Figures taken from Hunter’s public pricing page on 21 October 2026. The page’s price layout is ambiguous in places, flagged below. Check the live page before deciding.
The first thing to say about Hunter’s pricing is that most people are reading the wrong product.
Hunter is widely remembered as an email finder, a domain search tool you use occasionally. The current plans include connected email accounts, sequences with recipient caps, buying signals, saved-lead storage and inbox protection. It is a sending platform with a very good data layer attached.
That changes which number matters. It is not the credits. It is the email account cap.
The plans
| Plan | Annual (per month) | Billed yearly | Billed monthly | Monthly premium |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | – | – | – |
| Starter | $34 | $408 | $588 ($49/mo) | 44% |
| Growth | $104 | $1,248 | $1,788 ($149/mo) | 43% |
| Scale | $209 | $2,508 | $3,588 ($299/mo) | 43% |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom | – |
Start with that last column. Paying monthly costs roughly 43% more than paying annually, the steepest monthly premium of any platform in this series. Saleshandy’s is 21–30%, HeyReach’s 25%, Clay’s 10%.
So Hunter’s headline prices belong to a twelve-month commitment. If you want month-to-month flexibility, the real prices are $49, $149 and $299. Plans can be changed or cancelled at any time, with access continuing to the end of the cycle, which softens it, but the annual discount is where the advertised numbers come from.
What each tier includes
| Free | Starter | Growth | Scale | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Credits | 50/mo | 2,000/mo (24,000/yr) | 10,000/mo (120,000/yr) | 25,000/mo (300,000/yr) |
| Email accounts | 1 | 3 | 10 | 20 |
| Recipients per sequence | 500 | 2,500 | 5,000 | 15,000 |
| Signals | 10 | 20 | 200 | Unlimited |
| AI searches / suggestions | 30 / 15 | 150 / 150 | 450 / 450 | 900 / 900 |
| Saved leads | 100,000 | 2,000,000 | 10,000,000 | 30,000,000 |
| Team members | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Three observations.
Unlimited team members on every plan, including Free. No per-seat fee anywhere, with members sharing the plan’s credit pool. In a category where per-seat is the default, this is a real structural advantage and it deserves saying first.
The saved-lead limits are decoration. Thirty million saved leads on Scale is not a constraint anyone will meet. Ignore that row when comparing.
Email accounts are the constraint that matters. Three, ten and twenty. More on this below, because it is the whole decision.
The credit model, which is genuinely the best here
Having reviewed nine of these pricing pages, Hunter’s credit rules are the fairest set in the category. Specifically:
- 1 credit per email found via Domain Search, Email Finder or Bulk Email Finder
- 1 credit per up to 10 emails found via Bulk Domain Search
- 0.5 credit per verification
- No credit charged when no email is found, or when a verification fails
- Repeated searches or verifications count once per billing period
- Disposable addresses are skipped and not charged
- Credits cost the same through the web app, API, browser extension or Google Sheets add-on
Four of those are better than the norm. Not charging for misses removes the waterfall enrichment cost penalty. Charging a half credit for verification rather than a full one is unusual. Counting repeat lookups once per period is something almost nobody does, it means re-running a list does not re-bill you. And the bulk discount of ten emails per credit on Bulk Domain Search is a genuine volume break.
Working the arithmetic: 10,000 credits on Growth at $104 a month is roughly $0.0104 per verified email, before any bulk discount. That is competitive with anything published.
The gap: extra credit packs are listed with no prices. So you can model your plan precisely and cannot model an overage month at all. Ask for the rate before committing.
The mailbox ceiling
Here is where Hunter’s pricing meets the reality of cold email volume.
Sustainable cold sending is roughly 30–50 emails per mailbox per day. So the plan caps translate to:
| Plan | Email accounts | Rough daily ceiling |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | 3 | 90–150 |
| Growth | 10 | 300–500 |
| Scale | 20 | 600–1,000 |
For a founder or a small team, Growth’s ten accounts is adequate. For anyone running cold email at scale (40, 60, 100 mailboxes) the caps bite well before the credits do.
Additional accounts are priced, with ambiguity. The page lists:
- Additional email accounts from $10/month per account
- Custom domains and email accounts from $6.00/month per account
- Inbox Protection from $7.50/mo per email account in one place and from $6.00/mo per email account in another
Those overlap in ways the page does not resolve, and the difference matters a great deal at volume. At 40 mailboxes on Scale you are adding 20 accounts beyond the cap, $200 a month at $10, or $120 at $6. Ask which rate applies to which configuration.
Either way, per-mailbox infrastructure is where Hunter becomes expensive. Mailbox hosting elsewhere in this category runs from under a dollar to around $3.50 per mailbox per month. From $6 to $10 is several times that. What cold email infrastructure costs has the comparison.
The honest reading: Hunter has priced mailboxes as an add-on to a data product rather than as infrastructure, which is consistent with where it came from.
