The PDL Alternative

A Billion Stale Records, or One Fresh One?

People Data Labs sells breadth: billions of aggregated records. Datamagnet sells truth: the profile as it exists the second you ask, plus signals when it changes.

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Datamagnet
People Data Labs
Enrichment source
Live web
Aggregated DB
Freshness
As of request
Monthly updates
Signals & webhooks
6 types, near real-time
Monthly, enterprise
Post engagement data
Bulk datasets (billions)
Person records in the PDL dataset
2.47BPerson records in the PDL dataset
How often PDL refreshes API data
MonthlyHow often PDL refreshes API data
Per live Datamagnet person profile
1 creditPer live Datamagnet person profile

Datamagnet vs People Data Labs: the short answer

People Data Labs and Datamagnet solve different problems. PDL licenses a static dataset — roughly 2.47 billion person records and 74.7 million company records, refreshed monthly — that you query by API or take in bulk as flat files. Datamagnet fetches the public profile at the moment you call it, so the title you get is the one on the page right now. Choose PDL for scale, email and phone coverage, identity resolution and offline analytics. Choose Datamagnet when the answer has to be current, and when you want post engagement data, ICP search and job-change signals.

Our verdict

PDL is a genuinely good dataset company and a poor fit for freshness-critical work. Its breadth is real: 2.47 billion person records, 658 million emails and 899 million phone numbers we do not carry at all, and delivery as flat files into S3, GCP, Azure or Snowflake. But the API serves that dataset, and PDL rolls its data updates out monthly, so a promotion that happened after the last update is not in it yet. Datamagnet is the better fit when the record has to be right at the moment a human or an agent acts on it, and when the workflow starts from a LinkedIn URL.

The 8 best People Data Labs alternatives in 2026

Ranked for teams using PDL as a person or company data API. If you need emails and phone numbers on every record, PDL may still be the right answer.

  1. 1. Datamagnet

    Best for: Current profiles when the workflow starts from a LinkedIn URL

    Fetches the profile live at request time for 1 credit instead of serving a monthly build, and adds post engagement, ICP search and job-change signals by webhook. Returns no emails or phone numbers.

    Starting price
    $39/mo, or $0.02/credit

  2. 2. Coresignal

    Best for: Job-postings data and historical time-series

    4.5B+ employee, company and job-posting records with history back to 2016, queried by Elasticsearch DSL or delivered as flat files. Deeper than PDL on job postings and history.

    Datamagnet vs Coresignal
    Starting price
    From $49/mo; Pro $800/mo

  3. 3. Bright Data

    Best for: Engineering teams that want raw scraping infrastructure

    Proxies, 1,000+ ready-made scrapers and stored datasets covering the major professional network. Very low per-record cost at volume, but you own parsing, retries and freshness.

    Datamagnet vs Bright Data
    Starting price
    $1.50/1K records; datasets $250/100K

  4. 4. Enrich Layer

    Best for: Former Proxycurl users who want the same API shape

    The Proxycurl-compatible API that outlived the July 2025 shutdown, with emails, phone numbers and job postings. Serves cached profiles first; a forced live fetch costs ten credits.

    Datamagnet vs Enrich Layer
    Starting price
    Pay-as-you-go from $0.0216/credit

  5. 5. ScrapIn (Reverse Contact)

    Best for: Matching a person from an email, domain or name

    A real-time profile API with identity resolution, now part of Reverse Contact, which also licenses company, employee and job-posting datasets from $1,000/mo.

    Datamagnet vs ScrapIn (Reverse Contact)
    Starting price
    Pay-as-you-go from $100

  6. 6. Apollo

    Best for: Small sales teams that want data and sequencing in one tool

    A stored contact database with emails and phone numbers, wrapped in sequencing, dialer and workflow tools, priced per seat rather than per API call.

    Datamagnet vs Apollo
    Starting price
    Free; paid from $49/user/mo

  7. 7. ZoomInfo

    Best for: Enterprise sales orgs buying verified contact data

    A verified B2B contact database sold on annual platform contracts, and now also as GTM AI with consumption-priced API, MCP and CLI access.

