Both Crustdata and Salesmotion offer API-first B2B intelligence. Both support MCP for AI agents. Both target developers building the next generation of sales tools. But they solve fundamentally different problems — and understanding the difference determines whether you build a tool that finds contacts or one that actually knows why a deal matters right now.
Key Takeaways
- Crustdata is a people and company search engine — 1B+ profiles, 60M+ companies, real-time data for AI SDR and lead enrichment use cases.
- Salesmotion is an account intelligence API — earnings calls, SEC filings, clinical trials, legal events, and AI-generated research briefs from 1,000+ sources.
- Crustdata answers "who works at this company?" Salesmotion answers "what is happening at this company and why should I care?"
- Both support MCP and target AI agent builders. They are complementary, not competitors.
- Salesmotion publishes transparent pricing starting with a free tier (100 credits, no card). Crustdata's pricing requires contacting sales for most plans.
What Is Crustdata?
Crustdata is a Y Combinator F24 company that provides real-time people and company data via REST APIs and bulk data feeds. The platform covers over 1 billion people profiles and 60 million companies, with data refreshed monthly from 11+ sources including LinkedIn, funding databases, job boards, and web traffic providers.
Crustdata positions itself as "Google for AI agents" — a data layer purpose-built for AI SDR platforms, recruiting tools, and investment analysis workflows. Their core API endpoints include:
- People Search & Enrichment — find contacts by role, company, seniority, and dozens of other filters
- Company Search & Enrichment — firmographics, headcount, funding history, tech stack
- Job Listings — open roles and hiring velocity
- Watcher API — real-time alerts for job changes, funding rounds, and growth milestones
The product is designed for developers building AI agents that need fresh contact and company data at scale. If you are building an AI SDR that needs to find the right person at the right company, Crustdata is built for that workflow.
What Is the Salesmotion API?
The Salesmotion API solves a different problem entirely. Instead of "what is this company?" it answers "why should I care about this company right now?"
Salesmotion delivers structured account intelligence across eight endpoints, each returning AI-processed data from over 1,000 sources:
- Earnings Calls — AI summaries, full transcripts, key topics, sentiment, and executive quotes
- SEC Filings — 10-K, 10-Q, 8-K parsed into structured fields with risk factors and material events
- Clinical Trials — phases, status, investigators, endpoints from ClinicalTrials.gov, WHO ICTRP, and EudraCT
- Court & Legal — litigation, regulatory actions, patent filings, compliance events
- News & Press — aggregated from 1,000+ sources with relevance scoring and AI summaries
- Job Postings — hiring velocity, department breakdowns, tech stack signals
- Company Firmographics — headcount, industry, revenue, funding, tech stack
- AI Summaries & Briefs — talking points, competitive intelligence, key insights, and the raw data behind every summary
Every endpoint returns structured JSON with AI summaries built in. One API call to /v1/accounts/{id}/summary gives you a complete research brief — the kind that would take an analyst 45 minutes to compile manually. Teams using Salesmotion's Research Agent have cut account research time from 60 minutes to under five.
Head-to-Head Comparison
| Capability | Crustdata | Salesmotion API |
|---|---|---|
| Core data type | People profiles + company firmographics | Account intelligence (earnings, filings, legal, clinical) |
| AI summaries | No built-in AI layer | AI summaries on every endpoint |
| People search | Yes — 1B+ profiles | No — focused on company-level intelligence |
| Earnings call analysis | No | Yes — transcripts, sentiment, AI briefs |
| SEC filing parsing | No | Yes — 10-K, 10-Q, 8-K structured data |
| Clinical trial data | No | Yes — ClinicalTrials.gov, WHO, EudraCT |
| Legal & court data | No | Yes — litigation, patents, regulatory |
| Signal types | Job changes, funding, hiring velocity | Earnings, filings, legal, clinical, news, hiring |
| MCP support | Yes | Yes |
| Pricing transparency | Contact sales for most plans | Published — Free, $99, $299, $599/mo |
| Free tier | Free trial available | 100 credits/mo, no credit card |
| Data freshness | Real-time people search; monthly bulk refresh | Continuous monitoring across 1,000+ sources |
| Target user | AI SDR builders, recruiters, investors | AI agent builders, RevOps, data engineers, consultants |
See Salesmotion in action
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Try the interactive demo →When Crustdata Is the Better Choice
Crustdata excels in specific scenarios where people-level data and company discovery are the primary need:
- Building an AI SDR platform. If your agent needs to find the right contact at a target account — name, title, email, LinkedIn — Crustdata's people search API is purpose-built for that.
