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Lead Generation

Hunter

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Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: not determined

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by Hunter Web Services, Inc. · hunter.io

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Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The SDR Team Lead

Weighted verdict

Runs eight SDRs against a monthly meeting target. Wants filters that find the right buyer at the right company, emails that do not bounce, and direct dials that reach a person. Measures a database by connect rate, not by the record count on the homepage.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The SDR Team Lead

Coverage, accuracy & freshness

How this is scored

How much of the target market the database actually covers — judged on DACH and EU coverage as much as North American — and what the vendor documents about verification and refresh, because accuracy claims cannot be checked from outside.

0 — No stated coverage, no refresh cadence, no verification method; accuracy asserted as a percentage with nothing behind it.

3 — Headline record counts for the whole database, thin or unstated European coverage, and no description of how often records are re-verified.

5 — Coverage stated per country or region including DACH, email verification described, a stated refresh cadence, and firmographics beyond name and domain.

8 — Coverage broken down by country, industry and data type (email, direct dial, mobile), verification method and refresh cadence documented, company data drawn from official registers where available, and a bounce or credit-back guarantee with stated terms.

10 — The vendor is accountable for its data: per-country coverage and accuracy methodology published, every field carrying a last-verified date visible to the user, register-sourced company data, and credit-back terms that make inaccuracy the vendor's cost rather than the buyer's.

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The SDR Team Lead

The headline numbers are sources and campaign volume — 650M+ public sources, 1.2B+ leads contacted — with no per-country breakdown, and we found no public information on DACH figures or a re-verification cadence. Email quality is at least documented: deliverability validation, confidence scores, and auto-verified lead data on all plans, though the terms are "as is" with no refunds when bounces land on my list. For my team the bigger gap is phones — we found no public information on direct dials or mobile numbers. 1 2 3 4

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Data sources & lawful basis

How this is scored

Where the personal data in the database comes from and on what legal basis it is processed — as evidenced on the vendor's own pages. Covers Art. 6(1)(f) legitimate interest, the Art. 14 notice to the people in the database, and whether they can find, object to and remove their record.

0 — No statement of where contact data comes from or on what legal basis; "GDPR-compliant" asserted without explanation, and no way for a listed person to object.

3 — Sources described in general terms ("public sources", "partners"), legitimate interest named without any balancing, and an opt-out request form as the only route for data subjects.

5 — Source categories named (registers, company websites, contributory networks, licensed partners), legitimate interest stated as the basis for EU records, a dedicated privacy notice for the people in the database, and a self-service opt-out or removal process.

8 — The above plus an Art. 14 notification practice described (people informed when added), contributory or browser-extension collection disclosed as such, a legitimate-interest assessment summarised publicly, and EU records handled differently from US records where the law differs.

10 — Provenance is traceable per record: the source and collection date available for each contact, Art. 14 notices sent and documented, the balancing test published, objections honoured across the whole dataset and suppressed permanently, and no data sourced by scraping behind logins or from contributors' address books without their contacts' knowledge.

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The SDR Team Lead

Sources are named concretely — addresses crawled from public web pages plus pattern-generated ones, robots.txt respected, private consumer data skipped — and the people in the database get a self-service claim page to update or delete their record, with removal inside three months. Legitimate interest is the stated basis with an assessment conducted, but the summary is only available on request, and we found no public information on notifying people when they are added. 3

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Visitor identification & intent signals

How this is scored

Identifying companies behind website visits and surfacing buying intent — scored on what is identified (company or person), how the tracking works, and whether the vendor states that its script needs consent under §25 TDDDG and how it behaves without it.

0 — No visitor identification or intent data, or person-level identification of EU visitors with no statement of legal basis.

3 — Reverse-IP company identification with a cookie-setting script, no statement about consent, and match rates claimed without method.

5 — Company-level identification with filters, visit history per company, a stated position that the script requires consent where it sets cookies, and a consent-mode or cookieless option.

8 — Company-level only for EU traffic by design, cookieless operation documented, integration with common consent management platforms, intent topics or page-level signals with the source of third-party intent data named, and alerts routed to owners.

10 — Identification that survives a DPO review: no personal data of visitors stored, the TDDDG and GDPR position published and specific, third-party intent data sourced from a named co-op or panel with its consent basis stated, and scoring on intent that the user can trace back to the underlying visits.

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The SDR Team Lead

We found no public information on identifying companies behind website visits — no tracking-script description, no consent statement under the German telemedia tracking rules, no match-rate method. A Signals line appears in the pricing table with per-tier counts, but nothing captured describes what it identifies or how it works. 2

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Prospecting workflow & outreach rules

How this is scored

Search, list building and outreach — and whether the product helps the buyer stay within UWG §7 and the GDPR once the list exists, rather than leaving the legal risk entirely with the customer.

0 — A search box and an export button; nothing on the pages about what the buyer may lawfully do with the contacts.

3 — Filters on firmographics and job title, saved lists, and a terms clause making the customer solely responsible for compliance.

5 — Advanced filters including technographics and triggers, company-level lists and alerts, a global suppression or do-not-contact list, and guidance on cold outreach rules in the main EU markets.

8 — The above plus country-aware handling (for example flagging German contacts where cold calls and emails require consent), phone numbers checked against national do-not-call registers where they exist, and opt-outs from outreach synced back to the database.

