Proxycurl alternatives: 8 compliant options after the shutdown
If you had a Proxycurl API key wired into your enrichment pipeline, it stopped returning data on 4 July 2025. Proxycurl (Nubela) shut down permanently that day rather than fight the lawsuit LinkedIn filed against it in January 2025, which alleged the company created fake accounts to collect millions of profiles, including non-public data, and resold that data through its API. As part of winding down, the team deboarded its existing customers and shut off all API access (source: Nubela's own "Goodbye Proxycurl" post, 2025).
That leaves two practical questions, and they have different answers. If you used Proxycurl to buy bulk people and company data, you need a licensed data provider. If you used it to power outreach, you need an outreach system that does not repeat the exact model that got Proxycurl sued. This guide ranks eight replacements on the one axis that predicts whether your new vendor survives: how it sources data, and whether it ever touches your account.
The 8 Proxycurl alternatives at a glance
The short answer: for pure data, move to a licensed aggregator that never logs into LinkedIn (Coresignal, People Data Labs). For large one-off datasets, Bright Data. For actual outreach, an agent that works from public data and only touches your own account at the send. Avoid the real-time LinkedIn API clones that replicate Proxycurl's exact model.
Sources: each vendor's public pricing and product pages, checked 25 July 2026. People Data Labs paid pricing is credit-based; figures above are cross-checked against public pricing trackers, July 2026. "Ranked by compliance" below explains why the order is what it is.
Why Proxycurl shut down, and why it decides your next vendor
Proxycurl did not close because of a bad quarter. LinkedIn sued in January 2025, and Proxycurl reached roughly 10M USD in revenue before shutting down on 4 July 2025 rather than litigate (source: Nubela blog, 2025). The complaint's core was not "scraping" in the abstract, it was fake accounts and the resale of member data, including non-public fields.
That distinction is the whole guide. The vendors most exposed to LinkedIn's next legal move are the ones running the same play: real-time LinkedIn data APIs that log in, pull profiles on demand, and resell them. The vendors least exposed do one of two things instead. Either they compile public business data from many sources without ever logging into LinkedIn, which is what a licensed aggregator does, or they never resell anyone's data at all and only act through your own connected account, which is what a compliant outreach tool does. We walk through where that line actually sits in the LinkedIn data compliance guide.
Before you pick a replacement, be honest about what you actually used Proxycurl for. The answer routes you to a completely different shortlist.
The 8 alternatives, ranked by compliance
The ranking below runs from the lowest-exposure data sourcing to the highest. Higher on the list means the vendor is structurally less likely to repeat Proxycurl's fate, not that it is automatically right for you. Match the rank to the "what you used it for" table above.
1. Coresignal: licensed public business data
Coresignal is the cleanest pure-data swap. It sells employee, company, and jobs data compiled from publicly available, business-only sources, and it states plainly that it does not collect private data or scrape behind login-secured areas, so there is no session cookie anywhere in the flow (source: Coresignal pricing and data pages, checked 25 July 2026). It is certified by the Ethical Web Data Collection Initiative.
Coverage is large: over 895M employee records, over 70M company records, and over 468M job postings per its site. Pricing runs from a free tier (200 collect and 400 search credits, valid seven days) through Starter at 49 USD/mo, Pro at 800 USD/mo, and Premium at 1,500 USD/mo, plus separately priced bulk datasets on top. It also ships an Agentic Search API aimed at AI agents, which is why the table lists it as agent-ready rather than a full agent. If you used Proxycurl for enrichment at volume, this is the first place to look.
2. People Data Labs: person and company enrichment
People Data Labs (PDL) is the other licensed-aggregation pick, and the closest in spirit to how many teams used Proxycurl for enrichment: send an identifier, get back a resolved person or company record. Its data is compiled from many sources rather than pulled live from a LinkedIn login, so it does not need your session cookie and there is no on-demand scraping in the request path.
