What Is PhantomBuster? LinkedIn Data Extraction by the Hour
By Joris van Huët · PhantomBuster's own site
The short answer: if you need lists of the people engaging on LinkedIn rather than a sequence that messages them, PhantomBuster's Start plan at $69 a month, or $56 billed annually, buys 20 hours of automation run time a month; the 14-day trial runs the same automations but exports only 10 rows (pricing page, checked on 26 October 2026). PhantomBuster is a cloud platform whose automations, called Phantoms, extract, enrich and act on data from LinkedIn, Sales Navigator and more than 15 other platforms, alone or chained into workflows.
Disclosure: I may earn a commission through some links on this site. It does not change what this page says.
What a plan buys:
- Hours, not leads. For example, the post commenters export runs at about 20 seconds per 10 comments, per its automation page, so 1,000 comments use 2,000 seconds; Start's 20 hours are 72,000 seconds, enough for 72,000 / 2,000 = 36 such runs.
- The tools it feeds. Results go to CSV, Google Sheets, HubSpot, Salesforce or Pipedrive, or through Zapier, Make and n8n, per the integrations page.
- The yield to measure. Rows are not leads; count how many survive your job-title and company filter.
What PhantomBuster does
Each Phantom does one job, such as exporting a post's commenters, scraping profiles or sending connection requests, and a workflow chains several. Plans differ in slots (Phantoms running at once), monthly execution time, and credits for email lookups and AI steps; everything runs in the cloud with the browser closed. An MCP server comes with every plan, the trial included, so Claude or ChatGPT can launch Phantoms, pull results and build filtered lead lists in one workspace, per the MCP documentation.
Who it suits
Growth and RevOps people who already have an outreach tool and a CRM and want fresher lists built from signals: engagement on a competitor's post, event attendance, a job change. A buyer who wants a database to search is in the wrong place; PhantomBuster does not sell one.
Two sets of rules decide how far you take it. Section 8.2 of LinkedIn's User Agreement bars software and crawlers that scrape profiles, and its prohibited software page puts scraping tools among those that risk an account; PhantomBuster's answer is that it works only through your own account and public data. The Dutch data protection authority's page on personal data in public sources says data being public is no licence to reprocess it, and that organisations collecting it automatically must show a legal basis and keep to data minimisation. PhantomBuster calls itself a processor, which leaves the basis with you.
Plans and prices
Checked on 26 October 2026 on the PhantomBuster pricing page, in USD:
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed annually, per month | Slots | Execution time a month | Email credits a month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trial (14 days) | Free | Free | 5 | 2 hours | 50 |
| Start | $69 | $56 | 5 | 20 hours | 500 |
| Grow | $159 | $128 | 15 | 80 hours | 2,500 |
| Scale | $439 | $352 | 50 | 300 hours | 10,000 |
Every plan includes unlimited users, per the same pricing page. The trial needs no card and caps exports at 10 rows, so a list built during the free days stays inside PhantomBuster until a plan is paid; you can judge the data, not take it.
Next to Apify, Apollo.io and Dripify
- Apify is a marketplace of more than 99,000 ready-made scrapers, called Actors, with a free plan that includes $5 of usage and paid plans from $19 a month plus usage, per its pricing page. It suits a team with a developer; PhantomBuster's LinkedIn workflows suit a team without one.
- Apollo.io sells access to its own contact database, with 900 credits a year on the free plan and paid seats from $49 a month billed annually, per its pricing page. Searching a database or capturing live engagement: that is the choice.
- Dripify runs the LinkedIn and email sequences a PhantomBuster list would feed, from $79 a seat a month, per its pricing page.
Getting started
Use the trial to judge quality: run one Phantom on a post you know well and read the ten rows it exports. How to use PhantomBuster turns the commenters on a lead-magnet post into a filtered list.
FAQ
Can I cancel and keep my data?
Yes: the plan runs to the end of the period, and the pricing FAQ says to export your data before the account closes.
What happens when execution time runs out?
Automations pause until the time resets or you upgrade, and no overage is charged, per the same FAQ.
When is the card charged?
At the start of each billing cycle; annual plans are charged once a year, per the same FAQ.