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Hunter API for Data Plans

Learn how to authenticate, use the main endpoints, and manage credit usage and rate limits for Hunter's API on a Data Plan.

Hunter’s API gives you programmatic access to the core features available on the platform. By integrating these structured API calls into your own systems, you can automate workflows and build custom connections tailored to your needs.

You can use it to search for companies and prospects, find and verify professional email addresses, enrich contact and company records, and manage leads and sequences.

👉 This article is intended exclusively for Data Plan users, as API endpoints and credit usage differ from those available on other plans.

If you are on an All-in-one plan instead, refer to the Hunter API article for All-in-one plans.

API key authentication

Every request to our API must include your API key — otherwise, you’ll get an error.

To get started with the API, you'll need your secret API key(s) to perform any API calls. Your API key is linked to your account, so keep it safe and private.

You can create, view, or delete your keys anytime in the API section of your account, or by using the API Keys endpoint.

For testing, you can use the special key test-api-key. It checks your parameters but always returns a dummy response. This test key works with our three main endpoints: Domain Search, Email Finder, and Email Verifier.

API endpoint descriptions

Through our API, you can fully take advantage of our email finding and verifying services while also managing your resources, like Leads. The API lets you easily create, read, update, and delete data.

👉 If you're on an all-in-one plan, you can refer to the available API endpoints for that plan.

Click the drop-downs below to see details about Hunter's API endpoints and main calls available.

Main API calls

These are the main endpoints you can use to find companies, find email addresses and contacts, and verify email addresses. The cost associated with each endpoint is detailed below.

Discover

Domain Search

  • Scope: Find all the email addresses corresponding to a website or company name.

  • Documentation: https://hunter.io/api-documentation/v2#domain-search

  • Credits cost: 1 Search credit for 1 to 10 email addresses per domain returned.

  • Example:

    https://api.hunter.io/v2/domain-search?domain=stripe.com&api_key=YOUR-API-KEY

Multi-Domain Search

  • Scope: Searches for email addresses across every company matching your filters. It returns one row per matching email address with its professional metadata, but the email address itself stays hidden. Each row includes a reveal_handle that you pass to the reveal endpoint to unlock the actual address.

  • Documentation: Multi-Domain Search and Multi-Domain Search: reveal

  • Credits cost: The search itself is free. Revealing costs 1 Search credit per personal email address, and 1 Search credit per domain for generic addresses.

  • Example:

    POST https://api.hunter.io/v2/multi-domain-search?location=US&department=executive&api_key=YOUR-API-KEY

    Then pass the handles you want from the response in the POST body:

    POST https://api.hunter.io/v2/multi-domain-search/reveal?api_key=YOUR-API-KEY

Email Finder

  • Scope: Find the most likely email address from a domain name, a first name and a last name, or from a LinkedIn handle.

  • Documentation: https://hunter.io/api-documentation/v2#email-finder

  • Credits cost: 1 Search credit per call. Returns a verified email.

  • Example:

    https://api.hunter.io/v2/email-finder?domain=reddit.com&first_name=Alexis&last_name=Ohanian&api_key=YOUR-API-KEY

Email Verifier

Email Enrichment

  • Scope: Find all the information associated with an email address, such as a person's name, location and social handles.

  • Documentation: https://hunter.io/api-documentation/v2#email-enrichment

  • Credits cost: 1 Search credit per call - charged if all of the following data points are returned:

    • Email address

    • Full name

    • Position

  • Example:

    https://api.hunter.io/v2/people/find?email=matt@hunter.io&api_key=YOUR-API-KEY

Company Enrichment

  • Scope: Find all the information associated with a domain name, such as the industry, the description, or the headquarters' location.

  • Documentation: https://hunter.io/api-documentation/v2#company-enrichment

  • Credits cost: 1 Search credit per call - charged if all of the following data points are returned:

    • Company name

    • Category, description or tags

    • Location or country code

    • Company size

  • Example:

    https://api.hunter.io/v2/companies/find?domain=stripe.com&api_key=YOUR-API-KEY

Combined Enrichment

  • Scope: Find all the information associated with an email address and its domain name.

  • Documentation: https://hunter.io/api-documentation/v2#combined-enrichment

  • Credits cost: 1 Search credit per call - charged only when the response returns all core data points from either the company data set or the email data set, described below.

    The company core data points include:

    • Company name

    • Category, description, or tags

    • Location or country code

    • Company size

    The email core data points include:

    • Email address

    • Full name

    • Position

  • Example:

    https://api.hunter.io/v2/combined/find?email=matt@hunter.io&api_key=YOUR-API-KEY

Other API calls

You'll find a summary of the remaining endpoints below. For a detailed description, visit our full API documentation.

The following endpoints are all free of charge.

Discover, Finder & Verifier

The remaining endpoints you can use to assist you in finding companies or emails. All free.

Endpoint

What it does

Discover People

Same filters as Discover, but returns the number of emails found (personal/generic/total per company, plus an aggregate across all matches) instead of company profiles.

Domain Finder

Resolves a company name to its most likely domain(s).

Email Count

Tells you how many emails Hunter has for a domain or company, broken down by type/seniority/department.

