Prospect research is priced four ways — per record in a static list, per subscription credit in a database, per hour or project in custom research, or absorbed as internal staff time. Be My Tech’s own current pricing runs from free (3 samples) to $59 for 50 researched prospects — one-time, with no subscription — but market pricing overall varies widely by volume, research depth, geography, and how strict the contact requirements are. The number on the label matters less than what it buys.
Written by Shahab Shabbir, Founder, Be My Tech.
What are you actually paying for?
Prospect-research pricing pays for the work between “a list of companies” and “a list you can act on today.” That work has several distinct steps, whether a provider itemizes them or not:
- Targeting interpretation — translating what you sell and who you sell to into criteria someone (or something) can actually search against.
- Discovery — finding candidate companies that plausibly match.
- Source checking — confirming each company is real, active, and matches from a public source, not a guess.
- Date checking — recording when that confirmation happened, not just when the list was assembled.
- Fit reasoning — writing a specific reason each record matches your criteria, not a copy-pasted line.
- Contact-status review — marking what’s publicly available and leaving the rest blank instead of guessing.
- Exclusions — removing companies that don’t actually qualify, even if that shrinks the count.
- QA and delivery — a final review pass and a usable format, not a raw export.
A cheap price usually means several of those steps were skipped, automated without review, or never happened. A high price doesn’t guarantee they did happen — it just means you’re entitled to ask.
Why are some prospect lists so cheap?
A list is cheap when most of the work above was done once, in bulk, years ago — not for you, specifically, this week. Large self-serve databases spread the cost of one big crawl and match across millions of records sold to thousands of buyers, so the per-record price can fall to a fraction of a cent to under a dollar. Published pricing from large database providers is public: per-contact costs run on credit-based systems, and subscription tiers range from a few hundred dollars a month for small teams to tens of thousands a year for larger seat and credit allowances. Exact figures vary by provider and change often enough that a single blended number would be misleading — check current pricing directly on the provider’s own site before comparing.
That’s not inherently a bad deal — it’s a different deal. You’re paying for access to a large, pre-built pool and doing the targeting, fit review, and freshness check yourself, at your own labor cost. Custom research inverts that: someone does the targeting and fit review before you receive anything, for a smaller number of records, at a higher price per record.
Four common pricing models
Prospect data is generally sold four ways: database subscription, purchased static list, custom research, or built internally. None of the four is universally correct — each fits a different combination of volume need, internal capacity, and how much the targeting criteria matter.
Database subscription
Ongoing access to a searchable database, usually billed monthly or annually, often metered by “credits” per contact unlocked.
May fit: teams that need broad, ongoing access; users with time and skill to filter and validate internally; organizations exploring large or shifting markets.
Tradeoffs: broad match rather than custom fit; the filtering work lands on you; record freshness varies by the provider’s own refresh cycle; credit systems can run out mid-project; usually a recurring commitment even in slow months.
Purchased static list
A one-time export against loosely stated criteria — industry, size band, region — delivered as a spreadsheet with no ongoing relationship.
May fit: simple criteria; a one-time starting point; buyers who don’t need documented fit reasoning.
Tradeoffs: limited transparency into how records were selected; ages the moment it’s delivered; methodology is often undocumented; little to no customization once purchased.
Custom prospect research
A provider researches and reviews a specific, smaller batch of companies against criteria you supply, before you receive anything.
May fit: specific or narrow targeting criteria; buyers who need documented fit reasoning and exclusions respected; a focused list valued over maximum raw volume.
Tradeoffs: lower volume per dollar than bulk data; research takes real time; still limited to what’s publicly available; typically a higher price per record than a database credit.
Internal research
Staff time — a founder, an SDR, a marketer — manually building and qualifying the list in-house.
May fit: companies with trained staff and institutional market knowledge; continuous, ongoing prospecting; existing internal tooling and process.
Tradeoffs: real labor cost even when no invoice is issued; consistency depends on who’s doing it and how carefully; needs its own QA; carries an opportunity cost against whatever else that person could be doing.
What actually changes the price?
