The short answer: for an all-in-one prospecting platform with the most free credits, pick Apollo.io (~75/month). For the cleanest, most transparent email finding and verification, pick Hunter. For EU-facing teams that need compliance on paper, Lusha, Hunter and Snov.io all carry explicit GDPR compliance. Whatever you choose, verify before you send, an unverified email is a guess, not a contact.
What actually separates these tools
Most email-finder roundups rank by feature count. In practice three things decide whether a tool earns its place on your toolbar, and the third is the one B2B lists gloss over:
Accuracy, does the email it finds actually deliver, and does it tell you how confident it is?
Free credits, how much can you do before paying, and is that enough to test on real prospects?
Compliance, can you legally use what you collect? In the EU and UK, "found it" and "allowed to email it" are not the same thing, and the fines land on you, not the tool.
The comparison
Tool
Free credits/mo
Verifies
LinkedIn
CRM export
GDPR-compliant
Apollo.io
~75
Yes
Yes
HubSpot, Salesforce
Stated
Hunter
~50
Yes (score)
Yes
HubSpot, Salesforce
Yes
Clearbit / Breeze
Via HubSpot
Yes
Limited
Native HubSpot
Stated
Lusha
~40
Yes
Yes
HubSpot, Salesforce
Certified
Snov.io
~50
Yes
Yes
HubSpot, Pipedrive
Yes
RocketReach
Limited trial
Yes
Yes
HubSpot, Salesforce
Stated
Wiza
Limited
Yes
Strong
HubSpot, Salesforce
Stated
Free credits as of June 2026 and change frequently; "GDPR-compliant" reflects each vendor's stated position, your own processing still has to be lawful. Verify on each vendor's current pricing and compliance pages.
How we compared them
We don't run a secret accuracy lab or publish invented hit-rate percentages, those numbers are unverifiable and vary by industry and region. Instead we weigh what's checkable: published free-credit allowances, whether the tool verifies and shows a confidence signal, documented CRM integrations, and each vendor's stated compliance posture. The honest truth about accuracy is that you should test any of these on your own target list before committing, a tool that's excellent for US tech contacts can be weak for EU mid-market, and vice versa.
The tools
Apollo.io Freemium
Best for: all-in-one prospecting on a budget · Free credits: ~75/mo · Exports: HubSpot, Salesforce
Apollo is the broadest tool here: a large contact database, the email finder, plus sequences and light CRM features, all reachable from the LinkedIn-side extension. The free tier is the most generous among the big names, which makes it the natural starting point. The honest limitation: breadth comes with clutter, and data quality on more obscure or non-US contacts can dip. Treat the free tier as a real test, not just a teaser.
Hunter does one thing and does it clearly: find a business email and tell you how confident it is, via a transparent confidence score, so you can decide whether to trust it. It's explicitly GDPR-compliant and integrates with the main CRMs. Best if you already have a CRM and just want accurate emails. The honest limitation: it's narrower than Apollo, no big database to browse or built-in sequences, so it's a finder, not a full prospecting suite.
Clearbit / Breeze Intelligence Paid
Best for: teams already living in HubSpot · Free credits: via HubSpot tiers · Exports: native HubSpot
Clearbit was acquired by HubSpot and now lives inside the HubSpot ecosystem as Breeze Intelligence. If your team runs on HubSpot, the enrichment is seamless, data flows straight into your records with no export step. The honest limitation: it's far less useful outside HubSpot, and the standalone Chrome-extension experience is weaker than it was pre-acquisition. Choose it because you're a HubSpot shop, not as a general finder.
Lusha Freemium
Best for: EU-facing teams that need certified compliance · Free credits: ~40/mo · Exports: HubSpot, Salesforce
Lusha leans hard into compliance and is certified GDPR-compliant, which matters if your legal team asks for paperwork. It surfaces direct dials as well as emails from the LinkedIn sidebar. The honest limitation: the free credit allowance is the smallest of the big names, and phone-number coverage is stronger in some regions than others.
