LinkedIn People Search by Name

LinkedIn People Search by Name finds LinkedIn profiles from a list of person names — without a LinkedIn account, login or cookies. For every name you get up to 50 matching public profiles with full name, location, current company, how many other companies and schools they list, profile photo and profile URL, plus how many people with that name LinkedIn has in total. Narrow the matches by location or company, and add the full public profile (headline, experience, education, about) when you need it.

$0.30 per 1,000 profiles ($0.0003 each) plus $0.001 per name that returns at least one profile — a full 50-profile name costs $0.016. Names with no match, bad input and failed lookups are free. No fee per run.

Tested head-to-head — 13 October 2026

Same request for six LinkedIn people-search tools on Apify: the name "Maria Garcia", 20 results.

	This Actor	The other five tools
Rows returned (20 asked)	20	5–20
Rows that really are "Maria Garcia"	18 of 20 — LinkedIn's own name directory	2 of 10 … 16 of 20 on keyword-style search
Fields per row	21 — incl. current company, schools count, photo	4–77
Price for these 20 rows	$0.007	$0.004 (10 rows) – $0.10
Time	6 s	2–11 s

The cheapest other tool returns 10 people per $0.004 page with loose name matching; the ones with a job headline on every row charge $5–7 per 1,000. Here the headline comes with the full-profile add-on.

What is LinkedIn People Search by Name?

It is the "who is this person on LinkedIn?" step of a sales, recruiting or research workflow, done in bulk. It reads LinkedIn's public people directory (linkedin.com/pub/dir) — the page LinkedIn itself shows logged-out visitors and search engines when someone looks a person up by name — and turns it into clean rows. Because nothing is logged in, there is no session cookie to paste and no LinkedIn account that can be restricted.

Paste one name or ten thousand; run it from the Apify console, the API, a spreadsheet, n8n, Make, Zapier or an AI agent.

What data can it extract?

Field	Example	Meaning
fullName, firstName, lastName	Satya Nadella	Name as shown on the card
location	Redmond, WA	Location as the member wrote it — a city, metro area or country
currentCompany	Microsoft	The first company LinkedIn lists on the card — in practice the current or latest one
moreCompaniesCount	4	Other companies on the profile ("Microsoft, +4 more")
schoolsCount, school	3, "Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal"	Number of schools; the first school when LinkedIn names it instead of a count
photoUrl	https://media.licdn.com/…	Profile photo (200×200) when the member has a public one
linkedinUrl, publicIdentifier	https://www.linkedin.com/in/satyanadella	Profile URL and slug
rank, totalMatches	1, 11	Position among the cards LinkedIn showed for the name, and how many people with that name LinkedIn reports in total
searchName, searchFirstName, searchLastName	Satya Nadella	Which of your names this row answers, and how it was searched
headline, fullProfile	Chairman and CEO at Microsoft	Add-on ($): the full public profile — headline, title, company, experience with dates, education, about, followers, connections, skills, certifications, languages and more

Every person row has every field; what the card does not show is null. The card does not show a headline or job title — turn on the full-profile add-on for those.

How much does it cost?

Pay per result (pay-per-event), with Apify's usual discounts on paid plans:

Event	Price (Free plan)	Bronze	Silver	Gold+
Name search — once per name that returns at least one profile	$0.001	$0.001	$0.001	$0.001
Person — one matching profile row	$0.0003	$0.00027	$0.00024	$0.00021
Add-on: full profile — only when you turn it on and the profile was read	$0.003	$0.0027	$0.0024	$0.0021

• What a name costs (Free plan): 50 profiles $0.016 · 20 profiles $0.007 · 1 profile $0.0013. With the full profile of every match: 10 profiles $0.034.
• Results per $1: about 3,100 profiles at 50 per name (≈ 4,300 on Gold), or about 300 profiles with full profile.
• Apify's free plan ($5 of monthly credit) covers roughly 15,000 profiles a month.
• Free: names with no match, names where none of the matches pass your filters, input values that are not names, lookups LinkedIn refused this time, names not searched because "Max cost per run" was reached, full profiles that could not be read. You get a row saying why, and it costs $0.
• Filtered-out cards are never charged — you pay for the rows you get.
• No start fee and no proxy charge — the route to LinkedIn is included in the price.
• Set Max cost per run in the run options and the Actor stops itself, green, at that amount.

