Outscraper free tier: limits, costs and a useful first test
Check Outscraper’s free allowance by service, understand renewal and overage, and audit a small Maps export before paying for contacts or switching tools.
OwnerClueSources reviewed
Is Outscraper free?
Yes, within service-specific allowances. The Google Maps Scraper currently lists 500 businesses free, with separate limits for contacts, reviews and verification. It is a renewing usage allowance, not an unlimited scraper. The official pricing page says tiers reset every 30 days. The amount already used in your account matters as much as the limit on a new task.
If you want a small business list, test Outscraper itself first. If you already have a good export and need supported owner or founder information, consider a separate website-research step. Switching tools is unnecessary when the original product already completes your task.
Checked October 3, 2026. This guide uses public documentation and OwnerClue’s current workflow descriptions; it does not claim a hands-on Outscraper benchmark. OwnerClue publishes this article and is discussed below for a specific complementary job.
For larger-job budgeting and changes between price bands, use the Outscraper pricing guide and calculator. For choosing a replacement by workflow, use the Outscraper alternatives guide. This page focuses on the free allowance and a bounded first test.
Looking for outscraper.com? Use these official links
For the brand navigation query “outscraper com,” the direct destination is Outscraper’s official website. Use its account sign-up, service pricing or API documentation for the corresponding task. OwnerClue is a separate product. There is no need to read a comparison just to open an Outscraper account.
Free allowances by service
These are the services most relevant to a local-business research workflow, not the complete Outscraper catalog. Prices are in USD. “Next rate” means the published rate for usage above the free allowance within the indicated band; it is not a monthly subscription price. Each service link opens the relevant official product page.
| Service | Published free allowance | Next rate per 1,000 units | Later rate per 1,000 units |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Maps Scraper | 500 businesses/places | $3 for records 501–100,000 | $1 after 100,000 |
| Maps Reviews Scraper | 500 reviews | $3 for reviews 501–100,000 | $1 after 100,000 |
| Emails & Contacts Scraper | Heading says 500 domains; bullet says 500 contacts | $3 per 1,000 domains from 501–100,000 | $1 after 100,000 domains |
| Email Verifier | 25 emails | $3 for emails 26–100,000 | $1 after 100,000 |
| Phone Number Lookup | 25 numbers | $5 for numbers 26–50,000 | $3 after 50,000 |
| Maps Photos Scraper | 500 images | $2 through 50,000 images | $1 after 50,000 |
| Google Search Scraper | 10 searches/pages | $5 for searches 11–100,000 | $3 after 100,000 |
| Universal AI Scraper | 5 pages | $9 for pages 6–5,000 | $7 after 5,000 |
| Lead Scraper | 500 leads/businesses | $6 for records 501–100,000 | $2 after 100,000 |
Two ambiguities deserve attention. The contacts page prices domains and says metered billing concerns domains with found contacts, while its free-tier bullet uses the word contacts. Do not interpret this as a promise of exactly 500 found email addresses or assume every failed domain is charged. Confirm the task’s billing unit and contact-success rule in the estimate or with support. Also, the official pricing explainer mentions 25 Google Search queries in its prose, whereas the current service pricing card lists 10. This table follows the current card and the main rate page, not the inconsistent example.
The contacts row refers to the linked Emails & Contacts Scraper product. Keep that product name with your estimate instead of assuming every contact endpoint shares its unit; the pricing guide discusses the endpoint distinction and how to enter prior usage.
Five hundred places do not include five hundred verified inboxes. One domain may publish multiple emails, none, or a general mailbox. Reviews count as reviews; asking for 50 reviews from each of 20 businesses could produce 1,000 review units. A Lead Scraper job is also a distinct service from a basic Maps job. Check which product you selected before applying a rate.
Renewal, card requirements and what happens after the limit
The allowance renews on a billing cycle. The rate page describes a new period starting when a task runs without an active period, with automatic completion after one month. Check your account’s actual period dates instead of assuming a reset on the first calendar day. A fresh task does not itself create a fresh free allowance. Official billing explanation.
An official homepage variant advertises a free start without a credit card. Its generic monthly-credit wording is less precise than the individual service cards. We have not verified every account, country or service sign-up path. For paid use, the rate page describes prepaid balance and a postpaid card option; check the payment requirements presented in your account.
Do not treat a small prepaid balance as an automatic spending cap. Outscraper’s FAQ says a task can finish even when usage exceeds that balance, with the remainder invoiced. Set extraction limits, inspect the estimate and account usage, and enable only the services needed for the test. The exact estimate may change with returned results.
A six-step test that answers more than “does it export?”
1. Define the decision before choosing a city
Pick one category and one compact location. For example, use a roofing category in a single suburb rather than several cities and loosely related trades. Decide what would make a row usable: a matching operating business plus a website for research, or a matching business plus a public phone for calling. A row can be useful without an email; a row with an email can be irrelevant.