- Lead enrichment at scale. Updating CRM records with current job titles, company headcount, and funding status across thousands of contacts.
- Recruiting and talent intelligence. Sourcing candidates by skill, role, seniority, and company across a billion-person database.
- Investment screening. Filtering companies by funding stage, headcount growth, and industry to build prospect lists for venture or PE workflows.
Crustdata is strong when the question is "who should I talk to?" and you need fresh, structured people data to answer it.
When Salesmotion Is the Better Choice
Salesmotion is built for teams where knowing about a company is not enough — you need to know what is happening at that company and why it creates an opportunity:
- Building account research tools. If your product needs to deliver a research brief on any company — earnings context, regulatory risk, competitive moves — Salesmotion's API does that in a single call.
- Earnings and financial intelligence. No other API in this category parses earnings call transcripts into structured sentiment, key topics, and executive quotes. For financial services, consulting, and enterprise sales, this data is table stakes.
- Life sciences and regulated industries. Clinical trial data, SEC filings, and legal events are not available from people-search APIs. Salesmotion covers account intelligence for life sciences and other regulated verticals.
- AI agent workflows that need the "why." If your agent can already find the right person (via Crustdata or similar), Salesmotion provides the intelligence layer — what to say, why now, and what context matters.
The difference shows up in outreach quality. A rep armed with Crustdata data knows the prospect's name and title. A rep armed with Salesmotion data knows the company just reported a 15% revenue miss on their earnings call, their CEO flagged "operational efficiency" as a priority, and they have three open VP-level roles in the exact department you sell into. That context is what turns a cold email into a warm conversation.
Can You Use Both?
Yes — and for many teams, this is the right answer.
Crustdata and Salesmotion are complementary. Use Crustdata's people search to identify who to contact at a target account. Use Salesmotion's account intelligence to understand why that account matters right now and what to say when you reach out.
A practical architecture looks like this:
- Crustdata identifies contacts matching your ICP — right role, right seniority, right company size.
- Salesmotion enriches each account with intelligence — recent earnings, new filings, legal events, hiring patterns.
- Your AI agent combines both to generate signal-based outreach that references real business context.
This is the difference between building an AI SDR that sends generic templates at scale and building one that sends relevant, informed messages that actually get replies.
Pricing Comparison
Salesmotion publishes its API pricing transparently. The free tier includes 100 credits per month with access to all eight endpoints — no credit card required. Paid plans start at $99/month for 2,500 credits and scale to $599/month for 25,000 credits. Every credit covers one API call to any endpoint.
Crustdata offers a free trial and a free-forever tier with limited features, but detailed pricing for their API plans requires contacting their sales team. For teams evaluating both, this difference in transparency matters during procurement.
The Verdict
These are not competing products. They solve different halves of the same problem.
Use Crustdata if you need to find who to talk to — names, titles, emails, company data at scale for AI SDR, enrichment, or recruiting workflows.
Use Salesmotion if you need to know why to talk to them — earnings context, filing analysis, legal events, clinical trials, and AI research briefs that turn raw company data into actionable intelligence.
The teams that win are the ones that stop treating "data" as one category. Contact data and account intelligence are different capabilities. The best AI agent stacks will use both — one to identify the right person, and one to arm the conversation with the right context. Salesmotion's API is free to start with 100 credits and no card required, so there is no barrier to testing whether account intelligence changes the quality of your pipeline.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Crustdata a direct competitor to Salesmotion?
Not really. Crustdata focuses on people and company search — finding contacts, enriching firmographic data, and tracking job changes. Salesmotion focuses on account intelligence — earnings calls, SEC filings, clinical trials, legal events, and AI research briefs. They serve different parts of the sales intelligence stack and are often used together.
Does Crustdata offer earnings call or SEC filing data?
No. Crustdata's strength is real-time people search and company enrichment. For structured earnings call transcripts, SEC filing analysis, clinical trial data, and court records, you would need a dedicated account intelligence API like Salesmotion.
Which API is better for building AI sales agents?
It depends on what your agent needs to do. If it needs to find the right contact at a target company, Crustdata's people search API is a strong choice. If it needs to research an account, understand recent business events, and generate relevant outreach, Salesmotion's account intelligence API is built for that. Many teams use both — Crustdata for contact discovery and Salesmotion for the intelligence layer.
Can I try both APIs for free?
Crustdata offers a free trial and a free-forever plan with limited capabilities. Salesmotion offers 100 free credits per month with access to all eight endpoints and no credit card required. Both let you evaluate the product before committing to a paid plan.
