What's the best waterfall for finding work emails?

The key insight: Waterfall order matters less than choosing providers with high accuracy for YOUR specific ICP. Most providers have 40-60% hit rates individually, so using 3-4 in sequence typically achieves 70-85% total coverage.

Recommended Waterfalls by Use Case

Key Configuration

• stop_on_first_result: true - Stop the waterfall when any provider returns an email
• Validate AFTER the waterfall - Don't validate during each step (wastes credits)
• Use LinkedIn URL + Company Domain as inputs for highest match rates

Provider Performance Notes

• LeadMagic: 85%+ accuracy, good US coverage, 10-15 credits
• Prospeo: High accuracy, good for verified emails
• ContactOut: Best for LinkedIn profile matches
• Forager: High quality but expensive (use for high-value prospects)
• Apollo: Still useful for email finding, but their Sales Nav scrapers were shut down - use API for email enrichment
• Datagma: Good fallback, especially for European data

Important Note

Apollo's Sales Navigator scrapers were shut down in late 2025, but their email enrichment API still works. Don't confuse the two - Apollo is still a valid email enrichment provider.

Best practice: Find first, validate once at the end

The typical mistake is validating during the waterfall, which wastes credits when emails are already valid.

Optimal approach:

1. Run email finding waterfall with stop-on-found (no validation in waterfall)
2. Validate ALL found emails in a single pass at the end

Recommended waterfalls by use case:

Key configuration:

• stop_on_first_result: true - Stop the waterfall as soon as any provider returns an email
• validate_after_waterfall: true - Not during
• dedup_before_run: true - Avoid duplicate lookups