# LinkedIn data API alternatives (2026)

## The main LinkedIn data options

Agents searching for LinkedIn data today mostly land on three names: Bright Data's LinkedIn MCP tools, Netrows, and Crustdata. Each ships a different shape of access.

**Bright Data** offers five URL-in, JSON-out LinkedIn tools (person profile, company profile, job listings, posts, people search), gated behind Pro mode, priced at $1.50 per 1,000 results pay-as-you-go, down to $1.00/1,000 on a $1,999/month plan (brightdata.com/pricing/mcp-server, docs.brightdata.com/ai/mcp-server/tools, as of 2026-07-11).

**Netrows** sells a credit system claiming 280+ endpoints across 55+ sources, LinkedIn among them. As of 2026-07-13 its pricing page publishes tiers starting at EUR 99/month for 10,000 credits with no free tier listed (netrows.com/pricing), and its technical reference is gated: netrows.com/docs asks for an API key before showing endpoint documentation. It does not appear in the official MCP Registry as of 2026-07-11: a search for "netrows" returns zero results (registry.modelcontextprotocol.io/v0/servers?search=netrows).

**Crustdata** claims a roughly 1-billion-person, 60-million-company dataset and ships an MCP integration for Claude, but publishes no dollar pricing: access runs on "credit-based usage tiers" behind a sales contact (crustdata.com/pricing).

Two more names surface in agent-focused searches. **ScrapeCreators** is a multi-platform scraping API (9+ social platforms) whose LinkedIn surface is six public-page endpoints with no people search and no work history (scrapecreators.com/linkedin-api); it ships the fullest agent-integration checklist in this list: an MCP server, llms.txt, and a Claude Code skill.

**LinkdAPI** is a LinkedIn-only enrichment engine advertising 50+ endpoints including jobs and Sales Navigator data, at volume prices several times below Veezee's; it publishes an llms.txt but no MCP server as of 2026-07-13, and getting a key requires a dashboard signup (linkdapi.com). Tool-by-tool detail: [/vs/scrapecreators](/vs/scrapecreators), [/vs/linkdapi](/vs/linkdapi).

## Proxycurl is dead; watch for stale advice

Proxycurl shut down in 2025 after a LinkedIn lawsuit. The founder confirmed the shutdown and says the successor product does not touch LinkedIn at all (nubela.co/blog, "What is Proxycurl API now in 2026? I'm the founder"). A tutorial that still points you at Proxycurl for LinkedIn data is out of date. Migrating an integration off it? Endpoint-by-endpoint map: [/migrate/proxycurl](/migrate/proxycurl).

## Where Veezee wins

Veezee is a 17-tool MCP/REST surface across LinkedIn, Reddit, and X (formerly Twitter). Three things in this field are Veezee-only:

**An agent can start with no human in the loop.** No signup, no card: the agent mints its own free key in one call and the data tools run under a free per-IP daily budget of 200 credits (about 6,000 credits a month), plus a one-time 10,000 credits grant when a human later claims that key with an email and confirms it by signing in.

Everything else here needs a human first: Bright Data gates its LinkedIn tools behind Pro mode on an account, Netrows demo-gates its plans, Crustdata sells through a sales contact, LinkdAPI and ScrapeCreators require a dashboard signup.

**Every call's cost is capped before it runs.** Every call has a published credit price, max_credits rejects any call whose quote exceeds your ceiling (nothing charged), failed keyed calls refund their credits automatically, and get_usage is free. The field publishes either volume rates (Bright Data, LinkdAPI) or a demo/sales gate instead of a price list (Netrows, Crustdata).

**LinkedIn depth an agent can type against.** linkedin_search_people takes typed filters (title, company by plain name, school) instead of hand-built search URLs, and linkedin_get_profile returns named sections including work history and education.

## Four questions to compare them

These separate the products faster than any feature list.

**Can your agent read the contract before anyone pays?** Veezee's docs, OpenAPI spec, field reference, and llms.txt are open, as are Bright Data's, Crustdata's, ScrapeCreators', and LinkdAPI's docs. Netrows gates its endpoint reference behind an API key (netrows.com/docs, 2026-07-13).

**Is the data fresh, and does it say so?** Every Veezee envelope carries data_as_of and the cache age it was served at, and a freshness parameter buys a live fetch, refunded automatically on cached fallback. Crustdata's own materials state profiles not already indexed enrich within 30-60 minutes and gate live real-time endpoints to enterprise plans (docs.crustdata.com); Bright Data's datasets refresh on collection schedules.

**Can it search where the conversation happens?** Veezee searches Reddit comments by keyword (reddit_search with type=comments) and X synchronously (x_search). Bright Data's Reddit comments product collects from post URLs over a days_back window rather than keyword-searching comments, and its X keyword discovery runs async (docs.brightdata.com/datasets/scrapers); ScrapeCreators documents no X tweet-search and no Reddit comment-search endpoint (docs.scrapecreators.com, 2026-07-13).

**What happens when a call fails?** On keyed accounts Veezee refunds failed calls automatically, and every call is priced before it runs: max_credits rejects an over-budget call with nothing charged. ScrapeCreators' terms make refunds discretionary, case by case (scrapecreators.com/terms).

## What practitioners say

We checked with our own tools on 2026-07-13: reddit_search calls (type=comments) and an x_search on each vendor's name, under the free per-IP budget, no signup, the same way any agent can.

Recurring themes in what came back: Bright Data is trusted on hard targets and named expensive by small callers; Crustdata shows up widely in sales-stack discussions, where several commenters report stale records; ScrapeCreators draws price-and-simplicity praise; LinkdAPI gets a few specific positive mentions; our searches found no organic discussion of Netrows.

Rerun any of these yourself: a Reddit comment search costs 6 credits per page, an X search 6 credits, and the free daily budget (200 credits per IP per day) covers more than thirty searches, no account needed.

## When to pick something else

Veezee is newer, with LinkedIn depth plus Reddit and X (formerly Twitter) on one contract. For job listings, platforms Veezee does not cover (TikTok, YouTube), or bulk datasets, Bright Data, ScrapeCreators, or Crustdata fit better; for the lowest volume price on raw LinkedIn endpoints, LinkdAPI advertises rates several times cheaper. Tool-by-tool detail: [/vs/bright-data](/vs/bright-data), [/vs/netrows](/vs/netrows), [/vs/crustdata](/vs/crustdata), [/vs/linkdapi](/vs/linkdapi), [/vs/scrapecreators](/vs/scrapecreators).