Comparison · 11 tools · Updated August 2026
B2B lead scrapers for Germany: eleven tools, honestly sorted
By Benedict Mehlmann, technology and product at Kodo Leads · Last updated
Kodo comes as software (from €290 a month) and as a full service (from €1,790).
Almost every comparison on this topic was written by one of the vendors being compared, and ends predictably. This list names what each tool is bad at, and it explains the part most lists skip: German law treats collecting an address and using it as two separate questions.
Kodo Leads is our own product and it appears on this list. It sits in the same grid as everyone else, with its own weakness named. The free official registers are included deliberately, because for some use cases they are simply the right answer. We earn nothing from a click on any vendor named here.
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The short answer
- You need a lot of company addresses in one industry and region, fast, without depth.LeadScraper.de or OutscraperBoth pull company name, address, phone and often an email out of public directories and map services within minutes. For a first look at a market that is enough, and it costs almost nothing.
- You already have names and companies, and only the email address is missing.Hunter.io or Skrapp.ioThese are not databases, they are address finders. They derive the likely address from a company pattern and test the mail server. For that one job they are cheaper and better than any database.
- You need legal form, register number, filed accounts and group ownership.Dealfront, or the German company register directlyThose facts live in official registers and no scraper touches them. The register is free but slow. Dealfront sells you convenient access to the same material.
- You do not want to know who matches your filters, but who has a reason to talk right now.No scraper is built for thatA scraper reads directories. The reason, meaning the new plant, the open role, the new certification, is not in a directory. It is in an official notice, in a job posting, and on the company news page.
Every tool side by side.
Measured against a concrete question rather than headline database sizes. Take a German supplier with roughly a hundred and eighty employees, on an industrial estate, with no curated map listing and no active leadership profiles. Which tool knows its legal form, its last filed accounts, its group ownership and a reachable contact, and tells you where it learned that? In German industrial B2B this company is the norm, not the exception.
| Tool | German companies | Official registers | Source per field | Strong at |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LeadScraper.de | strong | no | no | Fast, cheap, German language, no subscription lock-in |
| Lead Scrape | medium | no | no | One-time licence, local processing, many countries |
| Outscraper | medium | no | no | Excellent coverage of location-bound businesses, pay per use |
| Skrapp.io | weak | no | no | Cheap, fast, well embedded in the network workflow |
| Hunter.io | medium | no | partly | Names the source page for an address, clean API, very reliable pattern detection |
| Dealfront | strong | yes | partly | Commercial register and Bundesanzeiger, website visitor identification, EU processing |
| Apollo.io | weak | no | no | Free entry, published pricing, sequences included |
| PhantomBuster | weak | no | no | Very flexible, many ready-made building blocks, chainable |
| Bright Data | weak | no | no | Technically the strongest in the field, scales almost without limit |
| Unternehmensregister and Bundesanzeiger | strong | yes | yes | Official, complete, free, impossible to argue with |
| Kodo Leads | strong | yes | yes | Trigger with date and source, official figures, evidenced group ownership, processing in Germany |
Each tool in detail
-
LeadScraper.de
German vendor with the clearest promise in the field: pick an industry and a region, get a list. No annual contract, free trial, German interface. For quickly assembling a cold outreach list in the DACH region, the easiest way in.
- Strong at
- Fast, cheap, German language, no subscription lock-in
- Where it stops
- No official register data, no source per field, no triggers. You get addresses, not reasons.
Suitable for: Small sales teams and solo founders who want a list without onboarding or a contract.
Detailed comparison -
Lead Scrape
Classic desktop software with a perpetual licence instead of a monthly subscription. Searches directories across fifty-plus countries and exports locally. If you dislike putting prospect data in someone else's cloud, this is the most unusual answer in the field.
- Strong at
- One-time licence, local processing, many countries
- Where it stops
- Dated interface, coverage varies sharply by country, no register data
Suitable for: Buyers who prefer a one-time licence and want the export to stay on their own machine.
Detailed comparison -
Outscraper
Pulls company data mainly from map services and review platforms. If your buyers run a shop, a garage or a practice, this is the densest source available, because those businesses maintain their listings.
- Strong at
- Excellent coverage of location-bound businesses, pay per use
- Where it stops
- Manufacturers on an industrial estate keep poor map listings. That is exactly where it thins out.
Suitable for: Selling to location-bound businesses: trades, hospitality, retail, healthcare.
