AI Ark FAQ
Everything you need to know before getting started with AI Ark.
About AI Ark
AI Ark is an AI-powered B2B data platform that helps sales, marketing, and recruiting teams find the right companies and decision-makers. Our database covers 400M+ professional profiles and 70M+ companies worldwide, refreshed every 30 days, with every email verified in real time at the moment of export using BounceBan technology, including catch-all addresses that other providers mark as risky.
AI Ark is built for revenue teams, agencies, and operators who rely on accurate B2B data:
• Sales teams build prospect lists and reach decision-makers faster.
• Marketers run targeted outreach, segmentation, and ABM campaigns.
• Recruiters source candidates by skills, seniority, and location.
• Agencies and GTM engineers prospect at scale on behalf of clients.
The platform supports both individual operators and full revenue teams through a shared workspace with pooled credits and seat-based collaboration.
Four things set AI Ark apart:
1. 30-day full database refresh: not on-request or every 6–12 months like most providers, so you get fresh data every search.
2. Real-time email verification at export: every email is validated through BounceBan the moment you export, including catch-all addresses, keeping bounce rates under 1.5%.
3. Pay only for verified data: email credits are consumed only when a valid email is found. No email credit charge for invalid, unknown, or risky addresses.
4. Native AI features included: Company Lookalike Search, Semantic Search, and Personality Analysis are built into every plan, not sold as add-ons.
No. AI Ark is a data and enrichment platform, not an outreach tool. Exports are designed to plug directly into your existing stack: Smartlead, Instantly, Email Bison, HubSpot, Salesforce, Lemlist, and others. Because every email is verified in real time before export, you can launch campaigns without paying for a separate validation step.
Yes. The platform was designed for sales, marketing, and recruiting professionals; no SQL, scripting, or data engineering knowledge required. You can build complex searches with point-and-click filters, save dynamic lists, and export verified data in seconds. For technical teams, we also offer a full REST API and an MCP server compatible with Cursor, Claude, and Windsurf.
Data Quality & Coverage
AI Ark gives you access to 400M+ professional profiles and 70M+ companies globally. You can check exact coverage for any country, region, city, or economic zone (such as the EU, G7, or G20) directly in the search filters, even on a free account, before committing to a paid plan.
The entire database is refreshed every 30 days. This minimizes data decay and keeps job titles, company headcounts, and contact information current, a meaningful difference compared to providers that refresh only on request or on 6 to 12-month cycles.
AI Ark aggregates data from public sources, partner networks, and community contributions. Every record passes through strict validation algorithms that clean, normalize, and deduplicate the information before it becomes searchable. You are never required to share your address book, email account, or calendar to access the platform, community contributions are handled separately from user accounts.
Coverage is global, with strong density across EMEA, North America, and APAC. You can filter by country, city, continent, or economic zone (such as the European Union, G7, or G20), and live record counts are displayed for any area you select, so you always know exactly how much data is available for your target market before exporting.
A company record includes revenue estimates, real-time verified headcount, industry tags, full description, headquarters location, technology stack, company phone number, social links, funding data, and headcount growth trends, among other fields.
Yes. AI Ark currently provides verified mobile numbers for 100M+ profiles, with coverage expanding every month. Mobile numbers are priced separately from email data (5 credits per verified number), and you are only charged when a number is successfully found, never for missed lookups.
AI Ark is built around accuracy at three levels:
• Data freshness: every record is refreshed within 30 days, minimizing decay.
• Email verification: every email is validated in real time at export through BounceBan, including catch-all addresses, keeping bounce rates below 1.5%.
• ICP precision: AI Ark customers report 95%+ ICP match rates when using AI Lookalike Search and 50%+ more verified contacts compared to legacy tools.
If you ever encounter a record that looks incorrect, our team uses these reports to continuously improve the matching and validation models.
Email Verification & Deliverability
AI Ark customers typically see bounce rates below 1.5%. Every email is verified in real time at export through BounceBan, and invalid, unknown, or risky addresses are stripped from the file before download. This means you can load exports directly into Smartlead, Instantly, EmailBison, or any other outreach tool without paying for a separate validation step.
