---
title: "Data Now Costs $99 and $27 a Month. What Is the Agency Fee For?"
description: "With data on $99 and $27 monthly plans, an outbound agency fee should buy judgement, sales experience and tool knowledge. A decision list you can ask to see."
canonical: "https://leadlinepartners.co/resources/what-the-agency-fee-is-for"
published: "2026-11-06"
author: "Anshul Bhatia"
category: "GTM Engineering"
tags:
  - "outbound-agency"
  - "agency-pricing"
  - "blitzapi"
  - "moltsets"
  - "data-enrichment"
  - "account-selection"
publisher: "Lead Line Partners"
---

# Data Now Costs $99 and $27 a Month. What Is the Agency Fee For?

B2B data now sells on $99 and $27 monthly plans, and four of our account dives drew 590 Blitz records between them. Here's what an outbound agency fee should pay for.

By Anshul Bhatia, Founder. Published November 6, 2026.

## Key takeaways

- As of October 2026, Blitz's Start plan is $99 a month for 200,000 records and MoltSets' $27 plan caps enrichment at 5,000 records a week, so B2B data is now priced like a software subscription.
- Four 29 to 37 page account dives drew 590 Blitz records between them, 0.295% of a Start month, while the same account drew 350,897 records in 22 days.
- An outbound agency fee should buy judgement, sales experience and staying ahead on the tools, and each shows up as a dated, written decision a buyer can ask to see. Pricing is scoped per engagement.

Blitz sells 200,000 records a month for $99. MoltSets has a $27 plan. Both prices are as of October 2026, from the vendors' own pricing pages. And when the data under your outbound program is priced like a software subscription, you're entitled to a blunt question for any agency you pay: what is the monthly fee for?

My answer is opinion, in three parts: judgement about which accounts, why now and what's worth saying; then sales experience, which covers who approves each send, who places the calls and what a reply from a buyer should stop across your whole selling team; and staying ahead on the tools, which change month to month. Each part leaves a written decision behind, so you can ask to see it, line by line, on your own accounts.

## The data line shrank

Here are the plans as the vendors print them, as of October 2026. And the last column is my arithmetic: the monthly price divided by the most records the plan allows.

| Plan | Price a month | What you get | Per 1,000 records at the cap |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| **Blitz Start** | $99 | 200,000 records, 10 requests a second per endpoint | $0.495 |
| **Blitz Scale** | $499 | 5,000,000 records, 25 requests a second | about $0.10 |
| **MoltSets $27 plan** | $27 | 1,000 enrichment records every 5 hours, 5,000 a week; 500 search records every 5 hours, 2,500 a week | about $1.26 |

A cap price is a floor. You only pay that little per record if you use every record you're allowed. And the caps behave differently. On Blitz, one record is one item returned (a company, a person, an email, a phone number or a job posting), a call that finds nothing counts nothing, and at the cap "calls pause until the next cycle." And Start opens every endpoint, verified work emails and US phone numbers included.

MoltSets runs on a rate limit that rolls every 5 hours and every week. But carrier-verified mobiles are a separate $0.15 add-on. The MoltSets figure in the table assumes you hit the weekly cap every week for 30 days, which comes to about 21,400 records.

For our own work, Blitz's $99 Start plan looks very interesting and is under consideration. But if you're enriching whole markets, Blitz's own page says Scale fits that, at $499 with 25 times Start's records. A follow-up piece prices Blitz's new plans against our own logs. The tool pages have more: [BlitzAPI](https://leadlinepartners.co/tools/blitzapi) and [MoltSets](https://leadlinepartners.co/tools/moltsets).

## What four dives drew

Between 15 and 20 October, Lead Line Partners ran four account dives of its own, each ending as a 29 to 37 page PDF. Across the four: 128 pages, 78 accounts, 20 of them Tier 1. Together they drew 590 Blitz records: 124, 117, 105 and 244, dive by dive.

The counting rule is simple. Records per dive are counted as the first balance logged before the dive, minus the last balance logged after it, with the employment checks included. But the balance is account-wide, so a span could catch other work on the same key. All four run logs count their own records, and all four match (the fourth is 236 on the first pass plus 8 added later).

These draws ran on the plan we were on in October, which had no email or phone lookups, so the Start price is arithmetic on record counts, not a bill.

