Best Lusha Alternatives in 2026 (Cheaper Credits, Better Mobile Coverage, Real Signals)

TL;DR: The best Lusha alternative depends on what you ran out of. If it was phone credits, Kaspr gives you 100 phones a month for $49 with unlimited emails on top, and UpLead folds the mobile into the contact credit. If you want a sequencer and dialer with the data, Apollo gives 30,000 credits a year on a $49 seat. If your reps call Europe, Cognism's phone-verified mobiles are the upgrade, on contract. Hunter is the cheapest option if you only need email. None of them, Lusha included, tells you which contact is buying this quarter. That is a separate layer for $99 a month. Below: Lusha's real 2026 credit math, eight alternatives priced per phone number, when to stay, and how to leave without forfeiting your credits.

Lusha's billing documentation contains one sentence that explains most of the traffic to this page. On annual plans, unused credits are "forfeited, even if the subscription is renewed." Monthly plans roll over up to twice your limit. Annual plans, the ones sold at a 25% discount, reset to zero on the anniversary and renew automatically unless you cancel 14 days before.

You know the other half of the problem if you have revealed a phone number recently. An email costs one credit. A phone costs five. A Starter seat on annual billing carries 4,800 credits for the year, which is 80 phone numbers a month and nothing left for email, or 400 emails and no phones. The data is fine. The unit of purchase is the problem.

This guide to Lusha alternatives prices every tool by the unit the searcher cares about: what one phone number costs, and whether emails are rationed on top. It separates coverage (does the tool have a number for this person) from accuracy (does the number connect), because the complaint people have about Lusha is almost always the first one. It says when Lusha is still the right buy. We build a signal layer that sits on top of whichever database you pick, so we have a view, and we keep it to one section at the end.

Why People Look for a Lusha Alternative

A Lusha alternative is any contact-data tool that gives you B2B emails and direct dials from a LinkedIn profile or a search, at a better ratio of phone numbers to dollars than Lusha's five-credit phone. The tools that fit are Kaspr, Apollo, UpLead, Cognism, RocketReach, ContactOut, Lead411 and Hunter, and each wins on a different unit.

Three things send Lusha users to this search, and only one of them is price.

The credit ratio. Lusha's pricing page and its docs agree: email reveal one credit, phone reveal five, both together up to six. A rep who reveals email and phone for every contact spends six credits per prospect. On Starter that is 66 full contacts a month. On Pro, 100. The free plan's 40 credits buy eight phone numbers.

Coverage, not accuracy. Lusha's data page claims 515M+ contacts, 117M+ direct dials and 86% phone accuracy. Read the first two numbers together: about 23% of records carry a direct dial. When Lusha has a number, it mostly connects. The problem is the 77% of profiles where you click, Lusha returns an email only, and the credit is spent anyway. A competitor-run March 2026 test of 300 mid-market contacts got an email back on 31% of lookups. Treat that number with its bias attached, but the pattern matches what G2 reviewers describe: "outdated contacts, wasted credits."

The terms. Lusha's terms and conditions, version September 2026, state that plans renew automatically at then-current pricing, cancellation must be requested at least 14 days before the period ends, and all payments are non-refundable. The billing FAQ adds that stored credits reset to the free 40 the moment a plan downgrades. One Trustpilot reviewer in August 2026 lost 200 accumulated credits that way.

Léa runs a two-person outbound agency in Lyon. She bought Lusha Pro on annual billing in January 2026 for the discount, 7,200 credits for the year. Her team revealed about 700 phone numbers in the busy fourth quarter, then went quiet over the holidays. On 14 January, 3,700 unused credits expired. The renewal charge had already cleared.

What Lusha Costs in 2026

Lusha publishes its prices, which is more than ZoomInfo or Cognism do, so the table below is from the live pricing page on 10 October 2026. Competitor pages are frequently stale on Lusha: one still lists Pro at $29.90, another says Starter annual carries 6,000 credits (it is 4,800), and several repeat that a phone costs 10 credits (that is LeadIQ, not Lusha).

Three rules sit under the table. Monthly credits roll over up to twice your plan limit. Annual credits do not roll over "under any circumstances," per the billing FAQ. And the Scale tier is mandatory above five users, which is where per-user credit limits and intent data live.

