PhantomBuster vs TrueScrape
These products overlap less than their search results suggest. PhantomBuster is an outbound automation tool: its Phantoms run through your own accounts, so they can search Sales Navigator, enrich a lead with an email address and send a LinkedIn outreach campaign, all without code. We are a read-only API over public pages, fetched logged out, and we will never log in, hold your cookies or act on a platform for you. If the job is prospecting on LinkedIn, they do things we have decided not to do. If the job is reading public social data into your own code, the question is whether their accounts-and-execution-time model or our per-request API fits it better.
PhantomBuster figures read from their own pages on 2026-11-01. Pricing moves. Check before you rely on it.
What does PhantomBuster do better?
Actions, not just reads: outreach campaigns, lead warming, enrichment
Their plans include LinkedIn outreach campaigns, lead warming and profile and email enrichment, run through accounts you connect. We only read public pages and never act on a platform, by policy rather than by roadmap. If you need a connection request or a message sent, we are not an option at any price.
LinkedIn and Sales Navigator depth that logged-out access cannot reach
Because a Phantom runs as you, it can see what your account sees, including Sales Navigator searches. Our LinkedIn endpoints read public profiles, company pages, posts and the ad library without logging in, which is a much narrower window. For B2B prospecting that window is usually too narrow.
No code, with ready-made workflows and CRM sync
Phantoms chain into workflows a sales team can launch without an engineer, with HubSpot sync and connections through Zapier, Make and n8n. We are an HTTP API with an MCP server and a CLI: someone still has to write the code that calls us and decide where the data goes.
A 14-day trial with no card, and unlimited users on every plan
Their pricing page offers a 14-day free trial without a credit card, and every plan lists unlimited users. A whole sales team can try it at once. Our free grant is 1,000 credits once, on signup, sized for checking data quality rather than running a team.
How do PhantomBuster and TrueScrape compare, side by side?
3 of 10 rows go to PhantomBuster.
| Axis | TrueScrape | PhantomBuster | Better |
|---|---|---|---|
| How data is reached | Public pages only, fetched logged out. We never log in, hold cookies or use your accounts. | Automations run through your own connected accounts, which they describe as within platform constraints. | Depends |
| Actions on a platform | None. Read-only, permanently. | LinkedIn outreach campaigns, lead warming, and Sales Navigator automation on every plan. | PhantomBuster |
| LinkedIn depth | Public profiles, company pages, posts, post search and the ad library, logged out. | Whatever your connected LinkedIn and Sales Navigator accounts can see, including multiple accounts. | PhantomBuster |
| No-code use | None. An HTTP API, an MCP server and a CLI. | Phantoms and ready-made workflows, a Chrome extension, HubSpot, Zapier, Make and n8n. | PhantomBuster |
| Setup for a developer | Sign up, take one API key, call one endpoint. The same unified schema comes back from every platform, raw payload included. | Connect accounts, configure a Phantom, launch it, then collect or sync its output. They also offer an MCP server. | Us |
| Price and billing unit | Pay-as-you-go credits, no subscription: $1.25 per 1,000 at $25, falling to $0.80 per 1,000 at $500. One request is usually one credit. | Subscriptions from $56 a month billed annually ($672 a year), up to $352 a month, metered in execution hours, automation slots and email and AI credits. | Depends |
| Unused balance | Credits never expire. | Monthly allowances. When execution time runs out, automations pause until it resets. | Us |
| Failed and empty results | Never charged, for every error class, and an empty answer is refunded too. Cache hits cost zero. | Execution time is consumed while a Phantom runs. Nothing published about refunding a run that fails or finds nothing. | Us |
| Free evaluation | 1,000 credits once on signup, and free tools that need no account or email. | 14-day trial, no card, with 2 hours of execution time and exports limited to 10 rows. | Depends |
| Watching for changes | Mention monitors and subscriptions that call your webhook only when something new appears. | Daily and scheduled auto-refresh of automations. | Depends |
Choose PhantomBuster if
- You are doing LinkedIn prospecting and need Sales Navigator, enrichment or outreach sequences.
- Your team does not write code and wants workflows it can launch and schedule itself.
- You need the tool to act on a platform (send, connect, warm up), not only read from it.
- You want leads pushed into HubSpot or another CRM without building the pipe yourself.
Choose TrueScrape if
- You want public data without connecting any of your own accounts, so nothing you own is at risk.
- You are a developer: one API key, one schema across platforms, an MCP server and a CLI for agents.
- You are billing customers for this and need failed requests and empty results to cost nothing, with cache hits free.
- You want to watch for mentions of a term with one POST to /v1/monitors and a webhook, rather than scheduling runs.
- Your usage is uneven, and pay-as-you-go credits with no subscription fit better than a monthly allowance.
Questions people actually ask
- Does PhantomBuster log in to LinkedIn?
- It runs automations through your own accounts: their FAQ says so directly, and their plans include connecting multiple LinkedIn accounts. That is how it reaches Sales Navigator and sends outreach. We take the opposite position and only read public pages logged out, which is narrower but puts none of your accounts on the line.
- Which is easier to start with?
- It depends on who is starting. For a salesperson, PhantomBuster: pick a workflow, connect an account, launch. For a developer, ours is one API key and one HTTP call that returns the same schema on every platform, with an MCP server and a CLI for agents, a POST to /v1/monitors with a webhook for mention alerts, and free tools that need no account at all. No subscription to choose first: credits are bought when you need them.
- What is the honest case against us here?
- If your goal is pipeline from LinkedIn, we cannot do most of what you need. We do not log in, so Sales Navigator is out of reach, and we do not act, so there is no outreach. We have no no-code builder and no CRM sync. PhantomBuster was built for exactly that job and we would rather you used it than tried to bend a read-only API into a prospecting tool.
Sources: PhantomBuster pricing and FAQ · Our pricing
The free grant is 1,000 credits and needs no card. It is sized to answer whether the data is good enough, which is the only question worth resolving before you commit.