Live Profile Data Benchmark
A live endpoint fetches the profile when it is asked instead of serving a stored copy. Given a profile URL, does the provider return the person's current job, including for people who changed jobs a few weeks ago? Graded against the employer's own record and first-party announcements of each move.
Leaderboard
| Provider | Current-job accuracy | Fetch success | Latency p50 | Cost / profile | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1Reverse Contact live | 95.0%A (top fifth of the field on this metric) | 99.0%A (top fifth of the field on this metric) | 15,715msD (bottom fifth of the field on this metric) | $0.018C (lower half of the field on this metric) | 3.7A (top fifth of the field on this metric) |
| #2HarvestAPI live | 93.1%B (upper half of the field on this metric) | 99.0%A (top fifth of the field on this metric) | 3,350msB (upper half of the field on this metric) | $0.0037B (upper half of the field on this metric) | 3.4B (upper half of the field on this metric) |
| #3Fiber AI live | 93.1%B (upper half of the field on this metric) | 98.0%B (upper half of the field on this metric) | 5,381msB (upper half of the field on this metric) | $0.037D (bottom fifth of the field on this metric) | 2.8B (upper half of the field on this metric) |
| #4Aviato live | 83.2%C (lower half of the field on this metric) | 90.1%D (bottom fifth of the field on this metric) | 3,323msA (top fifth of the field on this metric) | - | 1.7C (lower half of the field on this metric) |
| #5Bright Data live | 79.2%D (bottom fifth of the field on this metric) | 91.1%C (lower half of the field on this metric) | 9,230msC (lower half of the field on this metric) | $0.0013A (top fifth of the field on this metric) | 1.6C (lower half of the field on this metric) |
Grade, against the field on this metric:A (top fifth of the field on this metric)top fifthB (upper half of the field on this metric)upper halfC (lower half of the field on this metric)lower halfD (bottom fifth of the field on this metric)bottom fifth
Ranked by overall grade, the weighted mean of each provider's grades on every metric of the suite, core and specific; ties are broken on Current-job accuracy. Click any column to re-sort; # is the default rank.
Suite-specific metrics
What only this data type needs measured. Same providers, same run, same rank as the leaderboard. Wider than the page: scroll the table sideways for the remaining columns.
| Provider | Move detection | Still at previous employer | Control accuracy | Work history completeness | Education completeness | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1Reverse Contact live | 94.2%A (top fifth of the field on this metric) | 4.8%B (upper half of the field on this metric) | 95.9%A (top fifth of the field on this metric) | 9.1A (top fifth of the field on this metric) | 99.0%A (top fifth of the field on this metric) | 3.7A (top fifth of the field on this metric) |
| #2HarvestAPI live | 94.2%A (top fifth of the field on this metric) | 2.4%A (top fifth of the field on this metric) | 91.8%B (upper half of the field on this metric) | 9.1A (top fifth of the field on this metric) | 99.0%A (top fifth of the field on this metric) | 3.4B (upper half of the field on this metric) |
| #3Fiber AI live | 94.2%A (top fifth of the field on this metric) | 4.8%B (upper half of the field on this metric) | 91.8%B (upper half of the field on this metric) | 8.6C (lower half of the field on this metric) | 99.0%A (top fifth of the field on this metric) | 2.8B (upper half of the field on this metric) |
| #4Aviato live | 86.5%C (lower half of the field on this metric) | 5.0%D (bottom fifth of the field on this metric) | 79.6%C (lower half of the field on this metric) | 8.0D (bottom fifth of the field on this metric) | 95.6%C (lower half of the field on this metric) | 1.7C (lower half of the field on this metric) |
| #5Bright Data live | 84.6%D (bottom fifth of the field on this metric) | 5.0%D (bottom fifth of the field on this metric) | 73.5%D (bottom fifth of the field on this metric) | - | 68.5%D (bottom fifth of the field on this metric) | 1.6C (lower half of the field on this metric) |
Grade, against the field on this metric:A (top fifth of the field on this metric)top fifthB (upper half of the field on this metric)upper halfC (lower half of the field on this metric)lower halfD (bottom fifth of the field on this metric)bottom fifth
Overall grade
Weighted mean of each provider's grades on every metric of the suite, A = 4 to D = 1, in leaderboard order.
Verdict
5 providers ranked. On current-job accuracy, the field runs from 95.0% (Reverse Contact) to 79.2% (Bright Data): the gap is the reason to benchmark on the data you actually buy.
Price basis
The pack behind Cost / profile, per provider: the central tier of its self-serve price ladder (on the public pricing page or after a free signup, never through sales) (the upper middle one when the count is even), in list price, monthly billing where offered, euro prices converted at 1 EUR = 1.1551 USD. Per request is the pack price divided by the requests it covers; Cost / profile then divides it by the measured yield.
| Provider | Pack used | Pack price | Per request | Billed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reverse Contact live | Pay-as-you-go 200,000 creditstier 8 of 14 | $1,800, one-time200,000 credits | $0.0182 credits | Every request |
| HarvestAPI live | Pro top-uptier 3 of 4 | $280 / month483.59 credits | $0.0040.0064 credits | Every request |
| Fiber AI live | Growthtier 2 of 3 | $900 / month50,000 credits | $0.0362 credits | Every request |
| Aviato live | No public price | - | - | - |
| Bright Data live | Scaletier 2 of 2 | $499 / month384,000 credits | $0.0011 credit | Only when found |
Methodology
- 01Who is in the test set
Two groups, frozen before any provider is called. The 52 movers are people whose move to a new employer that employer announced in its own press release, published between 2026-07-21 and 2026-09-11, with the start date passed on the run day: 25 in North America, 13 in Europe and 14 elsewhere, mostly C-level and VP hires (30 and 16, with 6 directors), since those are the moves companies announce. The release names the previous employer for 42 of them. Their profile URL was found with a web search, kept only when the result carried the full name and the new or previous employer. The controls are the 49 people of the People suite who have a profile URL, whose title and employer their employer's own website confirmed on 2026-09-25.
