Hunter.io costs $0 on the Free plan, $49 a month on Starter, $149 on Growth and $299 on Scale. Yearly billing brings the paid plans down to $34, $104 and $209 a month, and Enterprise is quoted. Every plan includes unlimited users who share one pool of credits. Finding an email costs 1 credit and verifying one costs 0.5, so Starter's 2,000 monthly credits cover up to 4,000 verifications. Teams that only use the API can buy Hunter's Data Platform instead, which sells verification credits by volume from $11 per 1,000 down to $2.80 per 1,000 at a million.
The plan price is the easy part. What you actually spend depends on rules the pricing page only hints at: which verification results Hunter charges for, what happens to unused credits when you change plans, why the same email can be charged twice across bulk uploads, and what re-verifying a list costs over a year. The one that matters most for B2B teams is that Hunter charges for accept-all results, the addresses on catch-all domains it can't confirm, while Unknown results are free.
This breakdown covers every plan, add-on, credit rule and API option, with cost-per-verification math for common list sizes. It also compares Hunter with Allegrow on what a verification costs and what it returns. All prices come from Hunter's pricing page and help center, checked October 30, 2026.
Key takeaways
- Four self-serve plans, unlimited users: Free (0), Starter (49), Growth (149) and Scale (299) a month, or 30% less billed yearly. You never pay per seat, but sending inboxes for Sequences are capped at 1, 3, 10 or 20.
- Verification costs 0.5 credits: that’s $4.18 to $12.25 per 1,000 verifications on a plan, depending on tier and billing. Accept-all results are charged at that rate. Unknown, Blocked and disposable results are free.
- The Free plan gives 50 credits a month, with API access and no time limit. That’s up to 100 verifications, not the “25 searches” older guides quote.
- Credits expire unless you’re on yearly billing: monthly credits reset each cycle, and yearly credits last 12 months. Credit packs cost two to six times the plan rate per credit and expire after three months.
- Bulk uploads have hidden costs: duplicates across separate files are charged twice, each bulk is capped at 100,000 emails, and accept-all results are left out of “Import as leads.”
- Re-verifying uploaded lists isn’t free: Hunter only re-checks its own saved leads at no cost. Re-verifying an imported 10,000-contact list every month uses half of Growth’s yearly credits.
- In our August 2026 benchmark, 70% of Hunter’s unresolved results were accept-all. That’s 518 of 744, all charged. Teams targeting large companies should verify those addresses with a tool that resolves catch-all and gateway domains.
How much does Hunter.io cost?
Hunter.io has four self-serve plans. Free costs $0 for 50 credits a month. Starter is $49 a month, Growth is $149 and Scale is $299, and yearly billing cuts those to $34, $104 and $209 a month. Enterprise is priced by custom quote.
A verification costs 0.5 credits, so each credit covers two verifications. The verification columns assume the whole balance goes to verifying. In practice the same pool also pays for Email Finder and Domain Search, so most teams get fewer verifications than the table shows.
What the table doesn't show, from Hunter's pricing page:
- Unlimited users on every plan. Hunter doesn't charge per seat. Every team member logs in and draws from the same credit balance, so a 3-person team and a 30-person team pay the same price for the same pool. Users aren't the same as sending inboxes, though: the number of email accounts you can connect to Sequences is capped per plan.
- One credit pool for everything. Finding, verifying and Domain Search all draw from the same credits, so a teammate's bulk Domain Search can use up credits the rest of the team planned to spend on verification.
- Auto-verification is a paid feature. Starter and above re-verify saved Hunter leads automatically. Free doesn't.
- Monthly cost per 1,000 verifications. On monthly billing it works out to $12.25 on Starter, $7.45 on Growth and $5.98 on Scale.
- Saved-lead limits rise with the plan. You can save 100,000 leads on Free, 2 million on Starter, 10 million on Growth and 30 million on Scale.
Is Hunter.io cheaper on monthly or yearly billing?
Yearly billing is 30% cheaper on every paid plan, and it changes how credits arrive. Yearly plans load all 12 months of credits on day one and keep them valid for a year. Monthly plans reset at the end of each billing cycle, so credits you don't use that month are gone.
Over a year, the saving is $180 on Starter (588 vs $408), $540 on Growth (1,788 vs $1,248) and $1,080 on Scale (3,588 vs $2,508). Yearly billing also suits uneven workloads: a team that verifies 30,000 contacts in one quarter and almost nothing in the next still uses its whole balance, where a monthly plan would let the quiet months' credits expire. Monthly billing makes sense for one-off jobs. Hunter's FAQ says you can subscribe for a single month and cancel once the work is done, keeping paid access until the end of that cycle.
