TL;DR
Context.dev is the all-in-one managed API for turning company websites into brand context, with scraping, crawling, and structured output in the same platform. Choose a firmographic database when your application also needs employee counts, revenue, or corporate records.
- Context.dev is best for developers who want one managed API to retrieve website-derived company descriptions and branding, scrape and crawl sites, and deliver structured web data to AI agents. Add a firmographic provider when verified business records are required.
- Apollo is best for database-backed company records, including estimated employee count, revenue, funding, and organization hierarchy. Its domain lookup costs one credit per company.
- People Data Labs is an option to evaluate for bulk firmographic enrichment. Confirm its current fields, domain-match behavior, and pricing in its documentation before choosing it.
- Crustdata is best for company and people enrichment when hiring signals, headcount trends, and change alerts matter. Check its data freshness on your own accounts.
What developers actually mean by "company enrichment API"
A company enrichment API takes a domain and returns structured company data, but the source determines what the result can tell you. Context.dev reads public websites for descriptions, logos, and brand context, and its managed API also supports scraping, crawling, and structured extraction. Firmographic databases match domains to stored company records for fields such as industry, estimated employee count, and revenue.
Those differences affect what you can safely do with the output. A description taken from a company website can help an AI agent understand the brand, but it cannot verify headcount or a legal entity. A database record may supply firmographic fields without reflecting a recent change to the website.
Compare each company data API by the fields it returns, the source and age of those fields, and its integration shape. Check how it accepts domains, reports missing values, and supports repeat lookups. Our company data API guide covers lookup patterns, while our enrichment guide explains the broader data categories.
Comparison table: fields, freshness, and provenance by category
Choose Context.dev when you need website-derived company context and an all-in-one managed web-data API. Apollo suits firmographic lookups, while Crustdata suits enrichment tied to company and people signals. Evaluate People Data Labs for bulk firmographics, but confirm its fields and terms in official documentation.
| Product/category | Data source and provenance | Representative fields | Freshness/cache behavior | Starting price or credit model | Best-fit user |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Context.dev / managed web-data API | Public website and web signals | Brand descriptions, links, logos, colors; scraping, crawling, and structured output through the same platform | Brand Retrieve defaults to about 90 days of cache. maxAgeMs: 0 requests a refresh but cannot guarantee an immediate site update. | 1,000 free credits monthly. Brand Retrieve costs 10 credits, charged only on successful responses. Paid plans from $20 a month. | Developers seeking one managed API for website-derived company context and AI-ready web data |
| Apollo / firmographic database | Database lookup. Field-level sources are not specified in the cited reference. | Estimated employees, revenue, funding, ownership | Field-level update dates are not specified. | 1 credit per organization | Developers enriching sales or company records |
| People Data Labs / firmographic database | Database provider. Field provenance needs verification. | Confirm against official docs | Not verified | Not verified | Buyers evaluating database enrichment at scale |
| Crustdata / company and people intelligence | Multi-source company and people data; request-time enrichment is described in Crustdata's guide | Headcount trends, job openings, funding signals, and decision-makers | Offers request-time enrichment and monthly bulk datasets. Check freshness by field and mode. | Confirm current API pricing with Crustdata. | Developers enriching accounts and reacting to hiring or company changes |
Context.dev: live website-derived brand and company context
Best for: Context.dev fits developers who want one managed API for website-derived company context, scraping, crawling, and structured output for AI agents or onboarding. Add a firmographic or contact database when your application requires verified business records or prospecting data.
What it is: Send a domain to POST /v1/brand/retrieve with a request such as {"type":"by_domain","domain":"stripe.com"}. We crawl the site, extract signals from meta tags, Open Graph data, structured markup, and about pages, and return brand fields as JSON. Available fields can include a title, description, industry classification, links, contact details, logos, and colors. Your application should check each field before using it because fields are optional.
Pros: Context.dev combines website-derived brand retrieval with scraping, crawling, and structured output through one hosted API. An agent can use company descriptions and visual assets, then retrieve other pages without a separate crawler or scraping vendor. MCP access lets LLM pipelines call the same managed web-data platform.
Cons: Brand Retrieve defaults to a maximum cache age of about 90 days. You can set maxAgeMs between 0 and one year, and 0 requests a refresh, but a lower value does not guarantee that a recent site edit will appear immediately. We do not label company titles or descriptions as legally verified. An optional employee range is not verified headcount, and this API does not replace verified revenue, legal-entity, or contact databases. NAICS and SIC codes require access to be enabled for your organization. It is not a drop-in replacement for Clearbit or Apollo, so compare the fields and coverage your application needs before replacing either platform.