A catch-all server accepts every message sent to a domain, which makes it hard for most tools to confirm whether a specific mailbox actually exists. As a result, most providers mark catch-all addresses as ‘risky’ or ‘unknown’ and exclude them, which can mean missing 30 to 50% of decision-makers at large companies (catch-all setups are common at enterprises).
AI Ark validates catch-all addresses in real time using BounceBan and only includes the ones confirmed as safe to send. You unlock those contacts without increasing bounce risk.
No. Email Credits are only consumed when a valid email is found and verified, including validated catch-all addresses. If no valid email is available for a contact, you only pay the base profile cost (0.5 credits), never for invalid, unknown, or risky addresses.
On average, around 70% of contacts in any given export include a successfully verified email. The remaining 30% are delivered as base profiles at the lower 0.5-credit rate. So for a 1,000-contact export, you can expect roughly 700 contacts with verified emails ready for outreach.
No. Every email is verified in real time at the moment of export, so the file you download contains only valid addresses. You do not need NeverBounce, ZeroBounce, or any third-party validation tool on top, that’s already included. This eliminates an extra cost and step in your workflow that’s typically required when working with most other B2B data providers.
Search, Features & Workflows
Enter up to five reference companies (e.g., your best existing customers), and AI Ark’s proprietary AI model surfaces semantically similar companies based on what they actually do; analyzing company description, SEO description, products and services, and associated keywords. This goes well beyond matching by generic industry or size tags.
You can then layer standard filters on top, headcount, location, funding stage, technology stack, headcount growth, to refine the result. Pro tip: keep your reference companies inside the same sector for the most accurate matches (e.g., Adidas + Nike + Puma works better than Nike + Coca-Cola + Amazon).
AI Personality Analysis uses public information about a contact to infer a likely personality profile (communication style, decision-making preferences, motivators) and provides practical tips on how to approach them. It runs on individual profiles inside the platform, or at scale through a dedicated API endpoint, useful for personalizing cold outreach or sales coaching.
Yes. Upload a CSV of up to 10,000 records per batch (LinkedIn URLs, company domains, or company names) through the Enrich tab, and we’ll match and enrich them with our full data set. For best accuracy:
• Company enrichment: use the LinkedIn Company URL (100% match rate). Domains work, but are less precise for global conglomerates.
• Person enrichment: use the LinkedIn Profile URL.
For lists larger than 10,000 records, run sequential batches and use Exclude Lists to avoid duplicates.
There is no overall cap. You can export as many records as your credit balance allows. You can export 10,000 records per batch, and for larger lists (e.g., 100,000 records), use one of these workflows:
• Net New filter (fastest): after your first 10K export, toggle the ‘Net New’ filter to automatically hide already-exported records, then export the next batch.
• Exclude previous exports: in your search filters, add your last export request to the Exclude list.
• Save to a list: save each 10K batch to a list, then exclude that list from your next search.
Yes. Upload a CSV of domains, company URLs, or LinkedIn URLs and save it as an Exclude List inside AI Ark. Applied to any search, it automatically removes those records; useful for suppressing existing customers, previous campaigns, partner accounts, or competitors.
You can stack multiple Exclude Lists on a single search, and the system supports lists larger than 10,000 records by combining sequential uploads into the same list.
Semantic Search lets you search across the unstructured parts of a profile, job description, work history, skills, publications, education, and find matches even when your exact keyword doesn’t appear in the title.
For example, searching ‘helps SaaS founders raise their seed round’ will surface relevant prospects even if their LinkedIn title is just ‘Partner’ or ‘Investor.’ This is significantly more powerful than traditional keyword filters that only match job titles.
Yes. Recruiters can include the ‘Open to Work’ badge to source candidates actively looking for new roles. Sales teams can do the opposite, exclude ‘Open to Work’ profiles to avoid pitching people who are about to leave their company. You can also filter by ‘Premium’ LinkedIn members, who are typically more responsive to outreach.
Credits & Pricing
AI Ark runs on a credit-based monthly subscription, built for high-volume agencies and GTM teams. On all plans above 30K credits, pricing ranges from just $2 to $4 per 1,000 credits, among the most competitive rates in the B2B data space.
