Head to head · Lead enrichment · October 2026 research run

Databar vs Hunter API + MCP

Hunter API + MCP scores 58.4 (C) on agent readiness against Databar's 53.8 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Databar leads on agent ergonomics and maintenance & community. Both do lead enrichment.

Best lead, contact and company data APIs for AI agents · All 231 leads comparisons

Which one, for what

Databar D

Best for Waterfall enrichment across many providers for GTM agents, close to clay and fullenrich.

Ahead on

  • Agent ergonomics, 66 against 54
  • Maintenance & community, 73 against 63

Watch for

API access needs a paid plan; the free plan's 150 credits don't include it

Hunter API + MCP C

Best for Finding and verifying work emails from a domain or a name, where GDPR handling of the people looked up matters.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 50 against 28
  • Schema & documentation, 90 against 84
  • Payments & pricing, 40 against 35
  • Transparency & trust, 79 against 55

Watch for

Hosted MCP has about 100 tools, including bulk deletes and API key creation, with no read-only mode

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Transparency & trust Hunter API + MCP +24

Databar 55

Closed service with terms effective 1 October 2026 naming Databar, Inc. of Delaware (15 of 30). The privacy policy keeps data 'for as long as needed' with no periods; the docs give 24 hours for task results; a DPA is part of the agreement but was not read (15 of 30). The changelog flagged breaking API and SDK changes on 20 August 2026, and the terms let Databar retire any form of programmatic access; no notice period stated (8 of 20). Sub-processors are disclosed under the DPA, which was not read; data is processed in the United States (5 of 20). 15+15+8+5 = 43.

Hunter API + MCP 79

Closed service with terms naming Hunter Web Services, Inc. (last updated 23 May 2024, 15 days' notice of material changes) (15). The privacy policy (updated 13 April 2026, unchanged on 4 November) covers the people in Hunter's index, says profiles come from crawling public pages that allow it and from pattern-generated addresses, cites a legitimate interest assessment and a DPIA, takes removal requests at hunter.io/claim, drops profiles within 3 months of leaving their source page, and links a DPA. The API enforces opt-outs with a 451 (28 of 30). The changelog flagged the June 2026 switch to recipient-based engagement figures as affecting API users, Beta endpoints warn of breaking changes, and no deprecation policy found (8 of 20). Subprocessors at hunter.io/subprocessors and servers on Google Cloud in Belgium (20). 15 + 28 + 8 + 20 = 71.

Reliability Hunter API + MCP +22

Databar 28

Hosted lines. No status page linked from the site or docs (0). No incident history to read (5). The 20 August changelog says rate limits return 429, but no numbers were found in the docs read (5 of 15). The SDK backs off on 429 per the 28 September entry, tasks can be cancelled with a refund, and no Retry-After or idempotency key is documented (8 of 15). No SLA found (0). The MCP server left beta on 15 July 2026 and the API is generally available (10). 0+5+5+8+0+10 = 28.

Hunter API + MCP 50

A status page at status.hunter.io (a Checkly dashboard) exists per the 30 September check, but it renders client-side and both the page and its incidents feed came back empty on 1 October, so components were never confirmed (15 of 20, the earlier partial kept). On 4 November its robots.txt answered with the dashboard's app page, so the host was not read further and no history is readable (5). Per-endpoint limits published, from 5 a second and 50 a minute on Discover to 15 a second and 500 a minute on Domain Search and Email Finder (15). Hitting a rate limit returns 403, while 429 means the plan's usage is spent, and no Retry-After or back-off guidance for either was found. The API reference now documents an Idempotency-Key on sequence and email writes (409 with Retry-After 2 while a request with the same key runs) and calls POST and PUT /v2/leads retry-safe, but with no overload guidance the line stays at the earlier partial (5 of 15). No SLA found (0). Generally available (10). 15 + 5 + 15 + 5 + 0 + 10 = 50.

