PhantomBuster review: what it automates, what it costs and who it suits
PhantomBuster runs ready-made automations in the cloud that pull lead data from LinkedIn and other platforms, enrich it and send LinkedIn outreach from your own account. Here is how the parts fit together, what each plan buys and who gets the most from it, checked on its own site and help center.
On this page 10 sections
Quick answer: PhantomBuster is a cloud platform of ready-made automations, called Phantoms, that pull and enrich lead data from more than 15 platforms and run LinkedIn outreach through your own account. Start costs $69 a month or $56 a month billed annually; Grow is $159 or $128 and Scale $439 or $352. It fits people who like to build their own lead lists and data flows and teams that want one plan shared by everyone.
PhantomBuster is easy to misread from the outside. It is less a single outreach tool than a box of parts: extractors, enrichers, AI writers and senders that you run one at a time or chain together. This review explains the parts, what each plan buys and which buyer it serves best. We make FOUND, a different kind of tool, so the disclosure comes first.
What PhantomBuster is
PhantomBuster is a no-code platform that runs automations on its own servers. A Phantom does one job, such as exporting a LinkedIn search, scraping profiles, finding email addresses or sending connection requests. A Workflow chains several Phantoms into one process, for example collecting the people who engaged with a post, enriching them and inviting them to connect. Once launched, a Phantom keeps running with your browser closed.
It pulls from more than 15 platforms: LinkedIn and Sales Navigator, plus Google Maps, Instagram, X, Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, Slack and GitHub. It does not sell or resell data; you build lists from public information through your own accounts.
PhantomBuster at a glance
- Runs
- On PhantomBuster's servers, set up from Chrome or Firefox on a computer.
- Connects LinkedIn
- Through its browser extension, with your LinkedIn email and password (used once to sign in, not stored) or with a session cookie you copy.
- Finds people
- Searches, post likers and commenters, groups, events, company followers and the other platforms above.
- Outreach
- LinkedIn connection requests with up to three follow-ups, plus Phantoms that like, follow, comment and message.
- AI
- Four AI Phantoms that write messages, score leads, draft comments and add custom fields.
- Price
- Start $69 a month or $56 billed annually; Grow $159 or $128; Scale $439 or $352.
Who PhantomBuster is built for
Its help center names sales and SDR teams, marketers, recruiters, founders and solo operators and lead generation agencies that keep each client in a separate workspace. Plans are not priced by user: every plan lists unlimited users (the help center sets the cap at 100 members per workspace), all sharing one pool of hours and credits. The pricing page also says where it does not fit: it is not built for buying ready-made lead lists or scraping private data.
In practice it rewards someone who thinks in data: where to pull people from, what to add to each record and where to send it next.
How PhantomBuster works
Setup
You sign up with an email address and password; single sign-on and Google sign-in are not supported and there is no mobile app. Accounts are connected from a desktop browser, most simply with the extension, which picks up your LinkedIn session. A teammate joins your workspace with their own login, while someone outside it, such as a client, can share a LinkedIn session through a magic link. One workspace can hold up to 100 LinkedIn accounts.
Finding people
Extraction Phantoms collect people from LinkedIn search results, Sales Navigator searches and lists, a post's likers and commenters, group members, event attendees and your company page's followers, as well as the other platforms. Profiles from compatible Phantoms land on the LinkedIn Leads page, which keeps one entry per profile URL. There you save filtered lead lists, such as job titles containing "marketing" among second-degree connections and each list updates itself as new leads match.
Enrichment Phantoms add verified professional emails, job and company details and, in all, over 1,000 data points and Phantoms can be scheduled to run again on their own.
Sequences
Outreach runs through Workflows. The LinkedIn Outreach Workflow takes a saved lead list, a Google Sheet, a CSV, another Phantom's results or a HubSpot list, sends each person a connection request with an optional note, then up to three follow-ups, each set 0 to 15 days after the invitation is accepted. A follow-up goes only to people who accepted and have not replied. Other Workflows start from a search, a post's engagers, your company page's followers or a group, then reach out the same way.
You set a daily invitation limit, 20 by default. Some Workflows let you pick the sending window, weekdays in working hours or at random through the week; others spread the day's invitations across working hours themselves. Each Workflow has a dashboard showing every lead as In queue, Invited, Accepted, Follow-up sent or Replied, with acceptance and reply graphs.
AI writing
Four AI Phantoms come with every plan. The AI LinkedIn Message Writer drafts a message for each lead from a prompt or template and the profile fields you choose; you test it on the first 10 leads, then insert its output into an outreach Workflow as a placeholder. The AI LinkedIn Profile Enricher scores leads against your ideal customer profile, the AI LinkedIn Post Responder drafts comments and the Advanced AI Enricher adds up to five custom fields, such as decision-maker status. They spend AI credits from your plan, with no separate AI account or key.
