin and a Codex plugin that register the same MCP connector and add ready-made skills. Its integrations page lists Zapier among the automation tools. The pricing docs carry a warning that prices can change by plan, entitlement and endpoint version, which is a reason to read your own account's prices rather than the list. The [MCP page](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/mcp-servers) lists Crustdata's MCP access alongside the others in this directory. ## Crustdata's own video of its MCP server Crustdata publishes this on its own channel, so it is Crustdata's account of Crustdata, not ours. It is here because a rate card cannot show you the thing moving, and a few minutes of the product is faster than any paragraph on this page at telling you whether the shape of it fits yours. [YouTube · Crustdata CrustData MCP in Claude CoWork 4:08 · Published April 2026](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-9PP_wlxdE) Four minutes from April 2026 on using the Crustdata MCP server from Claude. The channel is the one whose MCP video Crustdata embeds on its own MCP docs page. The video's description names the server at mcp.crustdata.com/mcp, while the current docs give install.crustdata.com/mcp, so take the address from the docs. Nothing on this page about credits or limits rests on the video. Published 21 April 2026 on [Crustdata](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYAkJyN-gII6kyh2Xiw1ApQ), the channel Crustdata's own pages link to, and read on 23 October 2026. Nothing in it is a source for a price or a limit on this page: every figure in the tables above comes from a Crustdata page. ## Strengths and limits Crustdata is built for software that makes thousands of calls and wants to pay for exactly what it keeps. ### What it does well - Search at 0.03 credits a result, and an empty search is free. - Each contact field is an add-on, so a profile without an email costs 1 credit. - Unmatched enrich and identify calls are not billed. - Every response reports its own cost in X-Credits-Used. - A free endpoint returns the prices on your own account. - A hosted MCP server and plugins for Claude Code and Codex. ### Where it falls short - No public dollar price for a credit, anywhere. - Enrich defaults to 15 requests a minute. - Live, contact and developer endpoints are enterprise only. - Premium search fields bill on the filter and the response. - A 1-day watcher SLA costs 150 credits a match, against 0.5. The two columns are one design seen from both ends. The credit model is the most granular in this directory and lets a pipeline pay for exactly the fields it uses, but the unit it is granular in has no published price, so the cheapness cannot be checked until you are inside the dashboard. ## Who should actually buy this Buy Crustdata when you are building software on top of B2B data: an AI SDR, a recruiting tool, a signal feed. Its search-then-enrich pricing, free autocomplete and per-field add-ons fit a product that searches far more than it enriches. For a sales team that wants a work email per contact, the comparison to make is credits per record against a vendor that prints its dollar rate. Spend the $20 of free credits, read the dashboard rate, and only then put Crustdata next to Apollo or People Data Labs on price. Plan the rate limits before the bill. At 15 enrich requests a minute by default, a pipeline that does not batch will be slow long before it is expensive. Crustdata is also a pick on the [BuiltWith alternatives](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/alternatives/builtwith-alternatives) page, where technographics come as an add-on to a full company record: 2 credits a company, 4 with technographics. ## Before you build against it Four things to settle first, each one read off Crustdata's own pages. The ticks are remembered in this browser, so you can come back to a half-finished integration. Provenance ## Where the data comes from, and what you may do with it The question that arrives late and expensively is who is allowed to hold the data. These are the fields it returns, the coverage it claims and the compliance it publishes. | Provider | Fields returned | Coverage | Compliance | Redistribution | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | [Crustdata](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/enrichment-apis/crustdata-api-review) | Work email, Personal email, Mobile phone, Firmographics, Technographics, Job postings, Job changes, Intent and news, LinkedIn profile | Global | None published | Not stated | Crustdata states no 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. A compliance badge describes the vendor rather than your use of it, so a GDPR DPA does not give you a lawful basis for the outreach you send. And the vendor 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. ## If Crustdata is not the answer Four providers in the [Enrichment APIs](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/enrichment-apis) listing that solve the same problem differently. Each one is a trade, and the trade is named. [People Data Labs $98/mo A dataset vendor that prints its price, $0.28 a record, and whose standard terms cover showing its data inside your product.](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/enrichment-apis/people-data-labs-api-review) [Reverse Contact $100 one-time Unlimited profile fetches from a social URL at a flat $249 a month, and credit packs from $100 for 5,000 if you would rather pay per call.](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/enrichment-apis/reverse-contact-api-review) [TheirStack $49/mo If what you used Crustdata for was hiring signals, TheirStack sells job postings as rows, from $49 a month for 1,500 API credits.](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/signal-apis/theirstack-api-review) [Apollo $49/seat/mo Search, enrichment and sending behind one key at a published $0.0196 a credit, with an enrichment limit of 1,000 a minute.](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/enrichment-apis/apollo-api-review) The full set, organized by the reason people leave, is on the [Crustdata alternatives](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/alternatives/crustdata-alternatives) page. ## Calling these APIs one by one? *Run them from one Clay table.* Clay runs a waterfall across 150+ data providers from one table, without a separate contract with each. A lookup that finds nothing costs no data credit, and the free plan includes 500 actions a month. [Try Clay](https://go.frontal.so/clay) [See the Crustdata alternatives](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/alternatives/crustdata-alternatives) Frontal is a Clay Elite Studio Partner. What practitioners say ## Nothing worth quoting yet We searched Reddit for threads about the Crustdata API and have found none worth quoting yet. When one turns up, it goes here, and nothing on this page leans on an unquoted paraphrase. FAQ ## Crustdata API, answered **Is the Crustdata API free?** $20 in free credits on every new account, on the self-serve In-DB endpoints. **How much does the Crustdata API cost?** Crustdata publishes no dollar price on its public pages. It bills by subscription or by credit pack, with a free tier. Read from Crustdata's own pricing page on 24 October 2026. **What are the Crustdata API rate limits?** Per endpoint, per minute: 15 on person and company enrich, 30 on search, 10 on the live endpoints, 300 on autocomplete. Batch jobs are also capped at 5 in flight per pool by default. **How do I get a Crustdata API key?** A Crustdata API key comes from the dashboard, and every request sends it as a Bearer token in the authorization header. Requests authenticate with bearer token in the authorization header, plus an x-api-version header pinned to 2025-11-01. The current steps are in Crustdata's own documentation, which is authoritative on anything that has changed since 24 October 2026. **Does Crustdata have an MCP server?** Yes. Hosted at install.crustdata.com/mcp, with a Crustdata account sign-in. It is listed with the others on the MCP page. 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** 24 Oct 2026 **Sources** 6 vendor documents Read from - [crustdata.com/pricing](https://crustdata.com/pricing) - [docs.crustdata.com/general](https://docs.crustdata.com/general/pricing.md) - [docs.crustdata.com/general/rate-limits.md](https://docs.crustdata.com/general/rate-limits.md) - [docs.crustdata.com/general/credits.md](https://docs.crustdata.com/general/credits.md) - [docs.crustdata.com/for-agents](https://docs.crustdata.com/for-agents/mcp.md) - [docs.crustdata.com/openapi-specs](https://docs.crustdata.com/openapi-specs/2025-11-01/introduction.md)