Comparing Email Finder APIs: Pricing and Features in 2026

Choosing an Email Finder API

When integrating email discovery into your application, the API matters as much as the data. Developer experience, pricing transparency, rate limits, and endpoint design can make or break your integration. This guide compares the leading email finder APIs from a developer perspective.

The Contenders

We are comparing five popular email finder APIs available in 2026:

• Easy Email Finder - Pay-per-email, Google Places-based discovery
• Hunter.io - Domain-based email search with verification
• Apollo.io - Full sales intelligence platform with API access
• Snov.io - Email finder with drip campaign features
• RocketReach - Professional profile-based email lookup

Pricing Comparison

This is where the biggest differences emerge:

• Easy Email Finder: $0.25 per email, no subscription, no minimum. Search is free. You only pay when you enrich a lead with an email.
• Hunter.io: Free tier (25 searches/month), then $49/month for 500 searches. Per-search pricing works out to about $0.10 per search, but you pay even when no email is found.
• Apollo.io: Free tier (limited), then $49-$119/month. API access requires paid plans. Credits refresh monthly but do not roll over.
• Snov.io: Free tier (50 credits/month), then $39-$199/month. Credits are consumed by various actions, making cost prediction difficult.
• RocketReach: $53/month for 170 lookups ($0.31/lookup). Annual plans required for best pricing.

For developers building integrations, the subscription model matters. If your usage is variable or project-based, pay-per-email pricing avoids waste. If you have consistent high volume, subscriptions may offer better per-unit economics.

Authentication and API Design

# Easy Email Finder - Bearer token
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer eef_live_xxxx" \
  https://easyemailfinder.com/api/v1/search

# Hunter.io - API key parameter
curl "https://api.hunter.io/v2/domain-search?domain=example.com&api_key=xxxx"

# Apollo.io - API key header
curl -H "X-Api-Key: xxxx" \
  https://api.apollo.io/v1/mixed_people/search

# Snov.io - OAuth2 bearer token
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer xxxx" \
  https://api.snov.io/v1/get-emails-by-domain

Easy Email Finder and Apollo use header-based authentication, which is more secure than query parameter auth since headers are not logged in server access logs. Hunter passes the API key as a URL parameter, which is less ideal from a security standpoint.

Rate Limits Comparison

• Easy Email Finder: 60 req/min (search), 10 req/min (enrich). Clear Retry-After headers.
• Hunter.io: 15 req/sec (search), varies by plan. No public documentation on exact limits.
• Apollo.io: Varies by plan tier. Can be restrictive on lower plans.
• Snov.io: Not publicly documented. Throttling behavior varies.
• RocketReach: 5 req/sec. Well documented.

Easy Email Finder compensates for its lower enrich rate limit with the /enrich-batch endpoint (20 websites per call), giving an effective throughput of 200 enrichments per minute. For details on working within these limits, see our rate limits guide.

Endpoint Design

Easy Email Finder offers a unique advantage with its /search-and-enrich endpoint, which combines business discovery and email extraction into a single call. Most other APIs require separate calls for searching and looking up emails.

Hunter's domain-search endpoint is focused on finding all emails at a given domain, which is useful for targeting specific companies but less suitable for discovery of new businesses. Apollo's people-search is powerful for finding individuals but requires knowing the company or person name upfront.

Data Sources and Coverage

• Easy Email Finder: Google Places data for business discovery, then real-time website scraping for email extraction. Best for local businesses and SMBs.
• Hunter.io: Pre-built database of emails indexed from the web. Faster responses but data can be stale.
• Apollo.io: Large B2B database with person-level data. Best for enterprise contacts.
• Snov.io: Web scraping and social profiles. Mixed accuracy.
• RocketReach: Professional profiles and social data. Best for individual people lookup.

Developer Experience

From a developer experience perspective, Easy Email Finder keeps things simple: five core endpoints, clear documentation, and predictable pricing. There is no complex OAuth flow, no webhook setup required for basic usage, and no mandatory SDK. Any HTTP client works.

Apollo has the most feature-rich API but also the steepest learning curve. Hunter has excellent documentation and client libraries. Snov.io requires OAuth2, adding complexity to the auth flow.

Our Recommendation

Choose based on your primary use case:

• Local business leads: Easy Email Finder is purpose-built for this
• Domain-based email lookup: Hunter excels here
• Enterprise sales intelligence: Apollo has the deepest data
• Variable or low-volume usage: Easy Email Finder's pay-per-email model avoids subscription waste

For most developers building lead generation features, starting with Easy Email Finder's free search endpoint is the fastest path to a working prototype. You can always add other providers later for different use cases. Visit the API documentation to get started.