Replies and approvals
PhantomBuster sends through your own LinkedIn account, so replies arrive in your LinkedIn inbox. The Workflow dashboard marks who replied and when the outreach runs on a HubSpot list, each invitation, acceptance and reply is logged on the contact.
AI messages land in a results file or on your Leads page, before anything sends, so you can read them before you feed them to an outreach Workflow. The pages we checked describe no step that holds each outreach message for approval inside the Workflow itself. Through the MCP server, most AI tools ask you to confirm bigger actions, such as creating or deleting Phantoms.
Limits and safety
PhantomBuster separates two kinds of limit. Your plan sets slots, execution time and credits; LinkedIn sets its own caps and upgrading never raises those. On top, its help center publishes recommended volumes. For invitations: 50 to 80 a week on a new or rarely used account, 80 to 100 on a busy free account and up to 100 on a busy Premium or Sales Navigator Advanced account. For extraction: 1,000 search results a day per LinkedIn account or 2,500 on Sales Navigator.
LinkedIn counts all activity on an account together, so three Phantoms sending 25 invitations a week each look like 75. The advice is to warm a new account up over several weeks, avoid sudden spikes and pause when runs start failing. When LinkedIn's weekly invitation limit is reached, the Phantom stops to protect the account.
Integrations
The HubSpot integration works on every HubSpot plan: it enriches contacts with LinkedIn data, flags job changes, adds new connections and runs outreach to a HubSpot list. Salesforce, Pipedrive and Clay connect too, email finders such as Dropcontact plug into enrichment and Zapier, Make and n8n reach the rest. Every plan includes the API, which launches Phantoms, fetches results and manages leads, though Workflows cannot be launched through it. The MCP server lets Claude, ChatGPT and coding tools such as Cursor launch, schedule and stop Phantoms, download results and build lead lists.
PhantomBuster pricing
PhantomBuster prices by plan, not by user. These are US dollars a month as its pricing page showed them on 25 Oct 2026, on each side of its billing switch; annual billing is charged once a year and saves 20%.
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed annually | Each month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Start | $69 | $56 ($672 a year) | 5 slots, 20 hours of execution, 500 email credits, 10,000 AI credits, 1,000 URL finder credits |
| Grow | $159 | $128 ($1,536 a year) | 15 slots, 80 hours, 2,500 email credits, 30,000 AI credits, 10,000 URL finder credits, priority support |
| Scale | $439 | $352 ($4,224 a year) | 50 slots, 300 hours, 10,000 email credits, 90,000 AI credits, 20,000 URL finder credits, priority support |
- On every paid plan: unlimited users, every Phantom and Workflow, the API, the MCP server and unlimited CSV and JSON exports.
- Before paying: a 14-day trial with no card, holding 2 hours of execution, 5 slots, 1,000 AI credits and 50 email credits, with downloads capped at 10 rows. Afterwards the workspace moves to a plan with 30 minutes of execution a month and one slot.
- Running out: when execution time is used up, automations pause until the monthly reset or an upgrade; nothing is charged automatically.
Twelve months of Start come to $672 billed annually against $828 paid monthly (our arithmetic) and that one plan covers the whole team.
What PhantomBuster does well
- It reaches well beyond LinkedIn. More than 15 platforms, from Sales Navigator and Google Maps to Reddit, GitHub and Slack.
- The parts snap together. Single-job Phantoms, ready-made Workflows, schedules and chains that launch one Phantom after another.
- Lists maintain themselves. Saved lead lists refresh as new leads match their filters, with one record per person.
- One plan for the whole team. There is no per-user price and up to 100 members share a workspace.
- AI is in the box. AI credits on every plan cover writing, scoring and enrichment.
What to know before you buy
These are facts about how PhantomBuster is built, not faults. Each one helps you judge the fit.
- You assemble the flow. You choose the sources, filters, message templates and schedules; PhantomBuster runs them.
- Resources set the ceiling. Every Phantom on your dashboard takes a slot, a Workflow usually takes two or three and background checks use execution time outside the sending window.
- Plans do not lift LinkedIn's caps. Upgrading adds slots, hours and credits, not invitations.
- Outreach runs on LinkedIn. For email, it finds addresses with email credits and passes leads to the email tool you connect, such as lemlist.
- Setup needs a computer. Connecting accounts works from Chrome or Firefox on a desktop, not from a phone or tablet.
- Small downloads before you pay. Results files stop at 10 rows until you are on a paid plan.
