PhantomBuster pricing 2026: plans, hours and cost per profile
PhantomBuster pricing is $69 a month for Start, $159 for Grow and $439 for Scale, or $56, $128 and $352 a month billed yearly. Each plan is a monthly budget of execution time (20, 80 or 300 hours) plus AI, email and URL finder credits that reset every cycle and do not roll over. A 14-day trial with 2 hours of runtime and no card drops to a free plan with 30 minutes a month and 10-row exports.
PhantomBuster does not charge per result. It charges for time: each plan gives you a monthly pool of execution hours, a number of slots (automations that can run at once) and several credit types. So the real question is not "what does a plan cost" but "how many rows do those hours buy". This post answers both, with PhantomBuster's own run-time figures.
PhantomBuster pricing plans
| Free | Start | Grow | Scale | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly billing | $0 | $69 | $159 | $439 |
| Billed yearly, per month | $0 | $56 | $128 | $352 |
| Yearly total (our math) | $0 | $672 | $1,536 | $4,224 |
| Execution time a month | 30 minutes | 20 hours | 80 hours | 300 hours |
| Phantom slots | 1 | 5 | 15 | 50 |
| AI credits a month | 0 | 10,000 | 30,000 | 90,000 |
| Email credits a month | 0 | 500 | 2,500 | 10,000 |
| URL finder credits a month | 0 | 1,000 | 10,000 | 20,000 |
| CAPTCHA credits a month | 0 | 1,000 | 5,000 | 30,000 |
| Storage | 50 MB | 1 GB | 10 GB | 50 GB |
| Exports and API output | 10 rows | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Priority support | No | No | Yes | Yes |
Source: PhantomBuster's plan article in its help center, updated 23 October 2026, which says the prices are current as of May 2026 and exclude VAT. Yearly billing saves about 20%. Every plan allows up to 100 workspace members, and they all share the same hours and credits, so PhantomBuster is priced per workspace, not per seat. Billing is in USD or EUR, set at your first payment. The pricing page itself loads its figures with JavaScript, so check it before you buy.
What the units mean
- Execution time is the total run time of all your automations in a billing cycle. The plan sets the total, not the speed.
- Slots are how many automations can be active at once. A single Phantom takes 1 slot; a multi-step Workflow takes up to 3.
- Email credits cost 1 per lookup, even when no email is found.
- AI credits are used only by AI Phantoms, and heavier tasks such as writing messages use more.
- Resets: everything resets each billing cycle. Unused credits do not carry over, and the plan article lists no top-up packs. For more than Scale, you ask support for a custom plan.
All of that is from the plan article and the plan-choice guide.
PhantomBuster free trial and free plan
The trial lasts 14 days and needs no card. It includes 2 hours of execution time in total (not per day), 5 slots, 1,000 AI credits, 50 email credits, 50 CAPTCHA credits and 1 GB of storage. Exports and API output are capped at 10 rows, which is enough to check that a Phantom works, not to build a list. When the trial ends, the workspace moves to the Free plan: 30 minutes a month, 1 slot, no credits, 10-row exports.
PhantomBuster cost per profile and per 1,000 results
PhantomBuster's own guide gives two typical run times: the LinkedIn Profile Scraper takes about 1 minute per profile, and LinkedIn Search Export takes about 12 minutes per 1,000 leads. Dividing plan price by hours, then multiplying by those times:
| Plan | Per execution hour | Per 1,000 full profiles (about 16.7 hours) | Per 1,000 search-export leads (12 minutes) | Max full profiles a month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Start, monthly | $3.45 | $57.50 | $0.69 | about 1,200 |
| Start, yearly | $2.80 | $46.67 | $0.56 | about 1,200 |
| Grow, monthly | $1.99 | $33.13 | $0.40 | about 4,800 |
| Grow, yearly | $1.60 | $26.67 | $0.32 | about 4,800 |
| Scale, monthly | $1.46 | $24.39 | $0.29 | about 18,000 |
| Scale, yearly | $1.17 | $19.56 | $0.23 | about 18,000 |
These are best cases: they assume you use every hour. Two things push the real cost up. Unused hours vanish at the end of the cycle. And PhantomBuster's guide says automations must stay within the limits of LinkedIn, X, Instagram and Facebook, so the platform's own caps may stop you before your hours run out.
