Hit Lusha's free credit limit mid-list? Here are 7 free Lusha alternatives compared on real monthly credits, reset rules, and export limits.
That's the moment every SDR on a free Lusha plan eventually hits. You're deep into a prospect list, the LinkedIn tab is open, the Lusha extension is revealing numbers one by one, and then it stops. Not because the list ran out. Because the credits did.
Lusha's free plan sits somewhere around 40 credits a month for a single seat, though the exact figure has been reported anywhere from 5 to 70 depending on when and where you check (Amplemarket, 2026; Cleanlist, 2026). Whatever the exact number on your account, the pattern is the same: it resets monthly, and it runs out mid-list far more often than it lasts through one.
Here are seven tools that solve the same problem, ranked by how reliably their free credits refresh and how far they actually stretch.
Free Lusha alternative: a contact-lookup or B2B database tool that reveals verified emails, phone numbers, or LinkedIn-sourced contact details without payment, either as a standing monthly free tier or a trial period, used in place of or alongside Lusha's own free plan.
Free plans are priced per contact revealed, not per list completed, so the credit count has no relationship to how long your prospect list actually is. A 25-contact list and a 100-contact list cost the same tool the same thing per lookup. The tool doesn't know or care where your list ends.
That mismatch is the real source of the frustration. You don't run out of credits because you did something wrong. You run out because the free tier was never sized to your workflow in the first place, it was sized to get you to upgrade.
Say your SDR pulls 40 names off LinkedIn for a Tuesday send, and the free plan resets 40 credits on the 1st of the month. If it's the 22nd and half the balance already went to a different campaign, that Tuesday list stalls at contact 20, not because the data isn't there, but because the math on reset timing never lined up with the calendar your team actually runs on. Multiply that across a five-person SDR team, each on their own individual free seat, and you get five separate cliffs on five separate days, which is exactly why most teams graduate to a paid plan faster on credit-metered tools than they do on flat-fee ones.
Ranked by monthly credit count and whether the credits are a recurring reset or a one-time grant, most reliable first.
Kaspr's free plan is one of the most generous in the LinkedIn-contact category: 5 phone credits, 5 direct email credits, and 10 export credits a month, plus unlimited B2B email lookups on some reported configurations (SalesRobot, 2026). It's built specifically for pulling contact info while browsing LinkedIn, the same core use case as Lusha. Paid plans start at $49/mo for 1,200 annual phone credits, which works out to roughly 100 a month on average (Leadhaste, 2026). If your prospecting happens on LinkedIn profiles more than in a database search bar, read our full Kaspr review or the direct Lusha vs Kaspr comparison next.
ContactOut's free plan resets daily, not monthly: 5 email credits, 5 phone credits, and 5 exports every single day, no credit card required. Over a 30-day month that's a larger effective pool than most monthly-credit competitors, though you lose whatever you don't use that day since it doesn't roll over. Paid plans carry a fair-use cap of 2,000 email credits and 1,000 phone credits a month that isn't listed on the pricing page, only in the terms of use, which is worth knowing before you plan around "unlimited" (Enrich, 2026). See our full ContactOut review or the ContactOut alternatives roundup for more.
Hunter's free plan gives 50 credits a month, permanently, no credit card needed (RB2B, 2026). It's the most predictable reset schedule on this list, but Hunter is an email-first tool. If your Lusha use case leans on phone numbers, Hunter alone won't replace it, though it pairs well as a second free tool for the email half of your list. Check our Hunter.io review and the standalone is Hunter.io actually free breakdown.
Wiza's free plan gives 20 email credits and 5 phone credits a month, aimed at Sales Navigator export workflows rather than one-off lookups (AeroLeads, 2026). The catch: bulk exporting from LinkedIn Sales Navigator requires you to already have a Sales Navigator subscription, which adds $79 to $139 a month that isn't part of Wiza's own pricing (Reachstream, 2026). It's a strong fit if you're already paying for Sales Navigator and just need the export layer. Read our Wiza review or Wiza alternatives for the full picture.
