Outscraper vs Lead Finder

We make Lead Finder, so read this accordingly. The honest summary is that these two tools are not really competing for the same job, and volume decides which one you want.

Last reviewed 3 August 2026

The one-line answer

Under roughly 10,000 rows a year, or if extraction must run unattended: use Outscraper. Above roughly 25,000 rows a year on a fixed budget: a flat desktop licence costs less. Between those numbers it is close, and the deciding factor is usually whether you need automation.

What Outscraper does better

It runs without you. That is the substantive difference and it is not a small one. Jobs execute on their infrastructure, on a schedule if you want, and results can be pulled by another system through an API. If extraction is one step in a pipeline rather than something a person sits down to do, a desktop application is simply the wrong shape and no amount of licence pricing changes that.

It also scales past what a single machine can practically sustain, and it bills only for what you use, which is genuinely cheaper if your volume is modest or spiky.

What Lead Finder does better

Cost stops moving. Above the crossover point the flat licence is not slightly cheaper, it is cheaper by an order of magnitude, and more importantly it is predictable. For an agency pricing lead-list delivery into a client retainer, a fixed software cost is worth more than a lower variable one.

Requests also come from your own connection rather than a shared proxy pool, which means your throughput is not affected by what other customers of the same provider are doing.

Feature comparison between Outscraper and Lead Finder
	Outscraper (cloud)	Lead Finder (desktop)
Delivery	Cloud service and API	Desktop app (Windows, macOS)
Pricing model	Metered per row	Flat licence, $20/year
Cost at 5,000 rows/yr	Lower	Higher
Cost at 100,000 rows/yr	Higher	Lower
Runs unattended	Yes	No, needs your machine on
API for automation	Yes	No
Requests originate from	Provider proxy pool	Your own connection
Past the 120-result cap	Yes (grid)	Yes (grid)
Setup	Account and API key	Install and activate
White-label resale	No	Yes, from $5/licence

Pricing models rather than exact rates, because published rates change and a stale number here would be worse than none. Check both vendors' current pricing before deciding.

Working out your own crossover

Do not estimate from a single job. Estimate from a year. Count the cities you sweep, the categories per city, and how often you refresh. Refresh frequency is the term people forget, and it is the one that pushes volume past the crossover fastest, because a list re-pulled quarterly is four times the rows of one pulled once.

Multiply that annual row count by the metered rate to get the cloud cost, and compare it against the flat licence. If the two land close together, choose on automation rather than on money, because the difference will not be what determines whether this works for you.

Using both

These are not mutually exclusive and some teams run both: a desktop licence for the bulk exploratory sweeps where volume is unpredictable, and a metered API for the scheduled refresh of the accounts that matter. If your volume is genuinely high and automation genuinely matters, that combination is often cheaper than forcing either tool to do the other's job.

Frequently asked

Which is cheaper, Outscraper or Lead Finder?

It depends entirely on annual volume. Metered cloud pricing is cheaper at low volume because you pay only for the rows you pull. A flat licence is cheaper above roughly 10,000 to 25,000 rows a year, because the price stops moving. Work out your realistic annual row count first; below about 10,000 rows a year the cloud option usually wins, and above about 25,000 the $20 licence usually does.

When should I choose Outscraper over Lead Finder?

Choose the cloud option when extraction needs to run without a machine of yours being switched on, when it has to run on a schedule, when another system needs to trigger it through an API, or when you want data delivered into a pipeline rather than downloaded as a file. Lead Finder is a desktop application and does none of those things.

When should I choose Lead Finder over Outscraper?

Choose the desktop option when you pull large lists repeatedly on a fixed budget, when you want extraction to come from your own connection rather than a shared proxy pool, or when unpredictable per-row bills are a problem for how you price client work. Agencies reselling lead lists tend to prefer flat cost because it makes their own margin predictable.

Do both get past the 120-result limit?

Yes. Both use grid-based extraction, which splits the target area into smaller areas and queries each one separately, then merges and de-duplicates. The 120-result ceiling applies to a single query, so neither tool is constrained by it. This is not a differentiator between them.

Is the extracted data different?

Not materially. Both read the same public Google Maps listings, so the core fields match. Differences appear in export formatting, how aggressively each de-duplicates, and enrichment such as email discovery, which is unreliable for every tool because most listings publish no email.