What companies pay in practice: SpendHound's data from 160 Lusha customers puts average spend at $3,700 a year for companies of 50 to 1,000 employees and $57,724 for larger ones. SMB spend fell 17% year over year in that sample. Lusha's base is buying fewer credits, not more.

One more number that matters for every accuracy claim below. In an August 2026 post comparing itself to Apollo and ZoomInfo, Lusha wrote that self-reported accuracy figures across the category "routinely run 15 to 25 percentage points higher" than what independent users report. That applies to Lusha's 98% email claim, and to every vendor claim in this article.

Credits expiring soon? Run a free signal check on your last Lusha export before you spend them. If fewer than 5% of those contacts show a buying signal this week, the problem was never which database you used.

The 8 Best Lusha Alternatives in 2026 at a Glance

Every price below was observed on 10 October 2026 unless noted. The "cost of a phone" column is the whole point of the table, because no other Lusha alternatives page has one.

For the per-phone math on Lusha itself: Starter annual is $37.45 for 80 phones, or $0.47 a number, with zero credits left for email. Kaspr Starter is $49 for 100 phones, or $0.49 a number, with unlimited B2B emails on top. The two cents are not the story. The unlimited emails are.

How We Chose These Lusha Alternatives

The list is built for the person who searches "lusha alternative," which is a rep or a small team, not a procurement department. So we applied four filters.

• Published or reliably reported pricing. Lusha publishes prices. A replacement that hides them is a step backward for a two-seat team. Cognism is the one exception, kept because it is the answer to the European mobile question.
• Phone numbers as a first-class product. Every tool except Hunter sells direct dials, and Hunter is here because a lot of Lusha users never needed phones in the first place.
• An honest unit. We priced each tool by what one phone costs and whether emails are rationed alongside, not by database size, because database size claims are unverifiable. Lusha's own figure went from 280M contacts in September 2025 to 515M+ today.
• No senders dressed as data. Instantly, Saleshandy, Expandi and Klenty appear on page 1 lists of Lusha alternatives. They send messages. They do not replace a contact database.

Bias disclosure: we make Getcleed, which is not a contact database. It scores a list you already have for buying signals and gets one section below. The seven tools above it are where the data comes from.

Lusha Alternatives for Cheaper Phone Numbers

This is the group for the searcher whose credits ran out on phones. Four tools, each with a different answer to the five-credit problem.

Kaspr

Kaspr is the most direct Lusha alternative because it is the same shape: a LinkedIn extension that reveals email and phone from a profile. The difference is the credit model. On every paid tier, B2B emails are unlimited. Phone credits are the only thing you ration, at 100 a month on Starter ($49 per user per month annual, $65 monthly) and 200 a month plus 200 direct-email credits on Business ($79 annual, $99 monthly). One phone costs one credit. Unused monthly credits roll over. The free plan gives 15 emails and five phones a month.

Kaspr is a French company that Cognism acquired in April 2022, and its coverage is strongest in France and the rest of Europe. Cognism said at the time that the merge gave it "nearly 30% more mobile coverage in key markets." For a US-only team, Kaspr's index is thinner than Lusha's.

Trade-off: pricing is per user, so a five-seat team pays $245 a month on Starter against Lusha Premium's $299.95 for 3,400 pooled credits. Kaspr wins when every seat reveals phones. Lusha wins when one rep does and four watch.

UpLead

UpLead solves the phone problem by refusing to price it separately. One credit returns one contact with a verified email and, on every paid plan, the mobile direct dial. Essentials is $99 a month or $74 on annual billing for 170 credits a month. Plus is $199 or $149 for 400. Extra credits are $0.50 on Essentials. UpLead backs its emails with a 95% accuracy guarantee and refunds credits on bounces.

Trade-off: 170 contacts a month is small, the database is US-centric, and UpLead paid a California Privacy Protection Agency fine in November 2024. For a rep who reveals 100 full contacts a month, though, $74 for email and mobile together beats Lusha Pro at $52.45 for 100 six-credit reveals with nothing left over.