590 records is 0.295% of one Start month. At Start's cap rate, that's an implied $0.29 for all four dives, or 5 to 12 cents each. Implied, because the bill is a flat monthly plan and no dive gets its own line. Clay credits used: none. Hiring checks read each company's own job board, at zero paid records. The dives also used a small share of the MoltSets weekly allowance (under 10 percent of any bucket in every run-log), which I haven't priced.

Cheap, then. The same account drew 350,897 records across 22 days, which is 1.75 times Start's monthly cap. Across one three-day stretch in early October, its balance fell by 183,613 records (91.8% of a Start month), while the logged evaluation runs inside it account for 110,504. A single dive barely registers. Testing, and possibly other work on the same key, does. And neither number explains a fee: one dive's records cost cents, while the account-wide total belongs to a whole program, testing included. Close to half of that draw is not tied to any log.

## Judgement is the first thing the fee buys

Three of the dives had more strong candidates than slots. Five Tier 1 slots each. The accounts with a verified high-strength signal inside the window numbered 15, 14 and 8, so 37 competed for 15 slots and 22 were set aside, by judgement or by a rule someone wrote down.

And some of those calls are uncomfortable. One account had made a funding announcement that named go-to-market as a use of the money, and it still lost its slot. The reason: discovery found no revenue leader on its pages.

In another dive, two accounts were dropped because the only evidence was trade press, and a third because its integration had already finished. Or take the third dive, where four pharma accounts tied and the list held two of them to mirror the prospect's own case studies. One of the two slots went on a rule. The other, the run log says, was "a judgment call, not a computed result." And I'd rather you see that sentence than a score with two decimals on it.

The same work decides why now and what's worth saying. The 20 Tier 1 cards carry 40 dated signals between them. People get the treatment accounts get: one dive's review logged 32 lines kept and 138 dropped, another 24 kept and 225 dropped. And on one final list of 33 people, 27 were still in the job, 4 weren't at the company anymore, 1 wasn't relevant and 1 couldn't be resolved. Our rule is that the check runs before anything is drafted or sent.

## Sales experience is the second

Picking the account is half of it. The other half is knowing what happens once a real buyer is on the other end, and which of your people should be there.

Every Tier 1 card ends in an action page. Each page names an entry person with a one-sentence reason, then the people who follow, why now, the first touch, the proof to bring, the risks and the next 14 days. Across 20 pages, that's 63 person steps. Who goes first at an account is a selling decision, the kind that comes from time spent selling. You should be able to read it and argue with it.

On our engagements, the approval and calling rules live in Trellis, which comes with the service and isn't sold on its own, and its bill is transparent, itemized usage billing. No campaign email goes out without approval from your executive or our team. And launch asks for that yes twice. A do-not-contact entry beats every approval, your executive's included, and every person is checked against that list again before anything goes out. One of your sellers places every call. And a reply pauses that person for every seat (each role on your selling team), because a reply usually changes what the next seat should say.

## Staying ahead on the tools is the third

The vendors I've named move month to month. Blitz's changelog has 47 entries between 5 August and 26 October, 82 days, which is about four a week. And its plans changed between two of our reads, on 28 September and 22 October. We noticed because we read the page. I can't tell you the date of the change or why it happened.

Quality moves too. We [ran MoltSets twice on the same 821 profiles](https://leadlinepartners.co/resources/moltsets-review-measured), on 28 September and 22 October. Usable addresses went from 356 to 411, up 15.4%, and the stale share of the addresses found fell from 20% to 9%. The two runs were 24 days apart. One provider, business emails only, and "usable" means the address is on the person's company domain or a known alias of it.

And terms matter as much as price. Blitz's Start and Scale plans include client work with no separate agreement, but an SLA and a DPA aren't on either. If an agency runs your program's data through a plan, you should know which terms it sits under.

That's the third part of the fee, in my view. Whoever you pay should read a change like that, test it on a dated run, and say when they did.

## The decision list

Each line below is tagged to one of the three parts.

1. Which accounts get in, which are set aside, and the written reason for each (judgement).
2. Why this account and why now, with a date on the evidence (judgement).
3. What's worth saying, and to which seat (judgement).
4. Who is still in the job, checked before anything is drafted or sent (judgement).
5. Who goes first at each account, and who follows (sales experience).
6. Who approves each send, and what overrides an approval (sales experience).
7. Who places the calls, and what a reply or a connected call stops (sales experience).
8. Which plan and cap your data runs on, and what happens at the cap (tools).
9. What changes when a vendor changes its plans or terms, and who checked (tools).

