Why MoltSets Charges
$0.25 Per Phone
(And We Don't).

Open letter to Adam Robinson. MoltSets is a sharp product. The pricing has one wrinkle worth talking about openly: every mobile phone lookup costs an additional $0.25 on top of the subscription. Their UI literally says "we have to do this".

They're not wrong. They do have to do this, given their pricing model. We don't, given ours. Here's the math.

Why mobile phones cost more than emails

Verified email enrichment has been cheap for a decade. The upstream cost to a B2B data API is somewhere in the $0.005-$0.02 range per resolved email. SMTP verification is essentially free (it's just an MX query plus a probe). Provider detection runs in code. The compute is trivial. Most of the cost is the underlying person index.

Mobile phone enrichment is different. Carrier-verified mobile numbers (the kind that actually ring through to a person, not their office switchboard) come from a much narrower set of sources. The data is harder to maintain. Carriers churn phones constantly. Carrier-network-operator (CNO) checks aren't free.

Upstream prices for verified mobile from the major B2B data providers in 2026:

• Apollo (API tier): $0.08-$0.10 per verified mobile
• Lusha API: $0.30-$0.50
• RocketReach: $0.20-$0.40
• Our primary upstream: ~$0.013 per resolved (extremely competitive)
• Our local-business layer: ~$0.05 per resolved

Even at our primary upstream's competitive rate, phones cost roughly 10-15x more than emails per lookup. Any data API that sells phones at the same per-call price as emails is either losing money on phones or has a hidden subsidy.

The "unlimited API" trap

Here's where the pricing model matters. MoltSets sells "unlimited API calls" at a flat monthly price. Their plans:

• $27/mo unlimited (60 req/min)
• $97/mo unlimited (300 req/min)
• $497/mo unlimited (1,800 req/min)

If phones were included in "unlimited," a single customer could fire 1,800 phone lookups per minute on the $497 tier. At a real upstream cost of $0.10/phone that's $180/minute of cost against $497/month of revenue. The customer would burn the entire month's revenue in under three minutes.

You can't run a sustainable business that way. Adam can't. Nobody can.

So MoltSets does the honest thing: phones are pulled out of "unlimited" and billed separately at $0.25 each. The $0.25 covers their upstream cost with a modest margin. Their UI explicitly says "we have to do this" because they want customers to understand it's not a money grab. It's the only way unlimited pricing works for everything else.

MoltSets's surcharge model: pros and cons

Pros of the surcharge model:

• The base monthly bill is predictable. You know your $27/mo is your $27/mo.
• Customers who don't use phones get the cheapest price.
• Heavy phone users pay proportionally. No subsidy from email-only customers.
• The vendor's margin on the base plan is protected.

Cons of the surcharge model:

• The monthly invoice becomes a moving target. $97 base + $200 in phones = $297 surprise bill.
• Marketing has to say "$97/mo" with an asterisk. Trust friction.
• Customers who use 50 phones a month feel nickel-and-dimed even though it's economically fair.
• Hard to budget. CFO asks "what's our phone vendor going to bill this month?" and the answer is "depends."

AgentEnrich's credit-pool model

Our approach is the inverse. Every plan has a monthly credit pool. Each endpoint consumes a specific credit cost from the pool:

Phones cost 12 credits because phones are expensive upstream. That's the same economic reality as MoltSets's $0.25 surcharge. We just hide the surcharge inside the credit currency.

At our Pro tier ($97/mo, 130,000 credits), a customer who spent the entire pool on phones would pull about 10,800 phones for $97. That's $0.009 per phone. Below our actual upstream cost. So we have a safety: if usage gets degenerate, the monthly credit ceiling kicks in and the customer hits a 429 until next month. We don't lose money; we just stop serving until reset.

Pros of the credit-pool model:

• One flat monthly bill. Predictable for the CFO.
• No surprise overage line items.
• Customers can mix endpoint usage however they want, including all phones if they want.
• "Unlimited" framing isn't dishonest. There's a ceiling, but it's visible up front and it's huge for normal use.

Cons of the credit-pool model:

• Customers have to understand "credits." Extra mental model vs flat-dollar pricing.
• Heavy-phone-only customers might be paying more than they would on a per-phone vendor.
• The credit currency abstracts the underlying cost. We have to be transparent about what each operation costs.