10 — Compliance is part of the workflow: outreach channels restricted or flagged per country and contact type by default, suppression shared across the whole account and every export, the Art. 14 notice supported at first contact, and a documented record of how each contact entered the buyer's pipeline.

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The SDR Team Lead

Filters, saved leads and automated sequences are all there, and the terms put the outreach risk squarely on me by making every customer an independent controller. We found no public information on a do-not-contact suppression list, per-country cold outreach rules for Germany and the other EU markets, or do-not-call checks — the homepage line is that they help you comply, with nothing behind it. 1 2 3 4

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CRM sync, enrichment & export

How this is scored

Getting the data into the systems where sales works — CRM sync, enrichment of existing records, API — and what happens to exported data, and to the buyer's access to it, when the subscription ends.

0 — Manual CSV export only; no CRM integration and no API.

3 — A one-way push to one CRM, CSV export, and no statement on whether exported data may be kept after cancellation.

5 — Native sync with the major CRMs including field mapping and deduplication, enrichment of existing CRM records, and a documented API with stated limits.

8 — Bidirectional sync with scheduled re-enrichment, update and deletion propagated when a record changes or a person objects, webhook or API access with credit costs per call published, and data retention rights after cancellation stated plainly.

10 — The vendor treats the buyer's CRM as the system of record: objections and corrections propagated into synced records automatically, full change history per field, a versioned API with a deprecation policy, and exit terms that say exactly which data the customer may keep and for how long.

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The SDR Team Lead

The getting-data-out side is covered — sync to HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho and Pipedrive, Zapier, a public API, an MCP server, CSV export, and pay-as-you-go credits for API and bulk tasks. But we found no public information on field mapping, deduplication or sync direction, the terms reserve the right to cut API access with or without notice, and nothing says what happens to exported data when the subscription ends. 1 2 4

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European sovereignty

How this is scored

Where a database of EU residents' personal data is held, who the contracting entity and controller are, and which subprocessors see it. Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline; weighted heavily here, because the product itself is personal data about people who never chose the vendor.

0 — Non-EU vendor and contracting entity, hosting unstated, subprocessors unnamed, and EU residents' contact data processed outside the EU with no stated transfer basis.

3 — Non-EU contracting entity with an EU representative under Art. 27, or EU hosting offered while enrichment, support or AI processing stay non-EU.

5 — EU contracting entity and EU hosting as standard, but parts of the chain — data partners, enrichment sources, tracking infrastructure — are non-EU without an explained safeguard.

8 — EU contracting entity and controller, EU hosting on named infrastructure, subprocessor and data-partner list published, and any non-EU transfer named with its legal basis.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: vendor, controller, hosting, data partners and every subprocessor European, certification published, and a DPA covering both the customer's data and the database records the customer exports.

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The SDR Team Lead

Servers sit in Belgium and transfers out of the EEA rely on Standard Contractual Clauses and the IDTA, with a subprocessor list published at a dedicated address — but the contracting entity and governing law are Delaware, and AI email writing runs through OpenAI with up to 30-day retention. That is a US vendor with an EU representative in Ireland, not a sovereign EU chain: my team's contact data moves on contractual paper rather than staying home. 3 4

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Pricing transparency

How this is scored

Whether a buyer can compute the real annual cost from public pages alone — including credits per email, phone number and mobile, credit expiry, seat pricing, visitor-identification tiers and the API — in a category where the unit of billing is often invented by the vendor.

0 — No public prices at all; every tier is a sales conversation.

3 — A monthly headline exists, but what a credit buys, whether credits expire, or the cost of an additional seat is unstated — the invoice is unknowable.

5 — Tier prices public with credit allowances given, but at least one commonly needed piece (mobile numbers, extra seats, API access, CRM sync) is unpriced or behind a sales call.

8 — Every tier priced publicly with credits per data type, credit expiry and rollover, per-seat costs, overage rates, minimum term and VAT treatment stated.

10 — Complete price computability: the annual invoice derivable for a given number of seats, exported contacts by data type, identified companies and API calls, with every credit cost and the refund rule for inaccurate data published.

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The SDR Team Lead

The pricing page publishes credit allowances per tier (600 up to 300,000 per month), unlimited users on every plan, a 0€ tier with 50 credits and add-on starting prices like "from 10€/month", and the terms state prices exclude taxes and fees are non-refundable. But we found no public information on the euro price of the paid tiers, what a credit buys per data type, credit expiry or credit-pack pricing — so I cannot compute my team's annual invoice from the captured pages. 1 2 4

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European sovereignty — proven facts

0 of 4 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Ownership Not determined — uncited Report an error
Data residency Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error
Subprocessors Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

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Sources (11)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Vendor homepage hunter.io Checked 22 Sep 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Pricing page hunter.io Checked 22 Sep 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Privacy policy hunter.io Checked 22 Sep 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Terms of service hunter.io Checked 22 Sep 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Security / trust page hunter.io Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Coverage, accuracy & freshness — found from sitemap hunter.io Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Coverage, accuracy & freshness — found from sitemap hunter.io Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Data sources & lawful basis — found from sitemap hunter.io Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  9. 9 Data sources & lawful basis — found from sitemap hunter.io Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  10. 10 CRM sync, enrichment & export — found from sitemap hunter.io Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  11. 11 CRM sync, enrichment & export — found from sitemap hunter.io Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →