Free B2B Database: 10 Legit Sources for Company & Contact Data [2026]
Let's start with the answer nobody selling you a list will give: there is no legitimate "download the entire B2B database free" button. Anyone offering 100,000 contacts in a CSV for $99 (or free) is selling scraped, stale data seeded with spam traps that will torch your sender reputation.
But that doesn't mean you need a $15,000 ZoomInfo contract to prospect. In 2026, a surprising amount of real, current B2B data is available at exactly $0 — if you know where it lives and what the free tiers actually cap you at.
We maintain pricing breakdowns for 70+ sales tools (here's what that dataset revealed), so we checked every free tier below against current 2026 limits. Here's what actually exists.
The 10 Free B2B Data Sources, Ranked
1. MarketBetter Free Lead Generator — no signup, no credits
Our own free AI lead generator builds a targeted contact list from a plain-English description of who you sell to. No account, no credit card, no monthly cap. It's the fastest way to go from "I need 50 VP Sales contacts at mid-market SaaS companies" to an actual list.
Yes, this is our tool. It's first on the list because it's the only one here with no credit meter attached.
2. Apollo.io free plan — the biggest free contact database
Apollo's free tier gives you access to its full 270M+ contact database with basic filters. The 2026 limits: around 100 email credits per month drawn from an annual pool of about 1,200, exports capped at 25 records at a time, and no phone credits.
The annual-pool detail matters: one aggressive list-building session can burn months of allowance in an afternoon. Pace yourself. Full breakdown in our Apollo pricing guide.
3. People Data Labs Free Company Dataset — actual bulk download
The closest thing to a real "free B2B database download" that exists: PDL publishes a free company dataset with 7M+ company profiles (name, domain, industry, size, location — reduced fields, refreshed quarterly). It's available through Snowflake and Databricks marketplaces or direct from PDL.
No contact emails — companies only. But as a firmographic backbone for building a target account list, it's unbeatable at $0.
4. SEC EDGAR — free, unlimited, government-grade
Every US public company files with the SEC, and the entire EDGAR system is free: no API key, no signup, no billing. You get legal names, addresses, phone numbers, SIC industry codes, executive names from proxy statements, and financials. The only rules are a User-Agent header and staying under 10 requests per second.
If you sell to public companies or their subsidiaries, this is the most underused free database in B2B. (Non-US equivalents: UK Companies House offers free bulk downloads of every registered UK company.)
5. Hunter.io free plan — email finding and verification
Hunter's free tier now gives you a unified 50 credits per month — use them as 50 email finds, 100 verifications, or any mix. It renews monthly forever, no card required.
Fifty credits won't power a pipeline, but it's exactly enough to verify the emails you source manually from the other channels on this list. Details in our Hunter.io pricing breakdown.
6. Lusha free plan — 40 credits with rollover
Lusha gives free users 40 credits per month, rolling over to a max of 80. Emails cost 1 credit; phone numbers cost 5. So realistically: 40 emails a month, or about 6-7 direct dials. The Chrome extension works on the free tier, which makes it useful for spot-checking LinkedIn profiles. Full math in our Lusha pricing guide.
7. ZoomInfo Lite — small, but it's ZoomInfo
Yes, ZoomInfo has a permanent free tier. ZoomInfo Lite includes 10 monthly credits (25 via Community Edition), contact/company search, and even a lite version of website visitor identification (up to 10 company reveals per day).
The catch is the trade: Community Edition works by syncing your email contacts into ZoomInfo's database — permanently. You're paying with your address book. Decide if that's acceptable before installing. If not, see our ZoomInfo alternatives roundup or the full pricing breakdown.
8. Kaspr free plan — LinkedIn phone numbers
Kaspr's free tier is small — 5 phone credits, 5 direct email credits, and 10 exports per month — but it's one of the few free ways to get mobile numbers off LinkedIn profiles, and the Chrome extension works on the free plan (no Sales Navigator support, though).
9. LinkedIn + company websites — the zero-credit channel
Names, titles, and company domains cost zero credits everywhere. LinkedIn search (even free LinkedIn), company team pages, conference speaker lists, and podcast guest lineups give you the who. Pattern-match the email (most companies use firstname@ or first.last@), then verify with Hunter's free credits.
Manual, yes. But data you source yourself is current by definition — which beats a 30%-decayed purchased list every time.
