Hunter is fine. Here's when you need something else.

If you searched for “Hunter alternative”, the situation is simpler than the listicles make it sound. Hunter is not dead, not acquired, and not hiding its prices. It is a domain-first email finder: give it a company domain and it lists the addresses and the naming pattern it knows at that domain, give it a name plus a domain and it guesses one address and verifies it, and it has had a permanent free tier with an API key attached for years. People go looking for something else for four reasons. The jump from the €49 Starter plan to the €149 Growth plan is steep. Monthly credits reset whether you used them or not. It returns no phone numbers. And the whole model assumes you start from a company, when a lot of workflows start from a person.

I build one of the tools below, PeopleDB, so read the rest knowing that. I have tried to be exact about what each tool starts from and what it charges, including the cases where mine is the wrong choice and the cases where the right move is to stay on Hunter.

What Hunter does well

Credit where due. Its pricing page, checked on September 6, 2026, shows a free plan with 50 credits a month, Starter at €49 a month for 2,000 credits (€34 on annual billing), Growth at €149 for 10,000, and Scale at €299 for 25,000, displayed in your local currency. The API is listed on every tier including the free one, and the docs are public. Verification is built into the paid plans and draws on the same credits. There is also a Discover database and email sequences, so a small outbound team can live in it end to end.

Stay on Hunter if your question is “who can I email at acme.com”, your monthly volume fits inside 2,000 credits, and you like having finding, verifying, and sending in one place. Nothing below does the domain-first job better at that price. The rest of this post is for people whose question is different.

How to pick

Start from the thing you actually have at the top of your workflow.

• A company domain, and you want the people at it: Snov.io or Skrapp, and honestly Hunter itself.
• A name and a domain, and you want one deliverable address: Voila Norbert or Anymail Finder.
• LinkedIn profiles you are clicking through, and you want emails and phones: Lusha, or Skrapp if email is enough.
• A database column of LinkedIn or GitHub identifiers and an HTTP client: PeopleDB, the one I build.
• A list of addresses you already have and need to check before sending: ZeroBounce.

Then ask how you want to pay. Hunter and most of its peers sell a monthly credit allowance that resets. Some tools charge only when they return a result (Anymail Finder, PeopleDB). Some sell credits that never expire (ZeroBounce, PeopleDB). If your usage is bursty, a subscription is the wrong shape regardless of data quality.

Vendor facts below were verified from their public pricing pages on September 6, 2026. Numbers drift; check their sites. Where a page would not load and I had to lean on third-party pricing guides, I say so.

Domain-first email finders

Hunter’s direct peers: same input, different packaging.

Snov.io

Snov.io is Hunter with more platform bolted on: domain search, a name-plus-domain finder, a LinkedIn extension, bulk CSV search, verification, drip campaigns, warm-up, and a small CRM. Starts from a domain, a name plus domain, or a LinkedIn URL. Pricing is a subscription with monthly credits: a free Trial tier with 50 credits that renews every 30 days, Starter at $39 a month for 1,000 credits, Pro S at $99 for 5,000, up to Ultra at $738 for 50,000. API and webhooks are on every paid plan but not the free one. Found emails are verified before they are shown to you. Best for a small team that wants the Hunter workflow plus outreach at a lower entry price. Caveat: one credit pool feeds finding, verifying, and campaign features, so 1,000 credits go faster than they would in a plain finder.

Voila Norbert

Norbert does one thing: name plus domain in, one address out, with bulk upload and an API. Starts from a name and a domain, or a CSV of them. Plans are monthly lead allowances: Valet at $49 a month for up to 1,000 leads ($39 on annual), Butler at $99 for 5,000, Advisor at $249 for 15,000, Counselor at $499 for 50,000. “Bulk & API usage included” is printed on every plan, and you get 50 free credits on signup. Verification is sold separately and cheaply: $0.003 per email up to 500,000, $0.001 above that, $2 minimum. Best for anyone who wants a plain finder with an API on the cheapest tier. Caveat: there is no domain search, so if you want the whole list at a company rather than one named person, this is the wrong tool.

