Shortlist outbound prospects on LinkedIn by title, company and city
Search LinkedIn people by keyword, location, company and title and get up to 25 short profiles as JSON per call, to build a prospect shortlist for outbound.
Outbound works when the list is right: the title you sell to, in the city you cover, at companies of the right kind. Building it by hand means paging through search results and copying names. Lovely Router runs the search for you. Send a keyword and filters, get a page of short profiles back, pay per search from a prepaid balance. Call it from a script or an AI agent.
Hand it to your AI agent
Copy this prompt into Claude Code, Cursor, Codex or any coding agent. It tells the agent where the docs are and how to use your API key.
Shortlist outbound prospects on LinkedIn by title, company and city. Use the Lovely Router data tools: each returns JSON and is billed per result.
- Docs (read first): https://lovelyrouter.com/docs/tools/find.md and https://lovelyrouter.com/docs/tools/run.md
- Plan first: POST https://lovelyrouter.com/v1/tools/suggest with `{"task": "<my task in plain words>"}` (free). It returns the tools to run in order, each with an example `input`, the `input_required` fields, an estimated cost and a ready-made `run` request. Replace the example values with my task's; if a field is unclear, read the tool with GET https://lovelyrouter.com/v1/tools/<id>. To browse instead, POST https://lovelyrouter.com/v1/tools/discover searches the catalog.
- Show me the plan and its estimated cost (`total_est_cost_usd`) before running anything large.
- Run: POST https://lovelyrouter.com/v1/tools/<id>/run with `{"input": {...}, "max_results": N}`. A 200 has the finished run with `items`; a 202 means it is still running, so poll the `poll` path until `status` is `succeeded`, `failed`, `timed_out` or `stopped`.
- Only delivered results are billed. Keep max_results small on the first run, check the output, then scale up.
- If you support MCP, connect https://lovelyrouter.com/mcp instead (Streamable HTTP, same key; https://lovelyrouter.com/docs/tools/mcp.md) and use suggest_tools, get_tool and run_tool.
- Auth: read my API key from the LOVELY_API_KEY environment variable and send it as `Authorization: Bearer $LOVELY_API_KEY`. Never print or commit the key. If it is not set, ask me to create one at https://lovelyrouter.com/app/keys.
- Billing is prepaid: every call is charged to my balance, so test with a small request before running anything large.
- Every docs page is plain Markdown; the full index is https://lovelyrouter.com/llms.txt.
My task: <the inputs (links, keywords or accounts) and how many results you need>How it works
Define who you sell to
Write the title, the places you cover and, if you have one, the companies or a keyword.
Run the search
Send them to
POST /v1/tools/linkedin-people-search/run. One call returns up to 25 short profiles.Shortlist and enrich
Pick the profiles that fit, then add the details or the email only for those.
Search LinkedIn people with one request
Search LinkedIn people takes a searchQuery and filters: locations, currentCompanies (full company URLs) and currentJobTitles. One call returns up to 25 short profiles. To get more people for one buyer persona, vary the title or the city between calls:
curl https://lovelyrouter.com/v1/tools/linkedin-people-search/run \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $LOVELY_API_KEY" \
-H "content-type: application/json" \
-d '{
"input": {
"searchQuery": "founder",
"locations": [
"San Francisco"
]
},
"max_results": 1
}'Write locations as full names (United Kingdom, not UK), because LinkedIn can match a short text to the wrong place. A run still going after 60 seconds returns 202; Run a tool shows how to poll.
What each search holds
| Field group | What you get |
|---|---|
| Person | Name |
| Role | Headline and current position |
| Place | Location |
| Link | Profile URL |
These are short profiles. Add the full background with linkedin-profile. You are responsible for using people and contact data lawfully, including privacy and anti-spam rules in the countries of the people you contact.
Recipes
Run one title in three cities and see which has more people before you plan territories.
Put the company URL in currentCompanies and the title in currentJobTitles for a direct hit.
If an employee list missed the head of a function, search by that title.
Search founder in one city and sort by headline to find the stage you serve.
Ask it to search, pick the best five and draft a note for each.
Prefer plain words? Connect the MCP server and tell Claude Code or Cursor: "Search LinkedIn people for Head of Marketing in Austin with linkedin-people-search, and give me a table of name, headline and profile URL for the 25 results. Set max_results to 1."
Pair it with the next steps
A people search gives names. These tools finish the job:
Search LinkedIn people by keyword, location, company and title. One call returns up to 25 short profiles.
Employees of LinkedIn companies, filterable by job title, location and keyword: name, headline, position, profile URL.
Public LinkedIn profile by URL: headline, experience, education, skills, location.
Work email address for LinkedIn profile URLs.
Check whether email addresses are deliverable: syntax, domain, MX records and mailbox status.
linkedin-company-employeesis better when you already know the company.linkedin-profilereads the full background of the people you shortlist.linkedin-email-finderlooks up their emails.email-verifychecks each address before you send.
For the whole workflow, see lead generation.
What you pay
You pay per search: starting a run holds its maximum cost, the per-call fee plus the per-search fee times max_results, and the run settles to what it returned. The rest of the hold goes back to your balance. A run that fails or times out pays only for the searches it delivered, and a run refused at the start costs nothing.
Running 20 searches a day is billed as 20 searches a day. There is no subscription and no monthly minimum: top up from $5, and one balance pays for tools and models. The card above shows today's price; pricing lists every tool.
Frequently asked questions
How many people does one call return?+
Up to 25 short profiles per search.
What filters can I use?+
locations, currentCompanies and currentJobTitles, with a free-text searchQuery.
How is this different from listing a company's employees?+
This tool searches across LinkedIn by title and place. linkedin-company-employees starts from one company.
Is it fine to contact people I find?+
That depends on the rules where you and they are. You are responsible for using people and contact data lawfully, including privacy and anti-spam rules in the countries of the people you contact.
Do I need a subscription?+
No. You add credit to a prepaid balance and each run draws it down. Failed runs pay only for the results they delivered, and nothing renews automatically.
Building an outbound list? See lead generation, and the rest of the tool catalog. Run settings are in Run a tool.