There will always be competition, no matter the industry. Customers have hundreds of solutions to choose from. You can’t wait around for them to find your business.
Our best bet to achieve sustainable and predictable revenue is creating solid lead generation strategies. We need the proper lead-generation tools to make the most of these strategies.
However, investing in the wrong lead finder tools gets costly. If you’re just starting or learning about lead generation, you’d want to try free lead finder tools instead.
You can do a lot with these free tools. Some are purely free; others follow a freemium model. Before we start, we need to learn the following:
- Limitations of free lead finders
- Best free lead finder tools
- Strategies for using free lead finders
- When to transition from free lead finders to paid tools
Limitations of Free Lead Finders
Free tools benefit small businesses that want to learn the basics of lead acquisition. But when it comes to scaling, free lead finders lack the following key features:
Limited Automation
Most free lead finders are browser extensions that scan a website and grab lead information. But you’d still need to go to a specific page to get the necessary data.
For example, LinkedIn scrapers can get all lead information when you visit a user’s page. It takes all the needed data, but you must find the right page before extracting.
Lack of Integration Capabilities
There are free tools with fantastic integration capabilities to significant CRMs. However, many of them don’t. Switching between apps might be a hassle if you already use an existing CRM.
Lead finders without CRM integrations aren’t deal breakers. You just have to decide if the time spent manually transferring lead data into CRMs is worth it.
No Bulk Features & Automated Qualification
Lead generation should be focused on quality and quantity. Bulk scraping, exporting, and lead qualification features help with both. When your lead finder tool has qualification features, SDRs can focus on nurturing prospects most likely to convert.
Inability to Validate
Validating data is crucial in every sales process. Before starting any outreach campaign, lead data needs to be verified or validated. Unfortunately, most free tools lack this feature.
Some have built-in validation features but are limited to the number of uses. Choose a lead finder with access to a database of pre-validated leads when possible.
Best Free Lead Finder Tools
Here are the best free lead finders we recommend whether you’re new to lead generation or want to try a different tool. Find what works for you, learn the ropes, and start scaling!
Instantly B2B Lead Finder
If you want access to a database of over 160 million verified leads, Instantly B2B Finder is the tool for you. Try it out for free today!
Users can access advanced search filters, use keywords to find leads that fit exact buyer personas, or even find prospects similar to previous clients.
After creating an email list, you can immediately run a cold outreach campaign with Instantly. You don’t need to pay for validation since each lead is validated.
And there’s no need to switch between a lead finder and a follow-up tool. Instantly has all the bases covered for all your outreach needs!
LeadFeeder
You can immediately qualify leads that visit your site based on their activity. Leadfeader offers users insight into prospects that visit your site and the content they interact with.
It shows you the leads with the highest buying intent that your SDRs can focus on. However, this strategy is more focused on inbound sales.
To make this tool more effective, focus on creating quality content on your website. Improve SEO, social media marketing efforts, and create awesome lead-capture pages.
If your business aligns more with inbound strategies, LeedFeeder might be for you. There’s a 14-day free trial version. The premium plan starts at around $150/mo.
Datanyze
Data-driven outreach paired with personalized emails wins your meetings. But data without context are just numbers on a screen. Datanyze helps you bring context to your lead data.
If you’re into B2B or SaaS, Datanyze gathers information on technologies prospects might use to solve pain points, create technographic analysis, and has an intuitive user interface.
All of this while being able to scrape lead data from Websites, LinkedIn, and even social media platforms. You can try it out for free for 90 days. But you’re limited to 10 credits each month.
Their paid plan starts at $29/mo. For 80 credits. For their Nyze Pro 2 plan, you get 160 monthly credits for $55.
UpLead
UpLead is another B2B Lead Finder that boasts high data accuracy. Much like Instantly, UpLead will only charge you for verified leads.
When you use their search parameters to find leads, UpLead verifies them in real-time and will only show verified leads. You also get to see both email and contact numbers.
Unfortunately, it’s not the most generous regarding free features and only gives five credits and a 7-day trial. But they make up for this with extensive lead enrichment features in their paid plans.
Their Essentials plan starts at $99/mo. The plan includes email and phone verification, 170 credits, and CRM integrations.
Octoparse
There are thousands of repositories online for businesses in industries like real estate, law, or finance. You can scrape these websites using free web scraper extensions to find leads.
The issue is having to go through each page to find the leads manually. Octoparse solves that for you. It can extract lead info from sites even with pagination.
However, it’s not the most intuitive tool out there. It’s a DIY lead scraper. You set your parameters and build your tool. Octoparse can get technical.
But if you take the time to learn it, it’s one of the best free options for finding qualified leads. Their free plan includes scraping from unlimited pages and 10k data rows per export.
