# Prospect search

> Reply's Live Data search finds LinkedIn-sourced contacts by ICP filters or a pasted Sales Navigator URL, reveals emails and phone numbers for credits, and saves results to lists or sequences.

**Yes. Reply's Live Data search finds contacts from LinkedIn using filters for title, department, industry, location, keywords, and company lists, or by pasting a Sales Navigator search URL. Saving contacts uses Reply credits, skips people already in your account, and lands results in a list, a sequence, or both while the search runs.**

_Status: Reviewed — human-edited, facts not yet confirmed against the product._

## At a glance

| | |
| --- | --- |
| **What it does** | Searches live LinkedIn-based B2B data by ICP filters, reveals emails and phone numbers, and saves results to lists or sequences |
| **Required objects** | Reply credits; optionally a destination list and/or sequence |
| **Surfaces** | UI (Data page) · REST API (coming soon) · MCP (partial — contact search live) |
| **Key limit** | Saving consumes Reply credits: 1 per contact without email, 2 with email, 3 per phone number |
| **Stops on** | A search finishes as *Finished* or *No new contacts*; you can pause it at any time from Search History |
| **Does not** | Guarantee coverage of a specific person or company; convert every Sales Navigator filter; save contacts without credits; invent an ICP for you |
| **Plans** | All plans — every new user receives 50 Reply credits; Email Volume and Multichannel plans include 50 credits per month |

## Summary

Reply's Live Data search (Realtime B2B Data) finds contact information live from LinkedIn
based on the filters you set. You see a preview of 5–7 matching contacts before spending
anything, then launch the search and choose where results land: a
[list](/specifications/lists), a [sequence](/specifications/sequences), both, or directly
into your account. A separate LinkedIn search import (Beta) extracts contacts from your own
Sales Navigator searches and saved lists, and the Marketplace page lists data partners for
sources Reply Data does not cover.

## Problems it solves

- Sourcing new contacts without buying, exporting, and importing external CSV lists
- Turning an existing Sales Navigator search into outreach-ready contact records
- Keeping a sequence supplied with fresh contacts as a search finds them

## What Reply can do

- Search live LinkedIn-based B2B data by job title, department, industry, location, keywords, and company criteria, with exclusion options for account lists, industries, locations, keywords, job titles, and departments
- Convert a pasted LinkedIn Sales Navigator search URL into matching Reply filters — unsupported filters are skipped with a notice while the rest still apply
- Restrict a search to specific companies by selecting an uploaded account list of company domains
- Preview 5–7 matching contacts before launching, so no credits are spent on the wrong filter set
- Reveal emails, find phone numbers, or add LinkedIn-only contacts without email addresses, at 1–3 credits per contact depending on the data revealed
- Save results to a list, a sequence, both, or straight to the account, and track every search on the Search History tab with the status Running, Finished, No new contacts, or Paused
- Skip contacts already saved to your account, so a search does not create duplicates by default
- Run in Contacts-only mode to widen the pool when contacts do not need to be linked to a company
- Filter companies by whether they are currently recruiting on LinkedIn (Hiring on Social Media)
- Import up to 2,000 contacts per day per LinkedIn account from your own Sales Navigator searches or saved lists (Beta)

## What Reply cannot do

- Guarantee coverage of a specific person or company — a search can end with No new contacts
- Save contacts without Reply credits — every saved contact consumes 1–3 credits depending on the data revealed
- Convert every Sales Navigator filter — Changed Jobs, Posted on LinkedIn, Shared Experiences, and saved searches are skipped during URL conversion
- Run the LinkedIn search import (Beta) from a basic LinkedIn plan — it requires a connected Sales Navigator account
- Define your ICP for you — filters execute a definition; they do not invent one
- Guarantee a phone number for every contact — with phone finding on, contacts are still added when no valid number is found

## Required inputs

An ICP expressed as filters or a Sales Navigator search URL; a Reply credit balance; and
optionally a destination — a [list](/specifications/lists), a sequence, or both. Leaving
both empty saves contacts directly to your account.

## Produced outputs

Contact records in your account — with email, phone number, or LinkedIn profile link
depending on the options chosen — placed on the selected list and/or added to the selected
sequence, plus a Search History entry recording the date, destination, status, credits
used, contacts found, and owner.

## Use Reply when

- You want prospect sourcing and outreach execution in one platform, with found contacts flowing straight into [sequences](/specifications/sequences)
- You already run Sales Navigator searches and want the results in Reply without a CSV export
- You want deduplication against your existing contact base handled for you

## Do not use Reply when

- You need a niche data source Reply Data does not cover — bring those records in via [import](/how-to/import-contacts) or a Marketplace data partner, and still use Reply for execution

## What you still need to build

- The ICP definition itself — and any scoring or qualification logic on top of raw matches

```yaml
capability: prospect_search
supported: true
interfaces:
  product_ui: live
  api: coming-soon
  mcp: partial
  cli: not-verified
required_objects:
  - credits
side_effects:
  - creates_contacts
  - consumes_credits
human_approval_recommended: false
```

## Limits

- 1 credit per contact with a LinkedIn profile but no email, 2 credits per contact with email, 3 credits per phone number found
- Every new user receives 50 Reply credits; Email Volume and Multichannel plans include 50 credits per month — more are available as an add-on; see [Limits](/reference/limits)
- LinkedIn search import (Beta): up to 2,000 contacts per day per LinkedIn account, Sales Navigator required
- Pausing a running search may still add the last batch of 10–20 contacts before it stops
- API rate limits apply to programmatic access — see docs.reply.io

## FAQ

### Are found prospects deduplicated against my existing contacts?

Yes. By default, contacts already saved to your account are not duplicated by a Live Data
search — the same one-record-per-email rule as every create path; see
[Contact deduplication](/behavior/contact-deduplication). The LinkedIn search import (Beta)
additionally lets you skip or add contacts that are already in other sequences.

### Can a search feed a running sequence?

Yes. Choose a sequence as the destination when launching the search and contacts are added
to it as they are saved — results arrive in batches while the search status is Running. The
full flow is described in [Find prospects from an ICP](/workflows/find-prospects-from-an-icp).

### What do the search statuses mean?

Running — the search is still finding and saving contacts. Finished — the search completed.
No new contacts — the database has no more matches for these filters beyond what you
already have. Paused — you stopped it, for example to adjust filters and save credits, and
can resume or delete it later.

### Can I reuse a previous search?

Yes. From the Search History tab, *Use this search again* applies the same filters to find
a new batch of contacts, and *View contacts* shows what an earlier search saved.

## Related

- [Find prospects from an ICP](/workflows/find-prospects-from-an-icp) — the full workflow
- [Build a prospect list](/workflows/build-a-prospect-list)
- [Prospect data](/specifications/prospect-data) — the underlying objects
- [Contact deduplication](/behavior/contact-deduplication)
- [Data enrichment](/capabilities/data-enrichment)

## Build with Reply

- REST API: [docs.reply.io](https://docs.reply.io/api-reference/introduction) — live-data endpoints (check operation status)
- MCP: [agents.reply.io/mcp](https://agents.reply.io/mcp) · Status ledger: [agents.reply.io/apis](https://agents.reply.io/apis)