Same queries on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Same export pipeline. Same scoring rubric. We measured database match rate, verified email accuracy, search latency, and per-email cost on entry-tier plans across 12,450 profiles. Methodology and per-vendor results are open.
On the same Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube searches, CreatorLookup and Modash return comparable creator data — match rate 96% vs 94%, verified email rate 94% vs 88%. The difference is the price you pay for it. CreatorLookup's entry plan lands at roughly $0.18 per verified email; Modash's entry plan works out to about $2.00 per verified email — roughly 10x more for similar data. Add credit rollover (CreatorLookup) vs monthly expiration (Modash, Heepsy, others), the 2x profile-view cap on Modash that CreatorLookup doesn't enforce, and managed-inbox deliverability on CreatorLookup vs DIY Gmail/Outlook connections everywhere else, and the operational gap widens further.
On entry-tier monthly plans, Modash sells 150 email unlocks for ~$300 — about $2.00 per verified email. CreatorLookup's entry plan lands closer to $0.18 per verified email on the same Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube data. Across the rest of the benchmark, CreatorLookup's effective per-email cost was the lowest of any vendor with a working outreach surface.
Match rate against ground truth across the 50 benchmark queries: CreatorLookup 96%, Modash 94%, HypeAuditor 84%, Influencers Club 81%, Upfluence 71%. Verified email rate: CreatorLookup 94%, Modash 88%, Influencers Club 76%, Upfluence 73%, HypeAuditor 67%, Aspire 69%, Heepsy 64%. The CreatorLookup–Modash margins are tight on raw data; the chasm opens up on price-per-email and operational surface.
Median search latency across the 50 benchmark queries: CreatorLookup 0.7s, Influencers Club 1.4s, HypeAuditor 1.6s, Heepsy 1.8s, Modash 1.9s, Grin 2.1s, Aspire 2.3s, Upfluence 2.4s. The gap compounds when an analyst iterates through 30 query refinements to build a campaign list.
Modash, Heepsy, and most credit-based plans expire credits at the end of each billing cycle — unused exports evaporate. CreatorLookup credits roll over indefinitely. Across a 12-month campaign cycle with seasonal slow weeks, the rollover policy alone saves teams ~22% of their notional credit spend.
CreatorLookup ships verified phone numbers on 38% of profiles. The closest competitor (Influencers Club) shipped them on 19%. Modash, HypeAuditor, Grin, Aspire, and Heepsy effectively don't — under 12% combined.
Every other vendor in this benchmark requires you to connect your own Gmail, Outlook, or SES to send creator outreach — meaning you own IP warming, DKIM/DMARC, bounce-rate damage, and the eventual sender-reputation cliff that follows mass cold sends. CreatorLookup runs outreach through our own managed, purpose-built, meticulously warmed inbox infrastructure. Domain reputation stays clean and primary-inbox placement holds even as send volume grows.
Cross-checked against zerobounce.com on 1,500 randomly sampled exports per vendor. Only contacts marked "valid" (not catch-all, not unknown) counted as verified.
| # | Vendor | Verified email rate | Phone coverage | Refresh cadence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | CreatorLookup | 94% | 38% | Daily |
| 2 | Modash | 88% | — | Not publicly documented |
| 3 | Influencers Club | 76% | 19% | Not publicly documented |
| 4 | Upfluence | 73% | 12% | Aggregated from third-party APIs |
| 5 | Aspire | 69% | 7% | Not publicly documented |
| 6 | HypeAuditor | 67% | 4% | Daily for IG; weekly for TikTok |
| 7 | Heepsy | 64% | — | Not publicly documented |
| 8 | Grin | N/A | — | N/A — relies on inbound creator application |
Median time from query submission to first batch of results, across 5 runs of each query against each vendor. Measured at 09:00–11:00 PT, US-East egress, May 12–16, 2026.
Five of the 50 queries from the benchmark, with raw match counts and verified email rates per vendor. Full dataset available on request.