- 02How each provider is asked
Each provider's live profile endpoint receives the profile URL, the way a customer would send it, on 2026-09-26, every provider within the same hours. HarvestAPI reads the public profile; Fiber AI is its live-fetch endpoint; Bright Data is its LinkedIn Profiles dataset collected by URL; Aviato is its person enrichment with a forced rescrape; Reverse Contact is its live endpoint, which is asynchronous, so its time runs until the job completes.
- 03How an answer is judged
The current job is the position the profile marks as current (the first one when several are). It counts when its employer is the verified one: the announced new employer for a mover, the employer-confirmed one for a control. Move detection is the share of movers shown at their new employer; still at previous employer is the share of returned mover profiles whose current job is the one they left. A profile a provider does not return counts as a miss in current-job accuracy.
- 04What a profile costs
The list price of one request on the central pack of the provider's self-serve price ladder (the middle tier, the upper one when the count is even), divided by the fetch success when the provider bills every request. The Price basis table shows the pack behind each number.
- 05What this does not tell you
A person who has not updated their own profile still shows the old job to every provider alike, so move detection has a ceiling below 100% that no provider can pass; compare providers with each other, not with 100%. Contact data, rate limits and behaviour on private profiles are not measured.
- 06Same conditions for everyone
Most provider calls go through the same API gateway, with a fresh answer forced on every call; providers it does not carry are called directly on their own API, or through Clay or their own web app where no API access was available, and the method above names them. Latency is measured from the same place for everyone, includes the gateway hop where there is one, and for asynchronous APIs runs until the job completes: comparable between providers, not a vendor's absolute latency.
- 07Grades and overall
Every value is graded against the other providers on the same metric: A for the top fifth, B the upper half, C the lower half, D the bottom fifth. Overall is the weighted mean of a provider's grades on every metric it was measured on, A = 4 to D = 1. Weights: Current-job accuracy 10×, Fetch success 5×, Latency p50 0.25×, Cost / profile 3×, every other metric 1×. A provider needs at least 20 attempted entries to be ranked; one that could not run is listed as not measured, never scored as zero, and "-" marks a metric not measured.
Raw responses hold personal data and are not published; the per-provider aggregates behind every number, with the counts they were computed from, are in the repository underruns/2026-09-25/scores/live.json. Inputs were checked before the run: people whose name, title and employer their own employer publishes, companies checked against registries and filings. Results on your own data will be lower: they include input errors we deliberately excluded so every provider was tested on the same, known-correct set.
What we measure
Every metric is defined once and applied the same way to every provider, so it compares across providers. The core metrics (coverage, accuracy, latency, pricing, and freshness and API quality where they apply) recur across suites; the rest are specific to this data type.
Questions about the Live Profile Data benchmark
Which is the best live profile data provider?
Reverse Contact ranks first on the Live Profile Data benchmark, with an overall grade of 3.7 A, ahead of HarvestAPI (3.4 B) and Fiber AI (2.8 B). 5 providers were ranked in the run of 2026-09-26. The overall grade covers every metric of the benchmark, so the leader on a single metric can rank lower.
Which live profile data provider has the highest current-job accuracy?
Reverse Contact leads on current-job accuracy, at 95.0%, ahead of HarvestAPI at 93.1%. Across the 5 providers ranked, current-job accuracy runs from 95.0% to 79.2%. Of every profile requested, the share returned with the verified current employer (the announced new one for people who moved).
Which live profile data provider has the highest fetch success?
Reverse Contact leads on fetch success, at 99.0%, ahead of HarvestAPI at 99.0%. Share of requested profiles for which a profile is returned.
Which live profile data provider is fastest?
Aviato leads on latency p50, at 3,323ms, ahead of HarvestAPI at 3,350ms. Median time to an answer per request, from the same place for every provider (for asynchronous APIs, until the job completes).
Which live profile data provider has the lowest cost per profile?
Bright Data leads on cost per profile, at $0.0013, ahead of HarvestAPI at $0.0037. List price per returned profile, on the central pack of the self-serve price ladder.
How is the Live Profile Data benchmark measured?
Every provider answers the same frozen, verified test set (52 people who changed jobs + 49 controls · 25 NA / 13 EU / 14 RoW movers · set v2026-09-26.1) in the same window, graded by employer-published record and first-party job-change announcements (objective). Each value gets a letter grade against the rest of the field, A for the top fifth down to D for the bottom fifth, and the leaderboard ranks providers on the weighted mean of their grades on every metric, current-job accuracy weighing most; ties are broken on current-job accuracy.