leadhound

Find freelance clients anywhere in the world, by live intent, not stale contact lists.

Most lead tools sell you a database of names, then you cold-email strangers who never asked for anything. leadhound does the opposite. It finds people and businesses that need your kind of work right now, shows why each one fits, and drafts a first message from that evidence, in the client's own language. You review it and send it yourself.

It works for any freelancer: developers, designers, writers, translators, marketers, video editors, photographers, virtual assistants, data and AI people, voice artists and bookkeepers.

• Live intent. New client projects on Freelancer.com, plus hiring posts on Reddit, Hacker News, Mastodon, job boards and paid GitHub issues.
• Local businesses in any country. Finds shops, clinics, cafes and trades anywhere with OpenStreetMap. It checks their websites and writes the pitch in the business's language.
• Evidence-based pitch. The website check finds problems an owner understands, such as "Chrome marks your site Not secure" or "customers can't book online". The message cites only those.
• Explainable scores. Every lead gets a 0–100 score with a line-by-line reason list. No black box.
• 11 languages. English, Español, Português, Français, Deutsch, Русский, ქართული, Türkçe, العربية, हिन्दी and 中文, for both the app and the messages.
• Private and free. Your data stays on your computer. No account, no tracking, no API key needed. Zero dependencies.

Install

The installer puts everything in your user folder (no admin rights), adds a desktop icon and opens the app. After that, double-click the icon (no terminal window opens) or type leadhound.

The downloaded app files are not code-signed yet. The first time you open one, Windows shows "Windows protected your PC": click More info, then Run anyway. On macOS, right-click the file and choose Open.

pipx install git+https://github.com/kalidatuna/leadhound   # then: leadhound

How to use it (3 steps)

1. Open leadhound (desktop icon, or type leadhound). The first time, pick your kind of work, such as Translator, and click Save and start searching.
2. Click Write message on a match. A message is ready in the client's language. Read it and change anything you like.
3. Send it. Pick Send via (email, WhatsApp, Reddit, the project page...) and click the gold button. Connected accounts send for you; the others open with your message ready. The next match moves up.

That is the whole simple view. Find new clients searches again whenever you like. Not for me hides a match. Quit closes leadhound. Double-clicking the icon twice just reopens the same window.

Everything else lives behind the Advanced button: the full list with filters and stages, detailed searches, settings, export and updates.

Send from your own accounts

Most platforms work right away with no setup: leadhound opens them with your message filled in. Click Accounts only if you want leadhound to send for you through your own account. Either way you still press the button on every message: leadhound never sends on its own, and the address always comes from the lead itself, never from the page.

Each account has a daily cap (10 for email and Mastodon, 5 for GitHub and Reddit), a pause between sends, and a block on sending to the same lead twice in a row. Logins are saved in accounts.json next to your config, readable only by your user. The file is not encrypted, so anyone who can read your user folder can read it. Use an app password or a limited token, never your main password, and disconnect to delete a login. Sending to Reddit, Mastodon and GitHub has been tested against local stand-ins, not the live services.

Free and Pro

Everything works for free: searching, matches, drafts, and opening Gmail, Outlook, WhatsApp and more with your message ready (3 searches a day, your top 10 matches). Every install gets a free taste (7 uses), then a 7-day Pro trial after a quick email sign-up (one trial per person). Pro unlocks sending from your connected accounts, unlimited searches and matches, AI-written messages, the local business finder with website checks, and automatic search. Pro is a license key checked offline. The sign-up and the optional hosted AI talk to the seller's license server and send only your email, a device code, and (for AI) the text of the lead. Sellers: see docs/SELLING.md.

Advanced

Find clients

• People hiring right now: one click searches all your sources. Freelancer.com alone usually brings 50–150 fresh projects in your categories.
• Local businesses: type any city in the world, pick business types (more than 70, such as dentists, cafes, plumbers or hotels), choose a distance or Whole city. Optionally only show places without a website, and check their sites.
• Check one website: paste an address to get the problems found, a ready pitch and the contact details the site publishes.