How to search LinkedIn people by name

1. Open the Actor and put your names in Person names, one per line.
2. Optionally type a Location contains or Company contains filter.
3. Optionally turn on Add the full profile of every match ($).
4. Click Start. A name takes 5–15 seconds; four names run in parallel.
5. Download the results as CSV, Excel or JSON, or fetch them through the API.

How names are read

• "First Last" → the first word is the first name, everything after it the last name ("Ludwig van Beethoven" → Ludwig + van Beethoven). For names of three or more words, if that split finds nobody, the other split is tried once (Ludwig van + Beethoven) at no cost to you.
• "Smith, John" (CRM / last-name-first exports) is turned around to John Smith.
• Titles, credentials and middle initials are dropped: "Dr. John F. Kennedy, PhD" → John Kennedy.
• One word → searched as a first name ("Satya" → everyone named Satya, 50 cards).
• Duplicate names are searched once.

⬇️ Input

{
  "names": ["Satya Nadella", "John Smith"],
  "locationContains": "",
  "companyContains": "",
  "maxResultsPerName": 50,
  "includeFullProfile": false
}

Field	Required	What it does
names	yes	Person names, one per line
locationContains	no	Keep people whose location contains this text (London, TX); alternatives with `
companyContains	no	Keep people whose current company contains this text (Microsoft); alternatives with `
maxResultsPerName	no	1–50, default 50
includeFullProfile	no	Paid add-on, default off

The filters are applied on our side, after fetching. LinkedIn's public directory has no location or company filter, so the Actor takes the up-to-50 cards LinkedIn shows for a name and keeps the ones that match. A filter narrows those 50 — it cannot reach people beyond them. Matching is case- and accent-insensitive substring matching on the text the card shows: a card that says "Dallas, TX" matches TX and Dallas, but not United States, because the card does not say it. Filtered-out cards are not charged, and a name whose cards are all filtered out costs nothing.

⬆️ Output

{
  "type": "person",
  "searchName": "Satya Nadella",
  "searchFirstName": "Satya",
  "searchLastName": "Nadella",
  "rank": 1,
  "fullName": "Satya Nadella",
  "firstName": "Satya",
  "lastName": "Nadella",
  "location": "Redmond, WA",
  "currentCompany": "Microsoft",
  "moreCompaniesCount": 4,
  "schoolsCount": 3,
  "school": "Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal",
  "photoUrl": "https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/v2/C5603AQHHUuOSlRVA1w/profile-displayphoto-shrink_200_200/…",
  "linkedinUrl": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/satyanadella",
  "publicIdentifier": "satyanadella",
  "totalMatches": 11,
  "headline": null,
  "fullProfile": null,
  "fullProfileError": null,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-05T06:00:40.105Z"
}

With Add the full profile of every match on, headline is filled and fullProfile holds the public profile — the same fields as our LinkedIn Profile Scraper: headline, title, company, companyLinkedinUrl, location, city, region, countryCode, about, followers, connections, experience[] (title, company, dates, description), education[], certifications[], languages, skills, imageUrl, memberId and more.

A name with no match gives one free row:

{ "type": "notice", "kind": "no-results", "searchName": "Zxqvbn Qwplkjh", "totalMatches": 0, "notice": "LinkedIn's public directory has no profiles named \"Zxqvbn Qwplkjh\". Not charged." }

The dataset has three views: People (the table above; free rows explaining a name with no match come after the people, with a Note column), With full profile and Notices and errors. The run's key-value store holds a SUMMARY record (names searched, no-match names, cards removed by filters, rows delivered).