LeadIQ offers a free tier aimed at light prospecting, positioned as a Chrome-extension-first alternative to Lusha's own extension. Coverage and credit limits are narrower than Kaspr's or ContactOut's free plans, and it's best treated as a secondary tool rather than a full replacement. Our LeadIQ review and the direct LeadIQ vs Lusha comparison cover where it wins and where it doesn't.
RocketReach gives you 5 free lookups total, no credit card, but no export or CRM sync until you pay. It's useful for confirming RocketReach's database of 700M+ contacts actually has the person you're after before committing to a paid seat starting around $19/mo billed annually (UpLead, 2026). Full details in our RocketReach review and the Lusha vs RocketReach comparison.
InboundLabs is free to start, no credit card required, backed by a database of 280M verified B2B contacts and 98% email deliverability on verified contacts. It's a newer name next to Lusha's established brand, and we won't pretend otherwise. What it adds: verified direct dials instead of switchboard numbers, buyer intent signals layered on firmographic data, and filters by industry, headcount, region, and title, all on monthly plans with no annual lock-in once you move past the free tier. See how InboundLabs finds verified contacts instantly → inboundlabs.app
Every free-credit tool eventually produces the same experience: you're not out of prospects, you're out of the specific resource metered by the tool. We call this the Credit Cliff, the point where a free plan's monthly allowance runs dry before your actual task is finished, forcing a stop that has nothing to do with whether the work is done.
The Credit Cliff is different from the Free Tier Ceiling that shows up on database tools like Apollo. A ceiling is a permanent cap on what the free plan will ever do for you. A cliff is a temporary wall you'll hit again next month, on a different day, at a different point in a different list, because the reset clock and your workload were never synced in the first place.
The quotable version: your list doesn't know when your credits reset, and the tool was never built to care.
Count your list before you start pulling contacts, not after. If your list has 60 names and your free plan resets at 40 credits a month, you already know you'll hit the cliff before you finish, so plan the split across two reset cycles or pair two free tools instead of discovering the wall halfway through.
The other lever is timing. If your billing cycle resets on the 1st, start your heaviest prospecting push on the 2nd, not the 28th, so you're working with a full balance instead of whatever scraps are left from last month.
Lusha's free plan is a reasonable way to test whether its LinkedIn-first workflow fits your team, but the credit count was built to run out, not to carry a real list. The alternatives above range from daily resets like ContactOut to LinkedIn-native tools like Kaspr and Wiza, and each has a different cliff edge depending on how your prospecting actually happens. Match the reset schedule to your workload before you commit, and if you'd rather skip the credit math entirely, InboundLabs starts free with no card required.
Reports place Lusha's free tier at roughly 40 credits a month for one seat, though figures as low as 5 and as high as 70 have been reported across recent pricing pages. Confirm the current number at signup since it has changed more than once.
Kaspr's free plan includes 5 phone credits a month alongside 5 direct email credits, making it one of the stronger free options for direct dials in the LinkedIn-contact category, alongside Wiza's 5 phone credits paired with 20 email credits.
Yes. ContactOut gives 5 email credits, 5 phone credits, and 5 exports every day rather than a monthly pool, with no credit card required. Unused daily credits don't carry over, so the effective monthly total depends on how consistently you use it.
Yes, and it's a common workaround. Using Hunter.io for emails and Kaspr or Wiza for phone numbers on the same list spreads the credit load across two reset schedules instead of hitting one wall at once.
Lusha advertises around 98% accuracy for emails, but independent testing has found deliverable email accuracy closer to 60 to 70% in some samples. See our full breakdown of Lusha's real-world accuracy before deciding whether to upgrade.
Monthly resets are designed to keep you using the tool regularly, since you'll come back once the balance refreshes. One-time grants are designed purely as a trial, meant to demonstrate the product once before pushing you toward a paid plan.
No free plan fully avoids a limit, but Kaspr's combined email and phone allowance and ContactOut's daily reset both stretch further than single-purpose tools. Beyond that, InboundLabs starts free with no credit card and layers verified direct dials with firmographic filtering once you move to a paid plan.
LSI keywords: Lusha free plan, Lusha credits, B2B contact lookup, LinkedIn contact finder, free phone number finder, verified direct dials, contact export limits, Lusha pricing, free email finder tool, LinkedIn prospecting tool
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No commitment. No credit card. Just 50 free verified contact lookups.