Plans are structured by credit volume:
Starter: up to 30K credits/month, up to 3 seats
Builder: 60K to 300K credits/month, up to 5 seats
Scale: 450K+ credits/month, 10 seats
Enterprise: custom volumes, seats, API rate limits, and onboarding
Every plan includes full access to AI Lookalike Search, Semantic Search, Personality Analysis, and the complete API, no features locked behind higher tiers. Scaling up unlocks larger API rate limits and additional seats.
Credits are spent only when new data is delivered, and you only pay once for any given contact, ever.
• Company export: 0.1 credit (one-time)
• Person profile (without contact info): 0.5 credit (one-time)
• Verified email powered by BounceBan, added to a profile: 0.5 credit (one-time)
• Verified mobile number: 5 credits (one-time)
• Re-exporting a contact you already own: free
• Re-verifying an email you already own: 0.1 credit (only if you actively request a fresh verification)
A typical person export with a verified email costs 1 credit total (0.5 profile + 0.5 email). If no valid email is found, you only pay the 0.5 base profile cost.
Once a contact is in your account, it’s yours. Pulling them up again, re-exporting them, or adding them to new lists never costs another credit, even months later, across different searches, or after upgrading your plan.
Yes. Unused credits roll over month to month, up to a maximum balance of 2× your monthly plan allowance. For example, on a 100,000-credit plan, you can accumulate up to 200,000 credits before the cap kicks in. This protects you from losing credits during slower months while preventing indefinite stockpiling.
No. Re-exporting a Saved Record on the platform is free. Once you’ve paid for a contact, it’s yours. The only time you spend credits on an existing contact is if you actively request a real-time re-verification to confirm the email is still valid (0.1 credit), which is useful for older records before launching a new campaign. Note: When the API returns a profile in a response, it consumes credits each time, even for previously seen records, unlike the web platform, which tracks Saved Records to prevent double-charging.
Upgrades are not prorated. When you upgrade:
• You are charged the full price of the new plan immediately.
• You receive the full credit amount for the new tier on the same day.
• Your renewal date resets to the day of the upgrade.
Any rolled-over credits from your previous plan are preserved (up to the 2× cap of your new plan allowance).
Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing cycle, so you keep full platform access and your credit balance until then. After the cycle ends, platform access and any remaining credits are removed. There are no cancellation fees and no minimum contract length on standard plans.
Team & Agencies
• Starter: up to 3 seats
• Builder: up to 5 seats
• Scale: 10 seats
All seats share the same workspace, credit pool, lists, and saved searches. Adding teammates is done from your account under User Management.
Credits are pooled at the team level; admins can distribute usage flexibly across all users in the workspace. Lists, saved searches, and exports are shared by default to prevent two reps from prospecting the same accounts. This makes AI Ark especially efficient for sales teams running parallel campaigns and for agencies running multiple client engagements from one workspace.
Yes. AI Ark is widely used by lead-gen and GTM agencies. CSV exports are delivered as unbranded raw data, so you can pass them directly to clients without revealing the data source. A White Label UI dashboard for resellers is also on the roadmap, which will let you give clients direct platform access under your own brand.
Yes. When selecting records to export, open the selection menu and toggle Max. People Per Company, then enter your limit (e.g., 2 or 5). The platform automatically caps how many contacts come from any single organization, keeping your list diverse and preventing one large account from consuming all your credits.
API & Integrations
Yes. The API exposes the full platform programmatically, with dedicated endpoints for:
• People Search: filter professionals by title, location, skills, and more
• Company Search: including AI Lookalike (e.g., ‘find companies similar to nike.com’)
• Email Finder: including catch-all valid resolution
• Mobile Finder: by LinkedIn URL or Name + Domain
• Reverse Lookup: find a profile from just an email address
• Personality Analysis: at-scale enrichment endpoint
API usage follows the exact same credit pricing as the web platform. There is no premium for API access. Documentation and API keys are available at docs.ai-ark.com.
Standard plans allow 5 requests per second, with up to 100 records per request. That works out to:
• Per minute: 300 requests / 30,000 records
• Per hour: 18,000 requests / 1.8M records
Higher plans offer higher limits (per custom request).
