A free B2B database costs you hours instead of dollars. The free sources give you company names, addresses and sometimes phone numbers. A named decision-maker and a working email, the two things you need to send anything, mostly have to be found by hand. Plan on roughly 5 to 17 hours of cleanup per 100 rows, depending on the source.
That is the answer the top results for this search tend to skip, since many of them are written by companies that sell the paid version. Below is a plain look at the five kinds of free source, what fields each really carries, how old the data tends to be, and a cleanup estimate. No tool is ranked. At the end there is a way to decide whether your time or a subscription is the cheaper cost.
Why free databases are partial
Someone has to collect, check and update contact data, and when nobody is paid to do it, the result is usually a directory of businesses without people. Titles and email addresses are the expensive fields because they change often: people move jobs, companies change domains. So free sources are strong on "this business exists at this address" and weak on "this person can buy from you, and this address reaches them." Keep that split in mind as you read each source.
Government and state registries
Every state keeps a registry of businesses formed there, searchable by name on the Secretary of State's site. A few states, New York and Colorado among them, also publish open datasets you can download, while others offer only a search box. Fields: legal name, entity type, formation date, registered agent, sometimes the officers or managers. Missing: email, phone, and often the real owner, because the registered agent is often a filing service. Freshness depends on filing dates: new businesses appear quickly, but closed ones linger. It is good for finding new businesses and weak for finding people. Our guide to finding who owns a business shows how to get from an entity name to a person.
Chamber and association directories
Local chambers of commerce and trade associations list their members, usually with business name, phone, website and category, and often a contact person. Some list an email. The data is as fresh as the last membership renewal, so expect a year of drift. The bias is toward established businesses that pay dues, which is fine if those are your buyers and wrong if they are not. Cleanup is moderate: the website is already there, so finding the owner and an email is quicker than from a registry. Copying the directory into a sheet is allowed by hand; read the site's terms before using any automated tool on it.
No-cost versions of paid tools, and their caps
Several paid data products offer a plan that costs nothing, limited by credits. Hunter's no-cost plan includes 50 credits a month, as published on their site, October 2026. Apollo's pricing page lists a no-cost plan; its credit and export limits are on that page. Fields here are the best of any free source, with name, title and email, but the cap sets the pace. If each row costs one credit, 100 rows takes two months at 50 credits a month. Phone numbers and verified emails are often held back for paid tiers. Read the current limits on each vendor's page, because they change. For how to judge any data before paying for it, see lead data you can check before paying.
Open datasets and their age
Public datasets include the SEC's EDGAR system, which is free and covers public companies and other filers (so not most small private businesses), aggregators of company registers such as OpenCorporates (read their current terms for volume use), and Census data such as County Business Patterns, which counts businesses by industry and county but names none of them. They are good for sizing a market and poor for building a send list. Many are updated yearly or quarterly, so the data can be a year old when you open it, and a company that merged in the meantime still appears under its old name.
Cleanup hours per 100 rows
To make a row sendable, you need a named person with a role and an email you've checked. Here is what that takes, using these assumptions: finding the website takes 1 minute, finding the owner or decision-maker takes 2 to 5, finding the email takes 1 to 3, and verifying it takes 1. The totals are planning estimates, not measurements.
| Source | Business name | Person and title | Phone | Data age | Cleanup per 100 rows | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| State registry | Yes | Sometimes, and often a filing agent | No | No | Months | About 13 hours |
| Chamber or association directory | Yes | Sometimes | Sometimes | Usually | Up to a year | About 8 hours |
| No-cost tier of a paid tool | Yes | Yes | Yes, credit-limited | Often held back | Varies | About 2 hours, plus waiting for credits |
| Open dataset (SEC, census) | Public filers only, or counts | Officers of public companies | No | Rare | A quarter to a year | About 17 hours |
The hours come from 8 minutes a row for a registry (13 hours per 100), 5 for a chamber directory (8 hours), 1 for a no-cost tool (under 2 hours), and 10 for an open dataset (17 hours). Your speed will differ; time yourself on the first ten rows and scale up. Our guide to building a prospect list for free and finding B2B leads cover the process, finding emails from a website speeds the email step, and verifying addresses before sending covers the last one.
When paying for data is cheaper
Do the arithmetic with your own hour. If a registry row takes 8 minutes by hand, 50 rows is 6.7 hours. At $40 an hour that is about $267 of your time. Rocketship's Launch plan is $24.99 a month and includes 50 leads a month, which are named buyers you can read before you send. Lead enrichment credits are separate: Launch includes 100 a month, adding a person costs 1, and a verified phone and email costs 5, charged only when found. On those figures, buying wins on cost whenever your time is worth more than about $4 an hour, and the real question is whether the data is good. Paid data still needs checking, and a stale paid list is worse than a hand-built one. Free sources win when you need only a handful of names, when your market is tiny and local, or when your buyers are the kind that only a chamber directory lists.
So the choice depends on the job you need done. For a one-off list of 30 local businesses, free sources and a few evenings do it. For a list you refill every month, the hours add up and a paid source wins. For a first look at a market before deciding anything, a no-cost tier or a census table is enough. Rocketship finds the buyers by name, emails them from your own Gmail, follows up, and books the meeting on its own, and you see your first 25 buyers by name before committing. Plans that get you customers start at $24.99 a month (Launch), and every monthly plan starts with a 7-day free trial, card required.