Pick AI Ark if you build outbound lists by searching for accounts and people and want every email verified before it reaches your sequencer. Pick LeadIQ if your reps prospect one profile at a time inside LinkedIn and push contacts to Salesforce or Outreach. Teams weighing a LeadIQ alternative for volume usually land on AI Ark.
Key takeaways
Search first, capture second. AI Ark searches 400M+ people and 70M+ companies by role, tenure, headcount growth and lookalike, then exports a verified file. LeadIQ is built around capturing contacts while reps browse, and its database search is marked "Limited Access" on the Free and Pro plans.
Verified at export. AI Ark checks every email with BounceBan at the moment you export and delivers only addresses that pass, with an expected bounce rate under 1.5%. LeadIQ scores each email with a confidence level and leaves the send decision to the rep.
Where you prospect. AI Ark runs from a search screen, the API or the MCP server and hands the file to the tools you already use. LeadIQ works inside LinkedIn through a Chrome extension, with job-change alerts, an AI message writer and a dialer bundled around it.
Credits that last. AI Ark rolls unused credits over, up to 2x your monthly plan. LeadIQ's terms say paid-plan credits expire at the end of the subscription term.
Room to scale. AI Ark publishes tiers from 5,000 to 5,000,000 credits a month. LeadIQ Pro tops out at 6,750 credits a month, and at that volume 1,000 valid emails cost $9.36 on AI Ark against $32.25 on LeadIQ, both billed annually.
AI Ark vs LeadIQ at a glance
Feature | AI Ark | LeadIQ |
Category | Prospect and company discovery database with verified CSV and API export | Sales prospecting platform with capture, enrichment and outreach tools |
Database size | 400M+ people, 70M+ companies, 100M+ profiles with verified mobiles | 750M+ professional profiles; full database search on Enterprise only |
Database refresh | Entire database every 30 days | Monthly, with up to 200M records re-verified |
Email validation | BounceBan, in real time at export; invalid, unknown and risky addresses removed | Confidence level per email |
Published accuracy | Only addresses that passed verification are delivered; bounce rate under 1.5% expected | Over 90% on verified phone numbers |
Catch-all addresses | Validated one by one, delivered only when confirmed, labeled Catch-All Valid | Not described on LeadIQ's public pages |
Pricing model | Credits per data point, pooled across the team, published tiers from 5,000 to 5,000,000 a month | Universal credits; Pro slider, Enterprise quote-only |
Published entry price | $49/month for 5,000 credits; $470/year for 60,000 | $20/month for 200 credits; $15/month billed annually |
Credit rollover | Up to 2x the monthly plan | Credits expire at end of term |
Free tier | 100 credits a month, no card | 50 credits, 1 user |
Invalid-email charge | None: the 0.5 email credit is charged only when a valid email is found | 1 credit per email; credit payments non-refundable |
API | 300 requests per minute, same credit pricing as the web app | Yes |
MCP server | Yes: Claude, Cursor and Windsurf | Yes, Claude connector |
Export ceiling | 10,000 records per batch, repeat with the Net New filter | Plan credit balance; Pro tops out at 6,750 credits a month |
Duplicate protection | Net New vs Saved Records: a contact you already exported is never charged again | Salesforce duplicate detection on Enterprise |
Seats included | 3 up to 30k credits, 5 on 60k to 300k, 10 on 450k+ | Up to 5 on Pro |
What Teams Say About AI Ark
The person-level keyword list search is incredible, and one of the biggest headaches in outbound – verifying emails – is no longer an issue. With a verifier integrated directly into the platform, the process is much smoother and faster. It saves time, reduces extra steps, and makes building clean, reliable prospect lists far easier.
Sameer Malla Thakuri
Head of GTME and Ops @ GrowthPal
What is AI Ark?
AI Ark is a B2B prospect and company discovery database for teams that build outbound lists at volume: SDR teams, founders running their own outbound, RevOps, and agencies working for several clients. You search 400M+ people and 70M+ companies, choose who you want, and export.
