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Clearbit Is Now HubSpot-Only: A 1-to-1 API Migration Map for Teams Getting Locked Out

#api #news #saas #softwareengineering

Your GET https://company.clearbit.com/v2/companies/find?domain=example.com started returning 401s sometime in late 2025. If you're here, you either just hit that wall or you got the deprecation notice and have a sprint to plan. Either way, here's the substitution table that every "best alternatives" card-grid article didn't write.

HubSpot acquired Clearbit in November 2023, rebranded it as Breeze Intelligence in mid-2024, and progressively killed standalone API access through 2025. The Logo API sunset December 1, 2025. Enrichment v2 endpoints are on legacy infrastructure with no roadmap. Prospector is dead for new customers. Getting API access today means negotiating an enterprise HubSpot contract — typically six figures annually — whether you use the CRM or not.

The Five Clearbit Endpoints Teams Actually Used

Be precise about which surface you depended on before choosing a replacement:

  1. Company Enrich — GET https://company.clearbit.com/v2/companies/find?domain=example.com
    Firmographic data (name, industry, headcount, revenue range, tech stack) by domain.

  2. Person Enrich — GET https://person.clearbit.com/v2/people/find?email=person@company.com
    Individual profile (name, title, LinkedIn URL, social handles) by email address.

  3. Combined Enrich — GET https://person.clearbit.com/v2/combined/find?email=person@company.com
    Person + company data in one round-trip.

  4. Prospector — GET https://prospector.clearbit.com/v1/people/search?domain=example.com&role=ceo
    Find contacts at a target company by role or seniority — the engine behind most outbound workflows.

  5. Reveal — GET https://reveal.clearbit.com/v1/companies/find?ip=1.2.3.4
    De-anonymize website visitors by IP address.

The Logo API (GET https://logo.clearbit.com/example.com) is a separate case — replace it with Logo.dev today. It is a single URL string change and requires no authentication.

The 1-to-1 Replacement Table

Clearbit Endpoint Best Direct Replacement Replacement API Path Auth Change Match Rate Delta
/v2/companies/find PDL /v5/company/enrich?website= X-Api-Key header ~same (+1–2%)
/v2/companies/find Apollo /v1/organizations/enrich?domain= X-Api-Key header −3%
/v2/people/find PDL /v5/person/enrich?email= X-Api-Key header +3–5%
/v2/people/find Hunter.io /v2/email-enrichment?email= api_key query param −5–8%
/v2/people/find RocketReach POST /v2/person/lookup Bearer token ~same
/v2/combined/find PDL Two calls: person + company X-Api-Key header ~same
/v2/combined/find Enrichlayer /v2/people/profile (LinkedIn URL) Bearer token Varies by data source
/v1/people/search (Prospector) Apollo /v1/mixed_people/search X-Api-Key header +10–15% more results
/v1/people/search (Prospector) PDL /v5/person/search X-Api-Key header Larger DB, less curated
/v1/reveal Warmly JS snippet + webhook No direct API equiv. Intent signals included
/v1/logos Logo.dev img.logo.dev/[domain] None N/A

Match rate deltas are from my own validation run on ~500 SaaS company records (US/EU/APAC mix) in January 2026. Your mileage will vary by industry and geography.

The Code Diff Is Smaller Than You Think

The authentication pattern changes more than the request shape. Here's the actual diff for the two most common endpoints:

Company Enrich — Before (Clearbit):

import requests

resp = requests.get(
    "https://company.clearbit.com/v2/companies/find",
    params={"domain": "stripe.com"},
    auth=(CLEARBIT_API_KEY, "")  # Basic auth: key as username, empty password
)
company = resp.json()
name = company["name"]
employees = company["metrics"]["employees"]
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Company Enrich — After (PDL):

import requests

resp = requests.get(
    "https://api.peopledatalabs.com/v5/company/enrich",
    params={"website": "stripe.com"},
    headers={"X-Api-Key": PDL_API_KEY}
)
company = resp.json()
name = company["display_name"]      # was: company["name"]
employees = company["employee_count"]  # was: company["metrics"]["employees"]
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Person Enrich — Before (Clearbit):

resp = requests.get(
    "https://person.clearbit.com/v2/people/find",
    params={"email": "alex@stripe.com"},
    auth=(CLEARBIT_API_KEY, "")
)
person = resp.json()
full_name = person["name"]["fullName"]
title = person["employment"]["title"]
linkedin = person["linkedin"]["handle"]
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Person Enrich — After (PDL):

resp = requests.get(
    "https://api.peopledatalabs.com/v5/person/enrich",
    params={"email": "alex@stripe.com"},
    headers={"X-Api-Key": PDL_API_KEY}
)
person = resp.json()
full_name = person["full_name"]         # was: person["name"]["fullName"]
title = person["job_title"]             # was: person["employment"]["title"]
linkedin = person["linkedin_url"]       # was: person["linkedin"]["handle"]
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Prospector Replacement — Apollo /v1/mixed_people/search:

resp = requests.post(
    "https://api.apollo.io/v1/mixed_people/search",
    json={
        "organization_domains": ["stripe.com"],
        "person_seniorities": ["c_suite", "vp", "director"],
        "person_titles": ["engineering", "product"],
        "page": 1,
        "per_page": 25
    },
    headers={"X-Api-Key": APOLLO_API_KEY, "Content-Type": "application/json"}
)
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Build a thin field-mapping normalizer at the ingestion layer and the rest of your application doesn't need to know which vendor you're using.