ContactOut

ContactOut sells "unlimited" plans with a fair-use ceiling written into its terms: 2,000 email credits and 1,000 phone credits per account per month. The Email plan is $49 a month on annual billing ($79 monthly). Email plus Phone is $99 a month annual. The free tier gives five emails, five phones and five exports a day. The product was built for recruiters, which shows in the interface and in the fact that it indexes personal emails as well as work ones.

Trade-off: plan names and limits changed during 2026, so confirm the current set before buying. Third-party reviews report accuracy drops outside North America. But 1,000 phones for $99 is 12 times Lusha Starter's phone allowance for 2.6 times the price.

Lead411

Lead411 prices by export rather than reveal. Spark is $49 a month or $490 a year for 1,000 exports a month, and direct dials are included in each export at no extra charge. Lead411 also bundles company-level triggers (funding, hiring, executive changes) that Lusha gates behind Scale. The database is US-focused and the extension is less polished than Lusha's.

If you want the broader picture of how these vendors differ on coverage and freshness, our comparison of B2B data providers covers 12 of them side by side.

Two Tools That Replace Lusha and Add Workflow

Two tools replace Lusha and something else at the same time.

Apollo.io

Apollo is the most common tool people move to from Lusha, and the reason is volume. Basic is $49 per user per month on annual billing ($65 monthly) and carries 30,000 credits a year, against Lusha Starter's 4,800. A phone costs eight credits and an email one. Apollo does not refund credits for wrong mobiles. The free tier gives 900 credits a year. Professional is $79 annual, Organization $119 with a three-seat minimum, and both add the sequencer, dialer and deal workflow that Lusha does not have.

Trade-off: the data is wider, not deeper. In Cleanlist's March 2026 test of 1,000 leads, Apollo matched a working email for 78% of contacts against ZoomInfo's 84%, and trailed further on mobiles. Apollo is the right Lusha alternative when the team also wants to sequence from the same tool. If you only need the database, the Apollo alternatives roundup covers what to pair it with, and Cleed vs Apollo covers the seat math.

RocketReach

RocketReach has the largest index of the group and the least friendly phone pricing. Essentials is email only at $329 a year. Phones start at Pro, $829 a year or $69 a month on annual billing, with 3,600 exports a year, per prices observed on 8 October 2026. Monthly plans are $49, $99 and $209 and are metered in lookups rather than exports. Ultimate at $1,699 a year adds intent and API access.

Trade-off: if you came to this page because Lusha's phone credits were too expensive, RocketReach's $829 floor for any phone at all is the wrong direction. It belongs here because its coverage of US executives and technical roles is wide, and because a rep who exports 300 contacts a month with phones pays $69 for what would cost 1,500 Lusha credits.

Lusha Alternatives for Europe and Verified Mobiles

If your complaint about Lusha is that it has no mobile for the people you call, the fix is a vendor that verifies mobiles rather than one that sells more credits.

Cognism

Cognism does not publish prices. Its pricing page lists Standard and Pro, both with five seats included, and asks for a quote. Reported median contracts sit between $32,750 and $36,000 a year depending on which Vendr snapshot you read. One credit reveals one contact, email and phone together, and previously revealed contacts are free to view again. Pro adds "Diamond Data" phone-verified mobiles, on-demand verification and intent data. Cognism also runs do-not-call scrubbing for the UK, US and several EU registries by default, which Lusha gates behind Scale.

Trade-off: Cognism is not a replacement for a $37 Lusha seat. It is the upgrade for a team of five or more whose reps dial European mobiles for a living. An outbound agency we spoke to put Lusha's mobile accuracy at 60% to 70% against 80% to 90% for Cognism's verified set. Both numbers come from a party that sells services, with no sample size, so treat them as direction, not measurement. If you are weighing Cognism against the ZoomInfo contract as well, the ZoomInfo alternatives guide maps both by module.

Yasmine is an SDR at a Paris HR software company. On Lusha Pro, six of ten French VPs she looked up returned an email and no mobile, and each lookup cost a credit anyway. She moved to Kaspr Business in May 2026. Her connect rate on French mobiles roughly doubled, and the unlimited emails meant she stopped checking her balance. Her US colleague stayed on Lusha and should have.

The Cheapest Option If You Only Need Email

A surprising share of Lusha users never reveal a phone. For them, the five-credit phone was never the issue, and the right move is a tool that stops charging as if it were.