Detailed comparison -
Skrapp.io
Email finder built around professional networks. You work through a result list and the extension derives the likely address. Cheaper than the large databases because it solves exactly one step.
- Strong at
- Cheap, fast, well embedded in the network workflow
- Where it stops
- Derived addresses with no evidence. German mid-market firms with inactive profiles yield very little.
Suitable for: Sales reps and recruiters turning profile lists into addresses.
Detailed comparison -
Hunter.io
French vendor that derives a company email pattern from a domain and evidences addresses found on the open web. Alone in this group, Hunter shows you the page an address was found on. That is a real difference.
- Strong at
- Names the source page for an address, clean API, very reliable pattern detection
- Where it stops
- No company search. You already have to know who you are looking for.
Suitable for: Anyone who needs an address for a known name and wants to know where it came from.
Detailed comparison -
Dealfront
Not a scraper but a database built on official sources. Formed in 2023 from Echobot in Karlsruhe and Leadfeeder in Finland. Anyone who outgrows simple address lists in the German market ends up here almost by default.
- Strong at
- Commercial register and Bundesanzeiger, website visitor identification, EU processing
- Where it stops
- Considerably more expensive, price on request only, triggers limited to press portals
Suitable for: Sales teams with German buyers who need legal form, registers and ownership structure.
Detailed comparison -
Apollo.io
Large international database with sequencing built in and a free tier. An obvious choice for the US market, and the wrong one for German family-owned manufacturers.
- Strong at
- Free entry, published pricing, sequences included
- Where it stops
- Thin on German mid-market firms, US processing, variable data quality
Suitable for: Teams with international buyers who want database and outreach in one tool.
Detailed comparison -
PhantomBuster
Not a data vendor but a toolkit for automating actions on other people's platforms. Powerful and flexible, but you routinely operate against the terms of service of whichever platform you automate.
- Strong at
- Very flexible, many ready-made building blocks, chainable
- Where it stops
- Account bans are a real risk, no data of its own, needs setup time
Suitable for: Technically confident users who want to assemble their own workflows.
Detailed comparison -
Bright Data
Strictly speaking it does not belong on this list, but it ranks at the top for the query. It is infrastructure for reading websites, not a sales tool. You get raw data and a developer to process it.
- Strong at
- Technically the strongest in the field, scales almost without limit
- Where it stops
- No finished product for sales. Without your own development work this is just an invoice.
Suitable for: Engineering teams building their own data pipeline.
Detailed comparison -
Unternehmensregister and Bundesanzeiger
The official German source, free to access. Legal form, register number, managing directors, filed accounts, headcount. Everything no scraper has is in here. The price is your time: a few minutes of manual work per company.
- Strong at
- Official, complete, free, impossible to argue with
- Where it stops
- No search by criteria, no contacts, no addresses. Pure manual work.
Suitable for: Anyone who needs to know a few companies properly rather than many superficially.
Detailed comparison -
Kodo Leads
Our own product, and explicitly not a scraper. For a manageable number of companies we read the sources no directory contains: the commercial register, the Bundesanzeiger, official notices, job postings and the company's own news page. Every statement carries the link it came from.
- Strong at
- Trigger with date and source, official figures, evidenced group ownership, processing in Germany
- Where it stops
- No bulk lists. If you need ten thousand addresses for a mailshot, we are the wrong answer.
Suitable for: Sales into German industrial mid-market, where thirty evidenced companies beat three thousand addresses.
Detailed comparison
Why almost every comparison on this topic is useless
Search for a B2B lead scraper for Germany and you land almost exclusively on lists written by one of the vendors being compared. That vendor takes the top slot, the rest follow in descending order of threat. This is not an accusation, it is standard practice, but it makes those lists worthless as a basis for a decision.
This list was also written by a vendor, namely us. The difference is that we say so, that our product is not at the top, and that every tool has its weakness named. Ours first: if you need bulk lists, we are the wrong answer.
Scraper, address finder and database are three different things
Search results on this topic throw three product categories into one pot when they have little in common.
A scraper reads public directories at the moment you ask: map services, trade directories, review platforms. It has no memory. What was wrong in the directory yesterday is wrong in your list today. In exchange it is cheap and usable immediately.
An address finder such as Hunter or Skrapp does something quite different. You give it a name and a company, it gives you the likely email address. It does not find companies, it only closes the last step.