10. Crunchbase free — narrow, but useful for triggers
Crunchbase's free plan has gotten stingy: roughly 11 profile views a month, no exports, and the free API tier is gone entirely as of this year. Use it for what it's still good at — checking funding events on specific target accounts. A company that just raised is a company with budget.
Free-Tier Limits at a Glance (2026)
| Source | What you get free | Monthly limit | Contact emails? | Phones? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MarketBetter Lead Generator | AI-built targeted lists | No cap | Yes | No |
| Apollo.io | 270M+ contact DB access | ~100 credits (annual pool) | Yes | No |
| People Data Labs | 7M+ company bulk dataset | One-time download | No | No |
| SEC EDGAR | All US public company filings | Unlimited | No | Company HQ |
| Hunter.io | Email find + verify | 50 credits | Yes | No |
| Lusha | Extension + prospecting | 40 credits (80 max rollover) | Yes | Yes (5 cr each) |
| ZoomInfo Lite | Search + visitor ID lite | 10-25 credits | Yes | Yes |
| Kaspr | LinkedIn extension | 5 phone / 5 email / 10 exports | Yes | Yes |
| LinkedIn + websites | Names, titles, domains | Unlimited | Pattern + verify | No |
| Crunchbase | Company + funding profiles | ~11 profile views | No | No |
The $0 Prospecting Stack (How to Combine Them)
Individually, each free tier is too small to matter. Stacked, they cover a real workflow:
- Build the account list — People Data Labs dataset or EDGAR for firmographics; Crunchbase free views for funding triggers on priority accounts.
- Find the people — LinkedIn and team pages for names and titles (zero credits), or our free lead generator to do steps 1 and 2 in one shot.
- Get the emails — Apollo's free credits for database lookups; pattern-match plus Hunter verification for everyone else.
- Get phones (sparingly) — Lusha and Kaspr free credits for your 10 highest-priority contacts only.
- Enrich and maintain — when you outgrow free tiers, see our data enrichment tools comparison before signing anything annual.
That's roughly 150 verified contacts a month at $0. For a founder or a one-SDR team, that's a real pipeline. For the full week-by-week outbound motion, steal our SDR playbook template.
What NOT to Do: The $99 CSV Trap
Every "free b2b leads database download" search surfaces vendors selling massive CSVs cheap. Here's what you're actually buying:
- ~30% decay per year. Industry studies put B2B contact decay around 30% annually. A list assembled 18 months ago is nearly half dead.
- Spam traps. Dormant addresses seeded into circulated lists specifically to catch buyers. Hit a few and you're on blocklists across providers.
- Zero exclusivity. The same file has been sold to dozens of teams. Your prospect already got this pitch six times this week.
- Compliance exposure. GDPR and CCPA contacts are almost certainly mixed in, with no consent trail.
The free stack above is slower. It's also data that actually connects, from sources that stay current.
FAQ
Is there a completely free B2B database? For company data, yes — People Data Labs' free 7M-company dataset and SEC EDGAR are genuinely free and unlimited. For contact emails and phones, no: every legitimate provider meters free access with credits (Apollo ~100/mo, Hunter 50/mo, Lusha 40/mo). Unlimited-contact "free databases" are scraped lists — treat them as radioactive.
Where can I download a free B2B leads list? You shouldn't want to. Downloadable lists decay ~30% a year and are shared across every buyer. Build instead: free company data (PDL, EDGAR) plus free contact credits (Apollo, Hunter, Lusha) gets you ~150 fresh, verified contacts a month at $0.
What's the best free alternative to ZoomInfo? Apollo's free plan is the closest like-for-like — biggest database, real monthly credits. ZoomInfo's own Lite tier works too if you accept the contact-sharing trade-off. We compared the full field in our ZoomInfo alternatives guide.
How do I get free B2B leads with buying intent? Static databases can't show intent — they show fit. Funding events (Crunchbase), new executive hires (LinkedIn), and your own anonymous website traffic are free intent signals. Visitor identification is the strongest of the three: those companies are already researching you.
When Free Stops Being Enough
Free tiers find people who match a profile. They can't tell you who's in-market right now. The highest-intent leads aren't in any static database — they're the companies visiting your website this week without filling out a form. That's a different data source entirely: here's how visitor identification works.
MarketBetter combines visitor ID, contact data, and an AI playbook that tells your SDRs exactly who to contact and what to do next — not just another database to dig through.
See the difference live: Book a demo