Outscraper
Local businesses can be a gold mine if you know where to find them. The best part is these businesses can be found on Google Maps—Outscraper automates the “finding” part for you.
Outscraper is free for the first 500 places. You don’t need to upgrade to paid tiers for advanced filters and API integrations.
Their paid plans are also amongst the most affordable for local lead generation using Google Maps. For example, users can get 10,000 leads on Google Maps for $80.
With their automation features, your SDRs can focus on implementing sales-closing techniques, addressing objections, and nurturing.
Voila Norbert
Need a lead finder that can serve as an email sequencing software?—Voila Norbert has you covered. Norbert can find their email if you know a prospect’s first and last name and company.
For bulk lead finding, Voila Norbert still requires you to upload a CSV file that includes the first name, last name, and company/website of prospects. Unfortunately, that means you’d still need to scrape the names and companies of potential prospects.
Another issue you might face is Norbert's hallucinating email addresses. It can output emails based on your given information. But it won’t validate emails immediately. Instead, it will provide a percentage of how sure the email is correct.
You can start using Voila Norbert for free with 50 leads. You must pay a separate fee of $.003 per email lookup to validate emails. And, to unlock
Magical
Magical is excellent for businesses trying out email outreach campaigns for the first time. It can scrape leads automatically into a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet can conduct email campaigns and automatic follow-ups thanks to Magic's automated outreach features.
They also provide sales email templates if you’re unsure how to start an email campaign. All you need to do is add Magical as a browser extension, and it can begin to scrape profiles from sites like LinkedIn and Crunchbase.
Apollo
Most email marketers go to Apollo to find leads. They have one of the largest and most affordable lead databases for B2B and SaaS.
Apollo has dozens of useful features, all of which can be significant assets in every marketer's arsenal. However, many use Apollo solely for its vast database and low lead prices.
We suggest using Apollo to find leads and validation tools like Neverbounce to ensure maximum email deliverability.
But if you’ve already used Apollo and want to try something similar, here’s our list of recommended alternatives.
Clodura.ai
Among the issues marketers face is needing help knowing where to start when finding leads. Clodura helps you solve that issue by finding employees' emails within a company.
It's a tool that benefits people in SaaS as it can provide signals such as hiring areas, job changes, IPOs, product launches, and much more.
So, if you’re looking for a lead finder with an incredible display of technographic data and analytics, Clodura might be the tool for you.
Their free plan lets you download and find 25 emails a month. Clodura’s Starting plan costs $45/month but gives you access to 100 downloads and their dialer tools.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
LinkedIn is the best platform to find leads that fit your ideal customer profile. Naturally, the best tool to find leads on LinkedIn should be its own Sales Navigator.
Here, you can easily qualify leads and target those already showing interest in your products as you see the people who viewed your profile in the last year.
You also gain access to advanced lead-searching features and signals for leads that fit your ICP. And because it’s one of the most used lead finders, beginners can find thousands of tutorials on how to use the tool effectively in any sales campaign.
Zeroin
If you’re not a fan of Sales Navigator, Zeroin can be a great alternative. But the issue with most bulk LinkedIn scrapers is the platform slowly blocking them.
Thanks to its built-in timeouts replicating human action, you won’t get this issue from Zeroin. However, this also has a downside. Zeroin could take up to 24 hours to create a more prominent lead list.
The result is a clean and validated email list primed for outreach. Among the tools in this list, Zeroin has the most features built-in to their free plan.
Their free plan includes unlimited LinkedIn data exports, company phone numbers, emails, a built-in CRM, and even Sales Navigator support.
When Should You Start Paying for Lead Finder Tools?
Free tools can quickly help you scrape lead data from platforms like LinkedIn. The manual process can get time-consuming. An alternative would be hiring virtual assistants to do lead scraping for you.
But, a lack of enablement tools only hinders their efficiency. Overhead costs from paying VAs, training, and onboarding may cost more than monthly fees for most paid lead finder tools.
Many businesses start paying for lead finders after establishing a sales strategy. This is when advanced features of paid tools are crucial.
That doesn’t mean you can’t make a sales strategy with free tools. The issue is creating strategies around the limitations these free tools have.
Key Takeaways
Free lead finder tools are excellent for getting the ball rolling, especially for those just learning the ins and outs of lead generation.
Unfortunately, strictly “free” tools are restricted to manual lead scraping. You have to spend money to make it. Luckily, the following tools have great freemium features to get you started:
- Try Instantly B2B Finder to get pre-validated leads and a powerful outreach tool.
- Use LeadFeeder and Datanyze to gather in-depth lead information.
- Zeroin and UpLead can scrape both emails and contact numbers.
- Apollo has an extensive database of B2B leads that can be bought cheaply.
Lead finders are an investment that can bring your business incredible returns. Invest in lead finders that can validate, offer advanced search features, and streamline outreach.