Best People Search APIs for Developers

A people search API (also called an employee finder API or company people search) lets developers programmatically find people who work at a specific company. You provide a company identifier (domain, name, or LinkedIn URL) and optional filters (job title, seniority, department, location), and the API returns a list of matching employees with their professional profiles.

Common use cases include:

• Sales prospecting: Find decision-makers at target accounts ("Show me all VPs at Stripe")
• Recruiting: Identify candidates at specific companies by role and location
• Market research: Analyze the team composition of competitors or target accounts
• ABM campaigns: Build contact lists for account-based outreach by targeting specific roles at specific companies
• Data pipelines: Programmatically build and maintain lead databases

The best people search APIs offer accurate data, flexible filtering, paginated results for large companies, and affordable per-lookup pricing. We tested 6 APIs on these criteria.

Best for: Developers who want a simple, affordable people search API with LinkedIn URL input.

Enrich Employee Finder (People Search) takes a company LinkedIn URL as input and returns employees matching your filters. This is a unique approach: most APIs require a domain name or company ID, but LinkedIn URLs are often the most readily available company identifier in B2B workflows.

Input: Company LinkedIn URL (e.g., https://www.linkedin.com/company/stripe)

• Job level: C-Suite, VP, Director, Manager, Senior, Entry, Intern
• Job function: Engineering, Sales, Marketing, Finance, HR, Operations, Product, Legal, and more
• Country: Any country name
• Continent: North America, Europe, Asia, South America, Africa, Oceania

Output: Paginated list of employee profiles with name, title, LinkedIn URL, location, department, and seniority.

Pricing: 1 credit per person returned. On the Growth Pack ($49/mo for 100K credits), that is up to 100,000 employee lookups per month. No per-seat fees.

import Enrich from '@enrich.so/sdk';
const enrich = new Enrich('YOUR_API_KEY');
const employees = await enrich.peopleSearch.find({
  companyLinkedInUrl: 'https://www.linkedin.com/company/stripe',
  filters: {
    jobLevel: ['VP', 'Director', 'Manager'],
    jobFunction: ['Engineering'],
    country: ['United States'],
  },
  page: 1,
  limit: 25,
});
for (const person of employees.data) {
  console.log(`${person.name} - ${person.title}`);
}

The TypeScript SDK provides full type safety with autocomplete for all filter values. A Go SDK is also available.

Best for: Teams that need people search bundled with sequences, dialer, and CRM.

Apollo's people search is embedded in a 210M+ contact database with extensive filtering: job title, seniority, company size, industry, technology stack, funding stage, and intent signals. The API returns contacts with email addresses included (1 credit per email). Phone numbers cost 8 credits each.

Pricing: Free (75 credits/mo), Basic $49/user/mo, Professional $79/user/mo, Organization $119/user/mo. Annual billing required.

Pros: 210M+ database, extensive filters including intent data, email included in results, large community. Cons: Per-seat pricing, 8 credits per phone number, annual billing, no official SDKs, complex credit system.

ZoomInfo (Best for enterprise): ZoomInfo's People Search API provides access to 100M+ contacts with intent data, technographics, org charts, and reporting hierarchies. Pricing starts at $15,000+/year with annual contracts. Pros: deepest data, intent signals, org charts. Cons: $15K+ minimum, annual contracts, no self-serve.

People Data Labs (PDL) (Best for raw data volume): PDL offers access to 3B+ person records through a developer-friendly API. Pricing is per-API-call, starting at $0.01 to $0.10 per record. Pros: massive 3B+ dataset, flexible per-call pricing, good SDK, raw data access. Cons: data accuracy lower than curated providers, no built-in enrichment or verification.

Clearbit (HubSpot): Clearbit's people search endpoint returned employees by role and seniority. After the HubSpot acquisition, standalone API access is limited. Pros: deep company data, tight HubSpot integration. Cons: no standalone access, no transparent pricing.

RocketReach: RocketReach provides a people search API with 700M+ claimed profiles. Results include email and phone data. Essentials at $39/mo gives you 80 lookups ($0.49 each). Pros: email + phone in results, 700M+ profiles. Cons: very expensive per-lookup ($0.49+), limited bulk/API features, no official SDKs.

Here is a decision framework based on your primary need:

Need the cheapest per-person cost: Enrich at 1 credit per person ($0.0005 on Growth Pack). PDL is the next cheapest at $0.01 to $0.10 per record.

Need LinkedIn URL as input: Enrich is the only API that accepts a company LinkedIn URL directly. All others require a domain name, company name, or internal ID.

Need the largest raw dataset: PDL (3B+ records) has the largest dataset, but data accuracy varies. ZoomInfo (100M+) and Apollo (210M+) have curated databases with higher accuracy.

Need intent data and org charts: ZoomInfo is the only option with deep intent signals and organizational hierarchy data. Enterprise pricing ($15K+/year).

Need an all-in-one platform: Apollo bundles people search with sequences, dialer, and CRM.

Need official SDKs: Enrich (TypeScript + Go) and PDL (Python, Ruby, Node) offer official SDKs.

For most developers building custom data pipelines, Enrich offers the best combination of price (1 credit/person), developer experience (official SDKs), and unique input format (LinkedIn URL). Start with the 100 free credits to evaluate data quality.