Ask to see it. Whoever you pay should be able to open each line for your own accounts, with a date on it. For more questions in the same spirit, try these [questions to ask before hiring a GTM engineering agency](https://leadlinepartners.co/resources/questions-before-hiring-gtm-engineering-agency), or the [build versus buy guide](https://leadlinepartners.co/resources/build-vs-buy-gtm-engineering).

## What I can't tell you

The four dives are our own work, not a client invoice. I can't tell you what close to half of the 22-day total was, because it isn't tied to any log. The numbers come from our own files and the judgement is mine. And vendor prices are as of October 2026. They'll move.

I won't put a number on a fee, because Lead Line Partners doesn't have a standard one. If you want third-party ranges first, the [GTM engineering cost guide](https://leadlinepartners.co/resources/gtm-engineering-cost-2026) collects them with its own sources. Pricing is scoped per engagement, and the scoping conversation is where I'd walk this nine-line list against your own accounts.

## Frequently asked questions

### Is it worth paying an outbound agency a monthly fee when data costs $99?

It depends on what the fee buys. Four of our dives came to an implied $0.29 at Start's cap price, so the fee is for the choices around the data, not the dive's records. Ask the agency for its written decisions instead: which accounts, why now, who approves, who calls, and which plan the data runs on. If it can't show them, ask what the fee covers.

### How much does MoltSets cost?

MoltSets has a $27 a month plan, as of October 2026. It allows 1,000 enrichment records every 5 hours and 5,000 a week, plus 500 search records every 5 hours and 2,500 a week. Carrier-verified mobiles cost $0.15 each on top. At the weekly cap that works out to about $1.26 per 1,000 records over 30 days, and you only reach that price if you use every record.

### How much does BlitzAPI cost?

As of October 2026, Blitz's Start plan is $99 a month for 200,000 records at 10 requests a second per endpoint. Scale is $499 a month for 5,000,000 records at 25 requests a second, and Build Your Infra starts at $999, where an SLA and a DPA can be agreed. At the cap, Start comes to $0.495 per 1,000 records and Scale to about $0.10, and calls pause at the cap.

### How can a team control enrichment costs?

Count records per job with one rule: balance before minus balance after. Then check what each plan does at its cap. On Blitz, calls pause until the next billing cycle, and a call that finds nothing counts nothing. MoltSets caps roll every 5 hours and every week. Watch testing too. Across one three-day stretch in early October, our account's balance fell by 183,613 records (91.8% of a Start month), and the logged evaluation runs inside it account for 110,504.

### What should an agency show me before I sign?

Ask for a decision list for your own accounts, each line dated and each one open to your questions before you sign anything. Which accounts got in and which were set aside, with reasons. Why now, and what's worth saying to which seat. Who is still in the job. Who approves each send, what overrides an approval, who places the calls and what a reply stops. And which data plan and terms the work runs on.

## Sources

1. [BlitzAPI, pricing page, fetched 27 October 2026](https://www.blitz-api.ai/pricing)
2. [BlitzAPI, public changelog feed, 47 entries from 5 August to 26 October 2026, fetched 27 October 2026](https://api.blitz-api.ai/changelog)
3. [MoltSets, pricing page, fetched 27 October 2026](https://moltsets.com/pricing/)
4. [MoltSets, rate limits documentation, fetched 27 October 2026](https://developer.moltsets.com/getting-started/rate-limits)
5. Lead Line Partners, spend logs and run logs for four account dives, 15 to 20 October 2026 (internal)
6. Lead Line Partners, Blitz account ledger, 22 days to 20 October 2026 (internal)
7. Lead Line Partners, dated snapshots of BlitzAPI's pricing page, 28 September and 22 October 2026 (internal)
8. Lead Line Partners, MoltSets re-run on 821 profiles, 28 September and 22 October 2026 (internal)

## Written by

**Anshul Bhatia**, Founder

IIT Kharagpur. Builds GTM systems for B2B SaaS.

Anshul builds the outbound systems behind Lead Line Partners. Clay workflows, AI enrichment, and research-first sequencing for teams that want more with less.

[linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/anshul29/)

All articles: https://leadlinepartners.co/authors/anshul-bhatia

---

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