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SphereScout is designed to be straightforward, but you may have questions as you get started or scale your outbound campaigns. This page covers the questions users ask most often — from how credits work and what the data includes, to GDPR compliance and re-downloading past exports.

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Getting started

SphereScout is a B2B contact database with over 50 million local business contacts across 20+ countries. You search by business category — such as restaurants, lawyers, dentists, or contractors — and filter by country, state/region, and city. You can also narrow results by contact type: only show businesses that have an email address, a phone number, a website, or a specific social profile. When you find the right segment, you export the results to CSV with one click.SphereScout is built for sales teams, marketers, and agencies that need verified, ready-to-use contact data without complex data pipelines.
Create a free account at spherescout.io. As soon as your account is active, your dashboard shows 100 free credits — no credit card required. Run a search, apply filters, and export up to 100 contacts to see the data quality firsthand before you decide on a plan.
No. You can create an account and export your first 100 leads without entering any payment details. A credit card is only required when you purchase a subscription plan, buy a credit top-up, or make a one-time purchase.
SphereScout covers 20+ countries, with business contacts spanning North America, Europe, and beyond. You can browse available countries directly in the dashboard using the country filter on the search page. Coverage depth varies by country — larger markets tend to have higher contact volumes and more complete data fields.

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Credits and billing

One credit equals one exported contact record. When you run a search and export 200 contacts, 200 credits are deducted from your balance. Searching, browsing, and previewing results in the dashboard are all free — credits are only consumed when you download an export.
Re-downloading a previous export within 30 days does not use additional credits. See the exports section below for details.
When your credit balance hits zero, exports are paused. You can still search and preview results, but the export button is disabled until you add more credits. You have two options:
  • Buy a credit top-up — a one-time purchase of additional credits added to your account immediately.
  • Upgrade your plan — switch to a higher tier and get a larger monthly credit allocation right away.
Your monthly subscription credits reset on your billing date each month.
Yes. Credit top-ups let you purchase an additional block of credits without changing your subscription plan. Top-up credits do not expire and are not tied to your billing cycle — they stay in your account until you use them. SphereScout draws down your subscription credits first, then uses top-up credits once your subscription balance runs out.
A subscription gives you a set number of credits each month that reset on your billing date. It’s the best fit for teams running continuous outbound campaigns. SphereScout offers four subscription tiers:
PlanMonthly creditsPrice
Starter10,000~$49 / month
Growth40,000~$99 / month
Pro100,000~$199 / month
Scale300,000~$499 / month
A one-time purchase is a single transaction for a specific list, with no recurring charge. It’s ideal for a single campaign or project where you know exactly how many contacts you need. You pay once and download your file.
If you run campaigns regularly, a subscription plan is more cost-efficient per contact. For occasional use, a one-time purchase keeps things simple.
Yes. You can cancel your subscription at any time from your account settings. Cancellation stops future billing, but your credits remain available until the end of the current billing period. Purchased (top-up) credits stay in your account after cancellation and can still be used.
Unused subscription credits expire at the end of your billing period. They do not carry over to the next month or convert to purchased credits.

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Data quality

SphereScout maintains a 95% accuracy rate across the database. Email addresses are validated monthly to check deliverability, so you can expect the contact data you export to be current and actionable. Records that fail validation checks are flagged or removed during each refresh cycle, keeping the database clean over time.
Yes. SphereScout is GDPR compliant. The database is built and maintained with data protection regulations in mind, and all contact records are sourced and processed to meet compliance requirements. If you have specific questions about data processing or need documentation for your own compliance needs, contact support@spherescout.io.
The database is continuously updated and quality-checked. Email addresses go through a validation cycle monthly to verify deliverability. New contacts are added as they are discovered, and existing records are refreshed when changes are detected. You can use the data freshness feature in your dashboard to check whether new contacts have been added to a specific segment since your last export.

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Exports and downloads

All exports are delivered as CSV files. You can open them directly in Excel, Google Sheets, or any spreadsheet application, and import them into most CRMs and outbound sequencers without additional conversion. Each row represents one business contact and includes the fields available for that record — such as company name, email, phone, city, website, and social media links.
Yes. Your export history is saved in the dashboard, and you can re-download any export within 30 days of the original export date. Re-downloading does not use any additional credits — you only pay credits once, at the time of the initial export.
Go to Export History in your dashboard to see all your past exports and access their download links.
Data freshness is a feature that lets you check whether new contacts have been added to a specific segment — defined by category and location — since the last time you exported it. Instead of re-exporting the entire segment and paying credits for contacts you already have, you run a freshness check to see if there are net-new records. If there are, you can download only the new contacts, called a delta, without duplicating records from your previous export.

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API

Yes. SphereScout provides API access so you can query the contact database programmatically. The API lets you search for contacts, apply filters, and retrieve results directly from your own applications or data pipelines — without using the web dashboard. API usage is tied to your account credits, the same way dashboard exports are.
An API key is a unique token that authenticates your requests to the SphereScout API. It tells the API which account the request belongs to and deducts credits from your balance accordingly.To get your API key:
  1. Log in to your dashboard.
  2. Navigate to Dashboard → Plans and open the API Keys tab.
  3. Generate a new key and copy it immediately — for security reasons, it is only shown once.
Include your key in the Authorization header of every API request. Keep it private and do not share it or commit it to version control.
If your API key is compromised, revoke it immediately from the API Keys section in your dashboard and generate a new one.
Still have a question that isn’t answered here? Email the SphereScout support team at support@spherescout.io and they’ll get back to you.