Email Lead Generator — Find Businesses + Verified Emails

Give an industry and a location. Get back a list of real local businesses, each with MX-verified contact emails and a lead score.

This is a discovery-based lead generator, not a domain email finder. You do not need to know any companies or domains up front — the actor discovers the businesses for you from OpenStreetMap, then finds and verifies their emails.

Already have a company or domain and just want its emails? Use a domain email finder (e.g. b2b-email-finder-pro / contact-email-finder) instead. This actor is for when you only know the type of business and where.

What it does

1. Maps your category to OpenStreetMap tags and geocodes your location (Nominatim) to a search area (or accepts a bounding box directly).
2. Queries the Overpass API for matching businesses — name, website, phone, address — with automatic mirror fallback (free, no API key, no CAPTCHA).
3. For each business with a website, fetches the homepage plus /contact and /about (direct first, your proxy only if blocked), extracts same-domain emails, validates MX records, dedupes, and scores deliverability.
4. Emits one lead per business.

By default (requireEmail=true) only businesses with at least one MX-verified email are returned and charged.

Input

Field	Type	Required	Description
category	string	yes	Business type, e.g. restaurant, law firm, dentist, plumber, marketing agency.
location	string	yes	City/region (Portland, Oregon) geocoded to an ~8 km radius, or a bbox south,west,north,east.
maxResults	integer	no	Max qualified leads to return (default 50).
requireEmail	boolean	no	Only emit/charge leads with a verified email (default true).
proxyConfiguration	object	no	Optional Apify Proxy, billed to your account. Off by default.

Output

One row per lead in the dataset:

{
  "businessName": "Stumptown Coffee Roasters",
  "category": "cafe",
  "address": "128 SW 3rd Ave Portland OR 97204",
  "phone": "+1-503-295-6144",
  "website": "https://www.stumptowncoffee.com",
  "emails": [
    { "email": "info@stumptowncoffee.com", "type": "role", "mxValid": true, "deliverability": 5 }
  ],
  "leadScore": 90,
  "source": "osm",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-19T00:00:00.000Z"
}

If discovery finds no businesses, or none have a verified email, the run still finishes SUCCEEDED with a single summary row { "leadsFound": 0, "note": "..." } and charges nothing.

Run it

MCP (Claude / any MCP client)

Call the actor apricot_blackberry/email-lead-generator with:

{ "category": "coffee shop", "location": "Portland, Oregon", "maxResults": 10 }

API (curl)

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/apricot_blackberry~email-lead-generator/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"category":"law firm","location":"Austin, Texas","maxResults":25}'

JavaScript (apify-client)

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';
const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('apricot_blackberry/email-lead-generator').call({
  category: 'dentist',
  location: 'Denver, Colorado',
  maxResults: 30,
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Python (apify-client)

from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient("YOUR_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("apricot_blackberry/email-lead-generator").call(run_input={
    "category": "plumber",
    "location": "Seattle, Washington",
    "maxResults": 40,
})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

Pricing

Pay-per-event: a small actor-start fee plus a per-lead fee charged only for qualified leads actually emitted. Zero-result runs cost only the start fee. Apify Proxy (if you enable it) is billed directly to your account.

Notes & limits

• Data source is OpenStreetMap (Overpass + Nominatim). Coverage depends on OSM completeness for the area; dense urban categories return the most.
• Emails are discovered from the business's own website (same-domain only) and OSM contact:email tags — no pattern guessing. mxValid confirms the domain can receive mail, not that a specific mailbox exists.
• Very large areas are capped; narrow the location or category for best density.