Where can you find free B2B leads?
Free B2B leads come from two kinds of place: public sources that show who has a need right now, and the free tiers of contact-data tools that turn a name into an email address. Here is what each gives you for $0, checked 24 October 2026:
| Source | What you get free | The free limit |
|---|---|---|
| LinkedIn post search | People describing a problem, with name, role and company | Post search is not on the list of activities that count toward LinkedIn's commercial use limit; profile searches are |
| LinkedIn Jobs page | Companies hiring for the work you do or automate | Job searches don't count toward the limit |
| X advanced search | Posts by exact phrase, excluded words, language, account and date range | Advanced search is available when logged in to X.com |
| Reddit and niche forums | People asking for recommendations in their own words | Each community's rules, plus Reddit's own |
| SEC EDGAR full-text search | US companies that filed a Form D notice of an exempt offering, a sign of raising money | Free; full-text search covers filings since 2001, filterable by form type and date |
| Apollo Free | Contact and company data, email sequences | 75 credits per seat a month; an email costs 1 credit, a phone number 8 |
| Hunter Free | Email finding and verification | 50 credits a month; a found email costs 1 credit, a verification 0.5 |
The SEC's Form D filing page adds a timing detail: a company must file Form D within 15 days after the first sale of securities in the offering, so filings are recent by design. Our guide to finding startups that just raised money covers what to say to them.
How many leads does a $0 month actually produce?
About 125 email lookups a month, if you stack the two free tiers, plus as many public signals as you have time to read. Here is the arithmetic for one person:
| Free allowance | Per month | What it buys |
|---|---|---|
| Apollo Free, one seat | 75 credits | 75 emails, or 9 phone numbers (75 ÷ 8) |
| Hunter Free | 50 credits | 50 found emails, or 100 verifications of addresses you already have |
| LinkedIn connection notes on a free account | 3 (an older page says 5) | Requests with a personalised message |
| Apollo Free sending | 250 emails a day | 2 sequences per team, Gmail mailboxes only |
The note limit comes from LinkedIn's page on personalising invitations, which says free members can personalise three connection requests a month; its older invitation limit page still says five. Credits on both tools reset each cycle and don't roll over, so you can't save up a quiet month. Apollo Free also caps record selection at 25 per action, against 1,000 on its Basic plan, so you move free data out in small batches.
Compare that with what the founder in a November 2025 r/Entrepreneur thread needed: about 200 new leads a month. At $5 a contact, the top of the $3 to $5 range they said lead databases charged, that is $1,000 a month, and with their 2% conversion rate, $250 per customer just for the lead. Free tiers cover about 125 of those 200, a little under two-thirds. The cheapest paid step costs much less than $1,000: on monthly billing, Hunter Starter is $49 for 2,000 credits and Apollo Basic is $65 a seat for 2,500. Spread over 200 emails, that is about 25 and 33 cents a lead. Phone numbers cost more: 8 Apollo credits each.
What does a free lead really cost in time?
Your hours are the real price of free leads. Work it out with your own numbers: minutes per lead times leads per month. If finding the person, the reason to write and a working email takes 6 minutes each, 200 leads take 20 hours a month. Put your hourly rate against that before you decide free is cheaper.
The November 2025 founder tried the two obvious ways around the time cost and reported both:
- Scrapers. They scraped LinkedIn, company websites and industry directories. It worked for about two months, then they say LinkedIn banned the account; a rebuilt version lasted three weeks. In their words, they "spent more time fixing scrapers than actually reaching out to leads." Before you try this, read our post on whether LinkedIn scraping is legal.
- A virtual assistant. Upwork quotes were $600 to $800 a month to find leads by hand. Cheaper than the databases, they wrote, but slow, and you end up managing the person.
One commenter in that thread suggested the measure to use instead of cost per contact: cost per qualified meeting, counting the tool price plus the hours you spend running it. For example, a free source that yields one meeting for ten hours of work is not cheaper than a $49 tool that yields three.
Which free leads should you contact first?
Contact people who showed the need recently before people who only match a job title. A post asking for a recommendation, a complaint about a tool or a job ad for the work you automate gives you a reason to write in the first line. A name from a database gives you a title and a guess.
Rank a free list like this:
- Asked for help this week. Found through LinkedIn post search, which offers a Date posted filter, or X advanced search with a start date.
- Complained about a tool you replace. The same searches, with the competitor's name.
- Hiring for the job. From job pages; message the person the role reports to.