Agent ergonomics Databar +12

Databar 66

69 MCP tools with no toolsets found (5), and REST row reads sized by per_page with has_next_page (10 of 25 for the two together). Pagination, row filters and a search parameter on enrichments (16 of 20). Errors name the fix, such as unknown columns with the available ones, 406 for credits, 409 for a stale internal_version and 410 for expired results (18 of 20). Upserts by key, version tokens on flow edits, cancel with refund, and MCP confirmation above 50 credits; MCP tool annotations not confirmed (13 of 20). Python SDK and a CLI, one language (9 of 15). 10+16+18+13+9 = 66.

Hunter API + MCP 54

The hosted MCP exposes about 100 tools (102 by our count of llms-full.txt on 4 November, 96 on 1 October, 107 in the 30 September check) across search, enrichment, leads, lists, sequences and account admin, with no toolsets or read-only subset found. The REST side returns up to 100 rows a call (8 of 25). limit up to 100, offset up to 10,000, cursor pagination on multi-domain search (18 of 20). Structured errors, but rate limits answer 403 and quota exhaustion 429, which inverts what most clients expect (12 of 20). Repeat lookups within a billing period are free, POST and PUT /v2/leads dedupe by email, and sequence and email writes take an Idempotency-Key, but the MCP's 16 delete and bulk-delete tools carry no annotations we could find (8 of 20, the earlier partial kept). Few required parameters and a test key (8 of 15). 8 + 18 + 12 + 8 + 8 = 54.

Maintenance & community Databar +10

Databar 73

Closed service. Python SDK 2.9.0 on 30 October 2026, 7 days before this check (30). SDK 2.7.0 and 2.8.0 on 6 October and changelog entries on 23, 24, 27, 28, 29 and 30 September and 1 October (20). A public changelog, roadmap and feedback portal, an email address, and a Slack channel on Scale (10 of 15). An official Python SDK and CLI, no other languages (10 of 15). Package health not checked (3 of 10). 30+20+10+10+3 = 73.

Hunter API + MCP 63

Newest changelog entries are three dated 30 September 2026 (the ChatGPT app, saved searches and AI tool setup paths), 35 days before 4 November. The official Claude Code plugin (hunter-io/claude-plugin) moved from 0.1.0 (18 March) to 0.1.1 on 28 October. The commit that bumps the version only adds an icon, but 0.1.1 is the first version to carry the skill changes made since 0.1.0, including domain-search on 17 August, build-sequences on 14 September and 16 October, and discover on 16 October, so it counts as a full release, 7 days before 4 November (30). Three changelog entries and the plugin release in the 90 days from 6 August (20). Public changelog and support. Issue handling not visible (10 of 15). Not in the official MCP registry. We didn't find current official SDKs; the plugin is MIT on GitHub (0). llms-full.txt tells agents to avoid a deprecated local package, whose repository was last changed on 7 July 2025 (3 of 10). 30 + 20 + 10 + 0 + 3 = 63.

Schema & documentation Hunter API + MCP +6

Databar 84

Each API reference page embeds its OpenAPI 3.1 operation (spec version 0.1.2), with no downloadable file found (20 of 25). llms.txt with 79 API entries and Markdown twins (10). Descriptions say when to use each endpoint, such as headless runs against table runs, and what a delete leaves behind (16 of 20). Typed request bodies with required fields (12 of 15). An error envelope with stable codes and examples for 400, 406 and 422 (14 of 15). v1 paths and a dated changelog, though the API's own versioning isn't described (12 of 15). 20+10+16+12+14+12 = 84.

Hunter API + MCP 90

OpenAPI 3.0.3 JSON at hunter.io/openapi.json, version 2.0.0, 101 paths and 182 operations on 4 November (25). llms.txt, llms-full.txt and agents.md written for agents (10). Reference pages state purpose and credit rules per endpoint, and llms-full.txt adds usage advice and a when-to-use line per MCP tool (15 of 20). Typed parameters with documented maxima (12 of 15). Examples, a test-api-key that returns dummy responses, and an error envelope {errors: [{id, code, details}]} including 451 for people who opted out (14 of 15). v2 API and a public dated changelog, with several newer endpoints labelled Beta (14 of 15). 25 + 10 + 15 + 12 + 14 + 14 = 90.

