Because invalid addresses cost nothing, your effective cost per usable contact is the plan price divided by the credits you actually spend, not by the rows you looked at.
The list price per credit by source:
- Starter monthly: $99 for 5,000 credits, about $0.020 per contact.
- Pro monthly: $249 for 25,000 credits, about $0.010 per contact.
- Scale monthly: $449 for 100,000 credits, about $0.0045 per contact.
- Hyperscale monthly: $649 for 200,000 credits, about $0.0032 per contact.
- Annual billing lowers all of these by about 20 percent.
- Pay as you go: $0.035 per contact for 500 credits, $0.014 for 5,000, $0.008 for 25,000, $0.005 for 100,000.
Two adjustments make the number honest:
- Unused allowance counts. If you are on Pro and only spend 5,000 credits a month, your real cost per contact is about $0.050, not $0.005. Right-sizing the plan matters more than the headline rate.
- Phones are ten contacts. If a run includes phone numbers, add 10 credits for each number returned before dividing.
The comparison worth making against other vendors is cost per deliverable contact. A cheaper list that bounces at 20 percent is more expensive per landed email, and the bounce also costs you sender reputation, which no invoice shows.
If you are unsure whether your plan is the right size, look at three consecutive months of spend rather than the last one.