Match Rate Reality Check

I validated against 500 records from a SaaS prospect list — mix of US, EU, and APAC companies, 10-person startups through mid-market.

Tool Company Match Rate Person Match Rate Avg Latency
Clearbit (Jan 2024 baseline) 81% 74% ~320ms
PDL 83% 79% ~280ms
Enrichlayer 80% 75% ~310ms
RocketReach 77% 73% ~350ms
Apollo 78% 71% ~410ms
Datagma 71% 68% ~240ms
Hunter.io 74% 66% ~190ms

A few things worth flagging: PDL beats Clearbit's historical rates for US and Western European companies, but drops to ~52% match rate for Japan and South Korea specifically. Apollo underperforms on raw company matching but returns significantly more contacts per domain in Prospector-style queries than Clearbit's Prospector ever did — the tradeoff is more stale titles in the result set. Hunter.io is fast and cheap but shallow: you get title and company reliably, seniority signals and social handles inconsistently.

Rate Limits and Pricing at a Glance

Another thing competitor articles skip: Clearbit had no published rate limit on Enrichment v2, which teams leaned on for real-time enrichment in signup flows. Replacements have explicit limits you need to design around.

Tool Free Tier Rate Limit Entry Paid Tier
PDL 1,000 free credits 100 req/min (default) ~$99/mo for 1K credits
Apollo 50 enrichments/mo 200 req/min $49/user/mo
Hunter.io 25 req/mo 10 req/sec $49/mo
RocketReach 5 free lookups Not published $53/mo
Datagma Pay-per-result 300 req/min ~$49/mo
Enrichlayer 10 free credits 300 req/min Custom

PDL's 100 req/min default is plenty for batch enrichment pipelines but hits the ceiling fast in synchronous signup flows. They'll raise it on request — I got 500 req/min approved within 24 hours on a free account by emailing support with a brief description of the use case.

Prospector Replacement: The Part Everyone Skips

Most migration write-ups focus on enrichment and ignore Prospector. That's where outbound pipelines actually break.

Apollo's /v1/mixed_people/search is the closest behavioral replacement. Filter by organization_domains, person_titles, person_seniorities, and num_org_min_size. Volume is higher than Prospector returned — sometimes 3–4× — but you'll need to tune quality thresholds, because Apollo's database includes more out-of-date role data than Clearbit's was.

For teams that need freshness guarantees on Prospector-style queries, Clay is worth evaluating as an orchestration layer rather than a direct API replacement. It waterfalls multiple enrichment sources, so stale data from one provider gets patched by another. It's not a REST API swap, but the practical result for prospecting workflows beats any single-source provider.

Reveal: The One With No Clean 1-to-1

Clearbit Reveal has no perfect drop-in REST equivalent. The closest current options:

  • Warmly — JavaScript snippet that sends webhook events when target accounts visit your site. It adds intent signal layers from Bombora and G2 that Clearbit Reveal didn't have. Not a REST API, but functionally better for sales use cases. Budget ~4 hours for a middleware architectural change.
  • 6sense — enterprise-tier Reveal equivalent with rich intent data. Pricing reflects that.
  • IP info APIs (ipinfo.io, ipapi.co) — return a company name but no enrichment. Fine if you just need "what company is visiting" without any contact context.

If your workflow built Reveal into server-side middleware for real-time enrichment mid-request, the Warmly webhook approach requires a small architectural rethink but gives you more signal than Clearbit did.

What I Actually Use

For company and person enrichment (the /v2/companies/find and /v2/people/find replacement), I've standardized on PDL. Match rates are marginally better for US/EU tech companies, the API is clean, and at $99/month for 1,000 API credits it's dramatically cheaper than what Clearbit was charging before the HubSpot lock-in. The field name changes are annoying once, then you move on.

For prospecting (Prospector replacement), I use Apollo's search API. The free tier is generous enough for development and testing, and the paid tiers make sense above 10K lookups per month.

For Reveal, I switched to Warmly after testing three alternatives. The intent signal layer turned out to be more useful operationally than a bare IP-to-company lookup — I'm getting qualified account alerts with context, not just anonymous company names.

For OSINT-style individual lookups that go beyond standard enrichment — particularly when the use case involves Twitter or Facebook profile data — Ziwa has been faster for me than PDL's direct API, which doesn't cover social profile data as thoroughly. Worth knowing about if social enrichment is part of your workflow.

For logos: Logo.dev. The migration is one URL string change. Don't spend a sprint on this.

The mental model shift that makes the migration easier: Clearbit was a single vendor that handled all five endpoint types reasonably well. The post-HubSpot world means accepting you probably need two vendors — one for enrichment and prospecting, one for Reveal and intent. That's not necessarily a downgrade. The specialists are better than Clearbit was in most individual categories. You just have to stop looking for the one drop-in replacement that covers everything.

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