openleads 2.0.0

Free, open-source Apollo alternative: a universal entity→verified-email engine with pluggable free data sources (founders, developers, doctors, researchers) and an interactive chat CLI.

🧲 OpenLeads

The free, open-source Apollo alternative — for everyone.

Find founders, developers, doctors, researchers — anyone — and verify their emails, using only free, public data. No paid APIs. No API keys. No seat fees. Now with an interactive chat CLI.

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Apollo, Hunter, RocketReach, and ZoomInfo all sell the same two things: a contact database and email verification. Their moat is the database. OpenLeads inverts it.

OpenLeads is a universal entity → verified email engine, fed by a registry of pluggable, free, keyless public data sources.

The email engine doesn't care who you're looking for. So coverage grows by adding small source plugins, not by paying for a database. v2.0 ships sources for startup founders, open-source developers, U.S. doctors, and academic researchers — and you can add any vertical (lawyers, podcasters, real-estate agents…) by dropping a single .py file in a folder.

All for $0, in code you can read in one sitting.

openleads> find 25 AI founders, verified emails only
  plan  source=yc  count=25  filter=AI  verified-only  parser=rule
  ┏━━━┳━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┓
  ┃ # ┃ ✓  ┃ Email           ┃ Name         ┃ Title   ┃ Org     ┃ Score ┃
  ┡━━━╇━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━┩
  │ 1 │ OK │ [e-mail]     │ Ada Lovelace │ Founder │ Acme    │  96   │
  │ 2 │ ~CA│ [e-mail] │ Grace Hopper │ CEO     │ COBOLwx │  71   │
  └───┴────┴─────────────────┴──────────────┴─────────┴─────────┴───────┘
  25 leads · 18 verified · /export FILE to save

OK = SMTP-verified · ~CA = catch-all best-guess · ~PG = MX-only pattern guess · Score = 0–100 confidence

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✨ Why OpenLeads

	OpenLeads	Apollo / Hunter (free tier)
Cost	$0, forever	Credit-limited, then paid
API key required	❌ None	✅ Required
Who you can find	Founders, devs, doctors, researchers, + any vertical you plug in	Their database only
Email verification	✅ Live SMTP RCPT + 0–100 score	Paid feature
Catch-all detection	✅ Yes	Sometimes
Interactive chat CLI	✅ Yes (openleads chat)	❌
You own the code	✅ Readable, hackable, extensible	❌ Black box
Output	✅ CSV / JSON / NDJSON	Often gated
Core dependencies	Zero (stdlib only)	—

🚀 Install

# Python (recommended) — zero-dependency engine + plain CLI
pip install openleads

# …with the pretty interactive chat TUI
pip install "openleads[chat]"

# …with the cold-email companion too
pip install "openleads[all]"

Prefer Node? A thin wrapper lets you run it with npx (it installs the Python package on first use):

npx openleads find "50 fintech founders verified only"
# or: npm i -g openleads

⚡ Quickstart

# Launch the interactive chat — just type what you want
openleads

# Or go one-shot, non-interactive:
openleads find "50 fintech founders, verified only" --out leads.csv
openleads find --source npi --keyword pediatric --location CA --format json
openleads find "rust developers in Berlin" --source github --format ndjson --out devs.ndjson

# Verify specific addresses
openleads verify [e-mail] [e-mail]

# See what you can search
openleads sources

No signup, no key, no database fees.

💬 The chat CLI

openleads chat (or just openleads) opens a Claude-Code-style REPL. Type requests in plain English and refine conversationally:

openleads> pediatricians in California
openleads> only verified
openleads> /source github
openleads> machine learning researchers as ndjson
openleads> /export leads.ndjson

• Works fully offline. A rule-based intent parser understands counts, verticals, locations, filters, and verified only — no API key needed.
• Optionally smarter. Set OPENROUTER_API_KEY (a free model works) and free-form input is parsed by an LLM. The active mode is always shown.
• Slash commands for precision: /source, /count, /verified, /format, /export, /sources, /cache, /help, /quit.

