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Choose Coresignal if you want to search a very large multi-source database of employee, company and job records and collect full records in depth, and choose RichAPI if you want paid lookups fetched live from 40+ providers at a fixed credit price per endpoint, with credits that never expire and no charge for waterfall email and phone misses. Both bill in credits, both have an MCP server with OAuth sign-in, and both start free. They differ on how much data a record carries, how fresh it is and what a record costs in dollars.
What is the short answer?
Coresignal sells data first. Its home page cites 5B+ records across companies, employees, jobs and social posts, delivered as datasets or through APIs (Coresignal). Its pricing page lists 907M+ employee profiles (Coresignal pricing). Records come from its own database, and a separate Real-time Employee API scrapes a profile on request (Coresignal Real-time Employee API).
RichAPI is an API over many providers. It has 65+ endpoints behind one key, over REST and MCP (RichAPI MCP). RichAPI does not keep a database of any third-party site, and contact and company lookups are fetched live from licensed sources (RichAPI API).
How do RichAPI and Coresignal compare side by side?
Checked against each vendor's own pages on November 9, 2026.
| Coresignal | RichAPI | |
|---|---|---|
| Data model | Multi-source database, plus a real-time employee endpoint | 40+ providers, contact and company lookups fetched live |
| Coverage claim | 5B+ records, 907M+ employee profiles | 65+ endpoints across 40+ providers |
| Freshness | Records carry a timestamp. Real-time endpoint scrapes on request | Lookups fetched at call time |
| Search | Free through the search endpoints, 20 credits per preview page | People search 0.1 credits per result |
| Full employee record | 20 credits, or 10 for the core bundle | 1 credit per profile |
| Live profile fetch | 12 credits, under 30 seconds on a cache miss | 1 credit per profile |
| Work email | 10 credits per email found | 5 credits per hit, 0 on a miss |
| Plans | Monthly or annual credit plans from $49 a month | One-time bundles from $100, no seats |
| Credit expiry | Monthly plans reset each cycle, annual credits last 12 months | Never |
| Free start | 7 day trial | 100 credits, no card |
| MCP | OAuth 2.1 sign-in, 20 credits per search | Same endpoints as REST, OAuth |
Sources: Coresignal pricing, Coresignal credit pricing docs, Coresignal MCP, RichAPI pricing, RichAPI MCP.
How fresh is the data?
Coresignal says the database behind its APIs is refreshed in real time and each record carries a timestamp of its last update (Coresignal FAQ). For the freshest employee profile, the Real-time Employee API takes a profile URL and a max_age in hours. A value of 0 asks for current data, and 72 accepts a copy up to 3 days old. A cache miss scrapes the profile in under 30 seconds, and a request that takes longer returns a 408 (Coresignal Real-time Employee API). The endpoint allows 50 URLs per minute (Coresignal rate limits).
RichAPI fetches contact and company lookups live on every call, at the published endpoint price. Web-scraping endpoints cache server-side for speed and cost (RichAPI API). The trade-off is search coverage. A database can filter hundreds of millions of records in one query, and a live API is bounded by what its providers return per call.
What does a record cost?
Coresignal charges credits for each successful collect or enrich request. Search through its search endpoints is free, and a Search Preview of up to 20 results costs 20 credits (Coresignal credit pricing docs). Employee and company records are priced by bundle. The core bundle costs 10 credits, one extra bundle 14, two extra bundles 17 for employees and 16 for companies, and the full record 20.
The table below prices Coresignal at the Starter plan, $199 for 12,000 credits, about $0.0166 a credit. RichAPI is priced at the Growth bundle, $450 for 25,000 credits, $0.018 a credit.
| Task | Coresignal credits | Coresignal at Starter | RichAPI credits | RichAPI at Growth |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Search | Free, 20 per preview page | Free, $0.33 per preview page | 0.1 per result | $0.0018 per result |
| Core employee record | 10 | $0.17 | 1 per profile | $0.018 |
| Full employee record | 20 | $0.33 | 1 per profile | $0.018 |
| Live employee profile | 12 | $0.20 | 1 per profile | $0.018 |
| Work email | 10 per email found | $0.17 | 5 per hit, 0 on a miss | $0.09 per hit |
| Company record | 10 core, 20 full | $0.17 to $0.33 | 1 per company | $0.018 |
Sources: Coresignal pricing, Coresignal credit pricing docs, RichAPI pricing.
The two prices buy different amounts of data. Coresignal's employee record spans four bundles of fields, including employer details, career intelligence and social activity (Coresignal employee data). RichAPI's profile enrichment is a single endpoint at 1 credit. Check a sample response from each before you compare cost per field.
How do the plans and credits work?
