How much does it cost to collect business contacts? Three methods compared

What it costs to collect business contacts depends on the method: searching by hand costs no money but takes 1–2 minutes of your time per business, buying a list means paying for the list up front, and an automated collection tool such as Outreach charges for what it actually finds. In Outreach, you pay 1 credit for each contact detail you receive and 2 credits per email you send, and credits come in four packs, from $35 for 500 credits to $2,099 for 50,000 credits, with each credit costing less in a bigger pack. For example, collecting 300 businesses that have an email address and sending each of them one email uses 900 credits.

This post walks through that calculation in order so you can do it yourself: what each method costs in money and time, what uses credits in Outreach and what doesn't, how much the packs cost, and how to see the cost before you start collecting. Every Outreach number here is the value the service uses today, and if a value changes, we update this post along with it.

How does the cost differ between methods?

Look at the money and the time it takes to get one business together. There are three broad ways to collect business contacts, and each one asks you to pay with something different and to check something different before you commit.

The 1–2 minutes for a manual search is the time it takes to open a website, find where the contact details are, copy them into a spreadsheet and go back to the next result. No money leaves your account, but you can't do anything else during that time. This table does not have a separate row for directories. Where manual search, directories, bought lists and automated collection each run into trouble is covered separately in 4 ways to find B2B contacts as a solo founder (and their limits).

When you buy a list, also check when it was collected and how the seller handles dead addresses mixed into it. Sending to addresses that no longer exist builds up bounces, and once bounces pile up, even the emails you send to good addresses are more likely to land in the spam folder. A cheap list can still cost more per business if many of its addresses can't be used.

To compare with Outreach, multiply the number of contact details you actually receive from one business by the cost of one credit. If you only take the email address, that is one credit per business, and the bigger the pack you buy, the less that one credit costs. The rest of this post explains exactly what that credit is spent on.

What do credits pay for?

Credits are used when you receive contact details and when you send emails.

• Contact details — 1 credit per detail received. Email, phone number and Instagram handle each count separately. If you get both an email address and a phone number from one business, that's 2 credits.
• Sending email — 2 credits per email. That price already includes recording whether the recipient clicked a link in your email and whether they replied. Replies are picked up automatically, because Outreach checks your inbox every 10 minutes.

The business name, website, address and industry come free with the contact details. The Pipeline board, analytics reports, the blacklist, “Download to Excel”, the account safety guide and the automatic follow-up email settings also cost no credits.

Outreach has no monthly subscription. You top up credits and they go down only as you use them. If you don't collect or send anything for a month, not a single credit is used that month.

When are no credits used?

Details that weren't found, businesses that were filtered out, details you already have, details that turn out to be unusable, and emails that weren't delivered cost nothing. Here they are one by one.

1. The detail you chose isn't there. If you chose email and phone number but a business only lists an email address, only 1 credit is used. Nothing is charged for the missing phone number.
2. Businesses filtered out during collection. Posts that aren't businesses, businesses in another region and businesses in another industry are filtered out automatically, and no credits are charged for them.
3. Businesses you already have. A business that is already in your list costs nothing if it turns up again. Details you already received in another of your projects aren't charged again either, and the list marks that business as also being in another project.
4. Details confirmed to be unusable. If an email address is confirmed to be one that can't receive mail, the credit is refunded automatically. For details like phone numbers, which you only find out about by calling, report it on the detail screen that appears when you click the business. Once we confirm it, we refund the credit and remove that value from your list.
5. Emails that weren't delivered. If an email was sent but the recipient's server returned it, it is marked as bounced and the credit for that send is refunded automatically. An email that was held back before sending is marked as not sent, and it never used a credit in the first place.

There is one case where credits are not refunded. If your email account gets restricted because of emails that were already sent, the credits used for those sends are not refunded, because the emails really were sent. The guidelines for keeping your account safe are in how to keep cold email out of the spam folder.

How much do the credit packs cost?

There are four packs, and the more credits you buy at once, the less each credit costs.

The smallest pack is Starter and the largest is Business, and the bigger the pack, the less each credit costs. If you know you will use a lot of credits, a larger pack gets you the same credits for less.

A few more things worth knowing:

• You get 100 free credits when you sign up. No card is required.
• Credits never expire. Once you top up, use them whenever you need them.
• Refunds — Unused credits can be refunded within 7 days of purchase. Credits you have used, and credits older than 7 days, are not refunded. To ask for a refund, open a new request from the question mark (the help bot) in the bottom-right corner of the screen.
• Teams — Credits are managed per account. The team feature lets people view the same project together, but each person tops up their own credits.
• Larger volumes — On the home page, the Enterprise card that follows the four price cards lets you ask for a custom quote.

Can I see the cost before I start collecting?