Leads

• The list is ranked best first. A pipeline tracks each lead: Inbox, Shortlist, Contacted, Replied, Won, Lost, Skipped. NEW marks what appeared since your last visit.
• Each lead shows why it scored what it did, the original post or website problems, and contact buttons (Copy, Open, Call). Write with AI uses Claude, OpenAI or a local Ollama model if you set one up.
• Every move has an Undo. Keyboard: j/k move, s shortlist, c contacted, x skip, g write, o open, / search. Skip low scores… clears weak leads; Export CSV gives you a spreadsheet.

Settings: app language, message language (automatic = the client's language), your work and skills, currency and minimum budget, sources, automatic search every 6/12/24 hours, and the optional AI provider. Updates: the app tells you when a new version exists and installs it with one click.

Where leads come from

Requests in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Russian, Georgian, Turkish, Italian, Arabic and Chinese are recognised. "I'm looking for work" posts are filtered out in the same languages.

Website check

The check reads the homepage and up to 8 internal links:

It never pitches what it can't verify. If a site blocks automated checks (bot protection), the result is marked inconclusive. Only 404/410/5xx count as broken links. The copyright year comes from visible text only. Contact and booking words are recognised in 10+ languages.

Scoring

Leads with no skill match are capped at 45. Local businesses score on website problems (or no website), plus public contact details.

Run it online (your own private copy)

To use leadhound from your phone or any computer, run your own copy on a server. It then asks for a password.

• Render (one click): Deploy to Render. It generates the password for you; find it under Environment. Keeping data between restarts needs Render's paid disk, about 7 USD/month.
• Any server with Docker:

  docker run -d -p 8787:8787 -e LEADHOUND_PASSWORD='a-long-password' -v leadhound:/data ghcr.io/kalidatuna/leadhound
  

  Or use the included docker-compose.yml. Put it behind HTTPS (Caddy, Cloudflare Tunnel, ...) when it is on the internet.
• Railway / Fly.io: deploy this repository's Dockerfile, set LEADHOUND_PASSWORD, and mount a volume at /data.

Cloud mode is password-protected and rate-limits sign-in attempts. Sessions use an HttpOnly cookie, and it refuses to check private network addresses. Some sites, especially Reddit, block data-center IP addresses, so expect fewer Reddit results from a server than from your own computer.

Privacy and security

• Local mode listens on 127.0.0.1 only, blocks DNS rebinding, and requires a per-run token on every API call. It also sends a strict Content-Security-Policy with no inline scripts. Text from posts and websites is never rendered as HTML.
• Keys (GITHUB_TOKEN, ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, OPENAI_API_KEY) are read from environment variables and never saved to disk.
• Account logins for sending are saved in accounts.json (owner-only permissions, not encrypted) and are never sent to the browser. See Send from your own accounts.
• Installs and updates come directly from this GitHub repository's release archives.

Responsible use

• You send every message. Personalise it, and never mass-send. Daily caps exist to protect your accounts, not to set a target.
• Follow outreach law where you and the recipient are, such as CAN-SPAM, GDPR or ePrivacy. Identify yourself and stop when asked.
• Check before pitching. OpenStreetMap can miss websites, so open the site yourself before you send audit findings.
• Respect the sources. leadhound identifies itself, rate-limits per site, and only reads public posts and public business listings.

Terminal commands (optional)

leadhound scan                                  # search all sources
leadhound local "Lisbon, Portugal" --category cafe,dentist --radius 0 --website no
leadhound list --min-score 60
leadhound draft 12                              # message in the lead's language
leadhound audit https://example.com --booking
leadhound shortcut                              # desktop icon
leadhound serve --cloud                         # server mode (needs LEADHOUND_PASSWORD)

Contributing

Translations, sources, professions and website checks are all welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md. The translations were machine-assisted, so native speakers fixing wording would help a lot.

python -m unittest discover -s tests -t tests

License

MIT. Fonts (Fraunces, Instrument Sans) are under the SIL Open Font License, see leadhound/dashboard/fonts/. Platform logos come from Simple Icons (CC0) and belong to their owners; they only say which platform a button is for.