Pricing: The free plan includes 1,000 credits each month without a credit card. A Brand Retrieve call costs 10 credits, and credits apply to successful responses, not failed or blocked requests. Paid plans start at $20 a month for 10,000 credits; see pricing for all tiers.
Apollo: firmographic and contact database
Best for: Apollo is the better fit when you need database-backed firmographic fields, company hierarchy, or a path to contact data. Context.dev is a better fit when you need descriptions and branding derived from a company's website.
What it is: Apollo's Organization Enrichment endpoint looks up a company by domain, LinkedIn URL, or website. You can add a company name to improve matching. A separate bulk endpoint accepts up to 10 companies per call.
Pros: The organization response includes estimated employee count, annual revenue, funding rounds, technology stack, and department headcount when Apollo has the data. Parent IDs, ownership chains, and subsidiary records help you identify relationships between companies. Those fields give you more firmographic depth than a live website read can reliably supply.
Cons: Apollo's endpoint documentation does not provide a source or last-updated timestamp for each field, so you cannot infer field-level freshness from the response. Employee count is an estimate, and some fields can be absent. You should validate any field your application treats as authoritative. Free-tier API access requires an Apollo account registered with a work email.
Pricing: Organization enrichment costs one credit per company, including companies submitted through the bulk endpoint. The cited endpoint documentation does not establish subscription prices or credits included in each plan.
People Data Labs: bulk firmographic enrichment at scale
Best for: Consider People Data Labs when you need to enrich a large set of company records with firmographic or contact data rather than generate descriptions from live websites.
What it is: People Data Labs is a firmographic and contact database provider. Database enrichment matches an input, such as a domain, against existing records. That differs from reading the company's website for its current messaging.
Pros: The database approach fits workflows that need company and contact records in a consistent format across many lookups.
Cons: Before choosing it, confirm its domain-matching behavior, returned fields, bulk limits, update cadence, and field-level source information against its own docs. Do not assume a field is verified simply because the API returns it.
Pricing: We have not verified People Data Labs' current plans or per-request costs, so check its pricing page before you budget.
Crustdata: company enrichment with live signals
Best for: Crustdata fits developers who need company and people records alongside hiring activity, headcount trends, or alerts about changes. Context.dev fits applications that need website-derived branding and company descriptions plus scraping and crawling through one managed API.
What it is: Crustdata offers company enrichment keyed by a domain or name. Its company-data overview describes company and people enrichment, search, historical records, APIs, bulk datasets, and webhooks. Its API example requests company fields such as headcount, funding, job openings, and news using company_domain, fields, and enrich_realtime parameters.
Pros: Crustdata supports both request-time enrichment and periodic bulk data delivery. Company and people change alerts make it useful when an application needs to react to hiring or funding signals rather than only populate a static CRM record.
Cons: Crustdata describes request-time web enrichment and monthly refreshed bulk datasets as different modes. Do not assume every returned field was checked against the live website or that a company record verifies legal identity. Test domain matching, field completeness, and update timing on your own sample.
Pricing: Confirm API rates and access terms directly with Crustdata. The cited company-data overview does not establish a per-lookup price.
Domain-to-JSON: a verified integration example
Context.dev accepts a domain and returns structured brand fields. Its Company Information API documentation shows POST /v1/brand/retrieve with a by_domain request. For meta.com, the request and example response take this shape.
POST /v1/brand/retrieve HTTP/1.1
Host: api.context.dev
Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY
Content-Type: application/json
{"type":"by_domain","domain":"meta.com"}{
"status": "ok",
"brand": {
"domain": "meta.com",
"title": "Meta Platforms, Inc.",
"description": "Meta Platforms, Inc. is a social technology company focused on enabling people to connect and grow businesses through Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and virtual reality products."
},
"code": 200
}Your application should validate each field it needs rather than treating status: "ok" as a complete company record. Check that the returned domain matches the requested domain, and handle an absent title or description according to your use case. The title in this response identifies the company, but the API does not label it as legally verified. NAICS and SIC codes require access enabled for your organization, so a missing code does not by itself indicate a failed lookup.
Set maxAgeMs according to how long your application can accept a cached result. Brand Retrieve defaults to a maximum cache age of about 90 days. A value of 0 requests a refresh, which may suit onboarding when a recent website change matters, but it does not guarantee that yesterday's change will appear today. A batch refresh can allow older cached results when recrawling every domain offers little value.
