ContactOut: Email Finder for Recruiters and Sales Teams

ContactOut is a B2B contact data platform designed primarily for recruiters and sales professionals who need to reach prospects and candidates outside of LinkedIn’s messaging system . The platform started as a simple Chrome extension in 2015 and has since grown into a comprehensive tool covering contact discovery, a search portal, email campaigns, and an API .

Today, ContactOut claims over 1.4 million recruiters and sales representatives across 76% of Fortune 500 companies as users, with named clients including Microsoft, Google, and WarnerMedia . This article provides a complete overview of what ContactOut offers, how it works, its pricing structure, and the key limitations to consider before subscribing.

What Is ContactOut?

ContactOut is a tool that helps you find personal and work email addresses and phone numbers for professionals you discover on LinkedIn or through its own search portal . The Chrome extension overlays contact information directly on LinkedIn profiles, showing verified email addresses and phone numbers with confidence scores . It also offers a standalone web portal for searching contacts by name, company, and title without needing to be on LinkedIn .

The platform covers over 350 million professionals, making it one of the largest contact databases available . ContactOut was founded in December 2015 by Rob Liu, a computer science and law student who built the original Chrome extension to solve the inefficiency of recruiters not being able to easily pull contact information from LinkedIn profiles . The company is bootstrapped, headquartered in Hong Kong with operations in San Francisco .

How ContactOut Works

ContactOut operates through two main interfaces: a Chrome extension and a web-based search portal .

Chrome Extension

The Chrome extension is ContactOut’s primary interface. It overlays a sidebar on LinkedIn profiles, displaying masked contact information that users reveal with a click . Each reveal consumes one credit . The extension works across all LinkedIn surfaces, including Standard, Recruiter, Recruiter Pro, and Sales Navigator .

The workflow is simple: navigate to a LinkedIn profile, click “Show” in the sidebar, and the email and phone number appear . From there, you can save the contact, push it to a connected CRM, or add the prospect to an email campaign without leaving the panel . The extension also supports bulk reveals across LinkedIn search results and includes “ContactOut Anywhere,” which extends contact discovery to company websites .

Search Portal

The standalone web portal gives users access to the full ContactOut database without requiring LinkedIn . You apply 20+ filters including job titles, companies, revenue, skills, locations, company size, departments, and technologies used to build targeted prospect lists . Results include verified personal emails, work emails, and direct-dial phone numbers alongside profile metadata . From filtered results, users can export to CSV, save to folders, push to CRMs, or add prospects to email campaigns in one click .

Key Features

Email Campaigns

ContactOut includes built-in multi-step email sequencing, eliminating the need to export leads to a separate tool . Campaigns support unlimited sequential email touches with configurable delays between steps . Users can add recipients through manual entry, folder import, CSV upload, or one-click add from the Chrome extension . The email setup supports Gmail, Outlook, Office 365, and any provider via SMTP/IMAP .

AI Personalizer

The extension includes an AI Personalizer that generates outreach emails from the prospect’s LinkedIn profile data . It offers two modes (sales email and recruitment email) and claims to produce 4x more replies than standard outreach . A companion AI Writer on Gmail reads existing email threads and generates context-aware replies .

Data Enrichment and API

ContactOut offers bulk enrichment through CSV uploads containing LinkedIn URLs, email addresses, or company domain names . The ContactSheets Google Sheets add-on allows teams to enrich 1,000+ leads in seconds using formulas (=co_reveal and =co_enrich) . The ContactOut API provides RESTful endpoints for enrichment, search, verification, and reverse email lookup, with a hosted MCP server for AI-native workflows . The API is restricted to the Team/API plan .

Cloud Phone Dialer

A browser-based VoIP calling tool lets users place calls from ContactOut after retrieving a prospect’s number . Calls include mute, hold, in-call note-taking, and automatic recording retained for up to one year . A companion Live Phone Search feature runs real-time web crawls to find phone numbers not yet in the database .

ContactOut Pricing and Plans

ContactOut uses a freemium, credit-based subscription model with four tiers :

Plan	Monthly Price (Annual Billing)	Key Features	Hidden Cap
Free	$0	5 emails/day, 5 phones/day, 5 exports/day	Daily limit
Email	$49/month (billed annually)	“Unlimited” emails, 300 exports/month, search portal, email campaigns	~2,000 emails/month
Email + Phone	$99/month (billed annually)	“Unlimited” emails and phones, 600 exports/month, AI Email Writer, data enrichment	~2,000 emails/month + ~1,000 phones/month
Team/API	Custom (contact sales)	Team management, API access, CRM and ATS integrations, 20% more data coverage	Custom

Important: The advertised “unlimited” plans are subject to fair-use caps buried in the Terms of Use . According to the fine print, usage is capped at approximately 2,000 email credits and 1,000 phone credits per month per account . Once you hit these caps mid-month, there is no option to purchase additional credits on self-serve plans—you must wait for the monthly reset or negotiate a custom deal .

All paid plans are also restricted to one user per company . A two-person sales team faces the same enterprise pricing conversation as a 50-person department .

Cost Per Contact

Based on the effective caps:

Email plan: $49/month ÷ ~2,000 emails = ~$0.025 per email
Email + Phone plan: $99/month ÷ ~1,000 phones = ~$0.10 per phone number

ContactOut Reviews and Accuracy

User Sentiment

ContactOut has a 4.4/5 rating on G2 from 109 reviews . Users consistently praise the Chrome extension’s ease of use and contact accuracy for individual lookups . Positive feedback highlights the simple workflow, time savings versus manual email hunting, and the ability to find both personal and work emails .