It assumes you already own your outreach stack. Your sequencer, CRM and dialer stay where they are, and AI Ark's job is to hand them a clean file. Every email in that file has been verified by BounceBan at export, so it can go straight into Smartlead, Instantly or Outreach without a second verification pass.
The search is where AI Ark earns its place. Company Lookalike takes up to five customer URLs and finds companies that do the same thing. Net New vs Saved Records hides everyone you have already exported, so you never pay twice for a contact. Filters cover headcount growth, employees by department, time in role versus time at company, and company HQ separately from where the person sits.
What is LeadIQ?
LeadIQ is a sales prospecting platform for SDR and BDR teams that live in LinkedIn and a sequencer. Its Chrome extension shows emails, mobile numbers and account details on the profiles a rep is viewing, and sends them to Salesforce, HubSpot, Outreach, Salesloft or Gong. Around that sit champion job-change tracking, Signals such as 10-K filings, podcast mentions and hiring, an AI outbound message writer, CRM and webform enrichment, a Power Dialer in beta, and the Lando Agent. One pool of universal credits pays for all of it, and a Claude connector lets paid users search and enrich in natural language.
LeadIQ says its data comes from public and private sources, vetted third-party partners, and a data community whose opt-in members contribute email signatures and contact books. A Global Data Operations team researches new sources and vets records. Some emails are inferred by querying mail servers for common formats, each email carries a confidence level from an in-house deliverability check, and a search in the extension triggers a fresh verification.
LeadIQ publishes its Free and Pro prices on a credit slider, while Enterprise is quote-only and annual. It suits teams of up to five on Pro who capture contacts one by one, and larger sales orgs that want governance, SSO and CRM controls on Enterprise.
Data quality: where validation happens
How AI Ark does it
AI Ark verifies every email in real time with BounceBan when you export. Invalid, unknown and risky addresses never reach your file, and the 0.5 email credit is charged only when a valid address is found. The expected bounce rate on what we deliver is under 1.5%.
Catch-all domains get the same treatment. Each address on a catch-all domain is checked individually, delivered only when confirmed, and labeled "Catch-All Valid" in the export, so you know exactly what you are sending to.
That strictness is why the find rate is about 70% of exported contacts rather than close to 100%. The other 30% did not pass, so they arrive as profiles without an email, still carrying LinkedIn URL, title and company data you can use for LinkedIn or phone outreach. Because the whole database is refreshed every 30 days, job changes are caught before the email is checked. The quickest way to judge these numbers is to export a sample of your own ICP on the free tier, send it from the tool you use today with no verifier in between, and compare bounces at day seven.
How LeadIQ does it
LeadIQ verifies in layers. New data partners must run their own checks and pass LeadIQ's tests, an in-house algorithm gives every email a confidence level, users can flag wrong emails and numbers for manual review, and deliverability is tracked through Outreach and Salesloft. Re-verification is prioritized by how often customers search a profile.
Its published figures are about the database and phones: 750M+ profiles refreshed monthly with up to 200M re-verified, and over 90% accuracy on verified phone numbers with an 85% global mobile match rate, 70% in EMEA. We found no published email bounce or accuracy figure on LeadIQ's own pages.
Dated reviews are mostly positive. LeadIQ holds 4.2 out of 5 from 1,187 reviews on G2. The recurring complaint is data quality: G2's pros-and-cons summary lists "Inaccurate Data" in 47 reviews and "Incorrect Numbers" in 28, and a September 2026 G2 review quoted by Supered said some extracted emails were wrong.
The trade-off, stated fairly
LeadIQ shows you the contact and a confidence score, and lets the rep decide. That works when a person reviews each prospect before adding them to a sequence. AI Ark decides for you at export: you get fewer emails per 1,000 profiles, but each one has passed verification. If your outbound runs at volume, with nobody reading each row, a file that is already clean is the safer input for your sending domains.