A database such as Dealfront maintains its own holdings over years, reconciles them against official registers and sells you access. It costs many times more and is many times more dependable.
Anyone unclear on these three categories regularly buys the wrong thing. The most common mistake: buying a scraper and being surprised that filed accounts are not in it.
Where every scraper stops in the German market
Take a typical target in industrial mid-market. A supplier with a hundred and eighty employees, family-owned across three generations, on the industrial estate of a small town. No curated map listing, because no customers come there. No leadership presence on professional networks. A website last revised in 2019.
To a scraper this company is nearly invisible. It might find the name, the address and a generic mailbox at reception. That is all.
At the same time this company is fully documented in Germany, just elsewhere. Its legal form and directors are in the commercial register. Its revenue and headcount are in the Bundesanzeiger. Its new plant is in a district authority notice. Its ISO 50001 certification is on its own site under news. Its opening for a maintenance manager is on a job board.
None of that is secret. All of it is public. It simply is not in the directories a scraper reads.
The legal part almost every list omits
Two rules apply, and they are routinely confused.
Article 14 GDPR governs collection. As soon as you obtain personal data without asking the person directly, you must inform them, generally within one month. A name with a matching email address is personal data. A plain company address with a switchboard number is not. This is why many vendors stress that they supply company data rather than personal data.
Section 7 UWG governs contact. Marketing email to business recipients presumes consent, and German courts read that narrowly: your offer must be recognisably relevant to that specific recipient. The same standard applies to cold calls.
In practice: the less specific your list, the weaker your legal position. A blanket mailing to every metalworking firm in a region rests on thin ice. A call to a company that announced an investment in exactly your field last month rests on much firmer ground. The trigger is not only a better opener, it is the more defensible basis. This orientation does not replace legal advice.
How to decide in five minutes
Answer one question: what are you actually missing?
If you are missing addresses, because you have no list at all, take LeadScraper or Outscraper. Cheap, fast, sufficient.
If you are missing the email address for names you already hold, take Hunter or Skrapp. Anything else is overpaying.
If you are missing dependable company facts, meaning legal form, accounts, ownership, there is no way around official sources. Free and laborious through the German company register, convenient and expensive through Dealfront.
If you are missing the reason why this company should talk to you right now, none of the tools on this list solves your problem, and you should be looking at a different category.
Frequently asked questions
Is lead scraping legal in Germany?
Reading publicly accessible company data is not in itself prohibited. Two things about it are regulated, and both are routinely overlooked. First, as soon as personal data is involved, meaning a name or a personal email address, Article 14 GDPR applies: you must inform that person that you hold their data, generally within one month. Second, whether you may then email or call them is a separate question governed by section 7 of the German Unfair Competition Act. Being allowed to collect is not being allowed to contact. This is orientation, not legal advice.
Can I just email a scraped list?
Not without care. Marketing email to business recipients requires presumed consent under section 7 UWG, and German courts read that narrowly. Your offer must be recognisably relevant to that specific recipient and their role. A blanket mailshot to every metalworking firm in a region is unlikely to meet the bar. A targeted approach to a company that announced an investment in exactly your field last month sits on much firmer ground. This is why the trigger is not only a better opener, it is the more defensible basis.
What is the difference between a scraper and a B2B database?
A scraper reads public directories at the moment you ask and hands you the result. It has no memory and no verification. A database such as Dealfront or Cognism maintains its own holdings, reconciles them and enriches them. The scraper is cheaper and faster, the database is deeper and more expensive. Both answer the same question: who matches my criteria.
Why is my target customer in none of these tools?
Because the typical German mid-market manufacturer is not maintained where scrapers look. A supplier with a hundred and eighty staff on an industrial estate often has no curated map listing, no active leadership profiles, and a website last touched in 2019. In the official registers, however, that same company is fully documented, including revenue and headcount. If this is your audience, change the source, not the tool.
What does this cost?
The range is wide. Pure scrapers sit in the low double digits per month or bill per use. Address finders are similar. The large databases want annual contracts in the four-figure range per seat and quote only after a call. The official registers cost nothing but time. With any subscription vendor, check the annual cap on how many records you may reveal. That cap is where a cheap-looking offer becomes expensive.
Similar lists
The best B2B database for Germany depends on what you are looking for The Best B2B Lead Generation Tools for the DACH Region The Best Sales Intelligence Platforms in Comparison Kodo vs. Apollo Kodo vs. Dealfront All resources
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