Sluice vs Outscraper
Outscraper scrapes Google Maps into raw rows, reportedly about $3 per 1,000 records after a free first 500, with emails, verification and phones billed as separate tasks. Sluice searches local business listings by trade and town and scores each business against your customer profile, including its gaps: no website, few reviews, a slipping rating.
What Outscraper is good at
Outscraper is very cheap at scale and very good at one thing: getting what Google Maps holds into a file. A reported $3 per 1,000 records, falling to $1 per 1,000 at high volume, with no monthly fee, means a whole region's worth of businesses costs a few dollars. You own every row and can slice it however you like. For anyone building a large local database, or who already has their own scoring in a spreadsheet, it is the efficient choice.
Use Outscraper if: Use Outscraper if you need volume over judgement: tens of thousands of listings, a data product, a market sizing exercise, or a team with a spreadsheet process that already filters and enriches. It also suits pay-as-you-go buyers who do not want any subscription.
| Outscraper | Sluice | |
|---|---|---|
| What you get | Raw Google Maps rows | Scored local businesses with a reason |
| Price (reported / as of October 2026) | ~$3 per 1,000 records after 500 free | From $9/mo; lookups at supplier cost plus 40–60% |
| Cost per usable lead | ~$9–14 per 1,000 after email and verification (reported) | Shown as a worst case before each pass |
| Scale | Built for very large pulls | Capped passes; 25 people enriched by default |
| Gaps as signals | Data is there; you filter | No website, few reviews, slipping rating read into the score |
| Email verification | Separate paid task | Every address verified; only verified billed; bounce refunded |
| Outreach | None | Drafts and approved sending via your accounts |
| Subscription | None, pay per task | Monthly, no annual contract |
Rows are cheap. Deciding is not.
Search Google Maps for plumbers in Leeds and you get a few hundred businesses. Outscraper will put every one into a spreadsheet for well under a dollar. That part of local lead generation has become almost free.
What is not free is what comes next. Say you run a small web design agency. Of those few hundred plumbers:
- Many already have a decent website and will never buy one from a cold email.
- Some are franchise branches whose website is run from head office.
- Some have closed or moved, but the listing lingers.
- A handful have no website, or a broken one, and a run of recent reviews saying "hard to get hold of". Those are your leads.
The work is finding the handful. Outscraper gives you the haystack at a very good price. Sluice tries to hand you the needles, at a higher price per business.
Reading a listing for what is missing
Business-to-business databases are built around companies and job titles. Trades businesses on Google Maps do not fit that shape, which is why most people selling to them use raw scrapers. Sluice treats local listings as a first-class source and reads the gaps as part of the score:
- No website. The clearest sign for a web designer, and a useful one for SEO and marketing agencies.
- Few reviews. A business with eight reviews in a town where rivals have two hundred has a visibility problem.
- A slipping rating. Recent reviews lower than older ones suggest something has changed.
- Fit with your profile. Trade, town, size, and whatever else you said your customer looks like.
Each business gets a score from 0 to 100 with a short reason, and 70 is the line for worth contacting. You can do all of this yourself in a spreadsheet from Outscraper data. Sluice simply does it before you see the list. The method is covered in finding local business leads.
What does a usable local lead cost?
Outscraper's headline price is for raw listings. Reported figures for 2026: free for the first 500 records, then about $3 per 1,000, with emails, verification and phone numbers billed as separate tasks. Stack those and a lead with a verified email reportedly comes to roughly $9 to $14 per 1,000.
That is still cheap. The hidden cost is your time on the 1,000 rows that are not leads, and the email credits spent on businesses you would never pitch.
Sluice is priced differently. Lookups are charged at supplier cost plus 60% on Starter, 50% on Working and 40% on Agency, only when they return something usable. Every address is verified, only verified addresses are billed, and a bounce is refunded exactly. Every pass shows its worst-case price before it runs and is capped, so you cannot accidentally spend $200 on a county.
For 10,000 listings, Outscraper wins on cost and it is not close. For the 40 businesses in one town worth pitching this week, the gap narrows and the time saved is the larger number.
Where Outscraper is better
- Price per record. Far lower than Sluice.
- Scale. Built for large extractions; Sluice caps each pass.
- Raw access. Every field, every row, yours to analyse.
- No subscription. Pay per task, nothing monthly.
- Breadth of Google data. It scrapes more than Maps listings.
Where Sluice is better
- Judgement. A ranked list with reasons, not a spreadsheet to filter.
- Gaps as signals. Missing websites and slipping ratings feed the score.
- Verification included. Only verified emails are billed, bounces refunded.
- The next step. First messages drafted from what the listing and reviews show; sending only through accounts you connect and only what you approve.
- Other sources. The same profile can also search Google advertisers, companies hiring and competitors' reviewers.
Sluice is new and unproven at large volume. If your business depends on very large local datasets, Outscraper's track record matters.
Which suits your agency?
- Building a database or sizing a market: Outscraper.
- Already have a spreadsheet process and a VA to run it: Outscraper.
- Want this week's 30 best prospects in two towns, with a reason and a draft each: Sluice. See selling to local businesses and Sluice for web design agencies.
Try one trade in one town on the $9 plan and compare the shortlist to the spreadsheet you would have filtered by hand.
Questions people ask
- How much does Outscraper cost?
- Third-party reviews report Google Maps scraping free for the first 500 records, then about $3 per 1,000, falling to $1 per 1,000 above 100,000. Emails, verification and phone lookups are separate tasks, which reportedly brings a usable lead to roughly $9 to $14 per 1,000.
- Is Outscraper cheaper than Sluice?
- Per raw row, yes, by a wide margin. If you want every plumber in a country in a spreadsheet, Outscraper is the cheaper tool. Sluice costs more per business but returns fewer, scored ones.
- Does Outscraper score leads?
- No. It returns the data Google Maps holds plus enrichment you pay for. It has no scoring, signals or outreach.
- What does Sluice mean by a listing's gaps?
- A business with no website, very few reviews, or a rating that has been slipping is often a better prospect for a web, SEO or marketing agency. Sluice reads those gaps as part of the score rather than leaving you to filter for them.
Sources
Try it on your own market
Sluice quotes the worst-case price before anything runs and charges only for lookups that found something, so finding out costs close to nothing.
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