Pay-as-you-go LinkedIn scraping pricing
$0.012per profile delivered · $12 per 1,000 · $0.12 minimum per search
pineapi charges $0.012 for every LinkedIn profile delivered, $12 per thousand, with a $0.12 minimum on any search that runs. Ten thousand profiles cost $120. There is no subscription, no seat fee and no monthly minimum, and a month with no searches costs nothing.
One rate, and what it counts
pineapi bills profiles delivered, not profiles requested. There are no volume tiers to negotiate into and no enterprise rate behind a call: the price is the same at 500 profiles a month and at 500,000.
| Rule | Value |
|---|---|
| Price per profile delivered | $0.012 · $12 per 1,000 |
| Minimum per search | $0.12, the price of ten profiles |
| Minimum per lookup | None; unresolved URLs are not billed |
| Minimum card top-up | $5; prepaid credit does not expire |
| Billing unit | Profiles delivered, not profiles requested |
| Duplicates | Duplicates within a run are discarded and not billed. A profile delivered again in a separate run is billed again. |
| Failed searches | Not billed |
| Empty searches | Billed the $0.12 minimum. The search ran, nobody matched |
| Currency | USD only |
| Subscription, seats, monthly minimum | None |
Cost per profile, per credit and per API call
pineapi uses a USD prepaid balance, not an abstract credit pack. One delivered profile costs $0.012. A $5 top-up adds $5 of balance; it does not imply that every API call has the same cost.
For a completed search, the charge is the greater of $0.12 and delivered profiles × $0.012. For URL lookup, it is delivered profiles × $0.012 with no minimum. The block-of-25 rule applies to the requested search size, not a promise that you will receive or pay for a full block of returned profiles.
| Outcome | Charge | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Search completes with 0 delivered profiles | $0.12 | The search minimum applies |
| Search completes with 8 delivered profiles | $0.12 | The calculated profile charge is below the minimum |
| Search completes with 25 delivered profiles | $0.30 | 25 × $0.012 |
| Lookup returns 80 profiles from 100 unique URLs | $0.96 | 80 × $0.012; 20 unresolved URLs are free |
| Poll a run or download existing results again | $0 | No new extraction; results remain subject to retention |
Work out your monthly cost
pineapi charges the same $0.012 for every profile in the month. Searches are requested in blocks of 25 between 25 and 2,000 profiles, so the calculator rounds to what the API will actually accept.
· · ·
- Profiles billed
- 10,000
- Searches needed
- 5 · one search returns up to 2,000
- Price per profile
- $0.012
- Monthly total
- $120
pineapi bills profiles delivered, so the real invoice is this figure minus whatever a search did not return, with $0.12 as the floor for each search that runs, including one that matches nobody.
At the three volumes people usually ask about
| Profiles per month | Searches | pineapi monthly cost |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | at least 1 | $12 |
| 10,000 | at least 5 | $120 |
| 50,000 | at least 25 | $600 |
One search returns up to 2,000 profiles, so a 50,000-profile month is at least 25 separate searches rather than one very large call.
What pineapi does not charge for
pineapi bills delivered profiles and nothing else. Everything in this list is free, on every account, at every volume.
- Seats. Add as many people to an account as you like; the bill does not change.
- Monthly fees. A month with no searches costs nothing.
- Platform fees. There is no marketplace taking a cut on top of the unit price.
- Failed searches.
- Setup.
What is not on that list is the per-search minimum. Every search that runs bills at least $0.12, including one that matches nobody, and quoting the price without it would be quoting a price that does not exist.
How that compares
Compare the billing unit before comparing the headline price. A subscription resource bundle, a scraped record and a delivered profile are different units.
| Tool | Workflow | Published price | Commitment | Check before choosing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| pineapi | Profile search by filters and URL lookup | $0.012 per delivered profile; $0.12 search minimum; no lookup floor | Prepaid from $5; no subscription | Asynchronous runs; no email enrichment, sandbox or MCP server |
| Bright Data | LinkedIn scrapers covering profiles, companies, jobs and posts | $1.50 per 1,000 records on the advertised pay-as-you-go plan | Also advertises a 5,000-record monthly free tier | Compare the selected scraper and its record schema with your required fields |
| PhantomBuster | Automation workflows, including LinkedIn outreach and enrichment | Start: $56/month equivalent, $672 billed annually | Subscription bundles execution time, slots and credits | Not a fixed delivered-profile rate; estimate execution and enrichment usage |
USD rates; no assumption of equivalent record coverage or throughput. Free-tier eligibility, taxes and discounts are not modeled. Published by pineapi, one of the products compared.
Compare LinkedIn scraper APIs by workflow · Migrating from Proxycurl
Get a price for your volume
Tell pineapi the volume you are planning. We will explain the cost and onboarding. Paid runs need prepaid balance; there is no free test key.
Prefer to read first? The full response schema is public, and so is the single-file API reference.
Pricing questions people ask
How much does one API call cost?
Creation starts a paid asynchronous run, not a fixed-price call. A completed search costs at least $0.12, then $0.012 per delivered profile when that total is higher. Lookup has no floor. Polling run status and downloading existing results do not add profile charges.
Does pineapi use credits?
The account holds prepaid USD balance. Top-ups start at $5 and credit does not expire. There is no separate credit-to-profile exchange rate: each delivered profile costs $0.012, subject to the search minimum.
Is unused account balance refundable?
Unused prepaid balance is not refunded when you close your account. Incorrect charges and refunds required by applicable law are exceptions. Contact contact@heytalent.app about a disputed charge.
How much does it cost to scrape 10,000 LinkedIn profiles?
$120 with pineapi, at $0.012 per profile delivered. That is at least 5 searches, since one search returns up to 2,000 profiles, and each of those bills at least the $0.12 minimum. No subscription sits on top and no minimum sits underneath.
Is there a monthly minimum or a subscription?
No. pineapi is pay as you go: you add balance and it is drawn down per profile delivered. A month with no searches costs nothing, there is no plan to downgrade and nothing expires at the end of the month. The only floor is the $0.12 per search that actually runs.
Do I pay for a search that returns nothing?
You pay the $0.12 minimum, because the search ran and no profile matched your filters. A search that genuinely fails is not billed at all.
Am I billed twice for the same profile?
Yes, if it is delivered twice. Billing counts profiles delivered, so a profile appearing in two searches is billed in both. Consecutive paginated calls on the same search overlap by about 30%, which is why one large search costs less than several small ones covering the same ground.
Does lookup have the same minimum as search?
No. Both modes cost $0.012 per delivered profile, but only search has the $0.12 floor. Lookup has no minimum and unresolved URLs are free.
Are there volume discounts?
No, and there is no enterprise rate behind a sales call either. pineapi charges $0.012 per profile delivered at every volume, which means the price you can work out from this page is the price you get.
Can I set a spending cap?
Yes, by holding balance rather than a card on file. pineapi draws down what is on the account and returns insufficient_balance when it runs out, so an agent or a runaway job cannot spend more than you have put in.
Do re-downloads cost anything?
No. Results stay available through the API and as CSV for 30 days and re-downloading inside that window is free. After 30 days they are deleted, so anything you need for longer belongs in your own storage.
Last updated 2026-10-19