Side-by-side at three real usage profiles

Profile 1: The agent builder (75% enrichments, 5% phones, 20% other)

Building an AI SDR agent that mostly enriches LinkedIn URLs to people, occasionally pulls a phone, sometimes runs a buying-committee map.

• 3,000 enrichments × 1 cr = 3,000 cr
• 200 phones × 12 cr = 2,400 cr (or, on MoltSets: 200 × $0.25 = $50 extra)
• 800 committee resolves × 3 cr = 2,400 cr
• Total: ~7,800 cr (fits inside Builder $49/130k pool with massive headroom)

Profile 2: The lead-gen agency (40% enrichments, 30% phones, 30% other)

An agency running daily campaigns. Heavy phone use (mobile dialer pipeline).

• 30,000 enrichments × 1 cr = 30,000 cr
• 15,000 phones × 12 cr = 180,000 cr (or, on MoltSets: 15,000 × $0.25 = $3,750 extra)
• 20,000 buying-committee resolves × 3 cr = 60,000 cr
• Total: ~270,000 cr (fits Scale or Agency)

Heavy phone use makes the credit-pool model dramatically cheaper.

Profile 3: The phone-extremist (95% phones)

A B2SMB sales team running mobile outreach all day. Pure phones.

• 40,000 phones × 12 cr = 480,000 cr (or, on MoltSets: 40,000 × $0.25 = $10,000 extra)
• 2,000 enrichments × 1 cr = 2,000 cr
• Total: ~482,000 cr (fits Agency 550k with slim headroom)

When each model wins

MoltSets wins when:

• You almost never use phones (email-only outreach team).
• You want the absolute cheapest base plan ($27/mo is hard to beat).
• You prefer per-phone clarity and don't mind a variable invoice.

AgentEnrich wins when:

• Phones are part of your workflow (anything > 5% of calls).
• You want one flat predictable bill.
• You want signals + SMB owner data + the MCP server, all of which MoltSets doesn't ship.
• You're building an AI agent that calls combo endpoints (decision-maker, buying-committee, funding-radar). We have these; MoltSets doesn't.

Why we're writing this

Two reasons.

First: founders should explain their pricing economics. Adam already did this with his "we have to do this" line. We respect that. Doing the same back is fair play.

Second: some customers genuinely should pick MoltSets. We'd rather you self-select correctly than churn after two months. If you're an email-only shop with low phone needs, MoltSets's $27/mo base is mathematically cheaper. Go use it. If you're an agency or AI-agent builder, our credit-pool model is mathematically cheaper. Use us.

The market is big enough for both. Adam's not the enemy. Single-source enrichment vendors locked into 12-month enterprise contracts at $30k/year are the enemy. We're both attacking that market from different angles.

FAQ

Does AgentEnrich actually include phones at no extra charge?

Phones come out of your monthly credit pool. Each verified mobile phone consumes 12 credits. No separate surcharge added to your bill. On Pro ($97/mo, 130k credits) that's up to ~10,800 phones in pool. On Agency ($399/mo, 550k credits) it's up to ~45,800 phones.

What if I max out my credit pool on phones?

You'll get a 429 response with X-Credit-Monthly-Remaining: 0 until your monthly reset. You can upgrade a tier mid-month (prorated). If you sustain heavy phone usage month-over-month, we'll proactively reach out about Enterprise pricing.

Which model is better?

Neither universally. AgentEnrich wins when usage mixes endpoints or includes phones > 5%. MoltSets wins when you want predictable per-phone clarity and you barely touch phones. See the side-by-side above.

How does data quality compare?

Roughly equivalent. Both vendors carrier-verify mobile (not switchboard). AgentEnrich runs a waterfall: our identity layer → our local-business layer → third-source. 65-75% hit rate US, 40-55% EU, 30-50% rest of world. MoltSets is in the same ballpark. The data layer isn't where the differentiation lives.

Will this article hurt the relationship with Adam Robinson?

It shouldn't. We respect Adam. He pioneered the agency-style B2B-data-API positioning. This is brand-vs-brand competitive analysis, not personal. Standard SaaS playbook. Linear writes about Jira every week.

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