Ten factors move prospect-research pricing more than the provider’s brand name does: volume requested, how narrow the niche is, geographic specificity, how much evidence is documented per record, how strict the contact requirements are, seniority or role requirements for named contacts, how recent each record must be, how many exclusions must be tracked and respected, whether the list is one-time or refreshed on a recurring basis, and the delivery format. A request for “500 companies anywhere in the US that sell software” is cheap to fill. A request for “12 independent dental practices in three specific ZIP codes with an owner’s name publicly listed” takes real, per-record time — even though the second list is shorter.
Cost per row versus cost per useful record
The cheapest price per row is not necessarily the lowest cost per useful prospect. A 1,000-row list at $0.05 a row looks like a $50 bargain next to a 50-row custom list at $59 — until you count what it actually costs to turn either one into outreach you’d stand behind.
Call this the TRUE Cost view of prospect-research pricing — not a formula that produces a single verified number (actual internal costs vary by team and market), but a way to ask the right question before you buy:
The TRUE Cost view
What actually drives cost per useful prospect, not just cost per row
T
Targeting complexity — how narrow is the market?
R
Research depth — how much evidence is required per record?
U
Update standard — how recently must each record be checked?
E
Evidence & exclusions — what’s documented, what’s disqualified?
Cheap price per row + high T-R-U-E burden = expensive per useful prospect.
Be My Tech · bemytech.com/prospects
As a decision concept, not a financial guarantee:
Useful research cost = purchase price + internal cleanup time + poor-fit review time + correction effort
A cheap list with a high T-R-U-E burden can end up costing more in your own time than a smaller, pricier list that arrives already filtered. The reverse is also true — if your criteria are broad and you have the internal capacity to filter thousands of rows yourself, a database subscription’s low per-row price is the genuinely better deal. HubSpot’s own analysis of database decay — built on the widely cited MarketingSherpa research into B2B contact turnover — puts typical annual accuracy loss for a static database at roughly 22.5%, which is one reason the “U” factor matters as much as the sticker price — a record that was accurate a year ago isn’t a guarantee it’s accurate now.
What should be included in a paid record?
This article covers pricing; the full evaluation standard — what separates a trustworthy record from a padded one — is covered in What Makes a Prospect List Worth Trusting? 7 Checks Before You Buy. In short: a paid record should be able to show its source, a checked date, a specific fit reason, honestly marked contact availability, and disclosed exclusions — regardless of which pricing model produced it. Price tells you what you spent. Those fields tell you what you got.
If you’re trying to decide whether a purchased list, a database subscription, internal research, or custom research is the right fit for your situation (not just what each costs), see B2B Lead Lists vs. Custom Prospect Research: Which One Should You Use?
Comparing the options
| Option | Typical use case | Customization | Evidence transparency | Your cleanup burden | Recurring commitment | Principal tradeoff |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Database subscription | Broad, ongoing outbound at volume | Filter-based, after export | Varies by provider | High — you filter and validate | Usually yes | Volume over fit |
| Purchased static list | One-time, simple criteria | Low | Often undocumented | Medium–high | No | Ages immediately, little transparency |
| Custom research | Specific criteria, fit matters more than volume | High — set before delivery | Documented per record (when the provider publishes it) | Low — fit decided before you receive it | Optional (one-time or refill) | Lower volume per dollar |
| Internal research | Continuous, institutional-knowledge-driven prospecting | Highest | Depends entirely on your own process | N/A — the labor is the cost | Ongoing staff time | Real cost even without an invoice |
What does Be My Tech charge?
Be My Tech’s current pricing, verified against the live site at time of writing:
- 3 sample prospects — free
- 50 researched prospects — $59 one-time
- 100 researched prospects — $99 one-time
- No subscription — every package is a one-time purchase
Three free samples
For buyers who want to inspect the research standard — source links, checked dates, fit reasoning, and honestly marked contact fields — before spending anything.
50 prospects — $59 one-time
Potentially suitable for a focused initial campaign against one target segment, or a controlled test where you don’t yet need recurring delivery.