The Data Platform
Separate, API-only, and worth knowing about because the units differ.
Credits are bought in bundles, the example shown is $6,500 for 1,000 Search credits and 200,000 Verification credits, selected through a calculator, with no per-credit rate published. Purchased credits are usable for up to 12 months.
Two differences from the main plans: credits expire on a twelve-month window rather than resetting monthly, and the mix of search versus verification credits is fixed at purchase. That suits a product embedding verification at scale and does not suit a sales team.
Worked totals
Annual billing.
Founder: 3 mailboxes, ~2,000 lookups a month
Starter, $34/mo. Genuinely good value, and the three-mailbox cap supports roughly 90–150 sends a day.
Sales team: 10 mailboxes, ~10,000 lookups a month
Growth, $104/mo. Reasonable, with the ten-account cap supporting 300–500 sends a day. No extra mailbox fees.
Cold email at volume: 40 mailboxes, 25,000 lookups a month
| Line | Monthly |
|---|---|
| Scale | $209.00 |
| 20 additional accounts | $120–$200 |
| Total | $329–$409 |
The spread is the unresolved rate. This is the profile where Hunter costs most relative to alternatives.
Agency: multiple clients, whitelabel
No answer. The page mentions no whitelabel, no client workspaces and no multi-tenant structure. Hunter is not positioned as an agency product and should not be evaluated as one.
Against Outboundry
| Hunter | Outboundry | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry | $34/mo annual ($49 monthly) | $39/mo |
| Mid | $104/mo annual ($149 monthly) | Growth $89/mo |
| Monthly premium | 43% | ~25% |
| Email accounts | 3 / 10 / 20, extras from $6–$10/mo | Unlimited on every plan |
| Mailbox infrastructure | From $6/mo per account | Mailboundry shared IP $0.80–$2.00; dedicated $1.30–$2.50 |
| Domains | Not separately priced | From $5.99/yr |
| Seats | Unlimited, free | No per-seat fee |
| Credit cost per verified email | ~$0.0104 on Growth | ~$0.0124 on Data Pro ($149/12,000); ~$0.008 at $799/100,000 |
| Charges for misses | No | No |
| Repeat lookups | Free within the period | – |
| Verification | 0.5 credit | – |
| LinkedIn, WhatsApp, calls | No | Yes |
| Whitelabel / client workspaces | Not offered | Agency tier, $399/mo |
Where Hunter is better: the credit rules, clearly. Half-credit verification, free repeat lookups within a period, a bulk discount of ten emails per credit, and no charge for misses or disposables. Its per-email cost on Growth is marginally better than our mid data tier. Unlimited free seats on every plan including Free is also a better answer than most of this category gives.
Where it costs more: mailboxes. Capped per plan and then charged from $6–$10 each, against under $2 for shared-IP infrastructure. At 40 mailboxes that difference is most of the bill. And the 43% monthly premium is the steepest here.
The structural difference: Hunter is email-only. No LinkedIn, no WhatsApp, no dialler, no agency workspaces. So for a single-channel email programme at modest volume it is a strong, well-priced product, and for multichannel outbound or anything at mailbox scale it is one line in a stack rather than the stack. What a full outbound stack costs prices the alternative.
The short version
$34, $104 and $209 a month annually, or $49, $149 and $299 monthly, a 43% premium and the steepest in this category.
The credit model is the best published anywhere here: no charge for misses, half a credit per verification, repeat lookups free within the billing period, ten emails per credit on bulk domain search, and disposables skipped. Roughly $0.0104 per verified email on Growth.
The constraint is email accounts (3, 10 and 20) with extras from $6 to $10 a month and an unresolved ambiguity between those rates. At 40 mailboxes that is where the money goes.
Unlimited free team members on every plan is genuinely better than the category norm. No whitelabel or client workspaces, so it is not an agency product.
Next: how to compare data providers properly, or what cold email infrastructure costs.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Hunter.io cost?
Starter is $34 a month billed annually, Growth $104 and Scale $209. Billed monthly those become $49, $149 and $299, a 43% premium. Free covers 50 credits a month and one email account. Figures checked 21 October 2026.
How do Hunter credits work?
One credit per email found, one credit per up to ten emails on Bulk Domain Search, and half a credit per verification. Nothing is charged when no email is found, when verification fails, or for disposable addresses, and repeated lookups count only once per billing period.
How many email accounts does Hunter allow?
Three on Starter, ten on Growth and twenty on Scale. Additional accounts are listed from $10 a month, with another line showing custom domains and email accounts from $6, the page does not resolve which applies where.
Is Hunter.io good for cold email at scale?
Up to around 500 sends a day it is well priced. Beyond that the per-plan mailbox caps and $6–$10 per extra account make infrastructure the dominant cost, and Hunter offers no LinkedIn, WhatsApp, dialler or agency workspaces.