    Datamagnet vs ZoomInfo
    Starting price
    Free tier; data credits $0.35

  8. 8. Clearbit

    Best for: Only teams already on HubSpot

    Closed to new customers since the HubSpot acquisition; its enrichment is sold as Breeze Intelligence inside HubSpot. The usual "Clearbit vs People Data Labs" choice is now PDL vs Breeze.

    Datamagnet vs Clearbit
    Starting price
    HubSpot plan + $0.010/credit

Which one should you pick?

Straight guidance, including the cases where we're the wrong answer.

Choose Datamagnet if

  • The record has to be correct at the moment you use it, not as of the last monthly build
  • Your workflow starts from a LinkedIn URL or a Sales Navigator search rather than an email address
  • You need post content, commenters, reactors and reposters as structured data
  • You want job-change and engagement signals pushed to a webhook without an enterprise contract
  • You want to test on 10 free credits and stay pay-as-you-go, with no annual commitment and no seats

Choose People Data Labs if

  • You need email addresses or phone numbers on the record — Datamagnet returns neither
  • You are training models or running offline analytics and need billions of records as flat files, not API calls
  • Your inputs are emails, phone numbers or fuzzy name-and-company strings rather than LinkedIn URLs
  • You need identity resolution across non-LinkedIn keys, or fuzzy matching against many attributes at once
  • You need IP-to-company enrichment or a job-postings dataset, neither of which Datamagnet offers
  • Procurement requires a signed data licence with delivery into your own warehouse

Datamagnet vs People Data Labs, feature by feature

What each tool actually returns, how fresh it is, and what it costs to run.

Data & API coverage

Data & API coverage: Datamagnet compared with People Data Labs, feature by feature
FeatureDatamagnetPeople Data Labs
Data collected at the moment of request YesMonthly data updates
Person enrichment inputLinkedIn URLEmail, phone, name or LinkedIn URL
Live people searchUp to 25 results/pageDataset search, 100/request
Sales Navigator URL search Yes No
ICP search with include/exclude logic YesDataset query filters
Post content & stats Yes No
Post engagement (commenters, reactors, reposters) Yes No
Funding rounds data Yes0.4% of company records
Job-change & engagement signals6 signal typesMonthly changelog
WebhooksHMAC-signed, near real-timeMonthly, enterprise only
Charged only on successful requests YesBilled per record retrieved
Self-serve free tier10 credits, no card100 records/mo, contact data obfuscated
Email addresses & phone numbers (658M / 899M on PDL records) No Yes
Bulk flat files, S3 / Snowflake delivery NoEnterprise data licence
IP enrichment & job-postings data No Yes

Freshness

Freshness: Datamagnet compared with People Data Labs, feature by feature
FeatureDatamagnetPeople Data Labs
Update modelFetched live per requestMonthly data updates
Record age at deliverySecondsUp to a full update cycle
Job-change detectionContinuous signals + webhooksVisible after the next update
New-post detectionWithin minutes via signals No

People Data Labs capabilities are summarized from their public documentation and pricing pages, last checked August 2026. Products change — verify against their current offering before you buy.

A dataset is a photograph. A live fetch is a window.

PDL's API and its flat files are served from the same dataset, and PDL documents that data updates roll out monthly. That is the right architecture for counting — how many Series B fintechs in Berlin are hiring backend engineers — and the wrong one for acting on one person, because between updates the record is frozen. Datamagnet puts no corpus in front of the request: you POST a LinkedIn URL and we read the page. The cost is that we answer one profile at a time. The benefit is that the answer has no age.

  • Counting questions — market sizing, TAM, model training — want a stable corpus, and PDL is built for exactly those
  • Acting questions — is this still the right person, did they just move — want the page as it is now
  • Most teams need both; the split usually falls on whether a human touches the record within the week
Monthly
PDL refreshes API data on a monthly release cycle. A Datamagnet record is fetched when you ask for it.

Pricing, side by side

What you pay People Data Labs versus what you pay us, for the same work.

People Data Labs

A free tier and a self-serve Pro plan, then custom enterprise contracts. Billed by records retrieved, with volume discounts and 20% off annual commitments. Person and Company data are priced separately.