100 prospects — $99 one-time
Potentially suitable for broader testing across a couple of related segments, or teams prepared to work a larger list at once.
What changes the price on Be My Tech’s side is the same thing that changes it everywhere: how narrow and specific the criteria are. If a market needs extra research time, that’s communicated before delivery, not discovered after payment.
What is not guaranteed
No prospect-research provider — including Be My Tech — can price in a guaranteed outcome, because outcomes happen after delivery, not during research. Be My Tech’s pricing does not include or promise: replies, meetings, or sales; complete private contact details (personal cell numbers or direct emails that aren’t publicly listed); perfectly complete public information (some businesses simply don’t publish a phone number or owner name); permanent accuracy after the checked date; or fitness for outreach methods that violate the calling and email regulations that apply in your region. If a delivered record materially fails the stated criteria — closed business, dead website, wrong location, clear mismatch, duplicate, unusable source — Be My Tech’s current published policy is a free replacement within 14 days, and a refund review if the issue can’t be resolved fairly.
The hidden cost of a cheap list
A low sticker price doesn’t disappear the work — it just moves the work onto you. A cheap or loosely targeted list still has to be manually reviewed for duplicates, checked for businesses that closed or moved, filtered for poor fit, and cross-checked for accuracy before it’s safe to act on. None of that shows up on the invoice, which is exactly why it’s easy to underestimate. The 1,000-row, $50 list and the 50-row, $59 list can end up costing about the same once that review time is counted — the difference is who does the review, and when.
Who should buy
This tends to fit businesses that already know what they sell, can describe their target criteria in a sentence or two, and would rather review a smaller, evidence-backed list than sift a large export themselves — where fit and documentation matter more than raw volume.
Who should not buy
Be direct with yourself here. Custom research at this scale isn’t the right fit if you need thousands of contacts immediately, require guaranteed personal cell numbers or private emails as a baseline, want a self-serve searchable database you can query yourself, or are looking for guaranteed replies, meetings, or sales. A database subscription or internal research is likely the better tool in those cases — for anyone, not just for Be My Tech.
How can you test quality before paying?
You fill in four fields — your website, who you want to reach, where, and what you sell (plus optional exclusions) — and Be My Tech researches three matching prospects using the same sourcing and review standard described above. No card required, no call to book. If the three samples aren’t the right fit, you can reply and adjust the criteria before spending anything.
Review the standard before you pay for it
Price tells you what something costs. It doesn’t tell you what you’re getting for it. Run the TRUE Cost view — targeting complexity, research depth, update standard, evidence and exclusions — against any list before you buy it, including this one.
Request 3 source-cited sample prospects — free.
Frequently asked questions
Is pricing usually per record, per project, subscription, or retained research?
All four exist in the market. Database access is typically subscription or credit-based; static lists are usually a flat one-time fee; custom research is priced per project or per batch (as Be My Tech’s packages are); internal research is paid as staff time rather than an invoice.
Is a larger list automatically better value?
No. A larger list is better value only if you have the capacity to filter and validate it. Otherwise the extra rows are unreviewed risk, not extra value.
What makes a record more expensive to research?
Narrow or unusual targeting criteria, strict contact requirements, small or hard-to-find markets, and documented fit reasoning per record all add research time — and time is most of what custom research pricing reflects.
What’s the difference between buying database access and commissioning custom research?
Database access gives you a large pool and the filtering work; custom research gives you a smaller, pre-filtered set with the fit decision already made against your stated criteria.
Are direct email addresses and phone numbers always included?
No — only where a business has made that information public. A trustworthy provider marks the field blank rather than guessing.
Sources: the B2B contact-database decay figure (~22.5% annually) is drawn from HubSpot’s Database Decay analysis, which states its methodology is built on MarketingSherpa’s original research into B2B contact turnover — linked above. No blended per-contact pricing figure is cited in this article, since provider pricing changes frequently enough that a single number would go stale; check each provider’s own current pricing page directly. Be My Tech’s own pricing is verified directly against the live site at time of writing.
