LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 660 million users worldwide. With such a vast userbase, LinkedIn is a goldmine for finding and connecting with professionals in your industry. One of the key benefits of LinkedIn is the ability to extract contacts from member profiles and groups to build your own contact list. But with millions of profiles, extracting contacts manually is extremely time consuming. This is where tools to automate extracting contacts from LinkedIn become invaluable.
Why Extract Contacts from LinkedIn?
Here are some of the top reasons for extracting contacts from LinkedIn:
- Build targeted email lists for marketing and sales outreach
- Expand your professional network by connecting with relevant profiles
- Research professionals working in companies you want to target
- Identify prospects for sales leads
- Recruit candidates by finding profiles with suitable skills and experience
Without the right tools, manually extracting these contacts from LinkedIn is very tedious and time-consuming. Contact extraction tools automate this process and allow extracting hundreds or even thousands of contacts with just a few clicks.
LinkedIn Contact Extraction Challenges
While LinkedIn is a great source for finding professional contacts, extracting them comes with some key challenges:
- LinkedIn limits profile views – You can only view a certain number of full profiles in a given period before LinkedIn blocks further views.
- Contact details like email addresses are not public – Users must add you as a connection before you can view their contact information.
- Manual searching and extracting is incredibly slow – Impossible to extract more than a handful of contacts per day manually.
- LinkedIn monitors and blocks bots and scrapers – Automated scrapers risk getting blocked if detected by LinkedIn.
The ideal LinkedIn extraction tool must be able to overcome these challenges and extract contacts quickly, reliably and at scale.
Types of LinkedIn Contact Extraction Tools
There are three main types of tools used for extracting contacts from LinkedIn:
Browser Extensions
Browser extensions, like LinkedIn Sales Navigator Extractor, allow extracting contact info and other data from LinkedIn profiles from right within your browser. They are easy to install and provide a simple user interface for specifying criteria and extracting contacts. However, extraction is typically limited to 25-100 results at a time.
Automated Software Tools
Software tools provide automated crawling of LinkedIn by simulating human web activity. This allows extracting thousands of contacts without limits. However, LinkedIn aggressively blocks scrapers, so tools must be carefully designed to avoid detection. Leading software tools include Octopus CRM and Uplead.
LinkedIn Recruiters
LinkedIn Recruiter and Sales Navigator are LinkedIn’s official sales and recruiting tools. They provide advanced search filters and contact management features. However, they are significantly more expensive than other tools. Recruiter licenses start at several thousand dollars per year.
Top 5 LinkedIn Contact Extraction Tools
Based on features, extraction power, ease of use and cost, here are 5 of the top LinkedIn extraction tools:
1. Octopus CRM
Octopus CRM provides robust contact data extraction from LinkedIn through an automated web scraping approach. Key features include:
- Extracts email addresses, phone numbers, LinkedIn URLs and other data
- Crawls LinkedIn to extract 1000+ contacts per search
- Avoids detection through human-like browsing
- Easy to use wizard-based interface
- Extract by keywords, company, group, school and more
- Affordable monthly subscription plans
Octopus CRM is regarded as one of the most powerful and user-friendly automated extraction tools. It can extract thousands of contacts in just minutes with clever scraping technology to avoid bot detection.
2. Uplead
Uplead is a sales intelligence platform with excellent LinkedIn extraction capabilities such as:
- Extracts contact details like email and phone numbers
- Powerful filters by company, job title, skills and more
- Crawls LinkedIn avoiding bot detection
- Google Chrome extension available
- Integrates with Gmail and CRMs like HubSpot
- 14 day free trial, paid plans start at $67/month
Uplead requires more technical skill than some tools but provides flexible filters to extract very targeted, high-quality contacts from LinkedIn.
3. Dux-Soup
Dux-Soup is an advanced web scraping tool with specific support for extracting LinkedIn data. Key features:
- Extracts general profile data and contact info
- Configurable through an easy visual interface
- Extracts data to CSV/Excel for easy importing
- Comes with pre-built scrapers for major sites
- Pricing starts at around $10/month
Dux-Soup requires more technical setup compared to some tools but provides extensive extraction capabilities beyond just LinkedIn contact data.
4. LinkedIn Sales Navigator Extractor
This handy Google Chrome extension works right within LinkedIn Sales Navigator to extract contacts. Features include:
- Simple one-click extraction in LinkedIn
- Exports results as CSV file
- Free version has limited extraction
- Paid version ($39.99) removes extraction limits
The LinkedIn Sales Navigator extractor is super easy to use for basic contact extraction directly within your LinkedIn Sales Navigator account. However, extraction output is limited compared to automated tools.
5. Seamless.ai
Seamless.ai provides an AI-powered Chrome extension to extract contacts from LinkedIn and enrich them with AI data. Key features:
- Real-time email verification and enrichment
- Exports all enrichments to CSV/Excel etc.
- AI analysis of sales signals for each prospect
- 7 days free trial, $25/month minimum paid plan
For those needing not just contact data but actionable sales intelligence, Seamless.ai combines simple extraction with powerful AI enrichments.
| Tool | Type | Key Features |
|---|---|---|
| Octopus CRM | Software | Automated crawling, extracts 1000+ contacts, affordable pricing |
| Uplead | Software | Powerful filters and integrations, great for targeted extraction |
| Dux-Soup | Web scraper | Advanced scraping capabilities beyond LinkedIn data |
| LinkedIn Sales Navigator Extractor | Browser extension | Simple one-click extraction from within LinkedIn |
| Seamless.ai | Browser extension | AI contact enrichments and sales analytics |
Conclusion
Extracting contacts from LinkedIn can be a valuable source for building high-quality prospect lists. However, the right tools are crucial to automate extraction and avoid LinkedIn bot detection. The top 5 LinkedIn scraping tools featured here provide a range of capabilities, features and pricing to suit different needs and budgets. For most use cases, we recommend Octopus CRM or Uplead as the best combination of power, ease of use and affordability. With the right extraction tool, you can build targeted prospect lists from LinkedIn in a fraction of the time versus manual searching and connecting.