Testing APIs (Free)Up to 100 records/mo; contact data obfuscated
$0/mo
Full APIs (Pro) — PersonFrom 350 records/mo, or $940/yr
$98/mo
Full APIs (Pro) — CompanyFrom 1,000 records/mo, or $960/yr
$100/mo
Bulk Data (Enterprise)Annual term; flat files and data licensing
Custom

Datamagnet

Credits, not seats. Charged only on successful requests, and 10 free credits to test before you pay anything.

FreeOn signup, no card
10 credits
Starter1,000 credits/mo
$39/mo
Pro10,000 credits/mo
$99/mo
Scale25,000 credits/mo · webhooks + bulk export
$199/mo
Pay-as-you-go200 credits $10 → 100,000 credits $2,000
from $0.02/credit

PDL's entry Pro person plan is $98/mo for 350 records; Datamagnet's $39 Starter plan covers 1,000 person profiles at 1 credit each. PDL prices step down with volume, so quotes above the entry tier will differ. Competitor pricing is taken from their public pricing page and was last checked August 2026; list prices change and negotiated rates differ. See Datamagnet pricing for our current plans.

Where each tool genuinely wins

No tool wins everywhere. Here's the honest split.

Where People Data Labs wins

  • Email addresses and phone numbers at scale — 658 million emails and 899 million phone numbers on person records. Datamagnet returns neither, at any price
  • Bulk delivery of the whole dataset as flat files into S3, GCP, Azure or Snowflake, which is the only sane way to train models or run offline analytics
  • Enrichment from emails, phone numbers or fuzzy name-and-company inputs, plus a Person Identify API that resolves identity across keys Datamagnet never sees
  • Adjacent datasets we do not have at all: IP-to-company enrichment, 37 million job postings, inferred salaries and inferred revenue ranges
  • Scale for counting questions — 2.47 billion person records and 74.7 million companies give stable denominators for market sizing and TAM work
  • Official SDKs for Python, JavaScript, Go, Ruby and Rust, plus documented Salesforce, Zapier and Make integrations
  • ISO and SOC 2 Type 2 compliant data on every plan, with SAML and SSO available as an enterprise add-on for procurement
  • Changelog APIs that report updates, additions, deletions and merges between dataset versions, so a stored copy can be reconciled release over release

Where Datamagnet wins

  • Every profile fetched at request time, so nothing arrives a month stale
  • Post content, commenters, reactors and reposters as structured data — PDL has no post-level layer
  • Live people search, ICP search and Sales Navigator URL search, alongside instant search over previously enriched profiles
  • Six signal types delivered by HMAC-signed webhook or email digest, rather than a monthly enterprise-only payload
  • Charged only on successful requests, with 10 free credits and no card to start
  • No annual commitment and no per-seat pricing at any tier
  • A person or company profile is 1 credit, and the credit cost of every endpoint is published

Datamagnet vs People Data Labs: FAQ

People Data Labs is a dataset company: it aggregates roughly 2.47 billion person records into a corpus you query by API or license in bulk, refreshed on a monthly release cycle. Datamagnet is a live collection API: each request fetches the live public page at that moment and returns it as structured JSON. PDL optimises for breadth across a static corpus; Datamagnet optimises for the record being correct right now.

Clearbit has effectively left the shortlist: HubSpot closed it to new subscriptions and sells its enrichment as Breeze Intelligence inside HubSpot, so it is only an option if HubSpot is already your CRM. That leaves PDL and Coresignal as the big static-dataset providers — PDL stronger on emails, phones and identity resolution, Coresignal stronger on job postings and historical time-series — and Datamagnet as the live-fetch option when the record has to be right at the moment you read it.

Swap your PDL person call for POST /api/v1/person with the profile URL, and your company call for POST /api/v1/company. Field names differ, so budget an hour to write a mapper. The larger change is the input: PDL accepts emails, phone numbers and fuzzy name-plus-company strings, while Datamagnet keys on LinkedIn URLs. Ten free credits cover the test calls, and credits are charged only on successful requests.