True cost: what a valid lead actually costs
List price per credit is the wrong comparison, because the two tools charge for different things and spend credits at different rates. What matters is total annual spend divided by valid emails delivered, at the cheapest plan that covers your volume.
Published pricing
LeadIQ's plans, from its pricing page, with both billing toggles checked:
Plan | Credits | Monthly billing | Annual billing |
Free | 50, 1 user | $0 | $0 |
Pro, entry | 200 a month | $20/month | $15/month for 2,400 a year |
Pro, top | 6,750 a month | $290.25/month | $2,612.28/year for 81,000 |
Enterprise | Custom | Not offered | Not publicly stated, annual only |
AI Ark plans:
Plan | Credits per month | Monthly billing | Annual billing (credits per year) | Seats included |
Free | 100 | $0 | $0 | 1 |
Starter | 5,000 to 30,000 | $49 to $119 | $470 for 60,000 to $1,142 for 360,000 | Up to 3 |
Builder | 60,000 to 300,000 | $219 to $879 | $2,102 for 720,000 to $8,438 for 3,600,000 | Up to 5 |
Scale (Agency & Enterprise) | 450,000 to 5,000,000 | $1,249 to $9,999 | $11,990 for 5,400,000 to $95,990 for 60,000,000 | 10 |
AI Ark charges 0.5 credits per person profile, 0.5 per valid email (only when one is found), 5 per mobile number and 0.1 per company record. LeadIQ charges 1 credit per email, 10 per phone number, 11 for both and 3 per account enrichment.
Worked scenario: the Pro ceiling
Take a team that needs 6,750 valid emails a month, 81,000 a year, which is the most LeadIQ Pro sells. We count every LeadIQ email as valid, since LeadIQ publishes no email accuracy figure, which is the generous reading for LeadIQ. For AI Ark we apply the 70% find rate: 81,000 valid emails means about 115,700 profiles exported, or 98,357 credits a year.
LeadIQ, annual: $2,612.28 for 81,000 credits, so $32.25 per 1,000 valid emails. Monthly billing, $290.25 x 12, is $43.00 per 1,000.
AI Ark, annual: the 180,000-credit plan at $758 covers it, so $9.36 per 1,000 valid emails. Monthly billing needs the 15,000-credit plan at $79, or $948 a year, which is $11.70 per 1,000.
The bigger difference is what happens next. Double the volume and LeadIQ moves to Enterprise, which is quote-only and annual; across LeadIQ purchases tracked by Vendr the median contract is $26,400 a year. On AI Ark, 162,000 valid emails a year fits the published 360,000-credit plan at $1,142, or $7.05 per 1,000.
Phones follow the same pattern. At the top of Pro, 6,750 credits buy 675 phone numbers or 613 contacts with both email and phone. AI Ark charges 5 credits per mobile on any plan.
The counterpoint, stated honestly
At low volume LeadIQ costs less. A rep who needs 200 emails a month pays $180 a year on LeadIQ's annual plan, $75.00 per 1,000. The same 2,400 valid emails on AI Ark need the $470 annual plan, $195.83 per 1,000, with most of those 60,000 credits left over. Below roughly 80 valid emails a month, AI Ark's free tier of 100 credits covers it at no cost. LeadIQ's price also includes the extension, CRM sync and job-change alerts, which have value if you use them.
The hidden line item is verification. If your team runs exported emails through a separate verifier before sending, add that tool's cost and the hours spent on it to the LeadIQ column. AI Ark's figures above already include BounceBan. Run your own volume through the AI Ark pricing page to see where your number lands.