Hunter.io

Hunter sells email finding and verification, and nothing else. Starter is $49 a month or $34 on annual billing for 2,000 credits a month. Growth is $149 or $104 for 10,000. The free plan gives 50 credits a month. Hunter has no phone product. A phone number appears on a lead "when available," which in practice means rarely.

Trade-off: Hunter is not a Lusha alternative for anyone who calls. For a rep who emails, 2,000 credits for $34 against Lusha Starter's 400 for $37.45 is a five-to-one difference on the same unit. Pair it with a data enrichment tool if you need company fields on top.

The Lusha Alternative for the Question None of Them Answer

Every tool above answers the same question Lusha does: what is this person's email and phone. Switching between them changes what you pay per answer. It does not change which 400 people you look up, and that is where most of the credits go to waste.

Getcleed is not a contact database and does not replace one. It takes a list you already have, from a Lusha export, a Kaspr table, an Apollo search or a CSV, and reads the public LinkedIn activity of every person on it. It detects buying signals in 11 categories (a job change, engagement with a competitor's post, a pain-point post, a hiring announcement, a funding round) plus any custom signal you define. Each contact gets a relevance score from 0 to 100 and a hook that references what they did or said. The list is rescored every night.

The credit math changes when you do this before revealing anything. On a 400-contact list, the 95-5 rule holds: somewhere between 20 and 32 of them show a buying signal in a given week. Those are the ones worth five credits for a phone number. The rest can wait for the email, or for next week's rescore. A Lusha Starter seat that spends 4,800 credits on signal-scored contacts does a different job than one that spends them in profile order.

Pricing is $129 a month or $99 a month on annual billing, flat, for 1,000 contacts scored per period. There is a seven-day trial, and it syncs with HubSpot, Pipedrive, Attio and Lemlist. If your team's constraint is timing rather than data, the sales intelligence platforms guide explains how a signal layer and a database split the work.

Trade-off: it needs a source of contacts. Getcleed on its own gives you no phone numbers. Getcleed on top of Kaspr, Apollo or Lusha's free tier tells you which eight of the 40 free credits to spend on a phone.

Have a Lusha export sitting in a spreadsheet? Run a free signal check on it and see which contacts showed a buying signal this week before you buy credits anywhere.

When Lusha Is Still the Right Buy

Fairness demands this section, and so does the fact that Lusha holds a 4.3 on G2 from paying customers while its 1.2 on Trustpilot comes mostly from people who found their own data in it. Those are two different populations. Here is when the customers are right.

• You reveal US direct dials from LinkedIn, one at a time. Lusha's extension is still the fastest one-click path from a US profile to a number that connects, and its North American index (162.5M contacts by its own count) is where its coverage is deepest.
• You are on the free plan and it is enough. Forty credits a month, the extension and the CRM integrations, permanently. No Lusha alternative gives a free tier with phones that is this usable, with Kaspr's five a month the closest.
• You bill monthly and the rollover works for you. Monthly plans bank up to twice your limit. A rep who prospects in bursts gets the discount Lusha's annual customers pay for.
• One rep reveals, four watch. Lusha's pooled credits favor teams with one heavy user. Per-user tools like Kaspr and Apollo charge for every seat whether it reveals or not.

Marcus is a solo founder in Denver selling to US logistics companies. He is on Lusha free, reveals eight phone numbers a month, and chooses which eight by scoring his 300-person target list for signals every Monday. His cost for data is zero. He is not switching, and he should not.

How to Switch From Lusha Without Losing Your Credits

Lusha's terms are tighter than its price suggests. The sequence below is built around them.

