People Data API: A Practical Guide for Builders and Sales Teams

A people data API is a web service that returns facts about named professionals: who works at a company, what their title is, where they sit in the org chart, and how to reach them at work. You send a company domain, a name or a work email, and you get back a contact record instead of a web page. Teams use it to fill CRM gaps, to route leads, and to give sales agents something to act on without a human copying data out of a browser.

The category sounds uniform, but providers differ in ways that matter more than the headline price. Some bill by seat, some by credit, some per call. Some cover the whole world, others exclude whole regions on purpose. Some verify addresses by contacting mail servers, others never do. Before you integrate anything, read how each service handles the hard cases: unknown people, regulated regions and opt-outs.

If you want one concrete, publicly documented example, the BusinessMCP People Data API is a good one to study. It exposes three endpoints over REST and MCP: people search at $0.08 per item, an email finder at $0.04 per call and person enrichment at $0.10 per call, each charged only when a result is found. It is prepaid from $10 with no subscription, and its page is unusually direct about exclusions: it never returns people located in the EU, EEA, UK or Switzerland, and it keeps a set of US states out too. We use it in examples because the behaviour is written down, not because it is the only choice. Its sibling company data API is worth reading if your starting point is an account rather than a person.

This site is organised around the questions teams ask in order.

• What does each call do? Start with people search API, the email finder API and person enrichment API.
• What will it cost? People data API pricing shows how per-call billing compares with credits and seats.
• Which one should I pick? See how to choose the best people data API and the People Data Labs alternative guide.
• Is it legal to use? The article on people data API and GDPR explains why some providers simply exclude regulated regions.
• How do I wire it up? Try the Python example and the notes on people data for AI agents over MCP.

One principle runs through all of it: a contact record is a claim about a person at a point in time. People change jobs, addresses go stale, and some people have asked not to be listed. Good integrations store the status field, respect opt-outs and keep a human in the loop for anything sensitive.

We are an independent publication. Where a product appears we say what it does, who it suits and where it falls short, and we link to primary pages so you can check. Pricing and rules change; confirm on the provider’s own page, which for BusinessMCP is the Data API overview. Nothing here is legal advice.