Features side by side
Finding the right accounts
Feature | AI Ark | LeadIQ |
Database search access | Company Search and People Search on every plan, including free | Limited Access on Free and Pro, full on Enterprise |
Firmographic filters | Industry, location, revenue, technologies, funding, actual headcount rather than self-reported size | Technographics and firmographics |
Lookalike companies | AI model reads company description, products and keywords; up to five seed URLs | Not listed on LeadIQ's plans |
Headcount growth | Minimum growth percentage over 6 months, 1 year or 2 years | Hiring signals |
Department structure | Employees by department, for example large engineering and small sales | Not listed on LeadIQ's plans |
Bulk account input | Paste or upload up to 10,000 domains or LinkedIn URLs, then find people at those companies | CSV file enrichment on Enterprise |
AI Ark is built to tell you which accounts to target, not only who works there.
Finding the right people
Feature | AI Ark | LeadIQ |
People search | 400M+ profiles by role, seniority, function and location, with Smart, Word or Strict title matching | People search for email and mobile |
Keyword placement | Search the headline, summary or skills section only | Not listed on LeadIQ's plans |
Tenure | Time in role and time at company as separate filters, so recent promotions stand out | Not listed on LeadIQ's plans |
Location | Company HQ and person location filtered separately, down to city or economic zone | Not listed on LeadIQ's plans |
Multiple current jobs | Searches every active position, so advisors and board members are not missed | Not listed on LeadIQ's plans |
Mobile numbers | Verified mobiles for 100M+ profiles, 5 credits each | 10 credits each |
Personality analysis | AI analysis of communication style, 4 credits per profile, bulk via API | Not listed on LeadIQ's plans |
AI Ark lets you define the person precisely before you spend a credit on them.
Getting data out and using it
Feature | AI Ark | LeadIQ |
CSV export | Saved export templates, 10,000 records per batch, free re-download of past exports | Yes |
CSV enrichment | Upload a file, map LinkedIn URLs or domains, enrich | Enterprise only |
API | Enrichment API at 300 requests per minute, same credit pricing as the web app | Yes |
Clay | Clay templates and a single-person Email Finder endpoint for row-by-row enrichment | Not listed on LeadIQ's plans |
CRM and sequencer | Via the API with Zapier, Make.com, n8n and Clay | Yes |
MCP server | MCP server for Claude, Cursor and Windsurf | Claude connector |
Exclusions | Upload a CSV blacklist or exclude past exports and saved lists | Not listed on LeadIQ's plans |
Team workspace | Shared lists and a team-level credit pool | Shared universal credit pool |
AI Ark feeds the tools you already run, with exclusions that stop the same person being contacted twice.
Compliance and data sourcing
We run AI Ark as a B2B data search engine. We aggregate data from public sources, community contributions and partner networks, clean it with validation algorithms, and process it under GDPR Article 6(1)(f), legitimate interests, for B2B purposes. Our approach is set out on our GDPR page. Anyone can ask to be removed through our opt-out page. Our terms prohibit automated extraction and scraping, and data you upload for enrichment or exclusion lists stays in your workspace; we don't fold it back into the database.
LeadIQ displays SOC 2 Type II, GDPR-aligned and CCPA-compliant badges on its data page, and says every data partner is reviewed against local privacy law. Its app includes do-not-call lists and can suppress field types such as mobiles for chosen countries. People can access, claim or remove their profile through its privacy center, and its terms limit use to the customer's own internal B2B sales and bar automated extraction.
Choose LeadIQ if
Your reps prospect inside LinkedIn and Sales Navigator and want contacts captured from the page through a Chrome extension, which AI Ark does not offer.
You want contacts pushed in one click to Salesforce, HubSpot, Outreach, Salesloft or Gong.
You track champions and want alerts when past buyers change jobs.
You want Signals, an AI message writer and a dialer from the same vendor as your data.
You need fewer than a few hundred contacts a month, where the $15-a-month annual Pro entry plan covers you.
You need SSO, governance controls and Salesforce duplicate detection, and can buy an annual Enterprise contract.
Choose AI Ark if
You build lists by searching for accounts and people, with full search on every plan including free.