Anymail Finder

Anymail Finder’s pitch is that you only pay for deliverable addresses. Starts from a name plus a company or domain, a bare domain, or a LinkedIn profile URL. Pricing is a monthly subscription sized by credits, from $29 a month for 400 credits (about 7.3¢ each) down to $799 for 100,000 (0.8¢), with 33% off on annual billing. A credit is only spent when a verified email comes back, unused credits roll over while you stay subscribed, and repeat searches within 30 days are free. The API key is self-serve from the dashboard and passed as a Bearer token; there is a 100-credit trial, though the API trial asks you to verify a card first. Best for a developer who wants domain-first finding with per-result economics. Caveat: it is still a subscription underneath, so the rollover stops if you cancel.

Skrapp

Skrapp is a LinkedIn extension and a company search that share one credit pool, with verification included on every tier including free. Starts from a LinkedIn profile, a company website, or its own lead search. Free plan with 50 credits, Professional at $39 a month or $29 a month billed annually for 2,000 credits, Enterprise at $349 a month for 50,000. The fact that matters for this audience: API access is an Enterprise-only add-on, so the $39 plan gets you a browser tool, not an endpoint. Best for a solo recruiter or SDR who lives in LinkedIn and wants work emails cheaply. Caveat: the pricing page does not say whether the free plan’s 50 credits renew.

Person-first enrichment

Different question. You already know who the person is and want their contact details, and the company domain may be unknown, stale, or beside the point.

Lusha

Lusha is contact data for sales teams: a browser extension over LinkedIn, a prospecting search, and an enrichment API, with the compliance paperwork procurement tends to ask about. Starts from a name plus company or a LinkedIn URL. Pricing is a subscription with monthly credits: Free with 40 credits a month, Starter at $49.90 for 400, Professional at $69.90 for 600, Premium at $399.90 for 3,400, with about 25% off on annual billing. An email costs 1 credit and a phone number costs 10, which changes the math quickly if phones are the point. The API page has a “Generate API Key” button, so it is self-serve, but API pricing is not published and the pricing page does not say which plans include it. Best for a go-to-market team that wants phones and emails from LinkedIn with legal review already done. Caveat: 400 credits at 10 per phone is 40 phone numbers a month.

PeopleDB

Mine, so briefly, and the 1:1 comparison with Hunter has the full table. PeopleDB is an API for one job: pass a LinkedIn identifier or a GitHub login or ID, get back email addresses classified personal or work, phone numbers, and social handles. Pricing is prepaid credits with no subscription: 15¢ a lookup at 100 credits ($15), 12¢ at 500 ($60), 10¢ at 2,000 ($200), 7.5¢ at 10,000 ($750), 6¢ at 50,000 ($3,000). A lookup is only charged when it returns at least one email, credits never expire, and a new account gets 10 free credits and a working API key with no card. Verification is a separate endpoint, GET or POST /api/v1/email_verifications, that runs an SMTP check on any address you pass it; how that check works is its own post.

Now the part Hunter users need to hear plainly. PeopleDB does not do domain search. It cannot tell you who works at acme.com or what their address pattern is, and it has no prospecting, no extension, and no outreach. If your workflow starts with a domain, it is the wrong tool. If it starts with a column of LinkedIn or GitHub identifiers, especially GitHub, which nothing else on this page resolves, it is the right one. The contact enrichment API guide covers request and response shapes, pricing is on one page, and the docs have the rest.

Verification only

If you already have the addresses and only need to know which ones will bounce, you do not need a finder at all.

ZeroBounce

ZeroBounce is a verification service with a bulk checker, an API, and a few adjacent products. Starts from an email address, or a file of them. The published anchor is the ZeroBounce ONE subscription at $99 a month for a minimum of 10,000 credits, with a Freemium tier of 100 credits a month. Pay-as-you-go prices are set through a calculator rather than a table on the page; per third-party pricing guides, entry packs run around $39 for 2,000 credits. Credits never expire, unknown results are free, and one credit checks one address. API keys come from the account dashboard. Best for cleaning a list before a send or gating a signup form. Caveat: it finds nothing. Pair it with a finder.

The short version

Hunter’s peers mostly compete on price and packaging, and the differences are real but small. Snov.io is cheaper and bundles outreach, Norbert puts the API on the cheapest tier, Anymail Finder only charges for hits, Skrapp is the budget LinkedIn extension. None of them changes the shape of the question. If the shape is wrong, no discount fixes it. Everything above was true on September 6, 2026, and some of it will not be by the time you read this, so confirm on the vendor’s own page.