- Raised money recently. From Form D filings and funding news.
- Title and company match only. From a free database tier, last.
On Reddit, answer before you pitch. Reddit's rules ask users to take part authentically in communities where they have a personal interest and not to spam. For a full free signal routine with a daily sweep, see our signal-based selling stack under $200 a month. If you are weighing a paid list instead, our post on whether buying a lead list is worth it covers what happens when you send to one.
Where does free stop working?
Free stops at three walls: profile browsing on LinkedIn, the credit caps on data tools, and your own time. LinkedIn's commercial use limit page says that reaching the limit suggests you are likely using LinkedIn for prospecting. It also says LinkedIn can't show how many searches or views you have left, can't lift the limit on request, and that the warning may not appear if you use up the allowance too quickly. The allowance resets at midnight PST on the first of each month.
| What you need a month | Is free enough? | Cheapest step up, checked 24 Oct 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Up to about 125 emails | Yes: Apollo Free plus Hunter Free | None needed |
| 125 to 2,000 emails | No | Hunter Starter, $49 a month billed monthly or $34 billed yearly (2,000 credits a month), or Apollo Basic, $65 a seat a month or $49 billed yearly (2,500 credits a month) |
| Many profile searches a day | No, the commercial use limit applies | LinkedIn lists Premium Business, Recruiter Lite and Sales Navigator as ways to raise it |
| Daily signal search across LinkedIn and X | Only if you have the hours | A tool that runs the search for you |
Our free workflow for finding a decision-maker's work email and verifying it covers email patterns and verification in more detail.
A free lead routine for one founder
Save four searches
Two LinkedIn post searches (a request for help and a competitor complaint), one X advanced search, and one Form D search if you sell to funded US startups.
Sweep daily and log
Note each person with the post link, date and the first line you'll write. Skip anything older than two weeks.
Spend credits only on the shortlist
Look up emails for people you will actually contact this week. Use Apollo credits first and Hunter's for the gaps.
Track hours and meetings
At month end, divide hours spent by meetings booked. When the hours cost more than the cheapest paid plan, pay for the part that takes longest.
The step up from doing this by hand is Siela's AI SDR. It looks for signals such as people asking how to solve the problem or comparing tools, scores each lead hot, warm or cold with a one-line reason, and finds and verifies each person's work email so it emails only deliverable addresses. In Find leads only mode it saves the leads to its built-in CRM and sends nothing.
Frequently asked questions
How many free email lookups do Apollo and Hunter give you?
Checked 24 October 2026, Apollo Free gives 75 credits per seat a month, with an email costing 1 credit and a phone number 8. Hunter Free gives 50 credits a month, with a found email costing 1 credit and a verification half a credit. Together that is about 125 email lookups a month, and neither tool rolls unused credits over.
Does LinkedIn limit free accounts that search for leads?
Yes. LinkedIn's commercial use limit applies to profile searches and profile browsing on free accounts and resets at midnight PST on the first of each month. LinkedIn says it can't show how many searches you have left or lift the limit on request. Its list of activities that count includes profile searches but not post searches or job searches.
Is SEC Form D data a good free source of B2B leads?
It is a free source of US companies that have raised money through an exempt offering. The SEC says a company must file Form D within 15 days after the first sale of securities, so filings are recent, and EDGAR full-text search lets you filter by form type and date. You get the company, so you still need to find the right person.
When is it worth paying for leads instead of using free sources?
When your hours cost more than the cheapest plan. If you need more than about 125 emails a month, the free tiers run out, and Hunter Starter at $49 a month or Apollo Basic at $65 a seat a month on monthly billing covers 2,000 to 2,500 credits. Track hours spent per meeting booked for a month, then decide.
Sources
- LinkedIn Help: Commercial use limit (checked 24 Oct 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Search for member posts (checked 24 Oct 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Invitation limit reached (checked 24 Oct 2026)
- X Help Center: How to use advanced search (checked 24 Oct 2026)
- SEC: Filing a Form D notice (checked 24 Oct 2026)
- SEC: EDGAR Full-Text Search FAQ (checked 24 Oct 2026)
- Apollo pricing (checked 24 Oct 2026)
- Hunter pricing (checked 24 Oct 2026)
- r/Entrepreneur: finding b2b leads without paying $5 per contact (14 Nov 2025)
- Reddit Rules (checked 24 Oct 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Personalize invitations to connect (checked 24 Oct 2026)