You want every email verified by BounceBan at export, with an expected bounce rate under 1.5%.
You need more than 6,750 contacts a month and want published pricing at that volume, with credits that roll over up to 2x.
You want account signals such as lookalikes, headcount growth and employees by department.
You feed Clay, n8n, Make.com or your own code, and want an API at 300 requests per minute on the same credit pricing.
You want to pay for each contact once, with Net New vs Saved Records and exclusion lists keeping your files fresh.
AI Ark is built to put the right people in your file and only valid emails beside them. Run your own ICP on the free tier and compare the export with what LeadIQ gives you today.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is the difference between AI Ark and LeadIQ?
AI Ark is a prospect and company discovery database: you search 400M+ people and 70M+ companies with filters such as lookalikes, headcount growth and tenure, then export a file where every email has passed BounceBan verification. LeadIQ is a capture-first prospecting tool that shows contact data inside LinkedIn through a Chrome extension and syncs it to your CRM. LeadIQ suits reps working profile by profile; AI Ark suits list building at volume.
2. What is the best LeadIQ alternative for high-volume outbound?
For high-volume outbound, AI Ark is built for the job: searchable filters across 400M+ people, BounceBan verification at export with an expected bounce rate under 1.5%, and published plans up to 5,000,000 credits a month. LeadIQ Pro stops at 6,750 credits a month, and anything above that moves to a quote-only annual Enterprise plan. At 6,750 valid emails a month, AI Ark costs $9.36 per 1,000 against $32.25 on LeadIQ, billed annually.
3. How much does LeadIQ cost compared with AI Ark?
LeadIQ Pro starts at $20 a month for 200 credits, or $15 a month billed annually, and runs to 6,750 credits a month; Enterprise pricing is not publicly stated. LeadIQ charges 1 credit per email and 10 per phone. AI Ark starts at $49 a month for 5,000 credits, or $470 a year for 60,000, with a free tier of 100 credits a month, and charges 1 credit per profile with a verified email.
4. Do LeadIQ credits roll over?
No. LeadIQ's terms of use say credits on paid plans expire at the end of the subscription term, which is the month on monthly billing and the year on annual billing. AI Ark credits roll over: unused credits carry into the next month, up to 2x your monthly plan, so a quiet month is not wasted and the budget you have already paid for is protected when volume swings.
5. Is LeadIQ worth it?
For reps who prospect profile by profile and push each contact to Salesforce or Outreach, yes: the extension, job-change alerts and CRM sync are what the Pro price pays for, and G2 reviewers rate it 4.2 out of 5, with inaccurate data the top complaint. For list building at volume, Pro stops at 6,750 credits a month, and at that volume LeadIQ costs $32.25 per 1,000 valid emails against $9.36 on AI Ark, with every email verified before export.
6. How accurate are AI Ark emails compared with LeadIQ?
AI Ark verifies every email with BounceBan at the moment of export and delivers only addresses that pass, including catch-alls confirmed one by one, with an expected bounce rate under 1.5%. LeadIQ gives each email a confidence level and publishes accuracy figures for verified phone numbers rather than emails. The fairest test is your own list: export the same ICP from both tools, send from the same tool with no verifier in between, and compare bounces at day seven.
7. Can AI Ark track job changes like LeadIQ?
AI Ark refreshes its entire database every 30 days, so a contact's current company and title are updated before you export, and Time in Role filters surface people who just moved. It does not send champion job-change alerts the way LeadIQ does, and intent data is in development. For list building, the 30-day refresh means you are not paying for people who already left.
8. Can I try both before deciding?
Yes. AI Ark has a free tier with 100 credits a month and no card, so you can run your real ICP search and export a verified sample. LeadIQ offers a free plan with 50 credits and a 30-day free trial on its paid plans. Run the same search in both, send to a small sample from each file, and compare bounces and replies before you commit; the AI Ark file arrives already verified.
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