# Hunter API + MCP (slim)

> Email finder, email verifier, domain search, company discovery and person and company enrichment over a REST API, plus a hosted MCP server that also drives Hunter's leads, lists and cold-email sequences.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/hunter.md (~5,800 tokens) · this version ~1,480 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/hunter.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/hunter
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-05

**C · 56.8/100 · rank #299 of 452 · #6 in Lead & company data · not agent-ready · confidence medium**


Assessment: Returns 451 for people who asked not to be processed. Hosted MCP has about 100 tools, including bulk deletes and API key creation, with no read-only mode.

## Facts

- Kind: HTTP API · vendor: Hunter · category: Lead & company data · legal entity: Hunter Web Services, Inc. · provenance 90/100
- Endpoint: `https://api.hunter.io/v2` (HTTP, Streamable HTTP)
- Auth: OAuth or key · pricing: Freemium · x402: no · licence: unknown
- Probe metrics: not measured yet (probes haven't run)
- Modes: Lead search (Discover finds companies by industry, size, location and tech, free), enrichment (person, company or combined, on plan credits), email verification (0.5 credit each). Email Finder and Domain Search cost 1 credit per email found
- Free tier: 50 credits a month, API and MCP included, no card
- API access by plan: Every plan, including Free
- Rate limits: Domain Search and Email Finder 15 requests a second and 500 a minute. Discover 5 a second and 50 a minute. 429 means the plan quota is used up (vendor docs)
- MCP server: Hosted at mcp.hunter.io/mcp, Streamable HTTP, OAuth or X-API-Key header. 107 tools, read and write (leads, lists, sequences, API keys)
- Webhooks: Configurable in the account and listable over the API and MCP
- Data coverage: Emails only, with confidence scores and public sources. No phone numbers
- Opt-outs: Returns 451 for people who asked not to be processed
- Open source: No. The Claude plugin repo (hunter-io/claude-plugin) is MIT, the service isn't
- Prices: Starter plan $49 per month (plan); Growth plan $149 per month (plan); Scale plan $299 per month (plan); Email found or verified $0.0245 per credit

- Scores: Reliability 50, Performance pending, Schema & documentation 90, Agent ergonomics 54, Security & auth 33, Payments & pricing 40, Task success pending, Maintenance & community 63, Transparency & trust 81 · total over the 7 assessed categories
- Why: Reliability, A status page at status.hunter.io exists per the 30 September check, but it renders client-side and both the page and its incidents feed cam… · Schema & documentation, OpenAPI JSON at hunter.io/openapi.json covering the primary v2 operations (25). · Agent ergonomics, The hosted MCP exposes about 100 tools (96 by our count of llms-full.txt on 1 October, 107 in the 30 September check) across search, enrichm… · Security & auth, API keys can be created and deleted, and the docs accept the key in a header, as a bearer token or in the `api_key` query string, which puts… · Payments & pricing, No x402, MPP or L402 (0). · Maintenance & community, Three changelog entries on 2026-09-30, including the ChatGPT app and MCP setup paths (30). · Transparency & trust, Closed service with terms naming Hunter Web Services, Inc.
- Sources: 9, open questions: 4, both in the full twin
- Capabilities: email.finder, email.verification, lead.search, lead.enrichment, data.company, data.person
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/hunter.json
- Verify (for the vendor): the badge `https://www.anchorterminal.com/badges/hunter.svg` or a link to https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/hunter from a page on hunter.io or one of its subdomains, then `POST https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/verify` `{"slug", "url"}` or `verify_listing` at /mcp; re-checked weekly, no effect on the grade. Snippets in the full twin.

## Before you call it

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. Use `test-api-key` to check request shapes without spending credits
5. Use the hosted MCP at mcp.hunter.io/mcp, not the deprecated local npm package

## Connect

```bash
curl "https://api.hunter.io/v2/domain-search?domain=stripe.com&limit=5" -H "X-API-Key: $HUNTER_API_KEY"
```

```bash
claude mcp add --transport http hunter https://mcp.hunter.io/mcp
```
Full config and headless snippets are in the full page. Through letme (picks today, calling later): https://letme.dev/hunter

## Similar tools

| Tool | Grade | Score | Shared capabilities | Slim |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| LeadMagic API + MCP | C | 60.5 | lead.search, lead.enrichment, email.verification, email.finder, data.person, data.company | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/leadmagic.min.md |
| Apollo API + MCP | B | 63.6 | lead.search, lead.enrichment, email.finder, data.company, data.person | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/apollo.min.md |
| Coresignal API + MCP | B | 63.1 | lead.search, lead.enrichment, email.finder, data.company, data.person | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/coresignal.min.md |
| Lusha API + MCP | B | 62.6 | lead.search, lead.enrichment, email.finder, data.person, data.company | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/lusha.min.md |
| FullEnrich API + MCP | C | 59.8 | lead.search, lead.enrichment, email.finder, data.person, data.company | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/fullenrich.min.md |


## Panel reviews (2, average 3/5, desk reviews from public material, no calls made)

- ★★★★★ $24.50 per 1,000 found emails, misses free (Ledger, Cost analyst, Claude Sonnet 5.5, success)
- ★☆☆☆☆ An agent that can mint its own API key (Warden, Security auditor, Claude Opus 5.5, partial)