Write down the input, run date, required fields and rejection criteria. This makes a second test comparable and keeps impressive row counts from replacing the question you wanted answered.
2. Start with a bounded Maps task
Inspect remaining Maps allowance first. Use one query with a small per-query limit and, where available, a total-places limit. Twenty to fifty records is a reasonable suggested audit size, not an Outscraper minimum or measured quality threshold. Inspect the generated query preview before confirming. Keep contact enrichment, reviews, photos and phone lookup off until you know which extra fields are necessary.
More category/location combinations can multiply results. A per-query limit of 40 with two categories and three locations allows up to 240 places before an applicable total limit. This is planning arithmetic, not a promise of coverage or delivery.
3. Review the estimate as a list of services
Check the selected product, each enabled enrichment, intended unit count and available free usage. Save the task ID and estimate. If the interface does not clearly explain whether a contact job is billed per domain with contacts or another unit, resolve that before a large run. Free Maps headroom does not imply free verification headroom.
4. Export the raw file and preserve identifiers
Keep the original CSV before editing it. Retain place_id or google_id when returned, the website, location and business status. Import phone and identifier columns as text so a spreadsheet does not strip leading characters or reformat them. Store your task ID and run date in separate audit columns. These added columns belong to your working sheet; they are not promised native export fields.
5. Audit the matching businesses before buying enrichment
Open a small sample of listings and websites. Check category, location, trading status, website association and contact source. Count unique matching businesses separately from rows with websites, rows with public emails and rows with a supported named decision-maker. Do not treat a Maps owner-profile field as proof that the business website identifies a current legal owner. Record a blank when the evidence is absent.
6. Enrich only the rows that need it
Deduplicate the qualifying website list before a separate contact task. Validate only the email addresses you intend to use, keeping verifier outcomes apart from business matching. Compare account usage before and after each step. Download the finished results rather than starting the same collection again because you lost the file. Your next purchase should solve a demonstrated missing field or volume constraint.
Duplicates, reruns and missing fields
Outscraper’s FAQ documents duplicate removal inside one task and suggests place identifiers for spreadsheet cleanup. It does not establish a lifetime cross-task billing exemption. Treat a rerun as a new usage event unless the account or support confirms otherwise. Deleting duplicated rows after export improves your list; it does not establish an invoice refund. Duplicate-handling documentation.
Use place IDs for location-level deduplication when available. Use normalized domains for website research. Keep those keys separate: several franchise locations can share a domain and still be distinct businesses. Conversely, “https://example.com/contact” and “https://example.com/” usually refer to one website for your research queue. Review ambiguous matches rather than merging merely similar names.
Missing data needs a reason. No listed website means website-based contact research lacks its starting point. A readable website may publish only a generic mailbox or no contacts. A role may be historical, or a source may not support ownership. A discovered address is not automatically a deliverability result. Keep the record and its missing-field status so the test measures what the workflow actually produced.
A CSV audit sheet you can use
Download the synthetic Outscraper free-tier audit CSV. It contains invented examples on reserved example domains, including a duplicate, a blank email, a review row and an off-target business. It demonstrates your audit structure, not real Outscraper or OwnerClue output.
| Audit column | Why keep it? |
|---|---|
| task_id, run_date | Connect the working row to the run and usage record |
| place_id, normalized_domain | Separate business-location deduplication from website deduplication |
| target_match, duplicate_of | Preserve rejection and repeated-row decisions |
| public_email, email_source_url | Record the published contact and where it appeared |
| email_verification_status | Keep “not checked” distinct from a verifier result |
| person_name, published_role, person_source_url | Retain the actual role and its supporting page |
| usable_for, review_note | State which job the row supports and what remains uncertain |
Keep rejected rows in the audit file even when you omit them from a CRM import. A shared-domain franchise may be usable for location research but require one central contact record. A public info@ address can support company-level outreach without supporting a claim that you found an owner’s email. Those are different successful outcomes.
Worked budget: remaining allowance changes the answer
This is an illustration, not a quote or test result. Assume a fresh period, a basic Maps task returning 750 billable places before its allowance, and a contacts task returning 620 billable domain units before its allowance. Assume the account confirms the domain unit and all the selected domain units meet its contact-success billing condition.
| Step | Arithmetic at the published next rate | Illustrative charge |
|---|---|---|
| Maps | (750 − 500) × $3 / 1,000 | $0.75 |
| Contacts | (620 − 500) × $3 / 1,000 | $0.36 |
| Verification, if 120 addresses are checked | (120 − 25) × $3 / 1,000 | $0.285 before rounding |
Maps plus contacts totals $1.11 before other charges, applicable taxes or invoice rounding. Adding the illustrative verification step produces $1.395 before rounding. The rate inputs come from the linked official product cards above. No assumption of identical record, domain and email counts is required.