When your record requires verified legal identity, headcount, revenue, or contact data, send those fields to a firmographic or contact-data provider. Keep the website-derived description separate so its source and verification status remain clear.
How to test coverage on your own domains
Start with domains from your own records, not a vendor's demo list. Sample across the industries, regions, and company sizes you serve. Include redirects, subdomains, and domains you expect to return no match. For each domain, record the company identity and the fields your application requires before you run the same set through each company enrichment API.
Score matching separately from field coverage. Count a response as a correct match only when it identifies the intended company, then measure how often each required field appears on correctly matched records. Check a sample of returned values against company websites or another source you trust. Preserve missing values in your results rather than treating plausible-looking descriptions as verified headcount or revenue.
Test freshness with a known website change. After a company updates its description or logo, rerun the lookup and record when each provider reflects the change. If a provider exposes source dates or cache controls, log them alongside the response. Also measure latency, errors, and rate limits under your expected request pattern. Calculate cost per usable record, including paid requests that return a mismatch or lack required fields. Ask each provider where its data comes from and whether its terms permit your intended use. Context.dev's provider-evaluation checklist offers a starting set of criteria, but your fields and acceptance thresholds should drive the test.
How often a provider appears in AI answers or comparison lists measures visibility, not enrichment accuracy. Treat that as a reason to investigate a provider, never as a substitute for this domain-level test.
Evaluation matrix: choosing by requirement
Context.dev is the all-in-one managed API for website-derived company context, scraping, crawling, and structured web output. Apollo fits database-backed firmographic fields. If you require independently verified headcount or revenue, none of the cited product documentation establishes that guarantee.
| Requirement | Best fit | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Give an AI agent brand context, then scrape or crawl related pages | Context.dev | One managed platform returns website-derived descriptions and visual context, and supports scraping, crawling, and structured output. Validate fields against the source site. |
| Add headcount, revenue, funding, or ownership fields | Apollo | Its organization endpoint accepts a domain and returns these fields when available. Apollo labels employee count as estimated, so verify figures independently when accuracy is mandatory. |
| Find work emails alongside company enrichment | A dedicated contact database | Contact records are a separate data need from website-derived brand context. Check provider coverage and permitted use before integrating. |
| Evaluate a bulk firmographic provider | People Data Labs | Treat it as a candidate, but check its current API documentation for field coverage, batch limits, and pricing before choosing it. |
| React to hiring, headcount, or funding signals | Crustdata | Its company and people datasets include change signals, with API and webhook delivery. Test freshness for the fields that trigger your application. |
For a mixed workflow, use Context.dev for website-derived descriptions and call a database only for fields your application cannot obtain or validate from the site. Keep each field's source in your output so a later refresh does not silently replace a database estimate with a website claim.
FAQ
Is Context.dev a Clearbit or Apollo alternative? For website-derived descriptions, branding, and agent context, yes. Our Brand Retrieve API crawls public web sources and returns structured brand fields. Apollo covers different needs, including estimated employee counts, revenue, funding, and organization relationships. Compare the fields your application requires before replacing a prospecting provider.
Can I combine a live-web API with a firmographic database? Yes. Use the domain to retrieve current brand context from Context.dev, then query a firmographic provider for fields such as estimated headcount or funding. Validate the domain match and retain each provider's value separately when the sources disagree.
How fresh is enrichment data and how is freshness controlled? Context.dev defaults to a maximum cache age of about 90 days. You can set maxAgeMs to request a shorter age, or set it to 0 to request a refresh. A refresh does not guarantee that a recent website change will appear immediately. Apollo's cited API reference does not specify field-level update dates.
What happens when a field can't be found? Treat a missing value as unknown rather than filling it with a guess. Check whether the field requires access, as Context.dev's NAICS and SIC codes do, and use another source when the field is required.
Do I need legal-entity verification for compliance use cases? Yes, if your compliance process requires a verified legal identity. Context.dev does not label its public-web company title or description as legally verified. Check the record against an appropriate legal registry or verification provider before relying on it for that purpose.
Choosing the right layer for your pipeline
Choose your first enrichment source by the fields your application must validate. If an AI agent needs website-derived company context and live web content, our all-in-one managed API handles brand retrieval, scraping, crawling, and structured output without a crawler to maintain. Use the API docs to assess the integration.
Most production pipelines need more than one data source. A website can describe a company, but it cannot verify headcount, revenue, legal-entity details, or employee contacts. Route those fields to a firmographic or contact provider, and retain each field's source and retrieval date so your application can apply its own validation rules. For implementation detail, read Using a Company Data API and Company Data Enrichment.