Discover saved searches

Save and reuse a Discover filter configuration.

Leads management

Endpoint

What it does

Leads

Create, read, update, upsert, and delete leads.

Lead tags

Create tags and attach/detach them on individual leads.

Lead enrichment

Fills empty lead fields in place from Hunter's data (never overwrites fields you set manually).

Custom Attributes

Define custom fields you can set on leads.

Leads Lists

Create and manage lists of leads.

Leads list folders

Organize leads lists into folders.

Leads list favorites

Pin a leads list to the sidebar in the web app.

Bulk lead operations

Move or delete many leads in a single call.

Companies management

Endpoint

What it does

Companies

Track companies by domain, with rich filters (size, type, industry, technology, funding, location, tags...).

Company Lists

Static (manually curated) or dynamic (saved-filter) lists of companies.

Company list folders

Organize company lists into folders.

Company list favorites

Pin a company list to the sidebar in the web app.

Companies in a company list

Add or remove a company from a static company list.

Company Tags

Create tags and assign/remove them on companies.

Bulk company operations

Move, copy, delete, or tag many companies in a single call.

Account & team

Endpoint

What it does

Account Information

Plan name/level, credits, searches and verifications used vs. available, reset date.

Usage

Returns requests remaining this billing period.

Usage history

Returns a paginated history of your team's past requests

Team members

Lists teammates (id, name, email).

Integrations

Endpoint

What it does

Connected Apps

Lists connected CRMs/tools (HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zoho, Zapier...) and lets you push leads to one.

API keys

List, create, rename, and delete your API keys programmatically.

API credit usage for Data Plans

When using the API, requests are counted as follows for Data Plans:

  • Domain Search endpoint: 1 Search credit per 1–10 emails per domain

  • Multi-Domain Search: free to search. Revealing costs 1 Search credit per personal email address, or 1 Search credit per domain for generic addresses.

  • Email Finder endpoint: 1 Search credit per email found

  • Email Verifier endpoint: 1 Verification credit per verification

  • Enrichment API: 1 Search credit per enrichment

  • Discover API: free of cost

Rate limits

When using our API, we ask that you follow our rate limits, which are as follows:

  • The Domain Search, Email Finder and all Enrichment API calls are rate limited to 15 requests per second / 500 per minute.

  • The Email Verifier API call is rate limited to 10 requests per second / 300 requests per minute.

  • The Discover API call is rate limited to 5 requests per second / 50 requests per minute.

  • The Email Count API call is rate limited to 15 requests per second.

API calls in bulk

Most endpoints work with one piece of data at a time (1 contact, 1 domain, 1 email). If you need to cover many domains at once, use Multi-Domain Search to search across every company matching your filters in a single request, then reveal the addresses you want in batches of up to 100 handles.

FAQs

Can I use Hunter in a third-party application?

Yes, you can embed Hunter data into your own product or SaaS application. This is a supported use case.

The only restriction is that your product shouldn't replicate Hunter's core features (such as our Email Finder, Domain Search and Email Verifier) as a standalone offering. As long as Hunter data is used as part of a broader product rather than to rebuild what Hunter itself does, you're good to go.

For the full details, refer to Hunter's Terms of Service.

Do I have access to the Hunter platform on a Data Plan?

Yes, you get access to the Hunter platform, but with some limitations compared to an All-in-one outreach plan.

The following features are not included on a Data Platform plan:

  • Sequences — Hunter's built-in cold email outreach tool, which lets you automate follow-up emails and track replies directly from Hunter.

  • Discover — Hunter's company prospecting tool, which lets you search and filter companies by criteria like industry, size, and location to build targeted lead lists.

  • Signals — Real-time buying intent data that surfaces companies showing signs of being in-market, based on triggers like hiring activity and web traffic changes.

Everything else available on a standard All-in-one outreach plan — Domain Search, Email Finder, Email Verifier, Leads, and Enrichment — is fully accessible.

Can I share my API key across multiple applications or services?

Yes, your API key(s) can be used across as many applications or services as you need. You can find your keys in the API section of your Hunter account.

If you have team members added to your Team, each member will have their own individual API key. This means you can track credit usage per team member, though it won't tell you which specific application or service the credits were used on.

What happens to my API access if I run out of credits mid-month?

Once your credits are exhausted, API calls will return a 429 error — "You have reached your usage limit."

If you need to access further credits, you can simply purchase additional credits by subscribing to a new Data Platform plan from our pricing page.

Is there an enterprise option if I need higher rate limits or a volume deal?

If you need more than 1 million Search or Verification credits, you can contact our sales team to discuss a custom plan tailored to your needs.

What happens when I go over the API rate limit?

If you send requests faster than the allowed rate, the API returns a 403 Forbidden error instead of processing the request.

This is different from running out of credits — it's about how fast you're sending requests, not how many you have left.

If you go over your API rate limit, simply slow down your requests and try again — no credits are used when a request is rate-limited.

Tip: if your integration sends a high volume of requests, consider adding a short delay between calls to stay within the limit.

Find the complete guide to Hunter's API in this dedicated section:

API Reference Guide
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