What is Lusha? The Complete Guide to B2B Sales Intelligence

What is Lusha?

Lusha is a B2B sales intelligence platform that helps businesses find accurate contact information for potential customers and decision-makers. Founded in 2016 by Assaf Eisenstein and Yoni Tserruya, the platform has grown into one of the most widely-used prospecting tools in the industry, serving over 670,000 sales professionals and 223,000 organizations including companies like Google, Zendesk, and Yotpo.

At its core, Lusha functions as a sophisticated business contact database—think of it as a super-powered phone book specifically designed for B2B sales. The platform provides verified email addresses, direct phone numbers, and company information that sales teams need to reach the right people quickly.

But Lusha has evolved significantly from its origins as a simple Chrome extension. Today, it positions itself as an AI-driven prospecting tool that combines contact data with automated lead recommendations, intent signals, and even email sequence capabilities.

How Lusha Actually Works

Understanding Lusha's mechanics helps you determine if it's right for your workflow. The platform operates on a credit-based system—you purchase credits and spend them to reveal contact information from their database.

Here's what that looks like in practice:

• Email reveals: 1 credit per verified email address
• Phone reveals: 5-10 credits per direct dial or mobile number
• CRM exports: Additional credits may apply

Lusha gathers its data from multiple sources including public records, partner sources, and what they call "community signals"—data contributed by their user base through email signatures and business card information. The platform claims a 95% data accuracy benchmark through multi-source validation.

The most common way people use Lusha is through their Chrome extension. While browsing LinkedIn or company websites, you can click the extension to reveal contact details for specific prospects. This eliminates the tab-switching that makes manual prospecting so tedious.

Lusha's Key Features

Let's break down what you actually get with Lusha beyond basic contact lookups:

Prospecting Platform

The web-based prospecting platform lets you search and filter their database using criteria like job title, company size, industry, location, and technologies used. You can build targeted prospect lists directly within Lusha and export them to your CRM or as CSV files.

Chrome Extension

This is still Lusha's flagship feature. The extension overlays contact data while you browse LinkedIn, Gmail, or company websites. You can reveal emails and phone numbers without leaving your current workflow—a significant time-saver when prospecting at scale.

Intent Data and Signals

Higher-tier plans include buyer intent signals that help you identify companies actively researching solutions like yours. You can also receive job change alerts when prospects switch roles or companies—often an ideal time for outreach.

CRM Integrations

Lusha integrates with major CRM platforms including Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Zoho, and Microsoft Dynamics. This allows you to enrich existing records and push new contacts directly to your sales tools.

Data Enrichment

Upload CSV files to bulk-enrich your existing contact lists with verified emails, phone numbers, and company data. This is particularly useful for cleaning up databases that have degraded over time.

Lusha Pricing Breakdown

Lusha offers four main pricing tiers, though the credit system can make actual costs harder to predict:

Free Plan

You get up to 70 credits per month with access to basic prospecting features, the Chrome extension, and CRM integrations. At one credit per email, that's enough for light testing but not serious prospecting work.

Pro Plan

Starting at approximately $22.45 per user per month (billed annually), the Pro plan includes 3,000-7,200 credits annually depending on your configuration. You get list management, exporting capabilities, and basic team features. This tier works best for small teams and startups.

Premium Plan

At around $52.45 per user per month (billed annually), Premium doubles your credits and adds bulk show features, usage analytics, and enhanced filtering options. Growing teams typically land here.

Scale Plan

Enterprise pricing is fully custom, but expect to pay somewhere between $5,800 and $66,440 annually based on seats and usage. Scale unlocks intent signals, job change alerts, advanced API access, CSV enrichment with higher limits, and dedicated customer success support.

One thing to watch: credits don't roll over on monthly plans, and phone number reveals consume significantly more credits than email reveals. Heavy users can burn through credits faster than expected.

What Lusha Does Well

After reviewing user feedback and testing the platform, several strengths stand out:

Ease of Use: Lusha's interface is consistently praised as intuitive. The Chrome extension integrates seamlessly into LinkedIn workflows, and there's minimal learning curve for new users.

Data Quality: While no database is perfect, Lusha's accuracy rates are generally solid—especially for email addresses. Their community-sourced verification adds a layer of freshness that purely scraped databases lack.

