Key concepts

Five words cover the API. The same words are what you say to an assistant.

Company

A company is the employer, looked up by name (lookup_company, GET /companies/lookup, free) or enriched with firmographics (POST /company/enrich, 1 credit when a company is found). You start here when you already know who you sell to.

Signal

A signal is a buying moment: a funding round, a new role, a post, a technology, an event, people reacting to a company page. find_leads and POST /searches run one. A monitor or a watch keeps listening after the first search. The company did the thing, or a person did. The wording in the result keeps those apart.

Lead

A lead is a person returned for a role, a seniority, a department, or a signal. company_leads and POST /leads charge 5 credits per person. Those rows use per_ ids. They are people at a company you named, not a qualified signal lead.

Qualified lead

A qualified lead is a person a screened search kept because they fit the buyer profile. find_leads charges 20 credits for an exact fit and 5 credits for someone just outside. The id starts with lead_. explain_lead (GET /leads/{lead_id}) is free and is the "why this lead" step: fit, why now, and the evidence. It does not accept a per_ id.

Credits

Credits are the shared balance for the app, MCP and REST. You pay for a row that comes back. A preview (preview_cost, and the /preview routes) is free and returns the worst case, including max_credits. The table is Credits & costs.