Not in the way most sales teams mean. People Data Labs webhooks fire around its monthly data release and are available to enterprise API and Data License customers only, so a job change surfaces after the next build rather than when it happens. Datamagnet's Signal API watches people, companies and events continuously and delivers HMAC-signed webhooks or email digests across six signal types, including job_change and new_post.

People Data Labs publishes a free plan covering up to 100 records per month, with emails, phones and addresses obfuscated. Its self-serve Pro plan starts at $98 per month for 350 person records, or $100 per month for 1,000 company records, with 20% off annual commitments and volume discounts above that. Bulk data licensing is custom-priced on an annual contract. Datamagnet starts at $39 per month for 1,000 credits.

Choose People Data Labs when you need email addresses or phone numbers on the record, when you need billions of records as flat files for model training or offline analytics, or when your inputs are emails and fuzzy names rather than LinkedIn URLs. PDL also carries IP enrichment and a job-postings dataset that Datamagnet does not offer at all. Datamagnet wins when the workflow starts from a LinkedIn URL and the answer must be current.

Sources

Every competitor claim on this page traces back to one of these.

  1. 1.People Data Labs — Person Data pricing (Free, Pro $98/mo, Enterprise) — checked July 2026
  2. 2.People Data Labs — Company Data pricing (Free, Pro $100/mo, Enterprise) — checked July 2026
  3. 3.PDL docs — Person dataset stats (2,466,550,602 records; 658M emails; 899M phones) — checked July 2026
  4. 4.PDL docs — Company dataset stats (74,753,971 companies; funding on 0.4%) — checked July 2026
  5. 5.PDL docs — Data updates (API data refreshed monthly, major releases quarterly) — checked July 2026
  6. 6.PDL docs — Webhooks (sent once per month at data release; enterprise and Data License only) — checked July 2026
  7. 7.PDL docs — Pricing plans (Free, Pro, Enterprise; 20% annual discount) — checked July 2026
  8. 8.PDL docs — Create an account (free tier up to 100 monthly records) — checked July 2026
  9. 9.PDL docs — Person Search API input parameters (size 1–100 per request, scroll_token) — checked July 2026
  10. 10.PDL docs — Person Identify API (fuzzy multi-attribute matching, up to 20 profiles) — checked July 2026
  11. 11.PDL docs — Job posting dataset stats (37,001,534 postings) — checked July 2026
  12. 12.PDL docs — API and delivery index (IP enrichment, bulk enrichment, S3/GCP/Azure/Snowflake, SDKs) — checked July 2026
  13. 13.PDL docs — Person Changelog API (updates, additions, deletions and merges between versions) — checked July 2026
  14. 14.PDL docs — Inferred salary ranges (person field) — checked July 2026
  15. 15.PDL docs — Inferred revenue ranges (company field) — checked July 2026
  16. 16.Datamagnet — pricing and credit costs — checked July 2026
  17. 17.HubSpot — Clearbit by HubSpot (no longer offering new subscriptions) — checked August 2026
  18. 18.Coresignal — Datasets and Data APIs Pricing (Starter from $49/mo, Pro from $800/mo) — checked July 2026
  19. 19.Bright Data — Web Scraper API pricing ($1.50/1K records) and LinkedIn datasets ($250/100K) — checked July 2026
  20. 20.Enrich Layer — Pricing (pay-as-you-go from $0.0216/credit) — checked July 2026
  21. 21.Reverse Contact — Pricing (pay-as-you-go from $100; datasets from $1,000/mo) — checked July 2026
  22. 22.Apollo.io — Pricing (Free, Basic $49/user/mo) — checked July 2026
  23. 23.ZoomInfo GTM AI — Pricing (free tier, $0.35 data credits) — checked July 2026
  24. 24.HubSpot Knowledge Base — Understand HubSpot Credits and billing ($0.010/credit) — checked August 2026

Try Datamagnet against People Data Labs on your own data

10 free credits, no credit card. Run the same lookups through both and compare the JSON yourself.

  • Live data at request time
  • Charged only on success
  • No seats, no annual contract
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