Use cases

Sales and lead enrichment

You have names from a CRM, an event attendee list or a conference badge scan — find their LinkedIn profiles, current company and location, then filter by the company you expected.

Recruiting

Find the profile of a referred candidate from just a name and city, or check whether a name on a CV matches a public profile at the stated company.

Identity checks and research

How common is a name on LinkedIn (totalMatches), who with that name works at a given company, which one lives in a given city.

AI agents and RAG

An agent with the Apify MCP server can call this Actor with names: ["Jane Doe"] and companyContains: "Stripe" and get structured rows back — no login flow, no secrets to provide.

Integrations

Run it through the Apify API or the Python and JavaScript clients, schedule it, or connect it to n8n, Make, Zapier, Google Sheets, Slack, Airbyte, LangChain and the Apify MCP server. Results export as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML or HTML.

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/lergassy~linkedin-people-search-by-name/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{"names":["Satya Nadella"],"companyContains":"Microsoft"}'

Limitations — read before a big run

• At most 50 profiles per name. LinkedIn's public directory shows logged-out visitors no more than 50 people per name; there is no next page. For a common name ("John Smith" — 102,000+ on LinkedIn) you get 50 of them, and which 50 can change between runs. Use the filters, or add a middle name, to narrow common names.
• Filters are applied after fetching, to those 50 cards (see Input).
• No headline or job title on the card — only the first listed company. Turn on the full-profile add-on for headline, title and experience.
• Only members whose profile is public appear in LinkedIn's public directory.

Troubleshooting

• A name came back as an error row "Could not open LinkedIn's public directory…" — LinkedIn refused that lookup this time. It is free; run the name again.
• "None of them matched your filters" — the card text does not contain your filter word. Try a shorter word (TX instead of Texas), alternatives (NY|New York), or no filter.
• fullProfileError is filled — LinkedIn did not show that profile to a logged-out visitor on this try; the add-on was not charged for it.

❓ FAQ

Do I need a LinkedIn account or cookies?

No. The Actor reads LinkedIn's public directory and public profile pages only. Nothing is logged in, so no account can be restricted.

Is it legal to scrape LinkedIn?

The Actor reads only information people have made public, as any logged-out visitor or search engine sees it. In the US, the Ninth Circuit held in hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn that collecting publicly accessible profiles is unlikely to be "unauthorized access" under the CFAA, but the rows are still personal data: under GDPR, CCPA and similar laws you need a lawful basis (for example legitimate interest) to process them, must honour opt-out and deletion requests, and should respect LinkedIn's terms. Use it for legitimate business purposes and consult a lawyer if unsure.

Why only 50 results for "John Smith"?

That is LinkedIn's own ceiling for logged-out visitors. Tools that go deeper log in with an account and pay with ban risk and a higher price.

How fresh is the data?

Every run reads LinkedIn live; nothing is cached.

Can I search by job title or company only?

Not with this Actor — it needs a name. For "everyone with title X at company Y", see the other LinkedIn Actors below.

Does it return emails or phone numbers?

No — public profiles do not show them. For a work email, use LinkedIn Email Finder.

Your feedback

Found a bug or need a field? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab — we answer within a day. If the Actor saved you time, a short review helps other people find it.

You might also like

Actor	What it does
LinkedIn Profile Scraper — No Cookies	Full public profile from a profile URL: experience, education, skills, posts
LinkedIn Profile Scraper with Email	The profile plus a work email
LinkedIn Email Finder	Work email for a LinkedIn profile
LinkedIn Company Scraper	Size, industry, followers and HQ of the companies you find here
LinkedIn Jobs Scraper	Who a company is hiring
LinkedIn Posts Scraper	A person's or company's latest posts

Also known as: LinkedIn people search API, find LinkedIn profile by name, LinkedIn name lookup, LinkedIn people finder, search LinkedIn without login, LinkedIn profile search by name, LinkedIn public directory scraper, reverse name lookup LinkedIn.