PhantomBuster pricing, decoded
PhantomBuster pricing is built on execution hours: $69 a month buys 20 of them. What the tiers include, where the hours actually go, and what paying per result looks like instead.
The current PhantomBuster tiers
Per workspace, not per seat. Figures from PhantomBuster's own pricing pages, checked July 27, 2026.
| Plan | Monthly | Annual rate | Execution time | Slots | AI credits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | 30 minutes / month | 1 | None; exports capped at 10 rows |
| Start | $69 | $56 / month | 20 hours / month | 5 | 10,000 |
| Grow | $159 | $128 / month | 80 hours / month | 15 | 30,000 |
| Scale | $439 | $352 / month | 300 hours / month | 50 | 90,000 |
There is also a 14-day trial with no card: 2 total run hours, 5 slots, and small credit allowances, with exports capped at 10 rows.
You are buying time, not results
The detail that decides whether the price is good: hours burn whether or not rows come back.
PhantomBuster meters execution time. A phantom that crawls slowly, retries, waits on rate limits, or returns nothing still spends your hours. That is not a criticism of the product, it is the nature of automation platforms: you rent the machine, not the outcome. It just means the per-lead price is unknowable in advance, and a config mistake costs real money. Pay-per-result flips that: a search that returns nothing costs nothing, and 1,000 records is always the same price.
5,000 leads, priced before the run
One meter can quote the job in advance. The other cannot.
Pay-per-result lead data
The classic PhantomBuster job, a local lead list, priced per record instead of per hour.
The leads as CSV first:
Sample rows as CSV, exactly as exported · phones unmasked in the API response
| name | category | address | phone | website | rating | reviews |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Miami Realty Solution Group | Real estate agency | 90 SW 3rd St CU3, Miami, FL 33130 | (305) 728-08•• | http://miamirealtysolution.com/ | 4.8 | 212 |
| LG Realty Group Inc. Miami Luxury Real Estate | Real estate agency | 3250 NE 1st Ave Unit 305, Miami, FL 33137 | (305) 890-62•• | https://www.lgrealtygroup.com/ | 4.9 | 33 |
| Lauren Hershey | Real estate agency | 1200 Brickell Ave Ste 700, Miami, FL 33130 | (708) 539-93•• | https://www.laurenhershey.com/ | 4.6 | 46 |
| Ivan and Mike Team | Luxury Real Estate Experts / Advisors | Miami, FL | Real estate agent | 2550 S Bayshore Dr Ste 208, Miami, FL 33133 | (305) 877-52•• | https://www.ivanandmike.com/ | 5 | 41 |
| Chariff Realty Group Commercial Miami Real Estate | Real estate agency | 5801 Biscayne Blvd, Miami, FL 33137 | (305) 576-74•• | http://www.chariff.com/ | 5 | 132 |
| Milton Andrade, REALTOR - Compass | Real estate agency | 1655 SW 18th St, Miami, FL 33145 | (785) 530-39•• | http://www.polarisadvisorsgroup.com/ | 5 | 54 |
And one record as JSON:
Hours vs records
Different meters produce very different bills for the same job.
| PhantomBuster | CrustAPI | |
|---|---|---|
| Billing unit | Execution hours + slots | Records returned |
| A run that returns nothing | Still burns hours | Free |
| Entry price | $69 / month subscription | $49 once, 25,000 credits |
| Free tier | 30 min / month, exports capped at 10 rows | 3,000 credits / month, full exports |
| Automation phantoms | Yes, across many networks | No. Data API only |
| Unused volume | Hours reset monthly | Credits never expire |
PhantomBuster automates actions, not just data pulls: multi-step flows, social automations, scheduled sequences across networks. If you need a robot that does things, that is its real job and a data API does not replace it. If you only need the data the robot was fetching, the hours meter is the expensive way to buy rows.
One credit per record
A meter you can predict before you run the job.
Place searches bill 1 credit per business returned, and a search that returns nothing costs nothing. Start free with 3,000 credits every month, no card. Paid packs are prepaid and self-serve: 25k for $49 · 100k for $149 · 500k for $549 · 2.5M for $1,999 · up to 250M, ex-tax. That is about $1.96 per 1,000 records at the entry pack, falling to roughly $0.40 per 1,000 at the largest. Credits never expire.
Related: PhantomBuster alternative · Business leads API · Lead scraper · Local lead generation
Common questions
Clay
Predict the bill before the run
Pull one market on the free tier and see what a known per-record price feels like. No card, no hours.
Get 3,000 free credits