Coresignal sells monthly plans at Mini $49 for 2,500 credits, Starter $199 for 12,000, Pro $499 for 35,000 and Growth $1,000 for 150,000, listed at $0.007 a credit. Larger plans go up to 10,000,000 credits, and annual billing is 10% cheaper (Coresignal pricing). Monthly credits reset each cycle, except on Premium, Scale and Elite, which keep a 3-month rollover. Annual credits last 12 months, and free trial credits last 7 days (Coresignal credit pricing docs).
RichAPI bundles are Starter at $100 for 5,000 credits, Growth at $450 for 25,000 and Scale at $800 for 50,000. They never expire or renew on their own. Profile and company enrichment also has a yearly Enrichment Pass at $299 a month for 50,000 enrichments, about $0.006 each (RichAPI pricing).
What happens on a miss or an empty result?
Coresignal deducts credits only on a successful 200 response from collect and enrich, and an empty balance returns a 402 (Coresignal credits). Its contact enrichment endpoint returns NOT_FOUND when no email exists, and EEA and UK employees are excluded from email lookups (Coresignal Contact Enrichment API).
RichAPI's free misses apply to its waterfall endpoints. Email finder, email verifier and phone finder try providers in order and cost zero credits when nothing is found. Every other endpoint bills on a successful 2xx response, including an empty one (RichAPI ChatGPT integration). Each waterfall response carries an execution_log with one entry per provider attempt.
How do the MCP servers compare?
Coresignal's MCP server is at https://mcp.coresignal.com/mcp/v2 and uses OAuth 2.1 sign-in through the Coresignal dashboard, so no API key is stored on the server. Its tools are natural-language entity search at 20 credits, field discovery for free, a full record pull at 1 to 20 credits, email enrichment at 10 credits and a free paged file reader. Each response reports the credits used, and the server asks for confirmation before a large or expensive pull (Coresignal MCP).
RichAPI's MCP server at https://mcp.richapi.ai/mcp uses OAuth. You sign in when the client opens RichAPI and click Allow, with no API key to copy (RichAPI MCP). It works in ChatGPT and other remote MCP clients, on the same credit pool and prices as REST. Every tool is a read-only lookup that sends nothing and writes to no CRM (RichAPI ChatGPT integration).
Which limits matter in production?
Coresignal's data API rate limit depends on the plan. It is 5 requests per second on Mini and Starter, 10 on Pro, 20 on Growth and 50 on Premium (Coresignal rate limits). The reasoning mode of its agentic search is capped at 10 requests per hour.
RichAPI's rate limit follows the credits bought in a month. It is 1 request per second on the sandbox, 10 from 5,000 credits and 25 from 25,000, and a request over the limit gets a 429 with a Retry-After header. An empty balance returns a 402, and auto top-up is off by default (RichAPI pricing).
When should you pick each?
Pick Coresignal when:
- you need to search a very large employee, company or jobs database with filters
- you want full records with many field groups, or bulk datasets
- you want webhooks that notify you when a tracked profile changes
- you can budget a monthly plan and use the credits within the cycle
Pick RichAPI when:
- you want every paid lookup fetched live at a published price
- you want a dollar cost per call before you start
- you want misses on email and phone lookups to cost nothing
- you want credits that never expire and no monthly commitment
Our take
Coresignal and RichAPI handle freshness and pricing in different ways. Coresignal indexes widely, lets you search for free and charges for the records you collect, with a live scrape available when a record is stale. RichAPI fetches live by default and leaves broad indexing to the providers behind it. For discovery across a huge universe and deep records, Coresignal's index suits that job. For enrichment and contact lookups on a list you already have, RichAPI's fixed dollar price, free waterfall misses and non-expiring credits make spend easier to forecast.
FAQ
Is Coresignal cheaper than RichAPI?
It depends on the task. Coresignal search is free and its full employee record costs 20 credits, about $0.33 on the Starter plan. RichAPI charges 1 credit, $0.018 at the Growth bundle rate, for a profile. The records differ in depth.
Is Coresignal a Proxycurl alternative?
Yes for profile lookups by URL. Coresignal's collect endpoint takes a profile URL or shorthand name, and its Real-time Employee API fetches a profile on demand. RichAPI also enriches a profile from a URL (RichAPI Proxycurl alternative).
Does Coresignal return live data?
Its database is refreshed continuously and each record has a timestamp. The Real-time Employee API fetches a profile at request time for 12 credits.
Do RichAPI credits expire?
No. Bundle credits never expire. Coresignal's monthly credits reset each cycle, and its annual credits last 12 months.
Can I find work emails with both?
Yes. Coresignal's email enrichment costs 10 credits per email found and excludes EEA and UK employees. RichAPI's email finder costs 5 credits per hit and nothing on a miss.
Does RichAPI work in ChatGPT?
Yes. Add https://mcp.richapi.ai/mcp as a connector, sign in and click Allow.
Related
RichAPI pricing, API overview, RichAPI MCP, Proxycurl alternative, People Data Labs alternative, LinkedIn data API, company enrichment API, people enrichment API.