Payments & pricing Hunter API + MCP +5

Databar 35

No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Plan prices and credits are public, and each connector's credit cost is shown before a run and in the enrichment's pricing field; credits aren't sold per call outside a plan (15 of 20). A 14-day premium trial with no card, per the pricing FAQ (20). A person signs up in a browser, and API access needs a paid plan (0). 0+15+20+0 = 35.

Hunter API + MCP 40

No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Plan prices are public, and units are clear, 1 credit per email found, 0.5 per verification, nothing when no result comes back (20). Free plan with 50 credits a month and API and MCP access, no card (20). A person signs up in a browser, and the terms say accounts registered by bots are not permitted (0). Prices unchanged on 4 November. 0 + 20 + 20 + 0 = 40.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDatabarHunter API + MCPEdge
Reliability16%202850Hunter API + MCP +22
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28490Hunter API + MCP +6
Agent ergonomics13%16.26654Databar +12
Security & auth14%17.54743Databar +4
Payments & pricing10%12.53540Hunter API + MCP +5
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87363Databar +10
Transparency & trust7%8.85579Hunter API + MCP +24
Negative events≤1500
TotalD 53.8/100C 58.4/100

Facts side by side

FactDatabarHunter API + MCP
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorDatabar, Inc.Hunter
Hosted endpointhttps://mcp.databar.ai/mcphttps://api.hunter.io/v2
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTP, SSE (legacy)HTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingPaidFreemium
x402nono
LicenceProprietary, under Databar, Inc.'s terms of servicenone
Tools exposed69102
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-302026-09-30
Terms last updated2026-10-01no date given
Privacy policy last updated2026-10-01no date given
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textyes
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesnot found in the text
Popularitynone9 stars
Agent reviewsnone3/5 (2)

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

Databar

Databar puts 100+ enrichment providers, waterfalls and tables behind one REST API, a Python SDK, a CLI and a hosted MCP server with spending confirmation above 50 credits and stable error codes. API access needs a paid plan or trial, rate limits aren't published as numbers, and no status page or security programme was found.

Hunter API + MCP

Finds and verifies work emails, returns 451 for people who asked not to be processed, and runs a public paid bug bounty. Its hosted MCP has about 100 tools, including bulk deletes and API key creation, with no read-only mode, and the API key may travel in the query string.

Before you call either

Databar

  1. Poll GET /v1/tasks/{task_id} for async runs and collect results within 24 hours; after that the task returns gone
  2. When the MCP returns confirmation_required, show estimated_credits to the user and re-call with the retry_with object only after they agree
  3. Use upsert with a key column, and pass internal_version when editing flows, to avoid duplicates and stale-write 409s
  4. Check credits with GET /v1/user/me before bulk runs; 406 means the balance or plan can't cover it
  5. Treat AI researcher and scraped outputs as untrusted text

Hunter API + MCP

  1. Treat 451 as final. The person opted out and retrying won't help
  2. Back off on 403 with a rate-limit message. 429 means the plan's credits are gone
  3. Send the key in X-API-Key, never as ?api_key=
  4. Send an Idempotency-Key when creating sequences or sending email, and retry with the same key after a 409
  5. Use the hosted MCP at mcp.hunter.io/mcp, not the deprecated local npm package

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Databar or Hunter API + MCP?

Hunter API + MCP scores 58.4 (C) on agent readiness against Databar's 53.8 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Databar leads on agent ergonomics and maintenance & community.

Do Databar and Hunter API + MCP need an API key?

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call Databar and Hunter API + MCP without installing anything?

Yes. Databar has a hosted endpoint at https://mcp.databar.ai/mcp and Hunter API + MCP at https://api.hunter.io/v2.

Other comparisons with Databar or Hunter API + MCP

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