Outscraper or AutoLeads: pay-as-you-go or subscription?
Two opposite pricing philosophies for the same job: turning Google Maps and the open web into qualified leads. The per-row price lies. Here is the real cost per usable lead, and when each one wins.
We use Outscraper on side projects. Most recent export: several thousand Google Maps rows pulled overnight, delivered cleanly, for a few dozen dollars. On that job, no complaints. The real question starts after the export: who cleans, who enriches, who writes the emails. That is exactly the dividing line between Outscraper and AutoLeads, and the subject of this comparison.
The per-row price is misleading. A raw row at $0.014 can end up costing you several euros once it is cleaned, scored and turned into an email. This comparison does not stop at landing-page rates: it gives you the math for the real cost per usable lead, so you can decide before you even create an account anywhere.
- Two models, two buyers. Outscraper sells raw pay-as-you-go scraping (~$14 / 1,000 enriched). AutoLeads sells scored, ready-to-send leads on a French monthly subscription.
- The per-row price lies. The real number is the cost per usable lead, cleaning time included. The calculator below runs it for your case.
- Freshness vs re-audit. Outscraper is fresh on demand but frozen after. AutoLeads re-audits its batches every month.
- The real tradeoff: raw flexibility (you have the technical hands) versus pre-optimized FR ops (you want it to arrive ready). Decide that first.
Two pricing philosophies, not two products
Outscraper's philosophy is the one shared by most American data tools: you only pay for what you extract. The free tier gives 500 records per month, then raw Google Maps scraping starts around $3 for 1,000 records, and climbs to around $14 per 1,000 as soon as you turn on email and phone enrichment. No commitment, no monthly floor, you load credits and you burn them. Developers love this model because it matches their actual usage.
AutoLeads, which we launched this year, starts from the opposite assumption: most operators don't want to think about the price per record, they want a monthly budget, a predictable batch on Monday morning and enrichment already included. Signing up gives you 1 free week, no credit card required, then the plans scale with usage: Starter €249/month, Growth €499/month and Scale €899/month (with white label). The 4 plugins (website quality score, multi-source ratings, paid ads detection, outbound mailing) are included, not billed as extras.
Neither model is objectively better. They serve two different buyers. The rest of this article is just about figuring out which one you are, before you sign up anywhere.
The real cost: beyond the per-row price
A raw enriched row costs ~$0.014 on a pay-as-you-go scraper. But a row is not a lead. You have to dedupe it, drop the closed and off-target ones, check the site, decide whether it is worth an email, then write that email. That time has a price, and it often dwarfs the cost of the data.
A row costs $0.014. A lead ready to contact costs someone's time. That time is what you buy, or don't.
Run the math on your own case with this calculator. It compares the cost per usable lead of both models, labor time included. Fill in five fields and you have your answer before creating a single account.
COST PER USABLE ENRICHED LEAD
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Inputs (fill in with your own numbers):
A = enriched leads you need per month
B = price paid for 1,000 enriched rows (e.g. ~$14 on a pay-as-you-go scraper)
C = minutes of cleaning + scoring + copywriting per lead (by hand)
D = loaded hourly rate of whoever does that work (e.g. €30/h)
E = share of raw rows thrown away (dupes, closed, off-target), e.g. 0.30 = 30%
PAY-AS-YOU-GO (raw scraper)
Data cost = (A / (1 - E)) x (B / 1000)
Labor cost = A x (C / 60) x D
Monthly cost = Data cost + Labor cost
Cost per lead = Monthly cost / A
SUBSCRIPTION (enrichment included)
Monthly cost = price of the tier that covers A leads/month
Cost per lead = Monthly cost / A
(C ≈ 0: scoring, audit and opener already done)
DECISION RULE
Compare "Cost per lead" on both lines.
Raw wins when A is low AND C is low (you have the plumbing).
Subscription wins as soon as C climbs (you pay someone to clean).Data freshness: on demand vs re-audited
Nobody ever talks about this in scraping comparisons, and yet it is decisive. The two models handle freshness very differently.
The lesson: if you work your leads within days of the export, Outscraper's on-demand freshness is unbeatable. If your cycle stretches over weeks and intent signals (a company that starts paying for ads, a site that changes) drive your approach, a re-audited batch ages better than a frozen scrape.
Detailed comparison
The real tradeoff: raw flexibility vs pre-optimized FR ops
Strip everything else away and one choice remains. Outscraper sells you raw flexibility: you get the raw material and do whatever you want with it, with your own tools, your own rules. AutoLeads sells you pre-optimized French operations: the scoring, the templates, the Instantly push, all already tuned for a Lyon plumber or a Nantes dental practice.
