Many roads lead to Rome, all rivers run to the sea, and various methods let you find someone's email, but which method to choose depends on your financial incentives.
This article shows practical methods on how to find someone's email address.
We've covered methods with high finding rates, free methods, and everything in between.
The Methods We Will Go Through
- Waterfall Enrichment - The most accurate way to find emails with the highest finding rate
- Single email finder tool - Good enough and low cost, but comes with some tradeoffs
- LinkedIn profile - Easy and reliable, but not everyone reveals their email to the public
- Email permutation - Useful for high-priority profiles, but further verification is required
- Search engines - A free method that works occasionally for publicly shared emails
💡 Before we begin
The methods outlined here are intended for professional email discovery only. Be aware that personal email addresses typically have additional privacy safeguards under data protection laws.
How to Find Someone’s Email: Method 1 - Waterfall Enrichment
If you want to find as many emails as possible, this is the way to your goal. Let me explain why Waterfall Enrichment is the best method for finding someone’s email address:
- It runs automatically, you just upload a contact list, that’s it.
- It verifies emails automatically, ensuring high deliverability rates.
- It works across multiple industries and contact types, giving you versatility.
- It gives you 30% more emails than the second-best method (huge benefit gap).
Here’s how it works: Waterfall Enrichment connects multiple data vendors and email finder tools to one ecosystem, ensuring you'll have the highest amount of emails found, which makes it the most reliable foundation for successful outreach campaigns.
Read our article on Waterfall Enrichment 👈🏽
How to Find Someone’s Email Address: Method 2 - Use a Single Email Finder
This method isn’t as good as using Waterfall Enrichment, but it gets the job done. The only real difference is that it will get you way fewer emails than the Waterfall Email Finder.
For whom I’d recommend using a single email finder
- Entrepreneurs starting out: You just need to make some money now. You can get full coverage later down the journey
- SMBs with limited resources: If you run a small business with budget constraints, starting with a single email finder is more cost-effective in the short term until you can invest in the full coverage of Waterfall Enrichment
- Freelancer: When you're handling everything yourself and need a simple solution that works well enough
If you count yourself among the groups listed above, here’s an action plan for you:
- Subscribe to a low-tier plan of a single email finder (I recommend using Enrow.io)
- Get your API key in their settings and copy it
- Use your email finder tool within Datablist by simply pasting it into the Waterfall Email Finder
Here’s why this approach is highly recommended:
- You can use your email finder within Datablist without spending credits
- With Datablist, you can access 50+ data sources
- You can create, run, and automate workflows within one platform
- You can use AI to personalize emails once you have found the email addresses
📘 Email Finder vs. Waterfall Email Finder
Email finder: Tool that helps you discover email addresses of potential contacts by using various matching techniques.
Waterfall Email Finder: Tool that aggregates multiple email finders in one, allowing you to get the benefits of all tools.
Conclusion: Use a single email finder if you're starting out, and the Waterfall Email Finder if you're looking to scale your outreach and want maximum ROI.
How to Find Someone’s Email Address: Method 3 - LinkedIn Lookup
Some people have their emails displayed on their LinkedIn profiles, which makes it an easy option to find the email of someone you want to connect with
While this is an easy option that requires no investment but time, it's quite manual and unreliable since most people don't put their emails publicly on their LinkedIn profiles. But if you find it there, you can be quite sure that that email is the right one.
Here’s how you can find someone’s email address on LinkedIn: Go to their profile and click on “Contact info” and the email will then appear there in case they made it public.
Here’s a guide on scraping the LinkedIn Sales Navigator in a safe way 👈🏽
How To Find Someone’s Email: Method 4 - Guess & Verify / Email Permutation
Email permutation (also called "Guess and Verify") is a method where you systematically generate possible email formats based on a person's name and company domain.
This approach works well when you're hunting for a specific person's email that wasn't found through Waterfall Enrichment or other email finding methods.
The good thing with LLMs is that you don't need to use any email permutation tools; you can just ask Grok or any other LLM to generate possible email addresses for you.
Below is the prompt I used:
Name: Mathias Bernd
Domain: deutschland.com
Here's what you need to know about this approach:
- Benefits: Free to implement, requires no specialized tools beyond an email verifier, and can be surprisingly effective for individual contacts.
- Downsides: Very difficult to scale, time-consuming, and can generate dozens of possible combinations that need verification.
- Best for: Finding emails of high-value prospects or decision-makers when other methods have failed.
The process involves creating variations like:
mathias.bernd@deutschland.comm.bernd@deutschland.commathiasb@deutschland.combernd.mathias@deutschland.commbernd@deutschland.com
While this works for one or two people, trying to do this for dozens becomes messy and inefficient.
❗ Protect Your Domain Reputation
Always verify the emails you generate with an Email Verifier rather than messaging every possible combination. Sending to invalid addresses can get your domain blacklisted due to high bounce rates, damaging your email reputation.
For verifying your permutated emails, you can use tools like Datablist to check which emails are actually valid before sending any messages.
How To Find Someone’s Email: Method 5 - Search Engines
Using search engines like DuckDuckGo, Google, and Bing with search operators to find email addresses is another way to find professional email addresses.
DuckDuckGo is actually better than Google and other search engines for this purpose, since Google, for example, typically shows social media profiles when using the "@" operator.
Here's how to do it:
- Go to DuckDuckGo and use search queries like:
site:companydomain.com + "email" + "contact" + "full name""full name" + "@companydomain.com"
For example, if you're looking for Jeff Bezos at Amazon, you might search: "Jeff Bezos" + "@amazon.com" or site:amazon.com + "email" + "contact" + "Jeff Bezos”.
This technique works well for finding publicly listed email addresses that may appear in forum posts, PDFs, presentations, or other public documents indexed by search engines.
Conclusion
There are many ways to find someone's email address. Which one to use always depends on your use case, level of urgency, and the ROI you get from finding the emails you're looking for. My recommendation is that you use the Waterfall Email Finder if you have a commercial incentive, and the search engine/LinkedIn method to find emails when you don't.
Frequently Asked Questions About Finding Emails
What Is the Fastest Way to Find Someone's Email Address?
The fastest way to find someone's email address is through Waterfall Enrichment, which automatically connects multiple data vendors and email finder tools to provide verified emails at scale with minimal manual effort.
Why Is the Waterfall Email Finder The Method to Find Emails
The Waterfall Email Finder is the best method to find emails because it combines multiple data sources and verification tools into one workflow, providing 30% more verified emails than single tools, saving time through automation, and ensuring higher deliverability rates with built-in verification—all without requiring technical expertise.
How Can I Find a Business Email for Free?
You can find business emails for free by checking LinkedIn profiles (under "Contact info"), using search engines with operators like "name"+"@company.com", or by checking the company's website contact pages and team sections.
How Accurate Are Email Finder Tools?
Email finder accuracy varies widely between 30-85% depending on the tool, industry, and data quality. Waterfall Enrichment systems tend to be the most accurate (70-85%) because they leverage multiple data sources, while single-provider tools typically range from 30-60% accuracy.
Is It Legal to Find Someone's Email Address Online?
Yes, finding publicly available email addresses is legal. However, how you use those emails must comply with data protection laws like GDPR or CAN-SPAM. Always ensure you have a legitimate business reason and follow applicable privacy regulations when collecting and using email addresses.
What Email Format Do Most Companies Use?
The most common email formats are firstname.lastname@company.com (about 30% of companies), firstname@company.com (about 20%), and first initial + lastname@company.com (about 15%). However, formats vary widely between organizations.