The best tool to build a cold calling list of local businesses is one that pulls every business of a type in your area from Google Maps with its published phone number, already normalised to E.164 so your dialler accepts it, and charges a flat price per lead. MapScraper does this: it returns the whole area past Google's ~120-result limit, skips listings without a phone when you turn on the has-phone filter, and exports to Excel, CSV or JSON. It starts with 100 free leads, no card, then 1,000 leads for $5 at launch.
Updated 11 November 2026. Competitor facts come from each vendor's own pages, read on 11 November 2026: Lusha pricing and Apollo's plan walkthrough. Prices change, so check before you buy.
Two kinds of cold calling list
Pick the tool by who picks up the phone.
- You call a business. Plumbers, dentists, restaurants, salons, roofers, agencies. The owner or front desk answers the number on the Google listing. The data you need is the business list of an area: name, phone, website, rating, hours. This is what a Google Maps tool gives you.
- You call a named person at a company. A VP of Sales, an IT manager. You need that person's direct dial or mobile, which is not on Google Maps. This is what contact databases such as Lusha and Apollo sell, revealed contact by contact.
Most SMB sales teams, agencies and local service sellers are in the first group, and paying per-contact database credits for a number that is printed on the business's own listing is the expensive way to get it.
The tools compared
| MapScraper | Lusha | Apollo | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | Google Maps lead list tool | B2B contact database | B2B contact database and sales platform |
| Who you reach | The business, on its published number | Named people at companies | Named people at companies |
| Phone data | Listing phone, as shown and in E.164 | "Reveal a phone number – 5 credits" (an email is 1 credit) | Mobile reveals use "several credits per contact" |
| How you pay | One-time packs: 1,000 / $5 (launch), 5,000 / $19, 20,000 / $49, 50,000 / $99 | Starter, Pro and Premium self-serve "with a credit slider"; prices not on the page we read | Basic $49 per user per month billed annually; Professional $79; Organization $119 with a 3-user minimum |
| Free start | 100 leads once, no card | Free plan, "up to 40 credits per month" (8 phone reveals) | Free plan at $0 |
| Unused balance | Leads never expire | Not stated | "Annual credit allowance" per plan |
| Area coverage | The whole area: busy areas are split into cells past the ~120 limit and de-duplicated by place_id | Not applicable (search by company and title) | Not applicable (search by company and title) |
| Email in the same row | Yes, crawled from the business's own website | 1 credit per email | Per credit |
"Not stated" means we did not find it on the page we read. If your list is decision-makers at mid-size and large companies, Lusha or Apollo is the right category of tool and MapScraper is not. If your list is local businesses, the comparison is cost per dialable row.
How many Google Maps listings have a phone number?
Almost all of them, which is why Maps is the natural source for local call lists. On 31 October 2026 we scanned the first Google Maps results for 15 business types in 12 cities (Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Dubai, Houston, Istanbul, London, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Sydney, Toronto). 9,033 of 9,295 listings (97.2%) showed a phone number.
| Business type | Listings | With phone | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dentists | 628 | 625 | 99.5% |
| Law firms | 582 | 579 | 99.5% |
| Plumbers | 639 | 633 | 99.1% |
| Real estate agents | 633 | 627 | 99.1% |
| Hair salons | 518 | 513 | 99.0% |
| Roofers | 629 | 621 | 98.7% |
| Cleaning services | 697 | 685 | 98.3% |
| Accountants | 638 | 626 | 98.1% |
| Hotels | 682 | 666 | 97.7% |
| Restaurants | 558 | 545 | 97.7% |
| Electricians | 618 | 602 | 97.4% |
| Landscapers | 719 | 698 | 97.1% |
| Auto repair shops | 605 | 587 | 97.0% |
| Gyms | 491 | 468 | 95.3% |
| Cafes | 658 | 558 | 84.8% |
By city the share ran from 91.7% in Istanbul to 99.1% in Dallas and Dubai. These are the first results of one search per city, so treat them as the rate for active, ranking businesses. A listed number is what the business or Google published; it is not a guarantee the line is answered, and franchise listings sometimes point to a central switchboard. City-level scans are on pages such as plumbers in Dallas and roofers in Houston.
What a cold calling list needs, and how MapScraper covers it
| Need | Why it matters | In MapScraper |
|---|---|---|
| Every business in the area | One Maps search stops at ~120 results | Area split into cells, de-duplicated by place_id (how) |
| Dialler-ready numbers | Diallers and SMS APIs expect +country code format | Separate E.164 column next to the number as shown |
| No dead rows | You shouldn't pay for listings you can't call | Has-phone filter; filtered-out listings are not delivered or charged |
| Best time to call | Calling a closed shop wastes a dial | Opening hours per business |
| A reason to call | An opener beats "do you have a minute?" | Rating, review count, website status and a digital weakness score with written reasons |
| Follow-up email | Many calls end with "send me an email" | Email crawled from the business's own website, in the same row |
| Predictable cost | Calling volume varies month to month | One-time packs, leads never expire |
E.164 is left empty rather than guessed when the listing's country can't be determined, so sort by that column before importing.
Cost per 1,000 leads
MapScraper's packs, one-time, emails included:
| Pack | Leads | Price | Per 1,000 leads |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter (launch price) | 1,000 | $5 | $5.00 |
| Growth | 5,000 | $19 | $3.80 |
| Agency | 20,000 | $49 | $2.45 |
| Scale | 50,000 | $99 | $1.98 |
With the has-phone filter on, every delivered row has a number, so the cost per dialable lead is the pack price. Before a scan runs, a free pre-count estimates how many businesses the area holds, and stopping a scan early costs only the rows already delivered.
Build a call list in 15 minutes
- Sign up free; you get 100 leads, no card.
- Pick one business type and one city, and turn on has phone. Add a minimum rating if you only want established businesses.
- Check the free pre-count, then run the scan.
- Download CSV and import the E.164 column into your dialler or CRM.
- Use opening hours to plan call blocks, and the weakness reasons to write the opener.
- Re-pull the list before each campaign; a scan is a snapshot.
The cold calling lists use case shows the same setup, and how to get phone numbers from Google Maps covers cleaning and de-duplicating numbers by hand. For lists by trade, start at leads by industry.
Who should pick something else
- You call named decision-makers at larger companies. Lusha and Apollo sell person-level direct dials and mobiles; Google Maps does not have them.
- You need a dialler, not a list. MapScraper builds and exports the list; it does not place calls.
- You need several numbers per business. A Maps listing shows one primary number; extra lines are on the business's own site.
Comparing Google Maps tools instead? See the best Google Maps scraper roundup and MapScraper vs Outscraper.
Cold calling is regulated by country: do-not-call registers (the US National DNC Registry, the UK's TPS and CTPS), consent rules for autodialled or prerecorded calls, and GDPR or PECR in Europe. This is general information, not legal advice; our overview of the legal side is a starting point.
Summary
To cold call local businesses, build the list from Google Maps: in our 31 October 2026 scans, 97.2% of 9,295 top listings showed a phone number. MapScraper returns the whole area past the ~120-result limit, gives each number as shown and in E.164, skips rows without a phone when you ask, and adds opening hours, rating and the website's email to every row, in one-time packs from $5 for 1,000 leads. Lusha and Apollo are the better fit when you call named people at companies, where a phone reveal costs credits per contact (5 credits on Lusha).
Build your first call list now: start free with 100 leads, no card needed. After that, the launch pack is 1,000 leads with emails for $5, one-time, and the leads never expire.