# Lead finder

> Search OpenStreetMap for local businesses by kind and city, read their websites for the addresses they publish, and add them as leads. Every plan, no credits.

Canonical: https://ballast.to/docs/lead-finder
Last updated: 2026-11-08

The lead finder searches OpenStreetMap for local businesses, such as dentists in a city or plumbers in a district, reads their own websites for the email addresses they publish, and adds them to a list. It is on every plan, with no credits to buy.

## Search

1. Open Find leads under Leads in the rail.
2. Pick a kind of business (67 of them, from accountants to yoga studios) or Any kind and part of a name.
3. Type a city or area, or leave it empty and move the map to the part you want.
4. Click Search. The businesses show on the map and in the table with their address, phone and website.

- One search covers at most 2,500 km² and returns up to 1,000 businesses. A big city is searched around its center; when more businesses are there than one search returns, the page says so: zoom in or pick a narrower kind.
- OpenStreetMap is kept up by volunteers, so coverage varies by country and town. Cities in Europe and North America are usually well mapped.
- Searches are kept 90 days and stay under Recent searches. Results belong to your workspace: they are never shared with or reused for anyone else.

## Find their email addresses

Some businesses list an address on OpenStreetMap. For the rest, click Find emails (all businesses with a website, or the ones you picked). Ballast reads each website in the background, the way a visitor would:

- The homepage and up to 6 pages that usually list contact details: contact, about, team, imprint, legal.
- Nothing the site's robots.txt keeps our reader out of. Those businesses are marked Site asks not to be read.
- It keeps the addresses the site publishes, its phone numbers and links to its social profiles. It never guesses an address from a name or pattern and never asks a mail server whether an address exists.

| Label | Meaning |
| --- | --- |
| Company | A shared address or one named after the business: info@, office@, contact@, booking@. The safest one to write to. |
| Personal | A person's own address that the business publishes on its site, such as a doctor's address on a clinic's contact page. |

Progress shows live above the table. Reading a site takes a few seconds; a hundred take a couple of minutes. A site that doesn't answer can be tried again with Find emails.

## Add them as leads

Click Add to a list (or pick rows first). Each business with an address becomes one lead, company addresses first, and goes through the same checks as an [import](https://ballast.to/docs/leads#import): duplicates, your suppression list, invalid addresses, your plan's active contacts, the email provider, and your verifier if you turn it on.

- The business name goes to `company`, plus the website, phone, country and time zone. City, street address, category and the OpenStreetMap id go to custom fields.
- Company addresses only leaves out businesses whose only address is a person's own.
- The list is named after the search, like Dentists, Cluj-Napoca, unless you pick another.

Businesses have no first name, so give `{{first_name}}` a fallback in your sequence, like `{{first_name|there}}`, or open with `{{company}}`. The launch checklist warns you about a variable with no value.

## Google Places on your own key

OpenStreetMap is free and built in. Google knows more businesses in most places, so you can also search Google Places with your own Google key.

1. In Google Cloud, turn on Places API (New) for a project with billing, then create an API key under Credentials and limit it to that API.
2. In Ballast, open Integrations, Lead finder, Google Places, Connect. Paste the key and confirm it is yours to use under Google's terms. We test it with a search that asks for place IDs only, the cheapest kind, and keep it encrypted.
3. On Find leads, pick Google Places as the source.

- A search asks Google for up to 3 pages of 20 businesses (Google stops at 60) with their website and phone. Google bills each page to your project at its own prices.
- Google's terms keep its places off other maps, so the map shows the searched area but no pins. The table works the same.
- Google's Places policies limit how long place details may be kept outside Google. That is between you and Google, on your key; our copy of a search is deleted after 90 days.
- A key Google refuses marks the connection Needs attention. Fix it in Google Cloud, then click Check now.

## Rules and limits

- 30 searches an hour and 2,000 website reads a day per workspace. Leads you add count toward your plan's active contacts, like any other.
- You answer for the rules in each recipient's country. Germany, for one, asks for consent even between businesses. See [cold email vs spam](https://ballast.to/cold-email-vs-spam) and the [Acceptable Use Policy](https://ballast.to/legal/acceptable-use#lists).
- Business data is © OpenStreetMap contributors, under the Open Database License. Site owners can read what our reader does and how to block it on [ballast.to/bot](https://ballast.to/bot).

## API and MCP

Your AI can run the whole flow: `list_business_categories`, `find_businesses`, `read_business_websites` (call it again to see progress) and `add_found_businesses`, which shows how many leads it will add and to which list, and asks before it runs. They are in the full toolset ([connect with `?toolset=full`](https://ballast.to/docs/mcp)). The REST endpoints are in the [API reference](https://ballast.to/docs/api/lead-finder).

Ballast is cold email software with every feature on every plan. Connect unlimited mailboxes, send sequences at a pace your domains survive, and handle replies in one inbox, priced by the emails you send.