If only 90 rows meet your chosen contact and targeting criteria, the first two steps cost approximately $0.0123 per usable row. The 90 is an invented denominator for this example, not a reported yield. Add labor separately. If the Maps allowance was already fully used, the same 750-place task would instead be $2.25 at the stated next rate; do not subtract another 500 for each task.
Use the full pricing calculator to model your service mix, prior usage and larger-volume bands. Keep the same accepted-business definition when comparing that estimate with another research workflow.
Calculate cost per accepted record
Enter your costs and acceptance results. Free data can still require review time. A billable record and an accepted contact are different denominators. This calculator runs locally and does not send or save your inputs.
Complete all five inputs to see results. Enter 0 for a cost that does not apply.
Formula: (fees + hours × hourly labor cost) ÷ accepted records. Example numbers are illustrative, not vendor quotes or test results. Cost per accepted record is undefined when no record passes.
Keep Outscraper, or add OwnerClue for website evidence?
Keep Outscraper when its Maps exports, review extraction, photo extraction or documented APIs already fit your work. A small recurring export may stay within its service allowances. OwnerClue does not claim to reproduce Outscraper’s broad scraping catalog, reviews or photos. A lower-looking credit count cannot establish that switching is cheaper for your particular task.
Consider OwnerClue as a supplement when you have a qualified website list and need published owner or founder records with a supporting quote, source URL and capture time. Current domain enrichment inspects up to five reachable public HTML pages per website. Automated owner fields require an explicit owner or founder relationship; a manager or president title alone does not qualify. It does not guarantee an owner, a person-linked email or JavaScript-only content extraction. A founder role is not automatic proof of current legal ownership.
Prepare bare domains from your existing CSV and remove repeated domains before uploading. The current input accepts up to 100 rows and a 100 KB CSV per batch; website paths are not accepted by the domain endpoint. Within a batch, normalized duplicates reuse the first result. Successful readable enrichment costs one credit per unique domain even if no email is found; failed and needs-review rows release their reservation. Review full evidence before making a smaller CRM export. Input and billing rules.
OwnerClue offers 20 credits once, valid for 14 days, without a card. This is a trial, not a renewing free tier. Maps search, separate domain research and optional phone-line lookup share that balance; a successfully completed optional current phone lookup costs five credits. Review the paid plans, purchase availability, billing period and amount on current pricing before subscribing for continued use. We make no verified-contact yield or product accuracy promise. Public-email discovery does not include deliverability verification.
Review the evidence fields, then try a small domain batch if this is the gap your existing export revealed. With an untouched 20-credit trial balance, start with at most 20 domains rather than the 100-row batch maximum. Keep the original place IDs and map the normalized domain back to every relevant location. If you need to replace the discovery step as well, use the workflow comparison and broader alternatives guide.
Frequently asked questions
Is Outscraper’s free tier a one-time trial?
The public rate page describes renewing allowances and a 30-day reset. It is different from OwnerClue’s one-time 14-day credit trial. Confirm the actual active period and remaining usage in your Outscraper account before starting.
Can I export 500 businesses with 500 verified emails for free?
That outcome is not promised. Maps places, contacts and email verification have separate units and allowances. Email Verifier’s published free allowance is 25 addresses. Website availability and published contacts can reduce the number of email-bearing rows independently of your Maps volume.
Does every email in the contacts export belong to an owner?
No ownership guarantee follows from a contact field. A general mailbox, an apparently personal address and a person-linked email need different evidence. Check the website’s published role and the contact’s source; leave person association unresolved when the page does not establish it.
Does an empty email field mean I owe nothing?
Not automatically. A Maps place can still count as an extracted business without an email. The contacts product’s wording refers to domains with found contacts, which may include phones or social profiles; its free-tier unit wording is inconsistent. Check that service’s actual billing outcome rather than treating email presence as the sole invoice rule.
Can I stop using it without buying a monthly plan?
Core scraper pricing is usage-based rather than a mandatory monthly subscription. Stop launching tasks you do not need and review any usage already incurred. Completing a free test does not establish that prior paid usage has been cancelled or refunded.
Is OwnerClue a free replacement for every Outscraper service?
No. Its limited trial can test local-business or domain-research workflows. It does not offer an equivalent unlimited scraper or a renewing 500-record allowance. Use the existing Outscraper comparison for a broader workflow decision and credits documentation for OwnerClue’s unit rules.
What should I do when official pages disagree?
Prefer the current selected service’s estimate and account usage record, and ask Outscraper support when a material unit or condition remains unclear. The public cards are a useful planning reference, not a substitute for the actual task settings and bill. Preserve the estimate, task ID and service names so a question can be resolved precisely.