PDL offers a free tier of roughly 100 lookups per month for testing, with credit-based paid plans above that (per public pricing trackers, July 2026). It does not ship an outreach agent, it is a data API. If your Proxycurl usage was "enrich the leads already in my CRM," PDL and Coresignal are the two to trial side by side.
3. Bright Data: large one-off datasets
Bright Data sits a step down the compliance ranking only because it collects at web scale, but it has the strongest formal posture of the collection vendors. Its LinkedIn datasets (over 897M records per its site) are sold as structured, pre-collected data from publicly available sources, and the company holds SOC 2 and ISO 27001 and states GDPR and CCPA alignment plus its own code of ethics (source: Bright Data product pages, 2026). Dataset pricing starts around 250 USD for 100K records, roughly 0.0025 USD per record, with subscription discounts.
Bright Data does not need your cookie and is a fair pick for a one-time dataset or a research project. The honest caveat: large-scale collection of LinkedIn data is exactly the activity LinkedIn litigates over, and a compliance posture is a claim, not a settled verdict. It is more defensible than a real-time clone and less clean than a licensed aggregator that never touches LinkedIn.
4. BeReach: for outreach, not just data
If you were using Proxycurl to feed an outreach motion (find people, personalize, send), a raw data API is only a third of what you actually need. BeReach is an AI agent that finds and qualifies prospects and drafts B2B outreach you approve, and it is built so the account-exposure question the Proxycurl case turns on has a good answer.
The find, qualify, and draft steps run on public web data with nothing connected, so there is no session cookie in anyone's cloud during the part of the workflow where Proxycurl-style vendors get into trouble. A LinkedIn session is touched only at the real send, through your own account, and every message is human-approved before it goes out. There is one included AI model rather than a separate token bill, and the same agent runs inside Claude through a 33-tool connector at mcp.bereach.ai. You can start with no account at all on the free LinkedIn people search tool, or read the developer surface on the BeReach API page. It ranks below the pure aggregators here because this is a neutral compliance axis and BeReach reads public profile data too, but for the outreach job it is the option that does not resell anyone's data. Pricing starts with a free tier of 100 monthly credits; see current plans.
5. Unipile: a hosted API on your own account
Unipile is a different shape again. It is a hosted API that connects LinkedIn, email, and other channels, but it acts through your own connected account rather than reselling scraped third-party data. That means no fake-account exposure of the kind that ended Proxycurl, but it also means you hold the account-safety risk, because LinkedIn scores the behavior of the account you connected.
Pricing is per connected account: 49 EUR/mo covers up to 10 accounts, then 5 EUR per additional account, with volume pricing above 50 (source: Unipile pricing, checked 25 July 2026). It is infrastructure, not a finished outreach product, so you build the app, the sequencing, the AI, and the pacing on top. We break the real total down in Unipile LinkedIn API pricing.
6. Apify: on-demand collection actors
Apify is a marketplace of collection "actors," several of which target LinkedIn profiles, company pages, employees, and posts. Pricing is pay per result, and the DEV community's 2026 comparison put roughly 10K profiles at 50 to 100 USD with no monthly commitment, which is why it is popular for ad hoc jobs. Many LinkedIn actors run without your cookie because they use the platform's own proxies, and Apify has an AI beta, though it is not a finished outreach agent.
The tradeoff is compliance. Apify's LinkedIn actors collect public LinkedIn data on demand, which is the same category of activity Proxycurl ran. It is flexible and cheap for one-off collection; it is not a lower-risk model than the one that got litigated.
7. Scrapingdog: real-time profile and company API
Scrapingdog offers a LinkedIn API that returns structured JSON for profiles and companies in real time, and it explicitly does not use your account or anyone's account, collecting only public data from its own infrastructure (source: Scrapingdog LinkedIn API page, checked 25 July 2026). Pricing on its 2025 plans ran roughly 40 to 350 USD/mo, with each profile request costing 50 credits (100 for protected profiles). No AI agent.
For a developer who wants a near drop-in for the Proxycurl request shape, Scrapingdog is one of the closest. That closeness is also the risk: it is a real-time LinkedIn data API, which is precisely the model LinkedIn moved against.