What add-ons does Hunter charge extra for?
Hunter sells four add-ons on top of the paid plans, and none of them is available on Free. Three are priced per email account, and the fourth, credit packs, covers running out of credits mid-cycle.
The per-account add-ons scale with sending volume, not verification volume. A team that sends from more than 20 inboxes pays for each extra one on top of Scale.
Which Hunter.io plan is right for your team?
Pick the plan that covers your monthly verification and finding volume first. Inbox count comes second, and seat count doesn't matter.
- Free: testing Hunter's finder and verifier on a handful of known contacts, up to 100 verifications a month.
- Starter: a solo founder or small team verifying up to about 4,000 contacts a month and sending from three inboxes.
- Growth: a team that runs sequences from up to 10 inboxes and needs up to 20,000 verifications a month. This is where the cost per verification drops the most.
- Scale: high-volume outbound teams with up to 20 inboxes and 50,000 verifications a month, plus a dedicated account manager.
- Enterprise: teams that need custom credit volumes or more than 20 connected inboxes.
- Data Platform: teams that only need verification or search through the API, with no sequences. It's priced separately by volume (covered below).
How do Hunter.io credits work?
Hunter.io uses one credit balance for everything, and actions cost different amounts. Finding an email costs 1 credit, verifying one costs 0.5, and a search that finds nothing is free. Credits are counted the same way in the web app, the API, the browser extension and the Google Sheets add-on, so every tool draws from the same pool.
How many credits does each Hunter action use?
Bulk Domain Search is the cheapest way to find emails, because one credit covers up to 10 addresses from the same domain where single Domain Search charges one credit per email. The Data Platform counts differently: it splits credits into separate search and verification balances, and each verification uses one full verification credit rather than 0.5.
Which email verification results does Hunter charge for?
Hunter charges 0.5 credits for every verification that returns Valid, Invalid or Accept-all. Unknown and Blocked results are free, and Hunter skips disposable addresses without charging. Accept-all is billed exactly like Valid, even though Hunter's verification statuses page says that on those domains "tools like Hunter and most verification tools can't verify if the email is currently deliverable."
Accept-all is the result you pay for without getting an answer. For those addresses, Hunter's verification FAQs suggest checking the Confidence Score and prioritizing addresses that score above 85%, which is a probability rather than a confirmed mailbox. The free-Unknown rule only covers servers that refuse or block the check. A server that answers but accepts every address returns accept-all and is charged, and slow servers don't come back Unknown either: Hunter keeps checking in the background until the address resolves to a status, and that status is billed.
Do unused Hunter credits roll over?
Within a plan, no: monthly credits reset each billing cycle and yearly credits expire after 12 months. When you upgrade, downgrade or switch between paid plans, your remaining credits carry over as an extra credit pack, valid for 3 months if you move to a monthly plan and 12 months if you move to a yearly or Data Platform plan. Canceling, pausing or moving to Free forfeits unused subscription credits, although credit packs you already bought stay valid for their full 3 months.
How does Hunter count duplicate searches and verifications?
Repeating a search or verification you've already run is free within the same period. On monthly plans that period is the billing cycle; on yearly and Data Platform plans it's the calendar month, so a verification run on December 10 is charged again from January 1. Hunter tracks duplicates across the whole team, so a teammate re-checking an address you verified isn't charged. The exception is bulk: Hunter doesn't detect duplicates across separate CSV uploads, so the same email in two files is charged twice. Deduplicate your lists before uploading them.
How much do Hunter credit packs cost?
Credit packs start at $10 for 100 credits on Starter, $7.50 on Growth and $5 on Scale, and larger packs cost less per credit. Packs are available only on paid All-in-One plans, expire 3 months after purchase, and are used after your plan's credits run out.
Packs cost far more per verification than the plan itself. A 1,000-credit pack covers 2,000 verifications, which works out to $35 per 1,000 on Starter, $26.25 on Growth and $17.50 on Scale, against $4.18 to $8.50 per 1,000 on a yearly plan. At the top end, 10,000 pack credits on Starter cost $400, nearly the $408 a full year of Starter costs for 24,000 credits. A single purchase is capped at 9,000 credits on Starter, 60,000 on Growth and 180,000 on Scale. Auto-purchase can buy a pack whenever your balance hits zero, up to a monthly cap you set. Packs aren't sold on the Free, Enterprise or Data Platform plans, or while a subscription is paused.
