The cheapest useful way to enrich a LinkedIn profile is two API calls: Scavio's LinkedIn API returns the public profile for 1 credit, and the employer's company page for 1 more, so a lead with its company's headcount, industry and website costs 2 credits, about $0.004 on the Growth plan billed yearly. What you will not get cheaply is a full profile: for most ordinary members, the public page leaves out the headline, job title and work history.
A RevOps practitioner on r/revops asked for a cost-effective way to get the full content of a LinkedIn profile, because Clay's profile enrichment and Bright Data's APIs "feel quite pricey". The thread has drawn 21 comments. The honest answer has two parts: what each option costs per lead, and what "full" can mean when the data has to come from public pages.
What a public profile contains
To answer with numbers rather than vendor claims, we found 37 public "VP of Sales" SaaS profiles on Google and looked each one up through Scavio on October 27, 2026, then looked up every employer they linked to. 36 came back (one failed twice and was not billed).
| Field | Profiles that returned it |
|---|---|
| Name, location, follower count | 36 of 36 |
| School | 33 of 36 |
| Current employer | 32 of 36 |
| Employer's company page id | 31 of 36 |
| About text (a teaser of about 90 characters) | 33 of 36 |
| Headline, job title, work history | 0 of 36 |
All 31 employer pages then returned an employee count, size band and industry, and 30 a website and headquarters. The full chart and method are in the best LinkedIn lead enrichment APIs.
So the free-to-read part of a typical profile tells you who the person is, where they are and who employs them, and the company page tells you how big and what kind of business that is. It does not tell you their title. Bill Gates' profile, checked the same day, returned his headline and full work history, which is why tests run on famous profiles overstate what you will get on a real lead list.
The two calls
curl -s https://api.scavio.dev/api/v1/linkedin/person \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $SCAVIO_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"url": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-n-neely"}'The response names the employer and its page id, "current_company": {"name": "HighRadius", "company_id": "highradius", ...}. Pass the id on:
curl -s https://api.scavio.dev/api/v1/linkedin/company \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $SCAVIO_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"company": "highradius"}'HighRadius came back with 4,656 employees, the 1,001-5,000 size band, Software Development, highradius.com and a Houston headquarters. Cache company results by id: in a real lead list several people share an employer, so the company call is often free after the first.
For the missing title, the cheapest source is Google. Scavio's Google endpoint costs 1 credit for 10 results, and the result title for a profile usually reads "Name - headline" (39 of the 40 we pulled; 10 were cut short). The member's own posts carry the full headline too, at 10 credits a page. Step-by-step code for all of it is in how to enrich leads with LinkedIn data.
What each option costs per 1,000 leads
| Option | What you get | Cost per 1,000 (checked Oct 27, 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Bright Data, profile + company collectors | Profile and company records, batch delivery | $3.00 (2 records a lead at $1.50 per 1,000) |
| Scavio, person + company | Profile and employer firmographics, one call each | About $4 on Growth billed yearly; $8.60 on the $30 Project plan |
| Apify HarvestAPI profile scraper | Profile with skills; no company page | $4, or $10 with an email search |
| People Data Labs | Database record with emails and phones | About $280 at the entry Pro tier ($98 for 350 credits) |
| Coresignal | Full multi-source employee record | About $133 to $332 (20 credits a record, Growth to Starter) |
Per record, Bright Data is the cheapest, and it is the better fit if you enrich a large file overnight. Scavio costs slightly more per lead and answers each lookup as a normal API call, with the company, job search, posts and Google behind the same key, so one integration covers the whole lead. If the "full" you need includes an email or phone, the public profile will not have it with any of these scrapers, and a database provider is the real comparison.
Limits to plan for
- Speed: profile lookups took a median 22 seconds and up to 73; company lookups a median 4.9. Enrich from a queue.
- Failures: 3 of 37 first attempts failed after about 80 seconds with "LinkedIn data is temporarily unavailable"; 2 succeeded on retry, and failed calls are not billed.
- Caps:
connection_countstops at 500, and people search and contact info are retired endpoints that answer an unbilled 410.
At 2 credits a lead, 1,000 leads a month is 2,000 credits, which fits in the $30 Project plan's 7,000 monthly credits with room for job searches on the accounts that score well. Try the LinkedIn API free, 50 credits, no card, or run a profile in the playground.
Reference: LinkedIn API overview · person docs · company docs · pricing
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to enrich a LinkedIn profile?
From $0.0015 to about $0.33 a profile, depending on what you need. Per-record scraper APIs are cheapest: Bright Data is $1.50 per 1,000 records and Scavio is $2 per 1,000 profile calls on its Growth plan billed yearly. Database APIs that add emails cost more: about $0.28 a record at People Data Labs' entry Pro tier and $0.13 to $0.33 for a full Coresignal employee record.
Can I get a full LinkedIn profile without logging in?
For public figures, mostly; for ordinary members, often not. On October 27, 2026, Scavio returned Bill Gates' headline and full work history, but none of 36 public VP of Sales profiles returned a headline, job title or work history. Their name, location, school and current employer did come back, and the employer's company page returned headcount and industry.
Is there a free way to enrich LinkedIn profiles?
Several APIs have a free allowance, checked October 27, 2026. Bright Data gives 5,000 free records a month, People Data Labs 100 free credits a month with emails and phones obfuscated, and Coresignal a 7-day trial with 2,000 credits. Scavio gives 50 free credits with no card, which covers 25 leads with their employer's company page.
Is enriching LinkedIn profiles allowed?
LinkedIn's User Agreement prohibits scraping or copying profiles, so enrichment from LinkedIn pages runs against its terms; this is not legal advice. Reading only public, logged-out pages keeps your own LinkedIn account out of it, and privacy laws such as GDPR govern the personal data you store.