1. Find your renewal date and count back 14 days. The terms require the cancellation request at least 14 days before the current period ends. Set the reminder for 30.
2. Check your billing cycle before you decide. Monthly plans can be cancelled at the end of any cycle. Annual plans are non-refundable, so if you have eight months left, the cheaper move is often to spend the credits well rather than walk away from them.
3. Spend the balance before it resets. Stored credits drop to 40 the moment a plan downgrades to free. Reveal what you will need in the next quarter first, phones before emails, since phones are the expensive unit everywhere.
4. Export while you are still on a paid plan. CSV export is a paid feature. Pull every saved list and table before the downgrade takes effect.
5. Verify the export. Independent 2026 tests lose 13% to 22% of a fresh export to a verifier, and CRM data decays at about 2.1% a month. Lusha's own measurement found 12.25% of US sales leaders changed roles within 12 months.
6. Score the export for signals before you load it anywhere. The first month on a new tool is when a team judges the switch. Start with the contacts who showed a buying signal on LinkedIn this week, not with row one.
7. Consider the freeze option if you are not sure. Lusha lets you pause a plan for one or two months while keeping the account and data intact. It buys time to trial Kaspr or Apollo on their free tiers without burning the bridge.

If your prospecting is LinkedIn-first and the database was never the point, Sales Navigator alternatives covers that route. If you want to build a waterfall across several providers instead of picking one, the Clay alternatives guide covers the tools that do it without a workflow builder.

Lusha Alternatives FAQ

What is the best Lusha alternative in 2026?

Kaspr for reps who ran out of phone credits, because one phone costs one credit, Starter gives 100 a month for $49, and B2B emails are unlimited. Apollo for teams that also want sequences and a dialer. UpLead for a verified email and mobile in one credit. Cognism for European mobiles on contract. The best Lusha alternative is the one that fixes the unit you ran out of.

Is there a free Lusha alternative?

Yes, with limits. Apollo's free plan gives 900 credits a year. Kaspr's gives 15 emails and five phones a month. Hunter's gives 50 email credits a month. ContactOut's gives five emails and five phones a day. Lusha's own free plan at 40 credits a month, with the extension and CRM integrations, is still one of the more usable free tiers if you only need eight phone numbers a month.

How many credits does a phone number cost on Lusha?

Five. An email costs one credit and revealing both together costs up to six, per Lusha's pricing page and billing docs. Several comparison pages say 10, which is LeadIQ's rate, not Lusha's. On Starter's 4,800 annual credits, that is 80 phones a month with no emails, or 400 emails with no phones.

Do Lusha credits roll over?

On monthly plans, yes, up to twice your monthly limit. On annual plans, no. Lusha's billing FAQ says annual credits "do not roll over under any circumstances" and are forfeited at the end of the cycle even if you renew. Stored credits also reset to the free plan's 40 when a paid plan is cancelled.

Lusha vs Apollo: which is cheaper?

Per credit, Apollo. Basic is $49 per user per month on annual billing for 30,000 credits a year, against Lusha Starter at $37.45 for 4,800. Per phone, it is closer: Apollo charges eight credits and Lusha five, so Apollo Basic buys about 312 phones a month to Lusha Starter's 80. Lusha is cheaper for a single rep who reveals fewer than 50 contacts a month and wants no sequencer.

Is Lusha worth it in 2026?

For a US rep who reveals direct dials from LinkedIn one at a time, on a monthly plan or the free tier, yes. For a team on annual billing that reveals phones in bursts, the forfeiture rule and the five-credit phone make Kaspr, UpLead or Apollo cheaper per number. For reps who call Europe, Cognism or Kaspr cover mobiles Lusha does not.

The Bottom Line

1. Lusha's problem is the unit, not the price. A phone costs five credits, Starter annual carries 4,800 credits, and unused annual credits are forfeited at renewal with 14 days' notice to cancel and no refunds.
2. The cheapest Lusha alternative for phones is Kaspr (one credit per phone, 100 a month for $49, unlimited emails). UpLead and Lead411 fold the phone into the contact. ContactOut caps at 1,000 phones a month for $99.
3. Apollo replaces Lusha and adds a sequencer at 30,000 credits a year per seat. Cognism replaces it for European mobiles on contract. Hunter replaces it for email only at $34 a month.
4. Stay on Lusha if you reveal US dials one at a time, bill monthly, or live happily on the free 40 credits.
5. None of the eight tells you which contact is buying this quarter. That answer is in the public behavior of the people already on your list, and it decides which contacts deserve the five credits.

Export your Lusha lists before the credits reset. Then run a free signal check on them and see which 5% to 8% showed a buying signal this week. That is who to reveal a phone number for on whichever Lusha alternative you pick, and no database could have told you which 5% it was.