Is it legal to buy business leads?

In the US, buying B2B contact data is legal, and CAN-SPAM lets you email businesses if you identify yourself, give a real address and honor opt-outs. In the EU and UK, GDPR and PECR set stricter rules. Check the laws where your recipients are.

How much do business leads cost?

Database credits often cost a few cents to about a dollar per contact. Exclusive or verified-intent leads cost much more. A flat-price feed such as FreshLeads.cc ($36 a month) has no cost per lead.

Why do bought lead lists perform badly?

Most lists are old and shared: the same contacts are sold to many sellers, emails have gone stale, and the owners get many pitches each week.

Where to buy business leads

Updated October 31, 2026 · By the FreshLeads.cc team

You can buy business leads in three ways: a one-time list from a broker, credits in a data platform, or a feed of new leads every day. Each has a different cost and a different risk. This guide explains each one, what to check before you pay, and the rules for contacting the leads.

Three ways to buy leads

Type	How you pay	Good for	Main risk
List broker	One price per list	A one-time campaign to one industry	Old, shared data; unknown source
Data platform (Apollo, ZoomInfo, Lusha)	Credits or seats	Searching by job title and company size	Credits run out; everyone has the same data
Fresh-lead feed (FreshLeads.cc)	Flat monthly price	Selling to businesses that just started	No large companies; no job-title search

1. List brokers

A broker sells a file of contacts for an industry and a place, such as "plumbers in Ohio". The price looks low per contact. Ask how old the data is and where it came from. Many lists are years old, and the same file goes to every buyer, so the owners on it already get many pitches.

2. Data platforms

Platforms such as Apollo, ZoomInfo, Lusha and UpLead let you search and export contacts with credits. You choose the filters, and the data is updated more often than a broker file. They are the best choice when your buyer has a job title at an established company. See our comparison of 14 lead generation tools.

3. Fresh-lead feeds

A feed sends you businesses as they appear. New owners need a website, an accountant, insurance, software and customers, and few sellers have found them yet. FreshLeads.cc checks more than 100,000 new websites each day and keeps the real businesses, with the email, phone and socials from their own site. See this month's new startups and new companies for examples.

Before you pay: seven checks

Ask for a sample of 50 to 100 rows, and check them by hand.
Ask for the date each contact was found or checked.
Run the emails through a checker. More than 5% invalid is a bad sign.
Ask where the data comes from. "Our sources" is not an answer.
Ask whether the list is exclusive. Most are not.
Look for opt-out handling. A good seller removes people who asked to be removed.
Price per result, not per lead. 1,000 leads that give 2 replies cost more than 100 leads that give 5.

The rules for contacting bought leads

US (CAN-SPAM): use a true sender name and subject, include your postal address, and honor opt-outs within 10 business days.
EU and UK (GDPR, PECR): you need a lawful basis, usually legitimate interest for B2B, and you must tell people where you got their data.
Canada (CASL): stricter consent rules; a published business email can be contacted about the business's work.
Phone and text (TCPA in the US): strict rules for calls and texts to mobile phones. Get advice before you call at scale.

This is general information, not legal advice.

Get new businesses that fit your customer, every morning.

Start free

We make FreshLeads.cc, one of the options on this page. Something wrong? Tell us.