Yes. The collection screen shows the maximum cost and your current balance before you press “Start collecting”. It works out the maximum number of credits needed from the number of businesses you set and the number of details you chose to receive, and right below it the screen explains that only details actually received are charged, so the real total is usually lower. If your balance runs short, collection stops once your credits run out, and the screen also shows how many businesses your current balance can cover.

You choose which details to receive in the step that asks which businesses to save. For each detail you pick one of three options: “Required”, get it if available, or don't get it. When you first open the screen, only email is set to “Required”, so only businesses with an email address are saved, and each one uses 1 credit. If you add phone number as get-if-available, 1 more credit is used only for businesses that also have a phone number.

If you later need a detail you didn't take, you don't have to collect again. In the collection results list, click a hidden detail and it is revealed right there, and before you click, the screen shows how many businesses it covers and how many credits it will use. That's why taking only the details you really need at first, and revealing the rest when you need them, keeps the cost down.

What does it actually add up to?

Let's work through three cases. Bigger packs make each of these credits cheaper.

① Collecting email only and sending one email to 300 businesses

• Collection: email is “Required”, so all 300 saved businesses have an email address. That's 300 credits.
• Sending: 300 emails × 2 credits = 600 credits.
• Total: 900 credits.

② Collecting 100 businesses with email required and phone number if available

• Email: all 100 businesses have one, so that's 100 credits.
• Phone number: only businesses that have one are counted. Depending on how many of the 100 list a phone number, that's between 0 and 100 credits.
• If you don't send any email and only use the list for phone sales, the total is between 100 and 200 credits.

③ Trying it out with the free credits you received

• Collecting 80 businesses that have an email address uses 80 credits, and sending an email to 10 of them uses 20 credits.
• That's 100 credits in total, enough to go all the way from collecting to sending once without paying anything.

You can work out how far one pack goes in the same way. If you spend half the credits on collection and the rest on email, it looks like this:

• Starter, 500 credits — 250 contact details collected + 125 emails
• Standard, 5,000 credits — 2,500 contact details collected + 1,250 emails
• Pro, 15,000 credits — 7,500 contact details collected + 3,750 emails
• Business, 50,000 credits — 25,000 contact details collected + 12,500 emails

If you use credits for only one thing, you can do more of it. For example, Standard's 5,000 credits cover 5,000 contact details if you only collect, or 2,500 emails if you only send.

Which pack should I choose?

Work out how many credits you'll use in a month, then choose a pack that's a little bigger. Credits don't expire, so anything left over isn't lost.

For example, if you collect 100 businesses a week and send each of them one email, that's 300 credits a week (100 for collection + 200 for sending), or about 1,200 credits over four weeks. At that level, Standard's 5,000 credits cost less per credit than buying Starter several times over, and they last a little over four months.

If this is your first time and you don't know how much you'll use, we recommend running one small area with the free credits first. See how many businesses come back and how many details each one has, then choose a pack.

Is there a daily credit limit on sending?

Credits themselves have no daily limit. There is, however, a recommended sending volume to protect your email account, and by default Outreach pauses for 10 minutes after each email. The recommended volume depends on how long ago you signed up for Outreach, and it starts small and increases over time. The number you can send right now is shown on the sending screen, you can raise it yourself with “Change limit/speed”, and when you do, we tell you about the risk first. So even with plenty of credits, 300 emails at the recommended pace go out spread over multiple days.

What should I change first to lower the cost?

Receiving fewer details, and choosing who to send to before you send, make the biggest difference.

1. Set details you won't use to don't-get. If you only plan to send email, receiving the email address alone is enough. If you need more later, you can reveal the hidden details then.
2. Start small and grow. Set a small number of businesses to collect, look at the results, then raise it. Businesses already in your list cost nothing if they turn up again, so collecting in several smaller rounds costs you nothing extra.
3. Choose who to send to, then send. Instead of sending to everyone you collected, pick only the right businesses from the collection results list, and your sending credits go down by the same amount.
4. Check addresses before you send. Before saving an address, Outreach asks the receiving mail server whether it exists and doesn't save addresses that don't. If you collected addresses yourself or bought a list, filter them first with the method in our email address check post.

Are there free tools I can use without credits?

Yes. There are three free tools you can use without logging in, and none of them use credits. Check your sending address tests whether SPF, DKIM and DMARC are set up correctly for the address you enter. Email address check confirms, up to 10 times a day, whether an address actually receives mail before you send to it. Ad email label check looks at your subject line and body to see whether the (Ad) label, an unsubscribe method and sender information are included. You can use them to check the email address you use today even before you sign up.

How do I get started?

Run one small area with the free credits you receive. Create a project, set the industry and area to search, and check the maximum cost on the screen before you press “Start collecting”. If you get fewer results than expected, read what to do when keyword collection finds too few businesses, and for the full order of the screens, see how to use Outreach.

To top up credits, log in and go to Buy credits in the left menu. That page lists the same four packs and a set of frequently asked questions.

Last updated: November 3, 2026