AI Ark connects to all major automation platforms through its public API:
• Zapier
• Make.com (formerly Integromat)
• n8n
• Clay (via the HTTP Request module, a native Push to Clay action is in development)
This lets you trigger enrichments, push verified data into your CRM, or run end-to-end outbound flows without manual exports.
Yes. AI Ark provides an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that works with Cursor, Claude, Windsurf, and other MCP-compatible clients. This lets you query the AI Ark database directly from inside your AI workflow. For example, asking Claude to find lookalike companies and enrich them, all without leaving the chat. Setup details are at docs.ai-ark.com/reference/mcp.
Security, Compliance & Privacy
Yes. AI Ark is fully GDPR and CCPA compliant. We aggregate data exclusively from public sources and operate under the legitimate interest legal basis (GDPR Art. 6(1)(f)) for B2B prospecting. Detailed information is available on our dedicated GDPR page.
Anyone whose data appears in our database has the right to request deletion or correction at any time under GDPR and CCPA. You can submit a request through our Opt-Out page, and our team will process it promptly. We do not require you to be a customer to exercise these rights.
AI Ark provides verified mobile and direct numbers sourced from public records. Compliance with DNC, TPS, Bundesnetzagentur, and other national do-not-call registries is the responsibility of the user, who should screen against the relevant registry before initiating cold calls. We recommend integrating a DNC scrubbing tool into your workflow if cold-calling is a primary outreach channel.
No. AI Ark is a paid platform. You are never asked to share your address book, email inbox, calendar, or LinkedIn login to access the platform or earn credits. Data is sourced from public records and partner networks, and community contributions are handled completely separately from individual user accounts. Your data stays yours.
Customer account data and exports are stored on secure cloud infrastructure with encryption in transit and at rest. We follow standard B2B SaaS security practices, including access controls, audit logging, and regular backups. For specific details on data centers, processors, or security questionnaires (SOC 2, ISO 27001 status), please contact our sales or support team. We’re happy to walk enterprise buyers through our full security posture.
Getting Started & Support
Yes. You can create a free account with 100 credits every month; no credit card required. That’s enough to test all major features, run real searches, verify coverage for your target market, and export sample contacts before committing to a paid plan. There is no time limit on the free tier.
We offer a full set of resources to get you up and running quickly:
• A 10-minute product walkthrough video covering Company Search, People Search, advanced filters, list management, and exports: AI Ark Product Walkthrough
• An in-app help center with step-by-step guides and short Loom tutorials
• Full API documentation at docs.ai-ark.com
• Live chat support for technical questions and account issues
• Dedicated onboarding for Builder, Scale, and Enterprise customers
Most users are running their first export within 10 minutes of signing up.
Yes. Enterprise customers run on custom plans that include:
• Higher monthly credit volumes (millions of credits)
• Elevated API rate limits and dedicated API keys
• Additional seats and admin controls
• Custom data fields and tailored onboarding
• Direct access to a Customer Success Manager
Reach out to our sales team via the contact form to discuss volume pricing, security questionnaires, and procurement requirements.
Yes. AI Ark pays a 20% commission on all referred sales for the first 12 months; one of the most generous programs in the B2B data space. Register at partners.ai-ark.com to generate your unique referral link and start earning.
Sign up takes under a minute (no credit card required for the free tier). From there:
• Free account: 100 credits/month, ready to use immediately
• Paid plans: instant credit grant after checkout, no waiting period
• API access: API key available immediately in your settings
Most users run their first verified export within 10 minutes of signing up.
All exports you’ve already downloaded remain yours. They are CSV files on your machine and we don’t have access to them after export. After cancellation:
• Exports already downloaded: yours forever, no expiry
• Saved Records, Lists, and search history inside the platform: removed at the end of your billing cycle
• Remaining credits: forfeited at the end of the cycle
We recommend exporting any saved lists you want to keep before your cycle ends.
Comparison & Switching
While we won’t speak for other providers, here’s where AI Ark customers consistently report a meaningful difference:
• Data freshness: our entire database is refreshed every 30 days: compared to on-request updates or 6–12 month cycles common at legacy providers.
• Real-time email verification powered by BounceBan: every email is verified at the moment of export, on both the platform and the API, no separate validation tool required.
• Catch-all email validation: AI Ark validates and includes catch-all addresses in real time, while most tools mark them as “risky” and exclude them, meaning you reach 30–50% more decision-makers at large companies.
