If you’re running B2B lead gen, you know the drill: sales wants more contacts, marketing wants cleaner lists, and everyone’s tired of burning budget on tools that promise a “pipeline explosion” and deliver… not much. Enter Proxycurl—a data enrichment API that’s supposed to help you find, update, and sync prospect info with minimal hand-wringing.
The question: does Proxycurl actually help real sales and marketing teams, or is it just another shiny object? I spent a few weeks testing it with cold outbound, enrichment jobs, and head-to-heads against the usual suspects. Here’s the blunt, practical take.
Who Should Even Care About Proxycurl?
Let’s be real: if you’re a solo founder scraping LinkedIn for names, or your sales ops team is drowning in Excel, Proxycurl will sound attractive. It’s built for:
- B2B teams needing up-to-date contact/company info, fast
- RevOps folks tired of stale CRM records
- Growth or GTM teams running outbound at scale (but not too massive)
- Anyone frustrated by the “black box” feel of Apollo, ZoomInfo, or Clearbit
What it’s not for: SMBs looking for a plug-and-play CRM, or teams who hate working with APIs.
What Proxycurl Actually Does (And Doesn’t)
Proxycurl is an API-first tool that pulls fresh company and person data—think job titles, emails, company info, social links, and work history—mostly scraped from LinkedIn and the broader web. It's not a traditional SaaS app with dashboards and buttons. Instead, you (or your dev/ops person) wire it into your own stack.
Core features:
- Person Profile Enrichment: Feed it a LinkedIn URL, get back structured data (role, company, email, etc.)
- Company Enrichment: Give it a domain, get company size, funding, industry, etc.
- Reverse Email Lookup: Throw in an email, get a LinkedIn profile (if possible)
- Data Freshness: Claims to update profiles every few days, not months
What it doesn’t do:
- No built-in CRM/UX: You’ll need to connect it to your own database or tools.
- No “lead scoring” or “intent signals”: This is raw data, not magic.
- No email sending or sequences: It’s about data, not outreach.
If you want a “done for you” lead list, this isn’t it. But if you’re tired of seeing the same stale contact in 5 tools, Proxycurl gives you a shot at fresher info.
How to Actually Use Proxycurl in B2B Lead Gen
You’re probably not shopping for another API just for fun. Here’s how Proxycurl fits into real B2B GTM workflows, and where it can actually save time or money.
1. Cleaning Up Your CRM (and Keeping It That Way)
Dirty data slows down sales. Proxycurl’s enrichment endpoints let you:
- Bulk-update job titles, companies, and locations for old leads
- Fill in missing social links or emails
- Sync this process automatically—set up a script and forget about it
Pro tip: Don’t try to update every field. Focus on the stuff that actually helps reps: accurate seniority, current employer, and reachable email.
2. Building Target Lists That Don’t Suck
If you’re tired of buying “verified” lists that bounce, Proxycurl lets you:
- Scrape LinkedIn or upload a list of URLs, then enrich in bulk
- Filter by company size, title, geography, etc.—assuming you have the input data
- Keep your cold outbound lists fresher, so you’re not reaching out to people who switched jobs last year
But: There’s no magical “find me 10,000 VPs of Sales in SaaS.” You’ll need to bring your own sourcing or scraping.
3. Real-Time Lookup for Inbound or Routing
Say you’ve got a web form and want to qualify leads before they hit Salesforce. Proxycurl’s API lets you:
- Instantly enrich people and companies based on email/LinkedIn URL
- Route hot leads to your best reps (or just weed out the junk)
This is where the API-first model shines: it’s fast, and you control what happens next.
4. Updating Outreach or Personalization
Want to drop in a prospect’s latest job change or recent funding round in a cold email? Proxycurl’s data is usually more current than what you’ll find in the big-box tools. Just don’t expect perfect accuracy—LinkedIn users aren’t always honest or fast to update, and no enrichment tool can fix that.
How Accurate and Fresh is the Data, Really?
Let’s be blunt: Proxycurl is better than most at freshness, but “real-time” is an exaggeration. In my tests:
- Person profiles: 70-85% accurate for job/company/title; emails are hit-or-miss, especially for personal addresses.
- Company info: Generally good, especially if the company is active online.
- Update frequency: Most high-activity profiles update within a week or so. Niche/less active folks lag longer.
Compared to ZoomInfo or Apollo, you’ll see fewer obviously outdated records. But don’t expect miracles—if someone hasn’t updated LinkedIn, Proxycurl can’t invent data.
What to ignore: Hype about “AI-powered enrichment.” This is mostly web scraping + logic. Useful, but not magic.
Pricing: Pay for What You Use, But Watch the Meter
Proxycurl uses a pay-as-you-go credit system. No annual contracts, no surprise “minimums.” You buy credits, then burn them on API calls—different endpoints cost different amounts.
- Pro: No massive upfront cost. Great for teams that want to test or scale up/down.
- Con: High volume gets expensive fast. If you’re enriching millions of records, the bill can climb.
Ballpark: Enriching 10,000 profiles might cost you $100 to $300, depending on what fields you use. Cheaper than hiring a VA, pricier than a generic data dump.
Tip: Audit which endpoints you actually need. Don’t burn credits on fields you’ll never use.
How Proxycurl Stacks Up Against the Usual Suspects
Let’s compare Proxycurl to the big dogs:
- ZoomInfo: More “enterprise” features, but old data, expensive contracts, and a clunky interface.
- Apollo: Easier UI, built-in outreach, but database quality is spotty and job changes lag by months.
- Clearbit: Good for company info, less so for people. API is solid, but pricing is opaque.
- Scraping tools (Phantombuster, etc.): Cheaper, but often break, and you’ll handle bans/IP blocks.
Where Proxycurl wins: Data freshness, API flexibility, pay-as-you-go model.
Where it loses: No plug-and-play UI, spotty personal emails, and it’s only as good as your own workflow setup.
If you’ve got an ops-minded team and want to automate enrichment, Proxycurl is a strong contender. If you want a full “sales platform,” look elsewhere.
The Downsides (and How to Work Around Them)
No tool is perfect. Here’s what tripped me up:
- No UI: If you can’t work with APIs or scripts, setup is a pain. You’ll need to connect it to Zapier, Retool, or your own apps.
- Some fields are hit-or-miss: Emails, education, and phone numbers are rarely 100%. Use as “nice to have,” not gospel.
- LinkedIn scraping is always a cat-and-mouse game: LinkedIn doesn’t love automated scraping. Proxycurl stays ahead (for now), but expect occasional hiccups.
- Lack of intent data: If you care about “who’s in-market,” Proxycurl won’t help. It’s about raw data, not sales signals.
Workarounds:
- Pair Proxycurl with your own enrichment logic—fallback to other sources when it returns blanks.
- Use it alongside a basic scraper if you want to build lists, then enrich only the ones you care about.
Final Thoughts: Should You Buy Proxycurl?
If you’re a B2B lead gen team with even a little technical muscle—and you hate wasting money on flat, outdated contact lists—Proxycurl is worth a serious look. It won’t turn your outbound into magic, but it will make your data less embarrassing and your ops less manual.
Skip the hype, start small, and build Proxycurl into your workflow where it actually helps. Don’t fall for “all-in-one” promises—just fix the boring stuff, and run more experiments. That’s how you win in B2B.
When in doubt, keep it simple and iterate.