This is not cheap versus cheap. It is control versus time. You pay either with your hours (raw) or with your budget (subscription). Decide that first, the rest follows.
When to choose Outscraper
Seriously. There are real cases where Outscraper is better than us, and we won't pretend otherwise.
8,000 records one single time, for a market study or a one-off campaign: paying $120 in credits and never coming back beats a monthly subscription you'll forget to cancel.
Mature, well-documented public API, async jobs, webhooks, Zapier. If you have data engineers and want raw data inside your own pipeline, that maturity is hard to beat.
Some buyers can't justify a recurring line item, even at €20 per month. Credits that sit in an account without expiring are the right format.
Worldwide Google Maps coverage, no FR bias. If your target is in the US, the UK or APAC, you don't need a French tool.
If you have your own enrichment, scoring and copywriting stack, a bundled subscription makes you pay for things you won't use. Buy the raw records and do the rest yourself.
When to choose AutoLeads
The cases where the subscription model actually pays off:
25, 100 or 500 fresh, usable leads every month, every single month. With Outscraper you rebuild that pipeline every cycle; with AutoLeads it arrives on Monday by default.
The 4 plugins (quality score, ratings, ads detection, mailing) would each be a separate tool elsewhere. Here they are included in the plan, with no subscriptions to stack.
Scoring, copywriting templates, the Instantly push, support: everything is built for French operators. You don't pay a translation tax.
Outscraper's enrichment can cost 4 to 5 times the raw scrape. With AutoLeads the displayed price is the price paid: enrichment is in the plan, not a surcharge multiplier.
The website quality score and paid ads detection give your cold email a factual first sentence, recomputed at every batch. Outscraper doesn't ship those fields.
For the longer view on what bundled enrichment brings, the comparison with the other major European competitor is here: AutoLeads vs Scrap.io in 2026.
How to decide, before creating an account
You have the calculator and the tradeoff. Settle it now, without signing up anywhere. One simple rule:
- If your usage is under 1,500 records per year, irregular, and you have the plumbing to clean it (C near 0 in the calculator), buy Outscraper credits.
- If your usage follows a recurring monthly pattern and the calculator shows labor cost weighing in, lean toward AutoLeads Starter or Growth.
- If you pull thousands of enriched rows every month and your team knows how to use them, do the math: Outscraper wins on volume, no argument. The Scale tier at €899/month serves a different need: leads that are scored, audited, re-audited and ready to send, with white label for agencies.
Once decided, get started this week
Pull 500 records and confirm you really have the internal plumbing to use them, as your calculation assumed.
Sign up and use your free week, no credit card required, to validate the quality of the leads your math pointed you to.
Launch a sub-campaign with the agency configuration (scoring + ratings + ads detection).
Filter out scores under 70, write your first 10 emails and send them.
If you want us to look at your case together, grab a slot at /demo. If Outscraper credits are the better answer, we'll tell you.
Run a search on your own niche with your free week, no card required. Worst case, you lose ten minutes.
To see what subscription-driven outbound looks like at agency scale, read how web agencies generate 50 qualified leads per month.
Conclusion
Outscraper and AutoLeads aren't really fighting on the same axis. Outscraper sells flexibility and raw data, at the lowest per-row price on the market, fresh on demand; AutoLeads sells predictability and fewer but deeper leads, enriched, re-audited and outreach-ready on a French market. The per-row price settles nothing: it is the cost per usable lead, time included, that decides. Run the calculator, pick your flexibility-versus-ready-ops tradeoff, and only then create the account. Not the other way around.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Outscraper cost for 1,000 leads?
Around $3 for 1,000 raw Google Maps records, and around $14 for 1,000 records with enriched emails and phone numbers, paid in prepaid credits with no subscription. Note: this price does not count the cleaning, scoring and copywriting time, which is often the real cost driver.
What does AutoLeads' free week get you versus Outscraper?
Enriched, ready-to-use leads: website quality score, multi-source ratings, ads detection and an opener ready for Instantly. Signing up gives you 1 free week, no credit card required, while Outscraper's free tier only hands you raw records to clean up.
Is Outscraper cheaper than AutoLeads?
Per row, yes, by a wide margin: around 40 times cheaper on raw data. But the cost per usable lead depends on how much time you spend cleaning and enriching each row. The calculator below runs the math for your exact case.
Is the data as fresh on one side as the other?
Outscraper scrapes on demand: your data is fresh the second you launch the export, but frozen afterward. AutoLeads ships monthly re-audited batches: less instant, but the scores and signals are recomputed every cycle instead of frozen at scrape time.
Does Outscraper have a free tier?
Yes, 500 records per month for life. AutoLeads, for its part, gives you 1 free week at signup, no credit card required.