The gap between the two columns is the key point. A search-export row (name, headline, profile URL from a results page) is about 80 times cheaper than a full profile visit. Plan your workflow so the expensive step only runs on leads that passed the cheap one.
What PhantomBuster costs at three volumes
| Job, per month | Hours needed | Plan that fits | Cost a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solo founder: 500 full LinkedIn profiles, 400 email lookups | about 8.3 | Start (20 hours, 500 email credits) | $69, or $56 yearly |
| Sales team: 20,000 search-export leads, 3,000 full profiles, 2,000 email lookups | about 54 | Grow (80 hours, 2,500 email credits) | $159, or $128 yearly |
| Agency: 12,000 full profiles across clients, 8,000 email lookups | about 200 | Scale (300 hours, 10,000 email credits) | $439, or $352 yearly |
Before you commit, do what PhantomBuster suggests: run one real job in the trial, read its duration in the Phantom's Activity tab, and multiply by how often you will run it each month.
Which PhantomBuster plan fits you
- Start: one person running a few light automations, such as a weekly search export and a small profile enrichment.
- Grow: SDRs, consultants and small teams doing regular extraction, messaging or enrichment. It is the first plan with priority support.
- Scale: agencies and teams running many accounts at once (50 slots) or using a lot of AI and email credits.
- Custom: beyond 300 hours, through customer care.
Is PhantomBuster worth it?
PhantomBuster is worth it when you need actions, not only data. It can send LinkedIn connection requests and messages on a schedule, chain steps into workflows without code, and enrich leads with emails, all in one place your sales team can run. A data API cannot do any of that. It is also cheap per row for list-style exports, at well under $1 per 1,000 search-export leads.
It is a weaker fit when you only need to read data now and then. Time-based billing makes a full profile cost $20 to $58 per 1,000, hours and credits expire monthly, and each Phantom has its own output format. Agents launch a Phantom and then poll for its result (API reference) rather than getting an answer in one call.
PhantomBuster alternatives
- For outreach and actions: if you look at other automation tools, compare three things, not only the price: what the plan meters (time, actions or rows), what resets monthly, and whether failed runs still use your allowance.
- For official access: LinkedIn's own APIs. See is the LinkedIn API free for what they allow.
- For reading public data by the call: a data API. Our best LinkedIn scrapers post compares the options, and the lead enrichment playbook shows a workflow.
For a feature-by-feature table of PhantomBuster against ScrapeIO, see PhantomBuster alternative.
Doing it with ScrapeIO
ScrapeIO cannot send messages or connection requests, and it has no Sales Navigator search, so it does not replace PhantomBuster for outreach. For reading public data it is priced per call: the LinkedIn profile API, LinkedIn company API, company posts API and LinkedIn post search API cost 1 credit each. The agency row above (12,000 profiles) is 12,000 credits, about $22.56 at $1.88 per 1,000 on the $47 pack, and the credits never expire. Failed calls and not-found profiles are free. Agents can use the LinkedIn MCP server; every endpoint is on the LinkedIn platform page.
FAQ
How much does PhantomBuster cost per month?
$69 for Start, $159 for Grow and $439 for Scale billed monthly, or $56, $128 and $352 a month billed yearly, excluding VAT.
Does PhantomBuster have a free plan?
Yes. After the 14-day trial the workspace drops to a free plan with 30 minutes of execution time a month, 1 slot and exports capped at 10 rows.
Do PhantomBuster hours and credits roll over?
No. Execution time and credits reset at the start of each billing cycle, and unused amounts are lost.
Is PhantomBuster priced per user?
No. Plans are per workspace. Up to 100 members share one pool of hours, slots and credits.
Is the PhantomBuster API extra?
No. API access is on every plan, but on the trial and free plan its output is capped at 10 rows.
Sources
Checked on 9 November 2026 from each vendor's own pages. Prices and limits change; follow the links before you decide.
- https://support.phantombuster.com/hc/en-us/articles/4494623647250
- https://support.phantombuster.com/hc/en-us/articles/4414979591442-Phantom-slots
- https://phantombuster.com/blog/ai-automation/phantombuster-pricing-explained/
- https://hub.phantombuster.com/reference/launchagent-1
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