🧩 Sources (and adding your own)

$ openleads sources
  github       [people ] developers & open-source orgs
  npi          [people ] U.S. doctors & healthcare providers
  openalex     [people ] researchers & academics
  producthunt  [company] trending products & startups
  yc           [company] startup founders (Y Combinator)

All are keyless and free. Want a vertical we don't ship — recruiters, lawyers, real-estate agents, your CRM export? Drop a *.py file in ~/.openleads/sources/:

from openleads.sources.base import Source
from openleads.models import Entity, Query

class LawyersSource(Source):
    name = "lawyers"
    kind = "people"
    vertical = "attorneys"
    description = "State bar directory."

    def search(self, query: Query):
        for row in fetch_from_some_free_directory(query):
            yield Entity(full_name=row["name"], organization=row["firm"],
                         domain=row["firm_domain"], source=self.name)

Run openleads sources and it's there. The email engine handles the rest. Full guide: docs/sources.md.

📦 Output formats

openleads find "20 founders" --format csv     # default; CRM/mail-merge ready
openleads find "20 founders" --format json    # array, includes score + signals
openleads find "20 founders" --format ndjson  # one lead per line, streamable
openleads find "20 founders" --format json --out -   # write to stdout

The CSV schema is a superset of v1's, so the cold-email companion and any existing tooling keep working.

🔍 How it works

flowchart LR
    Q[Your request<br/>chat or CLI] --> I[Intent parser<br/>rule-based ± LLM]
    I --> S[Source plugin<br/>yc · github · npi · openalex · …]
    S --> E[Email engine<br/>multi-resolver MX → permutations → SMTP RCPT]
    E --> C[Confidence score 0–100<br/>+ honest label]
    C --> O[CSV · JSON · NDJSON]
    E <--> K[(SQLite cache<br/>MX · SMTP · datasets)]

The crown jewel is the email engine (deep dive): MX cross-checked across two DNS-over-HTTPS resolvers, common name permutations, and a real SMTP RCPT probe (no message is ever sent) with catch-all detection. Results carry an explainable 0–100 score. A SQLite cache avoids re-probing domains and mail servers between runs.

📡 SMTP verification needs outbound port 25. Works on most servers; some home ISPs block it, in which case OpenLeads gracefully falls back to MX-validated pattern guesses.

📨 Bonus: cold-email companion

openleads campaign turns leads.csv into personalized outreach — LLM-drafted (free OpenRouter models supported), clean formatting, placeholder guards, sends over your own SMTP, and saves a copy to Sent. Dry-run by default; --live to send.

pip install "openleads[campaign]"
cp .env.example .env        # add your SMTP + OpenRouter creds
openleads campaign          # dry run (preview)
openleads campaign --live   # send for real

⚠️ This is the only part that touches your mailbox. The lead engine never sends anything.

🧭 Responsible use

OpenLeads is for legitimate outreach, recruiting, research, and prospecting. Some verticals carry extra weight — e.g. healthcare providers (NPI) and academics — so please read docs/responsible-use.md. You are responsible for anti-spam law (CAN-SPAM, GDPR, CASL) and each source's terms.

🗺️ What's new in v2.0

• ✅ Installable package + openleads CLI (pip & npx)
• ✅ Interactive chat REPL (rule-based, LLM-optional)
• ✅ Pluggable sources + 4 new keyless verticals (GitHub, NPI, OpenAlex, ProductHunt)
• ✅ Confidence scoring (0–100) with multi-resolver MX cross-checks
• ✅ SQLite caching layer
• ✅ --format json/ndjson output

See the full CHANGELOG.

🤝 Contributing

PRs very welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md. The easiest high-impact contribution is a new source plugin (guide) — that's literally how OpenLeads becomes "Apollo for everyone."

📄 License

PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0 — free for personal, research, educational, and nonprofit use. Commercial use? See COMMERCIAL-LICENSE.md.

🙏 Acknowledgements

yc-oss/api · OpenAlex · NPI Registry · GitHub & ProductHunt public data · and everyone who has ever rage-quit a "request a demo" button.

If OpenLeads saved you a subscription, consider leaving a ⭐ — it genuinely helps.