• Volume-friendly pricing: built for high-volume teams, with rates of just $2 to $4 per 1,000 credits on all plans above 30K credits/month.
• AI features included on every plan: Lookalike Search, Semantic Search, and Personality Analysis are built in, not sold as paid add-ons.
We recommend testing on the free tier (100 credits/month, no credit card required) and comparing against your current provider on a live search of your target market.
AI Ark’s Lookalike model is proprietary and tuned specifically for B2B prospecting. Unlike most lookalike features that match based on industry tags and headcount, ours analyzes the actual content of company descriptions, products and services, SEO descriptions, and associated keywords, so a fintech focused on ’embedded payments for SaaS’ will surface peers in the same niche, not every fintech in your headcount range.
Users report it works especially well for companies with 10+ employees and consistently outperforms generic ‘similar companies’ features in match relevance.
Yes. Switching is straightforward:
1. Sign up for a free AI Ark account (100 credits, no credit card).
2. Upload your existing exclude list (current customers, past prospects) as a CSV; domains, LinkedIn URLs, or company URLs all work.
3. Re-run your saved searches with our advanced filters and AI Lookalike to find net-new contacts your previous tool missed.
4. Export verified, ready-to-send data into your existing CRM or outreach platform.
Most teams complete the migration in a single afternoon. For larger teams, our Customer Success team can help map filters and import historical lists.
Yes. You can save 20% by paying annually upfront on any paid plan. Annual customers also get all credits allocated on day one (rather than monthly drip), which is useful for teams running large one-off campaigns or with unpredictable monthly volumes. Enterprise customers receive custom volume pricing on request.
Yes. They solve different problems, and most teams use them together rather than picking one.
• Sales Navigator is best for browsing and engaging individual prospects on LinkedIn itself, with InMail and saved leads.
• AI Ark is built for finding decision-makers in bulk, getting verified emails and mobile numbers (which Sales Navigator does not provide), and exporting clean lists into your CRM or outreach platform.
Many customers replace Sales Navigator entirely once they see how much faster bulk search and verified contacts are for outbound work.
For a full feature-by-feature comparison, visit our Why AI Ark page.
No. The free plan never converts to a paid plan automatically. There’s no credit card on file and no surprise charge. When your monthly free credits run out, the platform simply pauses exports until the next month’s credits refresh, or until you choose to upgrade. You only ever pay if you explicitly select a paid plan and enter payment details.
Standard plans run on monthly or annual cycles, and you can choose either at signup:
• Monthly: cancel anytime, no notice period, no cancellation fees.
• Annual: 20% discount, billed upfront, with all credits allocated on day one.
• Enterprise: custom annual contracts with dedicated onboarding and custom volumes.
There are no long-term commitments, no auto-renewal traps, and no cancellation fees on standard plans.
Yes. All three are managed from your billing settings in the app:
• Upgrade: takes effect immediately. You’re charged the full new plan price and receive the full new credit allocation the same day, with your renewal date resetting.
• Downgrade: takes effect at the end of your current billing cycle, so you keep your current allocation until then. Your renewal date stays the same.
• Cancellation: takes effect at the end of the current billing cycle. No notice period, no fees.
Rolled-over credits from your previous plan are preserved on upgrades (up to the 2× cap of your new plan allowance).
The right plan depends on how many contacts you’re exporting per month and how big your team is. As a rough guide:
• Starter (up to 30K credits/month, up to 3 seats): solo founders, small sales teams, or anyone testing outbound at limited volume. Roughly 20K–30K contacts with verified emails per month.
• Builder (60K to 300K credits/month, up to 5 seats): scaling sales and marketing teams running consistent outbound or ABM campaigns. Roughly 40K–200K contacts with verified emails per month.
• Scale (450K+ credits/month, 10 seats): high-volume GTM teams and lead-gen agencies prospecting across multiple campaigns or clients. 300K+ contacts with verified emails per month.
Not sure how many credits you’ll need? Try our credit calculator to get a personalized recommendation based on your target market, monthly export volume, and use of mobile numbers. If you’re between two plans, our team can also walk you through your specific use case, just reach out via chat.