Is Hunter.io free? Free plan credits and limits
Hunter.io has a permanent free plan with no time limit and no credit card required. It gives you 50 credits a month, which works out to 50 found emails or 100 verifications. That's enough to test the finder and verifier, but not enough to run ongoing outreach. The plan renews every month, and unused credits don't carry over.
If you've seen "25 free searches a month," that figure is out of date. The current Free plan is measured in credits, not searches. According to Hunter's free plan page, it includes:
- 50 credits a month, shared across Email Finder, Email Verifier, Domain Search and the bulk tools.
- Unlimited team members, all drawing on the same 50 credits.
- 1 connected sending inbox for Sequences, with up to 500 recipients per sequence and open tracking.
- API access, the Chrome extension, the Google Sheets add-on and the CRM integrations, including Zapier and Make.
- 30 AI Discover searches a month, shared across the web app, API, MCP and Agent.
- CSV exports, limited to 10 emails per domain.
What the Free plan leaves out:
- Credit packs. When the 50 credits run out, you either wait for next month or upgrade.
- Automatic lead verification. Saved leads aren't re-verified in the background.
- Full CSV exports, additional sending inboxes, SMTP/IMAP accounts, link tracking and Sequences reporting.
- Lead enrichment and premium Discover filters. Lead exports are also capped at 100 companies.
In practice, 50 credits verifies 100 addresses a month. A single bulk upload of a 500-row list verifies the first 100 rows and skips the rest without charging for them. Spent on finding instead, the same balance returns 50 emails through Email Finder, or up to 500 through Bulk Domain Search if every domain returns 10 addresses.
Does the Hunter.io free plan include API access?
Yes. Free accounts get an API key and can call the Domain Search, Email Finder and Email Verifier endpoints. Each call draws on the same 50 monthly credits and costs the same as in the web app, so the API's free limit is the credit balance, not a separate API quota.
Hunter's API documentation lists the same rate limits without separating them by plan: 10 requests per second or 300 per minute for the Email Verifier, and 15 per second or 500 per minute for Domain Search and Email Finder. Each verification request handles one address, so a list means one call per email. For building an integration before spending real credits, the special key test-api-key checks your parameters and returns a dummy response on those three endpoints without using any credits. API calls also count toward the Free plan's 30 AI Discover searches a month.
How much does the Hunter.io API cost?
Every Hunter.io plan includes API access, and calls draw on the plan's shared credits. Teams that only need the API can buy the Data Platform instead. It sells separate search and verification balances by volume, starting at $11 for 1,000 verifications and $50 for 1,000 search credits.
Hunter Data Platform pricing by volume
Prices come from the Data Platform calculator on Hunter's pricing page. Because search and verification are bought separately, searching can't use up the verification budget. Volume discounts on verification only start at 100,000: the rate is $11 per 1,000 at both the 1,000 and 10,000 tiers, then drops to $7.40 at 100,000 and $2.80 at 1 million. The Data Platform is API only, with no Sequences, sending inboxes or credit packs.
Should you use the Data Platform or an All-in-One plan for API verification?
If verification is all you need, the Data Platform costs less at every volume in the table below, because you pay only for what you buy. A yearly All-in-One plan is the better deal when your team also uses Hunter's finder and Sequences.
The All-in-One price includes finding, Domain Search and Sequences, so a team using those features should compare the whole bill, not just the verification line.
What hidden costs and limits come with Hunter.io?
The plan price is only part of what Hunter costs. A few billing rules and product limits don’t show up on the pricing page but affect what you end up paying, mostly in bulk verification, plan changes and phone data. The ones worth knowing before you buy:
- No phone numbers. Hunter’s plans include no phone data and no phone credits. If your team calls prospects as well as emailing them, you’ll need a second data vendor for direct dials.
- Accept-all results cost credits but stay unconfirmed. You pay 0.5 credits for an accept-all result, the same as a confirmed one, and still can’t tell whether the mailbox exists (see the verification status table above).
- Accept-all addresses don’t import as leads. “Import as leads” skips accept-all addresses from a finished bulk verification. To work them, you download the full results file and import them separately.
- Duplicates are charged twice across bulk files. Hunter doesn’t dedupe across separate CSV uploads, so merge and dedupe your lists before uploading.
- Each bulk upload is capped at 100,000 emails. Rows beyond your remaining credits are skipped, and Hunter labels them “Not verified: out of credits.” Larger lists have to be split across several uploads.
