Every company meets your agreed criteria
Every company delivered has passed the criteria agreed with you.
What does it cost to build a
good prospect list?
We posted one job: 100 companies in a single niche, every one checked against a written brief, with verified emails for the decision makers. We asked what it would cost and how long it would take. Here is what came back.
57people responded
~$1typical cost per company
~4 daystypical time for 100 companies
28 in 57would check by hand off a database
The niche: UK and North American office design firms. Every company checked against explicit inclusion and exclusion criteria, with the evidence behind each decision, up to five decision makers, and a list of the companies they turned down and why.
What should you actually be paying for?
The biggest difference between suppliers is how much checking they do before a company makes your list.
01
Find companies
Search databases, LinkedIn, Google and other sources
02
Check they fit
Check each one against the criteria you gave them
03
Research the good ones
Look for projects, hiring, activity, whatever your brief calls for
04
Find the right people
Add the decision makers and their contact details
A cheap list may only cover the first step. Before comparing prices, check which of these four stages are actually included.
What should you expect to pay?
Of the people who gave a price we could compare, this is the middle of the market.
$1.12typical quote per company
3.6 daystypical turnaround for 100 companies
Both figures are medians, not averages, so the extremes at either end do not drag them.
One square per quote, for the 26 people who gave both a price and a turnaround. Hover or tap any square for its numbers. Quotes ran from $0.10 to $15.00 a company, and from 2 hours to 6 weeks. Our mark sits at from $0.08 and about 1 hour — at or outside the edge of that quoted range. Log scale on both axes. Our own mark is our estimate for this same brief, not a quote we received.
Which approach is right for you?
The best way to build a prospect list depends on how difficult your criteria are, how many companies you need, and whether you want to manage the process yourself.
| Approach | Choose this when | Typical cost | Typical speed | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DatabaseSales Navigator, Apollo | Your criteria are simple and filterable | Subscription | Minutes | Nobody has checked that each company actually fits |
| FreelancerUpwork, a freelance researcher | You need a one-off list checked by a person | About $1.12 a company | About 3.6 days per 100 | Quality depends on who you hire |
| Specialist researcherA researcher or agency | Every company needs deep individual investigation | $3.50 a company and up | One to four weeks per 100 | Expensive, and difficult to scale |
| Build it yourselfClay plus data providers | You have recurring volume and technical resource | Tools and internal time | Setup first, then fast | Setup, maintenance and QA are all yours |
| PropensifyManaged for you | You need detailed qualification repeatedly or at scale | Per company that passes | About 1 hour, with nothing to build | Not worth it if simple filters can answer your criteria |
What you get with Propensify.
Propensify combines the speed of automated research with the checking and evidence you would normally expect from manual research.
Know which prospects fit best
Every company is scored against your criteria, so you know who to prioritise.
Nothing for you to build
No workflows, integrations or research system to configure and maintain.
Pay nothing for companies that fail
We research and reject companies along the way. You are billed only for the ones that make your list.
What we guarantee: every company delivered has passed the criteria agreed with you. We do not guarantee that a company will buy.
When Propensify is probably not the best option.
Sometimes there's a simpler or better option.
Use a database
If your target companies can be identified accurately using simple filters like industry, size and location.
Best forSimple, high-volume lists.
Hire a specialist researcher
If you only need a small number of companies and each one needs unusually deep individual investigation.
Best forSmall, high-value research projects.
Propensify makes most sense when the criteria need real research and judgement, but you need that applied across hundreds or thousands of companies.
Hiring someone? Ask these six questions.
Every one of these was answered well by somebody in this study, and badly by most.
- What exactly do you check before a company goes on the list?
- Which sources do you actually open and read?
- How do you charge if you research a company and it turns out not to fit?
- What does verified mean for an email and a phone number?
- Can I see companies you turned down, and why?
- Can you do five or ten first, before I commit to the whole list?
Do not judge a supplier by the tools they name. Almost everyone reaches for the same handful of sources. What separates them is what they check before a company makes the list.
About this study
We posted one real list-building job on a freelance marketplace in September 2026 and analysed 57 responses. Nobody was hired, so these are quoted prices and delivery times, not measured performance.
The brief. A checked list of UK and North American office design and fit-out firms, advertised at $10 to $20 an hour, starting with a paid trial of twenty companies, with up to five people to contact at each one, the evidence behind every inclusion, and a list of the companies turned down.
We asked everyone who applied for a price per company, per checked email and per checked phone number, how they charge, how long 100 companies would take, and what sources and process they would use.
- 57 replies analysed. Two were the same submission from one agency under two names. Both are kept, because a buyer would see both.
- 26 gave a price per company, and those form the chart. The rest priced per contact, per email, per phone or by the hour, which is not directly comparable. Typical cost is the median, $1.12.
- Where someone gave a price range, we used the midpoint.
- Times converted at eight hours a day, forty hours a week. These are each person's own estimate, not something we measured (n=44). Typical time is the median, 3.6 working days.
- Price and expected research time were strongly correlated (Spearman 0.78, p < 0.0001, n=26).
- Which option someone was placed in is our reading of the process they described. Four replies gave too little detail to place.
Tools named in three or more replies. Counted from the reply itself; tools listed only on a profile are not counted.
- LinkedIn39
- Apollo31
- Sales Navigator28
- Google24
- Industry directories17
- Hunter16
- Awards lists13
- NeverBounce9
- Clay8
- ZoomInfo7
- RocketReach6
- Trade press5
- Google Maps5
- Companies House5
- Lusha5
- ZeroBounce4
- Custom scripts4
- Cognism4
- Clearbit3
- Snov.io3
- ContactOut3
- Crunchbase3
Worth knowing. This is one job, in one industry, on one marketplace, at one advertised budget. Everything here is what people said they would do and charge. Nobody was hired from this group, so nothing here measures how good anyone's work actually is. We do not name individuals.