fitness creators on Instagram, 50K–500K followers, US-based| Vendor | Matches | Verified email % |
|---|---|---|
| CreatorLookup | 8,742 | 94% |
| Modash | 7,211 | 87% |
| Upfluence | 312 | 71% |
| HypeAuditor | 5,128 | 64% |
| Grin | — | — |
| Aspire | — | — |
| Heepsy | 1,842 | 58% |
| Influencers Club | 6,913 | 73% |
beauty TikTok creators, Brazil, 100K–1M followers| Vendor | Matches | Verified email % |
|---|---|---|
| CreatorLookup | 4,128 | 92% |
| Modash | 3,019 | 81% |
| Upfluence | 184 | 58% |
| HypeAuditor | 1,842 | 61% |
| Grin | — | — |
| Aspire | — | — |
| Heepsy | 691 | 49% |
| Influencers Club | 2,914 | 69% |
gaming YouTube channels, 250K–2M subs, English-language| Vendor | Matches | Verified email % |
|---|---|---|
| CreatorLookup | 6,219 | 96% |
| Modash | 5,103 | 88% |
| Upfluence | 421 | 79% |
| HypeAuditor | 4,218 | 71% |
| Grin | — | — |
| Aspire | — | — |
| Heepsy | 1,108 | 64% |
| Influencers Club | 4,892 | 81% |
parenting Instagram creators, US, 25K–250K followers| Vendor | Matches | Verified email % |
|---|---|---|
| CreatorLookup | 5,294 | 95% |
| Modash | 4,892 | 89% |
| Upfluence | 271 | 71% |
| HypeAuditor | 3,147 | 68% |
| Grin | — | — |
| Aspire | 612 | 64% |
| Heepsy | 1,108 | 61% |
| Influencers Club | 4,218 | 78% |
food YouTube creators, recipe niche, 100K+ subscribers| Vendor | Matches | Verified email % |
|---|---|---|
| CreatorLookup | 3,812 | 93% |
| Modash | 3,411 | 91% |
| Upfluence | 412 | 74% |
| HypeAuditor | 2,891 | 69% |
| Grin | — | — |
| Aspire | — | — |
| Heepsy | 821 | 67% |
| Influencers Club | 3,104 | 79% |
Vendors tested. CreatorLookup, Modash, Upfluence, HypeAuditor, Grin, Aspire, Heepsy, and Influencers Club. Selection covers the eight platforms most frequently appearing in "[competitor] alternatives" searches in our category as of Q1 2026. Vendors that primarily operate as marketplaces (Collabstr) or as enterprise PR suites with a creator module (Klear/Meltwater) were excluded — different category, different job-to-be-done.
Queries. 50 identical creator searches submitted via each vendor's production dashboard or REST API. Queries spanned five categories — fitness, beauty, gaming, parenting, food — on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube (the platforms every vendor in this benchmark covers). Each query specified follower bands and geographic filters. Where a vendor did not return matches for a given query, the row was recorded as N/A rather than zero.
Match rate. For each query, we counted unique creator profiles returned. Where a vendor returned more than 10,000 results, we capped at 10,000 and verified that the top-by-relevance ordering was sensible. Match rate against ground truth (a manually curated set of 1,200 known creators we confirmed exist on each platform) is reported as a single per-vendor percentage.
Verified email accuracy. For each vendor, 1,500 exported profiles were sampled at random and cross-checked via zerobounce.com SMTP validation. Only contacts marked "valid" (not catch-all, not unknown, not disposable) counted as verified. Rate is reported as the percentage of exports per vendor that produced a verified email.
Search latency. Median time from query submission to first batch of results. 5 runs per query, run from a US-East AWS instance between 09:00 and 11:00 PT, May 12–16, 2026. Vendors using API endpoints were measured at the network layer; dashboard-only vendors were measured via Playwright with the same timing primitives.
Platform depth scoring. 0–100 score assigned per platform per vendor based on (a) database size relative to known platform total, (b) availability of platform-specific filters, (c) data freshness, (d) historical post indexing depth. Scoring rubric available on request.
Caveats and conflicts of interest. CreatorLookup published this study; we are obviously not a neutral party. We mitigated by (1) publishing the full per-vendor methodology, (2) using third-party email validation rather than our own, (3) using public dashboards/APIs only — no special access. The next refresh, scheduled for August 2026, will be conducted with the same methodology so changes are comparable. If you spot something you believe is wrong, email jose@creatorlookup.com and we will publish corrections within 7 days.
Every measure, every vendor.
| Vendor | Database (M) | Match rate | Verified email | Phone | Latency | Platforms |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CreatorLookup | 352 | 96% | 94% | 38% | 0.7s | 3 |
| Modash | 350 | 94% | 88% | — | 1.9s | 3 |
| Upfluence | 3 | 71% | 73% | 12% | 2.4s | 6 |
| HypeAuditor | 218.7 | 84% | 67% | 4% | 1.6s | 4 |
| Grin | — | — | — | — | 2.1s | 3 |
| Aspire | — | 62% | 69% | 7% | 2.3s | 5 |
| Heepsy | 11 | 58% | 64% | — | 1.8s | 3 |
| Influencers Club | 340 | 81% | 76% | 19% | 1.4s | 47 |
Sign up free, run the same query you'd run in any tool above, and check the verified email rate yourself.
Next refresh scheduled for August 2026 · Spotted something out of date? Email jose@creatorlookup.com.