Affordability: Compared to enterprise alternatives like ZoomInfo, Lusha offers a more accessible entry point. The free plan and lower Pro pricing make it viable for small businesses and solo professionals.

Fast Implementation: You can install the extension and start prospecting within minutes. No complex onboarding or IT involvement required.

Lusha's Limitations

No tool is perfect, and Lusha has documented shortcomings worth considering:

Credit Consumption: The credit model can get expensive quickly, especially if you need phone numbers (5-10 credits each). Teams prospecting at high volume may find costs escalating.

Advanced Features Locked to Higher Tiers: Intent signals, API access, and deep CRM enrichment require the Scale plan. If these matter to your workflow, budget accordingly.

Data Gaps: Some users report outdated or incorrect information, particularly for smaller companies or roles outside major metros. Always verify critical data before outreach.

Limited Outreach Capabilities: While Lusha has added email sequence features, it's still primarily a data tool. For robust multichannel campaigns, you'll need additional platforms like Reply.io or Smartlead.

Who Should Use Lusha?

Lusha fits best for specific use cases and team profiles:

• Sales development reps who prospect primarily on LinkedIn and need quick access to direct contact information
• Small to mid-sized sales teams who want accurate data without enterprise pricing
• Recruiters searching for candidate contact details beyond LinkedIn InMail
• Account executives who need to enrich existing CRM data before campaigns

If you're running high-volume prospecting with thousands of contacts monthly, the credit system may become a constraint. Similarly, if you need deep integration with complex sales workflows, you may outgrow Lusha's capabilities.

Building Your Complete B2B Prospecting Stack

Contact data is just one piece of effective prospecting. Before you even start looking up individual contacts, you need clarity on who you're targeting. That's where defining your ideal customer profile becomes critical.

Our free B2B Targeting Generator helps you develop AI-powered target market analysis before you spend credits on contact lookups. Understanding exactly which companies, industries, and buyer personas you should pursue prevents wasted effort on poor-fit prospects.

Once you have target companies identified, you'll need to verify that the contact data you find is actually deliverable. Before sending any cold emails, run addresses through an email verification tool to catch invalid or risky addresses. This protects your sender reputation and improves deliverability rates.

For prospects where you only have a name and company, our Email Finder can help locate their professional email without consuming credits on a paid platform.

Alternatives to Lusha

The B2B data space has become crowded with options. Here's how Lusha stacks up against common alternatives:

ZoomInfo: Larger database and more advanced enterprise features, but significantly higher pricing. Better for large organizations with complex data needs.

Apollo.io: Combines contact data with built-in outreach sequencing. More all-in-one than Lusha, with a different pricing model.

Cognism: European-focused data provider with license-based pricing (unlimited views) rather than credits. Easier cost forecasting for high-volume users.

RocketReach: Similar credit-based model with strong professional email finding. Worth comparing credit costs for your specific use case.

Each platform has tradeoffs around data coverage, pricing structure, and feature depth. The right choice depends on your team size, prospecting volume, and integration requirements.

Getting Started with B2B Prospecting

Whether you choose Lusha or another platform, successful prospecting follows the same core workflow:

1. Define your ICP: Use tools like our B2B Targeting Generator to clarify exactly who you're pursuing
2. Build targeted lists: Focus on companies and contacts matching your criteria
3. Verify contact data: Clean your lists before outreach to maximize deliverability
4. Personalize messaging: Generic templates get ignored—reference specific company details
5. Multi-channel approach: Combine email with LinkedIn and phone for higher response rates

Lusha can handle steps two and three effectively, especially for teams doing LinkedIn-centric prospecting. But the most successful sales teams combine multiple tools and approaches rather than relying on any single platform.

The Bottom Line on Lusha

Lusha is a capable B2B sales intelligence platform that delivers accurate contact data through an easy-to-use interface. For sales professionals who prospect primarily via LinkedIn and need reliable emails and phone numbers, it's a solid choice—particularly at the lower pricing tiers.

The credit-based model works well for moderate usage but can become expensive at scale. And while Lusha has added features like intent signals and email sequences, it's still fundamentally a data tool rather than a complete sales automation platform.

Start with their free plan to test data quality for your specific market. If the accuracy holds up and the workflow fits, upgrading makes sense. But always complement contact data tools with proper targeting strategy, email verification, and personalized outreach—that combination drives results more than any single tool.