Negative feedback focuses on the limitations of the free plan, occasional outdated contacts, and the Chrome extension sometimes loading slowly . One user noted that emails that were valid six months ago may now bounce . Another reviewer described ContactOut as “useful but lacks veracity” and uses it only as a secondary tool because “many times it brings emails that are not current” .

Accuracy Claims vs. Reality

ContactOut markets “triple verification” and “99% confidence” for its data . However, they do not publish independent bounce rate data or participate in third-party benchmarks . In one third-party test of 100 contacts, ContactOut returned 42 valid emails with a 7% bounce rate—well below the 99% claim .

The Dropcontact email finder benchmark, updated in February 2026, tested 15 tools across 20,000 real contacts by actually sending emails and measuring hard bounces. Top performers landed between 0.9% and 3.6% hard bounce rates. ContactOut was not included in this benchmark .

Pros and Cons

Pros

Strong personal email coverage: ContactOut excels at finding personal email addresses, valuable for reaching passive candidates who may not want to use their work inbox
Simple Chrome extension: Overlays contact information directly on LinkedIn profiles, avoiding the need to switch tools
Self-serve pricing starting at $49/month: Lower entry point than many enterprise-focused alternatives
Free plan with no time limit: 5 daily credits allow occasional use without commitment
Search Portal with 20+ filters: Standalone prospecting beyond LinkedIn

Cons

“Unlimited” isn’t unlimited: Fair-use caps of ~2,000 emails and ~1,000 phones per month are buried in the Terms of Use, not on the pricing page
Single-user plans: All self-serve tiers are locked to one user per company
No intent data or buyer signals: ContactOut tells you how to reach someone, but not if they’re researching solutions or showing buying behaviour
Phone accuracy drops outside North America: G2 reviewers consistently flag issues with international phone numbers
CRM and ATS integrations gated: Advanced integrations require the Team/API plan
Basic email campaigns: Compared to dedicated sales engagement platforms

Who Should Use ContactOut

Good Fit

ContactOut is a good fit if you:

Prospect on LinkedIn and want contact data surfaced on profiles
Need personal email addresses to reach passive candidates
Are an individual recruiter or sales rep who can work within single-user plans
Want self-serve pricing starting at $49/month without enterprise procurement
Focus prospecting on North American contacts

Poor Fit

ContactOut may not be the best choice if you:

Need intent data, buyer signals, or conversation intelligence alongside contact data
Are building a go-to-market operation across sales, marketing, and RevOps
Need multi-user team access without moving to custom enterprise pricing
Require CRM or ATS integrations on a self-serve plan
Want AI-driven account prioritisation and deal intelligence, not just contact discovery

Key Takeaways

ContactOut is a B2B contact data platform that helps recruiters and sales professionals find email addresses and phone numbers from LinkedIn profiles and its own database
The platform serves over 1.4 million users from 76% of Fortune 500 companies
Pricing starts at $49/month for the Email plan and $99/month for the Email + Phone plan (annual billing), with a permanent free tier offering 5 daily credits
“Unlimited” plans have hidden fair-use caps of ~2,000 emails and ~1,000 phones per month, with no option to purchase overages on self-serve plans
The Chrome extension is ContactOut’s core strength, praised for ease of use and contact accuracy for individual lookups
Accuracy claims of 99% are not independently verified; user reviews note occasional outdated contacts

Frequently Asked Questions

What is ContactOut?

ContactOut is a Chrome extension and web platform that finds verified email addresses and phone numbers from LinkedIn profiles and its database of 350M+ professionals .

Is ContactOut free?

Yes, ContactOut has a permanent free plan with 5 email credits, 5 phone credits, and 5 exports per day .

How much does ContactOut cost?

The Email plan starts at $49/month (billed annually) and the Email + Phone plan starts at $99/month (billed annually). Monthly billing is significantly more expensive, with the Email plan costing $99/month and the Email + Phone plan costing $199/month .

Does ContactOut really offer unlimited emails?

Not exactly. Paid plans enforce fair-use caps of around 2,000 emails/month and 1,000 phones/month, with no way to buy additional credits on self-serve plans .

Is ContactOut accurate?

Users consistently praise ContactOut’s accuracy for individual lookups. However, the “99% confidence” claim is not independently verified, and some users report occasional outdated contacts .

What are the best alternatives to ContactOut?

Alternatives include RocketReach, Hunter, ZoomInfo, and SignalHire, each offering different strengths in contact data accuracy and pricing models .

Is ContactOut GDPR compliant?

ContactOut markets compliance with CCPA and GDPR, but users prospecting into European markets should validate the exact workflow and legal basis before scaling .

Can ContactOut find phone numbers outside North America?

Phone number accuracy drops significantly outside North America, which is a recurring complaint in user reviews .

Conclusion

ContactOut is a solid tool for individual recruiters and sales professionals who need to find verified email addresses and phone numbers from LinkedIn profiles. The Chrome extension is widely praised for its ease of use and accuracy for individual lookups. However, the “unlimited” marketing is misleading: paid plans are capped by fair-use policies that are not disclosed on the pricing page. For teams or high-volume users, the single-user restriction and hidden caps make ContactOut a poor fit. As one reviewer put it, “ContactOut is a perfectly fine free tool that becomes a bad deal the moment you pay for it” .