SalesQL vs UpLead: The Honest Comparison
Comparing SalesQL and UpLead comes down to one question: do you need a cheap browser-based extractor or a standalone prospecting database? SalesQL's Starter plan works out to $0.039 per credit - that's $39/month for 1,000 credits. UpLead Essentials runs about $0.58 per credit at $99/month for 170 credits. That's roughly a 15x price gap, which tells you these tools serve fundamentally different workflows. Pick the wrong one and you're wasting either money or time.
30-Second Verdict
- Choose SalesQL for cheap email extraction from professional profiles. At $0.039/credit, it's one of the lowest-cost ways to pull contact data while you browse. G2 rating: 4.5/5 (166 reviews). Phone coverage is weak though - expect 5-10 numbers per 100 contacts.
- Choose UpLead for a standalone database with 50+ search filters and real-time email verification. G2 rating: 4.7/5 (824 reviews). You'll pay roughly 15x more per contact, but you're not tethered to browsing profiles one by one.
Side-by-Side Comparison
| SalesQL | UpLead | |
|---|---|---|
| G2 Rating | 4.5/5 (166) | 4.7/5 (824) |
| Capterra Rating | 3.8/5 (46 reviews) | Not listed |
| Email Accuracy | ~90% | 88-95% (95% guarantee) |
| Phone Coverage | 5-10% | 50-65% |
| Starting Price | Free (50 credits/mo) | $99/mo (170 credits) |
| Cost per Contact | ~$0.039 | ~$0.58 |
| Integrations | CRM + Zapier (Salesforce sync issues reported) | Salesforce, HubSpot, Zapier |
| Cancellation | Self-serve | Zoom call required |
SalesQL's phone coverage figure comes from Trustpilot reviews. UpLead's phone coverage range is based on a 100-contact SaaS benchmark.
SalesQL: Budget Extraction
SalesQL works as a prospecting companion. You browse professional profiles, the Chrome extension pulls emails and phone numbers, and you export. The company says it's used by 150,000+ professionals in 189 countries.
The value case is straightforward. One Capterra reviewer paid $40 for 1,600 credits and only saw 13 bounces out of 300+ emails. The Starter plan runs $39/mo for 1,000 credits, and there's a free tier at 50 credits/month. That's genuinely cheap for email extraction.
Here's the thing: phone numbers barely exist. A Trustpilot reviewer put it bluntly - for 100 contacts, SalesQL returned phone numbers for only 5 to 10. If direct dials matter to your outreach, that's a dealbreaker. Capterra's overall rating sits at 3.8/5 across 46 reviews, with customer service scoring just 3.3/5. Multiple reviewers flag refund disputes and billing friction.
G2 reviews skew heavily positive (81% five-star), but the 1-star reviews cluster around support and billing issues. SalesQL also doesn't integrate bidirectionally with Salesforce, which creates extra manual work depending on your CRM setup.
SalesQL gives you 5-10 phone numbers per 100 contacts. UpLead charges $0.58 each. Prospeo delivers 125M+ verified mobiles at a 30% pickup rate and emails at $0.01 - with 98% accuracy and a 7-day data refresh cycle.
Stop choosing between cheap data and accurate data.
UpLead: Standalone Database
UpLead takes the opposite approach entirely. It's a standalone B2B database with 160M+ contacts across 19M+ companies. Set your filters - 50+ are available - and the platform serves up contacts with real-time email verification.
UpLead offers a 95% data accuracy guarantee and a credit-back approach for bounced emails, so you're not paying for obvious bad data. Independent benchmarks put typical email accuracy at 88-95%, though at least one independent blog noted user-experienced accuracy as low as ~75% in certain segments.
The filtering is where UpLead earns its premium. Technographics on Plus and above, buyer intent data on Professional - you get a real prospecting surface beyond profile scraping. If you want to go deeper on intent, see our breakdown of the benefits of intent data. UpLead is also positioned as CCPA compliant in third-party comparisons. But Essentials costs $99/mo for just 170 credits, which works out to about $0.58 per contact. Annual billing drops that to ~$0.44/credit ($74/mo billed annually for 2,040 credits/year), but you're committing for a full year. Buyer intent data and full API access are gated behind the Professional tier, which is annual-only and requires a sales conversation.
The cancellation process is the biggest red flag we've seen. Capterra reviewers specifically describe that you can't cancel online - you have to schedule a Zoom meeting. At least one reviewer described being billed again after failing to complete the process. In 2026, that's inexcusable.
When to Choose Which
The decision comes down to workflow and deal size.
SalesQL makes sense if you already spend your day browsing professional profiles and just need a cheap way to grab emails. You'll save money but sacrifice phone coverage and may run into support friction. For teams doing high-volume, low-ACV outreach, the math works.
UpLead makes sense if you need a standalone database with broad search filters - especially if technographics or intent data matter to your targeting. You'll pay significantly more per contact, and you need to be comfortable with annual commitments and that Zoom-call cancellation process.
Let's be honest: if your average deal size is under $10k, UpLead's per-contact cost is hard to justify. SalesQL gets you 80% of the way there at a fraction of the price. But if you're closing six-figure contracts, UpLead's richer filtering can pay for itself with a single won opportunity.
The review-site pattern across both tools is consistent - praise for ease of use, complaints about stale or missing data (UpLead) and accuracy/support/billing issues (SalesQL). That accuracy gap matters when you're sending volume, because bounces compound into domain reputation damage fast.
Why We'd Pick Prospeo Over Both
Both tools have real tradeoffs that force you to choose between cost and coverage. Prospeo's database covers 300M+ professional profiles with 98% email accuracy and 125M+ verified mobile numbers that hit a 30% pickup rate. Data refreshes every 7 days - the industry average is 6 weeks.
The pricing gap seals it: ~$0.01 per email, with a free tier including 75 emails and 100 Chrome extension credits monthly. No contracts, no cancellation calls. Native integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, Smartlead, Instantly, Lemlist, Clay, Zapier, and Make mean no CSV exports cluttering your workflow. We've run the math across dozens of teams - switching from UpLead's ~$0.58/contact to ~$0.01/email is about a 98% cost reduction, and deliverability improves because of the weekly refresh cycle.
Beyond cost, Prospeo also offers 30+ search filters, buyer intent data powered by Bombora across 15,000 topics, and technographic signals - matching UpLead's advanced features without gating them behind annual-only enterprise tiers. And unlike SalesQL, the Chrome extension (40,000+ users) returns verified mobiles alongside emails, so you're not stuck with 5% phone coverage. One of our customers, Snyk, dropped their bounce rate from 35-40% to under 5% across 50 AEs after switching - that's the kind of difference fresh, verified data makes at scale.
UpLead gates intent data and API access behind annual-only tiers. SalesQL doesn't offer them at all. Prospeo gives you 30+ filters, Bombora intent data across 15,000 topics, and full API access - no annual lock-in, no Zoom call to cancel.
Enterprise-grade prospecting without the enterprise pricing or contracts.
FAQ
Can I cancel UpLead online?
No. Multiple Capterra reviewers report that UpLead requires a Zoom call to cancel your subscription. At least one reviewer described being billed again after failing to complete the process. Both SalesQL and Prospeo allow self-serve cancellation without scheduling a call.