- Canceling a bulk doesn’t refund it. A bulk starts using credits as soon as it launches. Canceling stops further charges but doesn’t return credits already spent. Small bulks often finish before a cancel takes effect.
- Bulk results are deleted after a set period. Paid bulk verification files are kept for 15 months. Results from free accounts are deleted after 6 months, with no reminder email.
- Changing plans starts a new billing cycle. Hunter charges the full price of the new plan immediately, not a prorated difference. Your remaining credits move over as a pack, but you pay for the new term right away.
- Automatic re-verification only covers Hunter’s own leads. Paid plans re-verify saved leads found through Hunter every month at no cost. Lists you upload from elsewhere aren’t included, so keeping them current means paying for each re-verification.
- “Valid” isn’t permanent. Hunter’s own FAQ notes that a mailbox can change status after it’s checked, and it recommends re-verifying before large sends. Each re-check of an uploaded list costs credits (covered in the re-verification section below).
What does email verification actually cost on Hunter?
Hunter charges 0.5 credits per verification. That works out to between $4.18 and $12.25 per 1,000 on a plan, or between $2.80 and $11 per 1,000 on the Data Platform. Two things push the real cost above the list price: accept-all results, which are charged even though the mailbox can't be confirmed, and re-verifying lists you didn't find through Hunter.
How much does it cost to verify a list with Hunter?
Halve your monthly verification volume to get the credits you need, then pick the smallest plan that covers it with room left over for finding. A team verifying 10,000 contacts a month uses 5,000 credits, which fits within Growth's 10,000.
The table gives a ceiling. Hunter doesn't charge for Unknown or disposable results, so lists with many unreachable servers cost slightly less. On lists heavy with company domains, part of every bill pays for accept-all results your team still has to make a call on. Starter plus credit packs can undercut Growth at 5,000 contacts a month, since 500 extra credits is about $50 on top of the $49 plan, but that advantage shrinks quickly as volume grows and pack credits expire after three months.
How does Hunter's verification cost compare with Allegrow's?
For small and mid-size lists, Hunter costs less per verification. Allegrow Starter is $99 a month for 5,000 verifications, and 10,000 a month comes to $139. Hunter’s Growth plan covers up to 20,000 for $149 a month, or $104 billed yearly. The picture flips at high volume. Hunter’s pricing is per credit, so the bill keeps climbing as volume grows. Allegrow Scale Plus is a fixed $1,340 a month, billed annually, for unlimited verification.
Unlimited covers more than raw volume, and the bigger difference shows up in the work around verification:
On Hunter, a team that verifies hundreds of thousands of contacts a month manages a credit budget. It buys packs that expire, re-pays every time a list is re-checked, and pays for accept-all results it still has to sort out by hand. Scale Plus turns verification into a fixed line item. You can re-verify the whole database every month, and the Email Safety Net checks every new contact as it’s added to a sequence and removes unsafe addresses before the first email goes out. Catch-all and gateway addresses come back resolved, not accept-all.
Hunter still wins on breadth and entry price: a finder, Sequences and verification in one plan from $34 a month. That’s why many teams use both. They find contacts in Hunter, then run every company-domain contact through Allegrow before it reaches a sequence.
What does re-verifying a list on Hunter cost over time?
On paid plans, Hunter re-verifies saved leads found through Hunter every month at no extra cost. Uploaded lists don't get that treatment: CRM exports, other vendors' data and event lists are charged in full every time you re-check them. Duplicate checks are only free until the end of the billing period or calendar month, so a monthly re-verification costs the full amount each time.
If most of your contacts come from Hunter's own finder, automatic verification keeps them current for free. If they come from somewhere else, a monthly re-verification of one 10,000-contact list uses half of Growth's yearly credits. Hunter recommends verifying shortly before large sends anyway, because a valid mailbox can change status after it's checked.
Is Hunter.io worth it for B2B email verification?
Hunter.io is worth it if you want email finding, verification and cold outreach on one low-cost plan, and most of your contacts are on domains that answer verification checks. It's weaker for lists built around large companies. Catch-all and gateway-protected domains come back as accept-all, Hunter charges for those results the same as any other, and your team is left to decide whether to send.
Our email verification benchmark (August 2026) tested 11 tools on the same records, and Hunter placed 4th. It was accurate on 85.4% of a 500-record labeled set (427 of 500) and kept false positives low at 0.3% (17 of 5,000). Across the full 10,000 records, it left 7.4% unresolved (744). Allegrow, tested on the same data, was accurate on 98.2% (491 of 500), had 0.22% false positives (11 of 5,000) and left 2.0% unresolved (197 of 10,000).