Snov.io Freemium
Best for: finding plus cold-email sending in one tool · Free credits: ~50/mo · Exports: HubSpot, Pipedrive
Snov.io combines email finding and verification with a built-in cold-email sender and drip campaigns, useful if you want to prospect and send without a separate outreach tool. It's GDPR-compliant. The honest limitation: doing everything in one tool means each part is good rather than best-in-class, and deliverability still depends on your own sending hygiene.
RocketReach & Wiza Freemium
Best for: deep contact lookups (RocketReach) and LinkedIn list exports (Wiza)
RocketReach has a very large contact database and is strong for finding harder-to-reach people, though its free allowance is thin. Wiza specialises in turning LinkedIn Sales Navigator searches into verified, exportable lists, the pick if your workflow is list-building from LinkedIn. Both verify. The honest limitation for both: the most useful volume is firmly behind paid tiers, and Wiza's LinkedIn-heavy approach makes the compliance points below especially relevant.
The GDPR and legality reality
This is the section the US-centric listicles skip, and it's the one that can cost you. Finding a business email address isn't automatically illegal, but in the EU and UK, GDPR governs how you process personal data, and a work email tied to a named person is personal data.
You need a lawful basis. For B2B outreach that's usually "legitimate interest", which requires a genuine, documented justification and a balancing test, not just "I found it".
Opt-outs and access requests are mandatory. People can ask what you hold and demand deletion; you must be able to comply.
The tool's compliance isn't your compliance. Hunter, Lusha and Snov.io being GDPR-compliant covers their data handling. Once you import a contact and email them, the obligation is yours.
LinkedIn's terms are separate from GDPR. Bulk-scraping LinkedIn violates its terms regardless of data-protection law, and can get your account restricted.
Practical takeaway: prefer tools with explicit GDPR compliance, keep records of where each contact came from and why you're contacting them, honour every opt-out immediately, and don't mass-scrape personal (non-business) accounts. This isn't legal advice, if you operate at scale in the EU, get it reviewed.
The permissions check
Email-finder extensions read the LinkedIn and company pages you're viewing and send data to their servers to look up matches, so they request meaningful access. That's inherent to the job, but it's still worth confirming you're installing the real vendor's extension and not a lookalike that harvests your prospect data for itself. Run anything you're unsure about through our Extension Safety Checker before installing.
Vetting a sales extension before you feed it your pipeline? The Extension Safety Checker flags unverified publishers and over-broad permissions in one pass. Free, no account.
Does it work on Firefox, Edge, Brave and Safari?
These are sales tools built around Chrome and LinkedIn, so Chrome is the first-class experience. They install on the Chromium browsers, Edge, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi, directly from the Chrome Web Store, and most major ones (Apollo, Hunter, Lusha) offer a Firefox build too. Safari support is rare across the category. Since the workflow centres on LinkedIn in a desktop browser, the Chromium browsers are where these tools are happiest.
Frequently Asked Questions
Accuracy varies by region and seniority more than by brand, so test each on your own list. Broadly, Apollo and Hunter lead on verified-email accuracy for most B2B use, with Hunter's confidence score being unusually transparent. Always use a tool that verifies before you send, an unverified "found" email is just a guess.
Apollo gives the most among the big names at around 75 lookup credits a month, with Hunter and Snov.io around 50 and Lusha around 40. Smaller tools sometimes offer more, but data quality matters more than raw credit count, 100 wrong emails are worth less than 40 verified ones.
Finding a business email isn't automatically illegal, but how you process it is what GDPR governs. In the EU you generally need a lawful basis (often legitimate interest) and must honour opt-outs and access requests. Use explicitly GDPR-compliant tools (Hunter, Lusha, Snov.io among them), keep records, and don't mass-scrape personal accounts. Bulk LinkedIn scraping also violates LinkedIn's terms regardless of GDPR.
Apollo is a fuller platform, large database, sequences and CRM features, with a generous free tier, best if you want prospecting and outreach in one tool. Hunter is more focused: cleaner email finding and verification with a transparent confidence score, best if you mainly need accurate emails and already have a CRM. Apollo for breadth, Hunter for precision.
The major ones do. Apollo, Hunter, Lusha, Snov.io and RocketReach all offer CRM integrations or export to HubSpot and Salesforce, though deeper two-way sync is often a paid feature. Check that the integration you need is on the tier you're buying, not just the top plan.