What a list of companies to call really costs
“We bought a list” describes four different purchases, and most arguments about whether a list was expensive are really arguments about which of the four somebody bought. Here is the difference, and here is exactly what one Pursiva run contains.
Published 14 Sept 2026 · 9 min read
Four things people call a list
The first is a record in a company database: a name, registration numbers, an address, an activity code, sometimes a headcount band. It is sold by the thousand and the unit price falls with volume. What you buy is identity — that the company exists and what it declares about itself. The record reads the same in the week the company opened a warehouse and in the week nothing happened at all.
The second is a lead from an agency. Someone did the work ahead of you: they approached companies and hand you the ones that answered. What you buy is another team's time and the market's reaction to it. It may be priced per lead or per booked meeting, and how the list was assembled — why this company and not the one next to it — stays on their side of the invoice.
The third is an hour of your own salesperson. Company sites, job ads, press releases, trade coverage: the research is done by someone who understands the offer, so the hit rate is often the best of the four. The cost is not the hourly rate, though. It is what did not happen during those hours, because they are hours in which nobody is talking to a customer. Twenty companies done properly is two days, not two hours.
The fourth is a researched company with a stated reason: the company, a sentence on why it fits what you sell, a sentence on why it is worth approaching now, and a link to the source behind every claim. That is what a Pursiva run returns. The difference from the first three is not that the row is better — it is that you can check it and reject it before the call rather than after it.
Four purchases, four different things in the price
We have not measured what other vendors charge and we will not print ranges we cannot date or source. Every number on this page traces back to something we ran. So the comparison below is about what each purchase contains, not about anyone else's price list.
| What you buy | What is in the price, and what is not |
|---|---|
| A record in a company database | In: the identity of the company — name, numbers, address, activity code, sometimes size. Not in: a reason to call today. A record describes a state rather than a change, so the order in which you work the list is still yours to invent. |
| A lead from an agency | In: a company that already reacted to something, which spares you the top of the funnel. Not in: any view of how the list was built. You cannot inspect the reasoning, because the reasoning stayed with whoever did it. |
| An hour of a salesperson's research | In: research shaped by someone who understands the offer and can turn it straight into a conversation. Not in: scale or repeatability — those hours are hours of calls not made, and quality drops by the twentieth company. |
| A researched company with a reason | In: a ranked company, a why-fit line, a why-now line, and a source you can open behind each claim, so you can strike rows off before dialling. Not in: contact data, outreach, or any promise that somebody will pick up. |
What one run buys
A single run is PLN 149 net, which is PLN 183.27 once 23% VAT is added on the invoice. For that, Pursiva reads your website, builds the ideal-customer profile that follows from it, hands it to you to correct and confirm, searches your market, and returns up to 40 ranked companies — each with why it fits, why now, and a source behind every claim. The results deliver themselves within an hour of the moment you confirm the profile.
- First run one-off
- PLN 149 + 23% VAT (PLN 183.27)
- Weekly watch a month
- PLN 299 + 23% VAT (PLN 367.77)
Divide PLN 149 by 40 and you have the price of one researched company with a stated reason: single digits in złoty for a row you can check and reject before you dial. If a run finds fewer companies, that figure rises — which is why the floor described further down is written as an obligation rather than a good intention.
What the price does not include
This is not small print. It is the edge of the product, and it is better known before the purchase than after it.
- Contact data. No names, no e-mail addresses, no phone numbers. Pursiva describes companies rather than people, and individuals appear only as roles. The separate guide on a list without contact data explains why that is a design decision and not a missing feature.
- E-mail sequences. We do not write messages for you and we send nothing on your behalf. A run ends at the company, the reason and the source. The opening line is yours to write — but you are writing it with the why-now already named and linked.
- A booked meeting. Nobody calls in your name and nobody fills your calendar. The ranking tells you who to approach first and with what; it does not tell you that somebody is already waiting for the call.
- Continuous coverage. A single run is a photograph of the market on the day you order it. A signal that appears two weeks later will not be on that list — that is what the weekly watch in the monthly plan is for.
When a run comes back short
Searching a market is uneven work. A narrow niche, a market that only has a few dozen plausible companies in it, or a profile tightened by your own exclusions can all produce a shorter list than it should. Rather than promise quality in the abstract, we wrote down a floor: if a run you paid for delivers fewer than 20 companies, you choose within 14 days of delivery — we run it again at no charge, or we refund it in full.
A re-run given under that floor is on us and does not spend an allowance from the monthly plan. The floor is the promise precisely because the run delivers itself within an hour: there is no queue in which a list waits for somebody's approval, so the commitment cannot be an inspection. It has to be the result, and a consequence when the result is not there.
When the monthly plan is the cheaper answer
The plan is PLN 299 net a month, PLN 367.77 with 23% VAT. It contains five runs a month and the weekly watch over the lists already delivered to you under it: the watch re-checks them and e-mails you only when something has changed. A quiet week brings no e-mail, which is the design rather than a fault.
The arithmetic is plain. The plan costs less than three single runs and contains five, so it pays off when you sell into more than one segment, or when you are testing several versions of the offer — each version is its own profile and its own search. If you need one list a quarter, the single run is cheaper, and it is more honest to say so than to sell you a subscription you will not use.
You switch the plan on from the results page, after you have seen a list rather than before. The allowance runs by calendar month and does not roll over, and you can cancel at any time with effect from the end of the month already paid for.
What to compare the price with
The honest comparison is not with somebody else's price list. It is with your own calendar. Two days of research are two days in which nobody is talking to a customer, and that is the real price of a list you assemble yourself. A run costs less than those hours and hands them back to the work a salesperson was hired for.
What you are buying is visible in full in the one run we published whole. Submitted on 2 Sept 2026: 35 minutes from a confirmed profile to a finished list, 40 companies scored — weak rows included, because we publish it without trimming. That is the same run your money buys.
So you are not paying for the search itself. You are paying for the shape of the answer: every row carries a named reason and a source you can open, so half the list is struck off before anyone picks up a phone. A list you cannot check is most expensive exactly when it is cheap — you pay for it in time, and after the call rather than before it.
Frequently asked questions
- Do I pay before I see the profile?
- No. Pasting your website address, having the offer read, and seeing the ideal-customer profile that comes out of it are all free — you review and correct that profile before any payment. Only the market search is paid for, and without payment it simply does not start. If the profile misses what you actually sell, you have risked nothing.
- What if the run finds only a few companies?
- If a run you paid for delivers fewer than 20 companies, you choose within 14 days of delivery: a free re-run or a full refund. The re-run is on us and does not spend an allowance from the monthly plan. If a run delivers nothing you can use, we refund it without you having to ask for it.
- Is this a subscription?
- A single run at PLN 149 net is a one-off payment and nothing renews after it. The subscription is a separate monthly plan at PLN 299 net, which contains five runs a month and the weekly watch over the lists delivered under it. You switch it on from the results page and can cancel at any time.
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See the profile before you pay
Paste your website address. Pursiva reads the offer and shows you the customer profile that follows from it — that part is free. You pay for the market search, and the results arrive within an hour.
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