Of Hunter's 744 unresolved results, 518 came back accept-all and 226 came back Unknown. Hunter's free-Unknown rule reads like a refund on the hard cases, but in our test 70% of its unresolved results were accept-all, which costs 0.5 credits like any other result. Only the remaining 30% were free.
Who sits behind those results is what makes the gap matter for B2B teams. In our Fortune 500 email infrastructure study (April to June 2026), 47% of Fortune 500 domains were catch-all, and 69% were catch-all, behind a Secure Email Gateway, or both. Those are the buyers many outbound teams are trying to reach, and they're the contacts Hunter is most likely to return as accept-all.
So Hunter fits teams that value finding and sequencing in one place, sell mostly to smaller companies, or use it as the first step in a stack. For teams whose pipeline depends on large-company contacts, the better setup is to find with Hunter and send the accept-all results to a verifier that resolves catch-all and gateway addresses. To see what that looks like on a single contact, you can run one through Allegrow's free email verifier. For a wider look at how Hunter stacks up as a whole tool, see our Hunter.io review and alternatives.
Conclusions
Hunter.io's pricing is simple at the plan level: one credit pool shared by unlimited users, verification at half a credit, and 30% off for paying yearly. For most teams the choice comes down to two numbers, how many contacts you verify and find each month and how many inboxes you send from. Yearly billing is the better buy for anyone who isn't doing a one-off export, because it also keeps unused credits for 12 months.
The cost the pricing page doesn't show is in the results. Accept-all is what catch-all and gateway-protected company domains return, and Hunter bills it like a confirmed address. If your outbound targets large companies, a meaningful share of your verification spend goes on contacts you still have to make a call on, and every re-check of an uploaded list adds to the bill.
If that describes your pipeline, test it on your own data before choosing. Allegrow's 14-day free trial verifies up to 1,000 of your contacts, including the catch-all and gateway addresses Hunter marks accept-all, so you can compare the results side by side before deciding where your verification budget goes.
Hunter.io pricing FAQs
Does Hunter.io offer discounts?
Yes. Every paid plan is 30% cheaper billed yearly than monthly: Starter costs $408 a year instead of $588. Registered nonprofits, which means 501(c) status in the US, can also get 30% off monthly plans by emailing Hunter with proof of status after signing up. The nonprofit discount can't be combined with other offers.
Can I get a refund from Hunter.io?
No. Hunter's subscriptions and credit packs are non-refundable. You can cancel at any time from your dashboard, and you keep your paid plan's features and credits until the end of the current billing cycle, so canceling right after a big job still lets you use what's left of that month's or year's balance.
Can I pause my Hunter subscription?
Yes. You can pause a paid plan for one to three months, and Hunter offers 30% off when you resume. While paused, your account runs on the Free plan, so unused subscription credits are lost and you can't buy credit packs. Packs you already bought stay valid for their full three months.
Does Hunter charge VAT or sales tax?
Hunter doesn't charge VAT. Customers in the US may pay sales tax, depending on their state. Plans can be billed in US dollars, euros or British pounds, and credit packs are priced in all three currencies on Hunter's pack page.
Does Hunter charge per user?
No. Every Hunter.io plan, Free included, allows unlimited team members at no extra cost. Everyone on the account shares the plan's credit pool. The per-plan limit applies to connected sending inboxes for Sequences (1, 3, 10 or 20), not to users. Extra inboxes cost from $10 a month each.
Does Hunter.io include phone numbers?
No. Hunter's plans include email finding, verification and outreach, but no phone data or phone credits. Teams that call prospects need a separate data provider for direct dials. That makes Hunter a better fit for email-first outbound than for teams that run calls and email together.
Does Hunter.io have a free trial?
Hunter doesn't offer a time-limited trial of its paid plans. Instead, the Free plan is permanent, needs no credit card, and gives you 50 credits a month to test the finder, verifier and API. To try paid features such as auto-verification, you can subscribe for a single month and cancel afterward.
Does Hunter offer pay-as-you-go pricing?
No. Hunter doesn't sell credits without a subscription. Credit packs require an active Starter, Growth or Scale plan. The nearest option to pay-as-you-go is the Data Platform, where API users buy a chosen volume of search or verification credits, from 1,000 up to 1 million, valid for 12 months.
