Use case · Vibe coders building lead tools

The lead data layer for the tool you are building

Indie developers and vibe coders building lead-gen apps, CRM add-ons, AI SDRs or vertical directories.

How it is usually done today

• Building a Maps scraper, a crawler, an email verifier and an LLM extraction step yourself.
• Stitching together several data vendors with different schemas.
• Using a scraping marketplace actor and post-processing its output.

Why that hurts

• Scrapers and crawlers are ongoing maintenance, not a one-time build.
• Email verification and phone line lookups each need their own provider.
• Normalizing several vendors into one schema is undifferentiated work.

How LeadMerlin does it

1. 1

   Prototype on demo data

   The /v2/demo endpoints return the same shapes with demo: true — no key, no cost.

2. 2

   Search or enrich

   Use /v2/searches for discovery or /v2/enrichments to enrich domains your users bring (up to 100 per request).

3. 3

   Poll and page

   GET /v2/jobs/:id until completed, then page results with cursor and limit (up to 200 per page).

4. 4

   Store what you need

   The response schema is published in the docs; keep only the fields your product uses.

Try the flow on demo data (no key needed)

curl -X POST "https://api.leadmerlin.com/api/v2/demo/searches" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{"keyword":"plumber","location_codes":[1026201]}'

curl "https://api.leadmerlin.com/api/v2/demo/jobs/demo/results"

curl -X POST "https://api.leadmerlin.com/api/v2/enrichments" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADMERLIN_API_KEY" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{"leads":[{"domain":"example-plumbing.com","business_name":"Example Plumbing","city":"Austin","state":"TX"}]}'

Location codes in these examples are placeholders — always look yours up with GET /v2/locations first.

What comes back

Most useful for this job:

• One consistent schema: identity, contact, reputation, services and web blocks.
• relevance on each business (on_niche / adjacent / off_niche) when niche filtering is on.
• Raw page text and schema.org blocks for your own downstream extraction.

Limits and honest caveats

• An empty balance returns HTTP 402 with code insufficient_credits. Don't retry it; top up or upgrade first.
• Results are only returned for businesses whose enrichment completed.
• You are responsible for how your product uses and stores the data.

Pricing

• 1 lead credit per business that has a website to enrich.
• Listings without a website are never charged (counted as skipped, not returned in results).
• Off-niche listings removed by the niche filter are never charged.
• Failed enrichments are refunded automatically.
• A search charges only what your balance covers: with 40 credits left, it enriches the 40 top-ranked matches. Set max_leads to cap any search.
• Locations, niche suggestions, polling and demo endpoints are free.
• Phone line-type lookups have a monthly allowance: 100 on the free start, 1,000 Starter, 2,000 Pro, 4,000 Agency. Numbers looked up before are free. Past the allowance, phones still come back without a line type.

FAQ

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