Who should pick PhantomBuster
Pick PhantomBuster if you mainly want
- Lead data from many platforms, not only LinkedIn.
- Building blocks you can schedule and chain into your own flows.
- One plan shared by the whole team, with no per-user price.
- A CRM kept fresh with job changes and LinkedIn data, especially HubSpot.
- An API on every plan and an MCP server for Claude and ChatGPT.
Look further if you mainly want
- Leads chosen for you from what people do on LinkedIn, with each message written from that.
- LinkedIn and email steps in a single campaign.
- An installed app that runs LinkedIn from your own computer.
- Agency workspaces with white label.
PhantomBuster alternatives, by fit
Each line in the second box points to a different tool and the reviews linked below follow the same method as this one.
| If you mainly want | Look at |
|---|---|
| People found for you from buying signals and checked against your buyer, then one sequence of LinkedIn steps and emails from your own mailbox, with work emails found for you, every message held for approval, a dedicated residential IP for your account, replies answered and a campaign per signal, for $69 a month | FOUND (ours) |
| One cloud sequence that mixes LinkedIn and email steps for lists you build, with an email finder in every paid seat | Dripify |
| Desktop software for a wide range of LinkedIn actions, with your session kept on your own machine | Linked Helper |
| Cloud campaigns for agencies, with client reports and white label | Expandi |
FOUND, which we make, is an AI SDR for LinkedIn that rolls the extract, enrich, score, write and send steps of a PhantomBuster flow into one agent that also works out who to look for. You give it a description of your buyer or your website to draft one from. It then watches seven kinds of buying signal, up to 15 signals per agent, among them posts about the problem you solve, engagement with a competitor's posts, job moves, hiring and funding and screens every person twice against your buyer, headline first and full profile second. Each lead explains why it is there; FOUND finds its verified work email and the invitation note (on a Premium account), the messages and the emails are built from that reason, in one sequence from your own LinkedIn and mailbox. Sending starts at 35 invitations a week, review mode keeps every message waiting for your yes and replies land in one inbox where an agent can answer them. Ask turns one sentence into up to 50 companies, with the right person at each and their email. FOUND also works from Claude, ChatGPT or any MCP client, with webhooks, a Slack alert on each reply and CSV export. Two agents each run their own signals and campaign, for $69 a month with one LinkedIn account, one mailbox and 100 credits; a teammate is $59 a month: see pricing. For most teams, from a founder selling alone to a full sales team, who want the outcome rather than the parts, that makes it the stronger pick; PhantomBuster stays the better fit for data from many platforms and flows you design yourself.
Questions
What is PhantomBuster used for?
Building lead lists and running prospecting automations. Phantoms extract people from LinkedIn, Sales Navigator and other platforms, more than 15 in all, enrich them with emails and profile data, score or write to them with AI and send LinkedIn invitations and follow-ups from your account.
How much does PhantomBuster cost?
Start is $69 a month or $56 a month billed annually ($672 a year). Grow is $159 or $128 billed annually and Scale is $439 or $352. Every plan allows unlimited users and the 14-day trial needs no card.
Does PhantomBuster keep running when my browser is closed?
Yes. It runs in the cloud, so a launched Phantom or Workflow keeps going after you close the browser.
How does PhantomBuster protect a LinkedIn account?
Its outreach Workflows apply preset timing and a daily invitation limit, 20 by default and its help center publishes recommended weekly volumes by account type. It also advises warming up new accounts and adding up every Phantom that runs on one account, because LinkedIn counts their combined activity.
Does PhantomBuster work with Claude or ChatGPT?
Yes, through its MCP server. Once connected, Claude, ChatGPT or another MCP client can launch, schedule and stop Phantoms, download results and search and update your leads, within one workspace at a time.
How we checked
We read PhantomBuster's home, pricing and product pages and the help center articles below on 25 Oct 2026, switching the pricing page between monthly and annual billing. Prices are in US dollars as shown. We did not run campaigns, so this review claims no acceptance or reply rate. For FOUND we used our own site and product. If something has changed, write to hello@foundtofind.com and we will fix it and move the date at the top.
- PhantomBuster: phantombuster.com, pricing, outbound workflows, lead prioritization, lead sourcing, integrations
- Basics: what it automates, what each plan includes, the first 14 days, slots and execution time
- Accounts and leads: connecting LinkedIn, several accounts, teammates, lead lists
- Outreach and AI: Workflows, LinkedIn Outreach, outreach reporting, AI Message Writer, AI Phantoms
- Limits: rate limits, account safety, plan and platform limits
- Integrations: HubSpot, the API, the MCP server