8. ScrapIn: the closest drop-in, and the highest exposure
ScrapIn markets itself as a real-time LinkedIn data API for teams building AI products, positioned almost exactly where Proxycurl sat. Its site lists a 7-day trial at 30 USD, pay-as-you-go from 500 USD, and custom enterprise pricing (source: ScrapIn pricing, checked 25 July 2026). No AI agent, and its public pages do not detail a formal compliance framework the way the licensed aggregators do.
It is the most literal Proxycurl replacement on this list, and for exactly that reason it carries the most inherited risk. If continuity of a real-time API is your only requirement, it fits. If you are picking a vendor you can still be using in two years, weigh that against the fact that being a real-time LinkedIn data API is what ended Proxycurl.
How to choose your replacement
Work backward from what you actually did with Proxycurl, then from how much legal continuity you want. Buying bulk data points you at a licensed aggregator like Coresignal or People Data Labs. Powering outreach points you at an agent that sends through your own account. Wanting a literal drop-in points you at a real-time API, and at the highest inherited risk.
- You bought bulk data. Start with Coresignal and People Data Labs. They source from licensed public business data, never log into LinkedIn, and run GDPR and CCPA processes, so they are the lowest-exposure swap. Use Bright Data when you need a large one-off dataset priced per record.
- You powered outreach. A data API alone will not send anything or keep your account safe. Move to a tool that finds, drafts, and sends, and that only touches your own account at the send. That is the BeReach model.
- You want a drop-in real-time API and accept the risk. Scrapingdog, ScrapIn, and Apify are the closest to Proxycurl's request shape, and they carry the closest resemblance to its legal exposure. Fine for short-term continuity, riskier as a two-year bet.
- You control the accounts. If you only ever operated your own connected accounts, a hosted API like Unipile keeps you out of the third-party data-resale category entirely, at the cost of owning account-safety yourself.
One more reframe worth doing: many teams reached for Proxycurl because they assumed the official route was impossible or unaffordable. That is worth re-checking now. See what the real options are in is the LinkedIn API free and how the safest outreach tools are ranked in best LinkedIn outreach tools ranked by account access.
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Frequently asked questions
Why did Proxycurl shut down?
Proxycurl shut down permanently on 4 July 2025. LinkedIn sued the company in January 2025, alleging it created fake accounts to collect millions of profiles, including non-public data, and resold that data through its API. Rather than litigate against Microsoft-owned LinkedIn, the founder chose to close, delete the collected data, and move the team to a new venture (source: Nubela blog, 2025).
What is the best Proxycurl alternative?
It depends on what you used Proxycurl for. For bulk people and company data, Coresignal and People Data Labs are the cleanest swaps because they license public business data and never log into LinkedIn. For large one-off datasets, Bright Data. For powering outreach rather than just buying data, an agent that works from public data and sends through your own account.
Are real-time LinkedIn data APIs still risky after the Proxycurl case?
Yes, structurally. Vendors like ScrapIn, Scrapingdog, and Apify actors run the same model Proxycurl did: collecting LinkedIn data on demand and reselling it. LinkedIn's action against Proxycurl targeted exactly that pattern. These tools can work as short-term drop-ins, but they carry the same category of legal exposure, so weigh continuity against a two-year bet.
Do Proxycurl alternatives need my LinkedIn login?
Most pure data providers do not. Coresignal, People Data Labs, Bright Data, Scrapingdog, and Apify collect from their own infrastructure or licensed sources, so no session cookie is involved. Unipile is the exception among these: it acts through your own connected account. An outreach agent like BeReach reads public data with nothing connected and only touches your account at the actual send.
Is buying LinkedIn data legal now that Proxycurl is gone?
The safer path is licensed aggregators that compile publicly available business data from many sources without logging into LinkedIn, and that run GDPR and CCPA processes. Reselling data collected via fake accounts, which is what LinkedIn alleged against Proxycurl, is the activity that drew the lawsuit. For where the line sits between public data and account operation, see the LinkedIn data compliance guide.
