PDL vs Akta: the real per-record cost of firmographics
People Data Labs vs Akta for domain-to-company enrichment: how per-call and per-result billing, not sticker price, decides the cheaper firmographics API.
The cheaper firmographics API is not the one with the lower sticker price. It is the one whose billing shape matches your hit rate. People Data Labs bills per call, so every domain you send costs the same whether it matches or not. Akta bills per result, so a miss costs you nothing. That single difference, plus which fields each one actually returns, decides the winner far more than any published rate does.
Copy this line to your agent to price a domain-to-company enrichment job across both providers before you commit.
set up https://monid.ai/SKILL.md and use pdl/company-enrich and akta/company-enrichment to enrich the same 5 domains and compare fields
TL;DR
- PDL uses a per-call billing shape: you pay for every domain you submit, matched or not. Akta uses a per-result shape: unmatched domains are effectively free.
- On a clean list of well-known companies, both land close, so PDL's breadth of records often wins on raw cost per matched row.
- On a messy list with a low hit rate, or a list of private and long-tail companies, Akta's per-result billing plus its private-company depth usually pull ahead.
- PDL is a breadth play (70M+ company profiles, standard firmographics). Akta is a depth play (20M+ private companies with funding, news signals, and business-model fields).
- Both sit behind one Monid wallet, so you can price them against each other without two contracts. Magnitudes are on monid.ai/tools.
The two billing shapes, and why they change the math
Firmographics vendors publish a price per lookup and let you assume that is what you pay. It is not. What you pay is the price per lookup divided by your match rate, because unmatched lookups still consume budget under some billing shapes.
People Data Labs exposes /v5/company/enrich, which does a one-to-one match against its Company Schema. It accepts a website, name, ticker, social profile, or location, and it charges on a per-call basis. Send 1,000 domains, get 700 matches, and you have still paid for 1,000 calls. Your true cost per record is the call price divided by 0.7, not the call price.
Akta exposes /v1/company/enrichment, which takes a single company domain (for example canva.com) and returns a data object alongside a credits_consumed counter. Its shape is per result: a domain that does not resolve does not bill the same way a matched one does. On a low-hit-rate list, that flips the arithmetic. Two identical sticker prices produce very different invoices once the misses are counted.
A fair comparison
Neither provider is strictly better. They are built for different lists.
| People Data Labs | Akta | |
|---|---|---|
| Endpoint | /v5/company/enrich | /v1/company/enrichment |
| Billing shape | Per call (misses still bill) | Per result (misses effectively free) |
| Input | Website, name, ticker, social, location | Company domain |
| What a call returns | Standard firmographics from the Company Schema: industry, size, headcount, location, founded, socials | Sectioned profile: firmographics plus funding, business model, management, financial estimates, news signals |
| Coverage strength | Breadth: 70M+ company profiles across public and private | Depth: 20M+ private companies with funding and real-time signals |
| Best-fit use case | High-volume, high-hit-rate enrichment of known companies | Private-market research, deal sourcing, and long-tail domains where depth matters |
The read here is not a scoreboard. It is a routing rule. If your list is thousands of recognizable company domains and you need the flat firmographic basics, PDL's breadth means a high match rate, which keeps its per-call shape efficient. If your list is private startups, portfolio companies, or scraped domains where half might miss, Akta's per-result shape stops you from paying for air, and its funding and signal sections give you fields PDL does not carry.
Per-record cost, reasoned in magnitudes
We do not print rates, because the honest unit is cost per matched record, and that depends on your list. Live magnitudes are on monid.ai/tools. The reasoning that survives any price change:
- At a 90 percent hit rate, per-call and per-result billing land within a rounding error of each other. Pick on fields, not cost.
- At a 50 percent hit rate, a per-call provider's real cost per matched record roughly doubles, while a per-result provider holds near its sticker. The gap is your miss rate, not a discount either vendor offers.
- Depth is not free breadth. Akta returning funding and business-model sections in one call can replace a second enrichment vendor, which changes the comparison from PDL-versus-Akta to PDL-plus-something versus Akta alone.
Run both on the same 5 domains before you scale. Discover and inspect are free on Monid, so you only spend on the runs, and you see two invoices side by side.
For agents
Grab an API key at app.monid.ai, then paste this to your agent and hand it the key:
set up https://monid.ai/SKILL.md
It learns the whole discover, inspect, run workflow itself. More details in the agent quickstart.
For humans
npm install -g @monid-ai/cli
monid keys add --label main --key <your-api-key>
More details in the CLI quickstart.
Inspect both schemas and prices for free, then run each on one domain:
monid inspect -p pdl -e company-enrich
monid inspect -p akta -e company-enrichment
monid run -p pdl -e company-enrich -i '{"website":"canva.com"}' -w
monid run -p akta -e company-enrichment -i '{"company":"canva.com"}' -w
Compare the returned fields and the billed amount on each, then route the rest of your list to whichever shape wins for that list.
One honest caveat
Coverage varies by region and by segment. PDL is deep on public and US-heavy company data, and Akta is built around private companies and funding signals, so a European mid-market list and a US enterprise list can produce opposite winners. Do not trust our table over your own domains. Sample a few hundred of your real records through both, measure the match rate and the field completeness you actually need, and let that decide. The billing shape only matters once you know your hit rate.
FAQ
Which is cheaper for firmographics, PDL or Akta? It depends on your match rate. On a high-hit-rate list of known companies, PDL's per-call shape is efficient. On a low-hit-rate or private-company list, Akta's per-result shape usually costs less per matched record. Magnitudes are on monid.ai/tools.
What does "per call" versus "per result" actually change? Per call means every domain you submit bills, including misses, so your real cost per record is the call price divided by your hit rate. Per result means unmatched domains do not bill the same way, so a messy list stays cheap.
Do I need two accounts to compare them? No. Both People Data Labs and Akta are reachable from one Monid wallet, billed pay-as-you-go at the price shown before you run.
Which returns funding data?
Akta's /v1/company/enrichment includes funding and business-model sections. PDL's /v5/company/enrich returns standard firmographics from its Company Schema, so pick Akta when the funding depth is the point.