Neither model is universally better — it depends on how often you actually buy. Here's the math to check your own case.
| PublicLeads | Typical subscription tools | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | One-time, per scope you need | Recurring monthly or annual, whether you use it that month or not |
| Starting price | $9 (one city) | Typically $50–$300+/month for self-serve tools; five figures/year for enterprise platforms |
| Contract | None | Often annual for the best rate; cancel and lose access to everything |
| Cost over time | Pay once, own the list — no further charges ever | Cost keeps accruing every billing cycle, including months you don't prospect |
| Data freshness | Free lifetime updates on lists you've bought | Continuously refreshed while subscribed |
| Best for | Occasional or project-based needs — a handful of campaigns a year | Continuous, high-volume prospecting where real-time data matters |
Subscriptions make sense when you're prospecting constantly and need fresh data flowing in every day — the ongoing cost buys you that continuity, and if you're using it heavily, the per-contact cost can beat buying one-time lists piecemeal. They stop making sense when your actual usage is bursty — a few campaigns a year — because you're paying every month for access you use in short windows. The honest answer depends entirely on your own usage, not on which model sounds better in the abstract.
Five rows from the full 2,649-row dataset, sorted by rating & review count. The complete CSV includes phone, full street address, postal code, website URL, Google rating, review count, email type (corporate vs webmail), and the parent domain.
| Name | Rating | Reviews | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Salt Water Digital Marketing | ★ 5.0 | 130 | stephen@saltwaterdigital.com |
| dNOVO Group | Digital Marketing Agency Vancouver | ★ 5.0 | 100 | ninfo@dnovogroup.com |
| Meteor Print & Sign Ltd. | ★ 5.0 | 73 | info@meteorprint.ca |
| Ollo Metrics | ★ 5.0 | 58 | info@ollometrics.com |
| The Branded Agency | ★ 5.0 | 58 | hello@brandedagency.com |
Quick math: a $99/month subscription costs $1,188/year regardless of how many months you actually prospect. Three PublicLeads city lists at $9 each cost $27 total. Even accounting for larger region ($19) or country ($99) purchases, most buyers who need fewer than roughly 10–12 lists a year come out ahead paying once — before counting the per-seat fees most subscriptions add on top.
Pick an industry and a city, check out, and the file lands in your inbox in minutes. No account required to buy — a dashboard is created automatically for re-downloads.
When you're prospecting continuously across many industries or regions and need the data refreshed in real time — the recurring cost is buying you that continuity, not just the data itself.
Every list you buy from PublicLeads gets free lifetime updates — re-download the latest version anytime at no extra charge. It's not real-time, but it doesn't go stale and unusable either.
Yes, plenty of buyers do — a subscription for ongoing prospecting, plus a one-time list when they need deep coverage of one specific city or industry the subscription doesn't prioritize.
Take your subscription's annual cost and divide by $9–$99 (city/region/country pricing) to see how many one-time lists it's equivalent to. If your actual yearly list needs fall below that number, one-time buying is cheaper.