Thirdwatch LinkedIn Company Employees vs HarvestAPI
Both actors take a company URL (or name) and return public employee profiles as structured JSON. HarvestAPI is the high-volume incumbent and runs on a managed authenticated-session backend. Thirdwatch is the no-account alternative with separate Basic and Full events plus confirmed-new monitoring. This page is the honest head-to-head: HarvestAPI wins on raw scale and authenticated depth; Thirdwatch wins when you want cheap first-pass discovery, repeat monitoring, and one API across LinkedIn + Naukri + AmbitionBox + CutShort.
Head-to-head
| Dimension | Thirdwatch LinkedIn Company Employees Scraper & New Hire Monitor | HarvestAPI LinkedIn Scraper |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Pay per event, 4 volume tiers (FREE→GOLD): Basic, Full, and completed non-empty company search. No subscription. Both are pay-per-result — compare the per-record rate at your volume on each Store listing. | Pay per result, tiered. No subscription. |
| Account / cookies required | No LinkedIn account, no cookies — uses LinkedIn's public guest surface Neither asks you for a login; the difference is who carries the auth and the access depth it unlocks. | No cookies for the buyer — HarvestAPI holds the authenticated session pool on its backend |
| Depth per employee | Basic: name, headline, title and URL. Full mode adds profile-backed employer, location, work history, education, skills, certifications and languages. HarvestAPI's session pool reaches deeper into gated profile fields at scale. | Comparable-to-richer per-profile depth; authenticated pool reaches fields the public surface gates |
| Throughput / scale | 1000s of profiles/hour via parallel runs; public-surface coverage is the ceiling (~60% on authwalled profiles) HarvestAPI is the choice for sustained million-scale extraction. | Built for very high volume — the profile scraper alone does ~3.2M runs / 30 days |
| Coverage reliability on authwalled profiles | Public guest surface; some profiles are authwalled and return partial data If a near-100% hit rate on every profile matters, HarvestAPI's pool is more consistent today. | Session pool clears the authwall more consistently |
| Batch / bulk input | Pass multiple company URLs/IDs per run; filter by title + location | Batch input supported (how high-volume actors hit 1M+ runs) |
| Multi-source from one vendor | Same API + MCP across LinkedIn, Naukri, AmbitionBox, CutShort, Career Sites and 70+ sources Thirdwatch wins if you want one billing relationship across LinkedIn + India job/candidate sources. | LinkedIn-focused suite |
| API / automation | REST API + MCP server + official Apify SDK | REST API + official Apify SDK |
| Userbase (Apify Store) | Newer listing, smaller userbase — one 5-star review, growing HarvestAPI is more battle-tested; Thirdwatch is the cheaper challenger. | Category heavyweight — tens of thousands of users on the profile scraper |
Pick Thirdwatch if…
- You want low-cost Basic discovery with four volume tiers and your usage is bursty, not always-on million-scale
- You already pull (or plan to pull) Naukri / AmbitionBox / CutShort / Career Sites and want one API + one bill
- You're enriching a CRM/ATS pipeline and Basic-mode fields (name, title, location, URL) are enough
- You want the MCP server so an LLM agent can call it directly
- Partial coverage on a minority of authwalled profiles is an acceptable trade for the price
Pick HarvestAPI LinkedIn Scraper if…
- You need sustained million-scale extraction with a near-100% hit rate on every profile
- You depend on deep gated profile fields that only an authenticated session pool reaches
- You want the most battle-tested LinkedIn vendor with the largest production track record
- Maximum reliability outranks price for your use case
Notes
The core architectural difference: HarvestAPI runs on a managed authenticated-session pool (its backend holds LinkedIn cookies so you don't), which lets it reach gated fields more consistently at million-run scale. Thirdwatch discovers profiles from public search and attempts direct public-profile enrichment before a residential fallback — no buyer account and no cookie pool. Some profiles remain restricted, and those rows stay Basic rather than being billed as Full.
Practical guidance: if you're a lead-gen or recruiting team doing bursty discovery and Basic fields cover your need, Thirdwatch pairs that low-cost first pass with confirmed-new monitoring and the rest of our global job/candidate catalog. If every profile must resolve at sustained million-scale volume, HarvestAPI's session-pool depth is worth the premium.
Many teams use both: Thirdwatch for cost-sensitive discovery and monitoring across a large account list, then a deeper tool for priority accounts that enter active deal cycles.
Legal note: both actors operate on LinkedIn data. You're responsible for your own compliance with LinkedIn's terms and applicable data-protection law (GDPR, CCPA) when storing or sharing output. We aren't lawyers.
Other comparisons
Try the LinkedIn Company Employees Scraper & New Hire Monitor for free
Sign in to Apify, run a test query, see the data yourself. Free credits cover ~100 results.