Short answer: both are Chrome extensions that show emails and phone numbers on LinkedIn profiles. ContactOut is the stronger pick if you work inside Sales Navigator or LinkedIn Recruiter and want an ATS or CRM integration; SignalHire is the stronger pick if your candidates or leads also live on GitHub, Facebook, X or Meetup, or if you want to pay only when a contact actually comes back. Both sell "unlimited" plans that are capped in their terms at 2,000 email credits a month. Facts below were checked on 28 October 2026.
Where each one works
- ContactOut: standard LinkedIn, Sales Navigator and LinkedIn Recruiter, plus any company website (Chrome Web Store listing, May 2026). It also enriches contacts from Gmail.
- SignalHire: LinkedIn, GitHub, Facebook, X and Meetup profiles, and company "Team" pages. Its site does not mention Sales Navigator or Recruiter, so do not count on those. Bulk lookups take a CSV or TXT file of up to 1,000 rows per run.
Prices and what "unlimited" means
| ContactOut | SignalHire | |
|---|---|---|
| Free | 5 emails, 5 phones and 5 exports a day | 10 credits a month with the extension |
| Emails only | $49/mo, unlimited reveals, 300 exports a month | $69/mo (or $57/mo yearly) for 1,000 credits |
| Emails and phones | $99/mo, 600 exports a month | $69/mo (or $57/mo yearly) for 435 credits; "Unlimited" $99/mo (or $83/mo yearly) |
| Cap behind "unlimited" | 2,000 email and 1,000 phone credits per account per month (terms of service) | 2,000 credits a month, shared by all users, annual plans only (terms, August 2026) |
| Charged when nothing is found | Not stated | No: a credit is used only if at least one email or phone comes back |
| Unused credits | Not stated | Expire at the end of the month |
SignalHire prices are from its own pricing page. ContactOut loads its prices with a script that did not render for us, so its figures come from Cleanlist's pricing guide (1 October 2026), which also notes lower prices outside the US and UK; confirm on ContactOut's page before buying.
Team, integrations and API:
ContactOut sells team plans, its API and the Salesforce, HubSpot and ATS integrations (Lever, Bullhorn, Greenhouse) through its sales team. SignalHire includes its API with paid plans, charges no per-seat fee and names Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zoho Recruit, Recruitee and ActiveCampaign among its integrations.
Which one to choose
- Recruiting from LinkedIn Recruiter into an ATS: ContactOut.
- Sourcing engineers on GitHub as well as LinkedIn: SignalHire.
- Low or uneven volume where empty lookups would waste money: SignalHire, since misses are free.