B2B Enrichment vs PhantomBuster

The two platforms, PhantomBuster and B2B Enrichment, essentially offer different ways of collecting and managing B2B data. Both aim to arm sales, recruitment, and marketing teams with insights from data, but the how of the way that they achieve their outcomes is where the difference actually lies.

B2B Enrichment is a data provider that sells pre-gathered and ever-updated company and contact details through API. PhantomBuster, on the other hand, is an automation and scraping tool that enables users to scrape real-time data from sites like LinkedIn, Google, and Instagram through their own accounts.

Let's take a closer look at how these two tools fare on some of the most important dimensions, from data accuracy and scalability to compliance and usability.

Public vs Private Data Sources

Both PhantomBuster and B2B Enrichment provide helpful B2B data but obtain and provide it in a different way.

• B2B Enrichment uses a centralized database of pre-collected, validated B2B contacts and company profiles. This allows users not to have to connect personal or corporate social media accounts, they simply call an API in order to receive structured, ready-to-use data.

• PhantomBuster instead depends on people connecting their own account (e.g., a LinkedIn or Google account) to run automated "Phantoms." These scripts mimic human action to scrape information in real time, generally from private or half-private places in a person's network.

B2B Enrichment scrapes accounts not at all, whereas PhantomBuster operates directly on sites through user sessions, offering greater freedom for real-time scraping but at higher danger of compliance and account suspension.

Data Freshness and Completeness

Both tools provide new data, but via quite dissimilar pipelines.

B2B Enrichment ensures its company and contact data is updated up to 30 days. The system continuously checks and updates records in its own database, providing consistency and accuracy at scale.

PhantomBuster, conversely, scrapes data in real time and is therefore technically newer at the time of capture. This comes at the cost of consistency and completeness, however, the data extracted is solely determined by the visibility limits of the user's attached account.

For instance, B2B Enrichment can enrich company revenue, industry, and work emails verified for millions of professionals. PhantomBuster can extract public-facing data, but completeness varies by connection degree, privacy settings, and updates to the platforms.

Email and Contact Accuracy

This is where B2B Enrichment shines.

The platform offers a dedicated Email API that finds, verifies, and lists professional contact information, even handling catch-all domains through advanced verification models. Its average match rate for valid work emails is among the highest in the industry.

PhantomBuster, however, lacks native email validation. Users typically rely on scraping publicly available email addresses through the use of automations or by using PhantomBuster in conjunction with third-party applications, methods that can result in lower precision and introduce compliance problems.

GDPR and CCPA Compliance

Compliance is a characteristic requirement for any business that handles individual data.

B2B Enrichment is conducted under CCPA and GDPR laws using publicly available, opt-in, and licensed business information. Since it doesn't use scraping or illegal access to websites, it is fully compliant with primary data privacy laws.

PhantomBuster, however, automates through user accounts. Although it provides dos and don'ts for its automations, legal and ethical liability for data collection on the user exists. Scraping semi-personal or personal profiles may be in grey areas of GDPR and CCPA.

Legality and Platform Risk

B2B Enrichment is a database-based API that neither directly accesses nor talks to any social media platform. This has been legally confirmed through the doctrine of precedent and adheres to both data provider- and user-side legislation. Users can safely integrate B2B Enrichment data into business processes.

PhantomBuster, in contrast, uses session-based automation, i.e., it uses user credentials (via cookies) in an attempt to simulate a human on websites. The action could be in violation of platform terms of service and could result in account suspensions or bans. Moreover, commercial reselling of scraped material is generally forbidden.

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API and Performance

B2B Enrichment is designed to scale and perform, for developers who need enrichment or verification of large datasets in a hurry. It processes an average of 1,000 profiles in under 4 minutes, comparable to Proxycurl-level performance.

PhantomBuster, on the other hand, runs automations in series. Scraping 1,000 profiles can take 6–8 hours depending on the complexity of tasks and account throttling power.

Ease of Use

Both sites appeal to different audiences.

B2B Enrichment is intended for developers and data teams. It has clean documentation, RESTful endpoints, and consistent API responses, perfect for CRM enrichment, lead scoring, and marketing automation.

PhantomBuster is also more accessible for non-tech users. It has a GUI with which one can create workflows, chain "Phantoms" together, and send data to spreadsheets, ideal for freelancers and marketers running small-scale outreach campaigns.

Pricing

In terms of cost effectiveness, B2B Enrichment is considerably cheaper.

B2B Enrichment operates on a credit basis, $30 for 10,000 credits (≈$0.003 per credit) and as cheap as $0.001 at scale.

PhantomBuster is a pay-on-use model paying both by runtime and quantity of running "Phantoms" simultaneously. Pricing is not calculated by the amount of scraped profiles, and unit cost of profile is determined by script length and frequency.

Conclusion: Which Tool Should You Choose?

Both PhantomBuster and B2B Enrichment are formidable in themselves, they simply perform different functions.

If your use case involves custom automation, niche data extraction, or scraping real-time activity signals, PhantomBuster remains a flexible option for small-scale or experimental workflows, provided you’re mindful of platform policies and compliance boundaries.

But, if you’re looking for clean, verified, and legally compliant B2B data at scale, B2B Enrichment is the clear winner. It’s designed for scalability, compliance, and accuracy, perfect for teams enriching CRMs, running outreach campaigns, or training AI models.