Best LinkedIn Data API Providers Compared (2026)

Why LinkedIn Data APIs Matter in 2026

LinkedIn is the world's largest professional network with over 1 billion members across 200+ countries. For B2B companies, it's the single most valuable source of professional data. Businesses rely on LinkedIn data for:

• Lead Generation: Find decision-makers by job title, company, industry, and location
• Sales Intelligence: Enrich CRM contacts with up-to-date professional profiles
• Recruitment: Source candidates, track career moves, and analyze talent pools
• Market Research: Monitor company growth, hiring trends, and competitive landscapes
• Account-Based Marketing: Build targeted account lists with employee data and company insights
• Data Enrichment: Append professional context to existing customer databases

LinkedIn's official API is extremely limited for data access. Most developers turn to third-party providers that offer richer data through alternative methods. This guide compares the best options available in 2026.

How We Evaluated These Providers

We tested each provider across these criteria:

• Data Coverage: Profiles, companies, jobs, posts, skills, recommendations
• Endpoint Count: Number of distinct API endpoints available
• Data Freshness: Real-time vs cached/stale data
• Response Times: Average latency per request
• Pricing Model: Cost per request, monthly minimums, hidden fees
• Rate Limits: Requests per minute and daily caps
• Documentation: Quality, code examples, OpenAPI spec
• Reliability: Uptime, error rates, consistency

1. Netrows

LinkedIn Data Coverage

• People (20+ endpoints): Full profiles, about sections, posts, comments, likes, skills, recommendations, similar profiles, connection count, activity timestamps
• Companies (12+ endpoints): Company details, insights, jobs, employee counts, similar companies, affiliated pages, posts, search by domain
• Jobs (5+ endpoints): Job search, details, hiring teams
• Posts (4 endpoints): Reactions, reposts, search, hashtag search
• Articles (4 endpoints): Details, comments, reactions, user articles
• Ads (2 endpoints): Company ads, ad details with targeting data

Unique Features

• Radar Monitoring: Track profiles and companies for changes with webhook notifications (1 credit to add, free monitoring forever)
• Relationship Discovery: Find connections between two professionals
• Activity Timestamps: See when a profile was last active
• Combined Platform: LinkedIn + X (Twitter) + Crunchbase + Glassdoor + Reddit + Bluesky in one API

Pros

• Most LinkedIn endpoints of any provider (48+)
• Real-time data, not cached
• Simple credit-based pricing (1 credit per call for most endpoints)
• Fast response times (under 2 seconds)
• Excellent OpenAPI documentation with interactive playground
• No annual contracts, cancel anytime
• Automatic overage billing for subscribers (never lose access mid-workflow)
• MCP Server for AI assistant integration
• Attio CRM native integration

Cons

• Newer platform (launched October 2025)
• No Python/Node SDK yet (REST API only)

Pricing

Most LinkedIn endpoints cost 1 credit per call. Company Insights costs 10 credits for premium data. Subscriptions start at €49/month for 10,000 credits (Starter) and €299/month for 100,000 credits (Growth). No hidden fees, no per-seat pricing.

2. Proxycurl

Pros

• Established provider (one of the first LinkedIn API alternatives)
• Good documentation
• Company enrichment by domain
• Job listing search
• Python SDK available

Cons

• Expensive per credit ($0.49/credit on starter plan)
• Limited endpoint variety compared to newer providers
• No X (Twitter) or other platform data
• No monitoring/webhook features
• Credits expire monthly

Pricing

Starts at $49/month for just 100 credits. That's $0.49 per API call. Higher tiers reduce the per-credit cost but require larger commitments. Significantly more expensive per request than most alternatives.

3. RapidAPI LinkedIn Providers

Pros

• Multiple providers to choose from
• Easy to test and compare
• Unified billing through RapidAPI
• Some free tiers for testing
• Quick integration

Cons

• Wildly inconsistent data quality between providers
• Many providers go offline without notice
• Limited or no support
• No SLA guarantees
• Stale/cached data common
• Hard to know which provider is reliable long-term

4. LinkedIn Official API

Pros

• Official and fully compliant
• Free for basic OAuth flows
• Good for "Sign in with LinkedIn"
• Posting API available

Cons

• Cannot look up arbitrary profiles (only authenticated user's own data)
• No company enrichment without Marketing Developer Platform access
• Partnership program is invite-only and extremely selective
• No job search, no posts, no recommendations, no skills data
• Essentially useless for data enrichment or lead generation
• Strict rate limits even for partners

Reality Check

LinkedIn's official API is designed for OAuth integrations where users consent to share their own data. It does not allow you to look up other people's profiles, search for companies, or access the rich data that makes LinkedIn valuable for B2B. For any data enrichment use case, you need a third-party provider.

5. PhantomBuster

Pros

• No-code interface for LinkedIn scraping
• Pre-built "Phantoms" for common tasks
• Good for sales teams without developers
• LinkedIn profile scraper, company scraper, search export

Cons

• Not a real API (browser automation, not REST endpoints)
• Requires your LinkedIn session cookie (security risk)
• Can get your LinkedIn account restricted
• Slow execution (minutes per batch, not milliseconds)
• Limited to what you can see in LinkedIn UI
• Not suitable for real-time integrations

6. Apollo.io

Pros

• Large contact database (275M+ contacts)
• Email finding and verification included
• Built-in outreach sequences
• Generous free tier
• API available on paid plans

Cons

• Data is from their own database, not real-time LinkedIn
• Profiles can be outdated (months or years old)
• API is secondary to their platform (limited endpoints)
• No posts, articles, recommendations, or activity data
• Per-seat pricing gets expensive for teams
• Annual contracts on higher tiers

7. Pipl / Clearbit / ZoomInfo

Pros

• Massive databases with verified data
• Intent data and buying signals (ZoomInfo)
• CRM integrations built-in
• Compliance and data governance features

Cons

• Extremely expensive (enterprise pricing only)
• Annual contracts, no monthly option
• Data is aggregated, not real-time from LinkedIn
• Limited API flexibility (designed for their platform)
• Overkill for startups and small teams
• Long sales cycles to get started

Pricing Comparison Table

Feature Comparison

Which Provider Should You Choose?

For Developers & Startups

Recommendation: Netrows
Best value with 48+ LinkedIn endpoints at €0.005 per request. Combined with X, Crunchbase, Glassdoor, and Reddit data, it's the most comprehensive B2B data API available. Perfect for building data enrichment pipelines, CRM integrations, or lead generation tools.

For Sales Teams (Non-Technical)

Recommendation: Apollo.io or PhantomBuster
If you don't have developers, Apollo.io gives you a complete sales platform with built-in outreach. PhantomBuster offers no-code LinkedIn automation. Neither provides real-time API access, but they're easier for non-technical users.

For Enterprise Data Enrichment

Recommendation: ZoomInfo or Netrows (Growth/Enterprise)
ZoomInfo is the industry standard for enterprise B2B data but costs $15,000+/year. Netrows Growth plan (€299/month, 100K credits) offers similar data coverage at a fraction of the cost with real-time data instead of a static database.

For Quick Prototyping

Recommendation: Netrows or RapidAPI
Netrows offers 100 free credits to test all endpoints immediately. RapidAPI has various free tiers but quality and reliability vary significantly between providers.

For Compliance-First Organizations

Recommendation: LinkedIn Official API
If you only need OAuth-based access to a user's own profile data (like "Sign in with LinkedIn"), the official API is the right choice. It's free and fully compliant, but extremely limited in scope.

Frequently Asked Questions