Hunter.io Alternative

Person-first lookups,
not domain sweeps.

Hunter starts from a domain and finds work emails at it. PeopleDB starts from a person: pass a LinkedIn or GitHub identifier, get back their emails (personal and work), phone numbers, and social profiles in one response.

Get 10 free credits → No card required.

Hunter vs. PeopleDB

	Hunter.io	PeopleDB
Starting point	A domain, or a name + domain	A LinkedIn or GitHub identifier
Email addresses	Work addresses at company domains	Personal + work, classified
Phone numbers	No	Yes
Email verification	Yes	Yes, separate endpoint
Pricing model	Subscription, monthly credits, from €49/mo	Pay per lookup, 15¢ down to 6¢
Credits	Reset monthly	Never expire
API access	Yes, on every plan including free	Yes, every account
Free tier	50 credits / month	10 credits, no card
GitHub lookup	No	Yes
Built for	Outbound email teams	Developers

Hunter details verified from their public pricing page and API documentation on August 27, 2026. Their pricing displays in your local currency. Numbers drift; check their site.

These tools answer different questions

Credit where due: Hunter is one of the most honest tools in this market. Pricing is public, the free tier is permanent, and the API key comes with every plan including the free one. If your question is "who can I email at acme.com", Hunter answers it well, and PeopleDB doesn't answer it at all.

The gap appears when your question is about a person rather than a company. A domain-first tool can't start from a LinkedIn profile or a GitHub login, doesn't return personal addresses (the kind that survive a job change), and has no phone numbers. If your table has identifier columns instead of domain columns, you're holding PeopleDB-shaped questions.

When PeopleDB makes more sense

You know who, not where

Recruiting, developer outreach, and identity resolution start with a specific person, often one without a guessable corporate address. Resolving the person beats enumerating a domain they might not even work at anymore.

You need more than work email

One PeopleDB lookup returns personal and work emails (classified as such), phone numbers, and linked social handles. Personal addresses matter when reaching the person is the goal rather than reaching the inbox their employer controls.

Your pipeline starts on GitHub

Nothing in a domain-first model helps with a GitHub login. PeopleDB resolves GitHub identifiers directly, which is a genuinely hard problem involving hashed archives and identity correlation.

When Hunter is the better fit

Domain-first prospecting, bulk email pattern discovery, and verification-plus-outreach in one tool: that's Hunter's home turf. The 50-credit monthly free tier with API access is also the cheapest way in this market to prototype anything email-shaped. Plenty of stacks use both: Hunter to find addresses at target companies, PeopleDB to resolve specific people wherever they work.

The API

GET /api/v1/people

# Person-first: a numeric GitHub ID is enough
curl "https://peopledb.co/api/v1/people?github_id=583231" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"

// ←
{
  "github_id": 583231,
  "github_login": "octocat",
  "email_addresses": ["…"],
  "personal_email_addresses": ["…"],
  "work_email_addresses": ["…"],
  "phone_numbers": ["…"]
}

Common questions

What's the core difference between Hunter and PeopleDB?

Hunter works domain-first: a company domain (or name plus domain) in, work emails out, with verification. PeopleDB works person-first: a LinkedIn or GitHub identifier in, that person's emails, phone numbers, and social profiles out.

Does Hunter provide phone numbers?

No. Hunter is email-focused end to end; as of August 27, 2026 their pricing page lists no phone data. PeopleDB returns phone numbers in the same lookup as emails.

Does PeopleDB do domain search?

No. PeopleDB resolves individual people from identifiers; it doesn't enumerate addresses at a domain. Domain-shaped questions belong to Hunter; person-shaped questions belong here.

Do PeopleDB credits reset monthly like Hunter's?

No. Hunter's credits renew and reset with the subscription month. PeopleDB credits are prepaid, never expire, and a lookup is only charged when it returns at least one email address.

Can I verify addresses I found with Hunter?

Yes. The verification endpoint accepts any address, whichever tool found it. One call runs the syntax, MX, and SMTP checks and returns a classification of valid, risky, or invalid with a 0 to 100 score, so you can set your own threshold before a send. It costs one credit per call and does not require moving your finder: keep Hunter for domain search and use PeopleDB to verify the list, or to resolve the specific people a domain sweep can't reach.

Pricing

100 credits — $15 (15¢ / lookup)

500 credits — $60 (12¢ / lookup)

2,000 credits — $200 (10¢ / lookup)

10,000 credits — $750 (7.5¢ / lookup)

50,000 credits — $3,000 (6¢ / lookup)

Get started → 10 free credits. No card required.

Comparing more tools? See the Hunter alternatives round-up, or the head-to-heads: vs. ContactOut, vs. Apollo, and vs. Clearbit.

Person-first lookups,not domain sweeps.