A Lusha alternative that bills per verified contact
Lusha is a contact database with a browser extension and credit-metered plans. TAPAC is a tool call: it sources people in real time from public company sites, Discord and Telegram, then runs the SMTP handshake on each mailbox before returning the record. The difference shows up in three places — where the data comes from, what verification actually means, and what a three-person team pays before sending anything.
Side by side
| TAPAC | Lusha | |
|---|---|---|
| Core model | Find + verify inside one request | Database with credit-metered plans |
| Data source | Live sourcing: company websites, Discord, Telegram | Stored community + crawled database |
| Verification | SMTP at request time, per address, returned with the contact | Verification inside the platform, metered |
| Bounce on returned contacts | 2–5% | Any stored list decays: 40% of emails are dead within 2 years (NeverBounce) |
| Free tier | 100 free searches | 40 credits/month as published in Lusha's plan comparison |
| Entry paid price | $0.10–0.50 per contact, pay-per-use | Starter at $49.90/month billed annually (published list price) |
| Cost for 3 people | Only for the contacts actually used | From ≈$1,796/year at Starter × 3 before credits run out |
| Agent access | MCP server (npx -y @tapacapi/mcp) + REST API | REST API and extension, no MCP server |
Lusha figures: published list price ($49.90/month Starter, annual billing) and the free 40-credit tier as documented in third-party plan comparisons — re-check before buying. TAPAC figures come from the product's own documentation.
Why freshness beats index size here
23% of contacts change jobs every year (ZoomInfo, 2025), so the value of a stored record falls from the day it is stored. Fresh, scraped data outperforms stale databases by 42% (Harvard Business Review, 2024). TAPAC's answer is not a bigger database — it is sourcing at request time and verifying at request time.
Where Lusha is the better buy
If your workflow is a human in a browser working through a list, with the extension open, and you want an established vendor with a support contract, Lusha does that job. TAPAC is narrower: it is for API callers and agents that need contacts plus a verification status back in one call.
Try it
npx -y @tapacapi/mcp
Or call the hosted endpoint at https://tapacapi.com/mcp. Keys are free at tapacapi.com/get-key — 100 searches, then pay per verified contact.
Where to go next
- Install the TAPAC MCP server —
npx -y @tapacapi/mcpfor Claude, Cursor, Codex or Windsurf. - Get a free API key — 100 searches, no credit card.
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