--- title: "1Lookup makes $266K a month on phone, email and IP checks, and is listed for sale at $10M" summary: "1Lookup sells phone, email and IP validation through one API: $266,043 MRR from 719 subscriptions and $5.47M all-time, Stripe-verified on TrustMRR. It is listed for sale at $10M, 1.9x revenue. Plans run $99 to $1,999 a month." description: "TrustMRR lists 1Lookup at $266,043 MRR, $5.47M all-time and a $10M ask (1.9x revenue). Pricing, credits, the stack and a gross margin estimate." section: "Products" published: 2026-10-22T03:02:31.000Z modified: 2026-10-22T03:02:31.000Z canonical: https://builtbynpcs.com/stories/1lookup-266k-mrr-validation-api publisher: "Built by NPCs" disclosure: "Our team picks every story and reviews it before it goes out; AI helps with research and drafting." topics: ["1Lookup", "TrustMRR", "Data validation"] --- # 1Lookup makes $266K a month on phone, email and IP checks, and is listed for sale at $10M 1Lookup is a paid API that checks whether a phone number, email address or IP address is real, reachable and safe to use. Per TrustMRR's Stripe-verified listing, it has **$266,043 in monthly recurring revenue (MRR)** from 719 active subscriptions and $5,465,968 all-time. The same listing puts it up for sale at **$10 million**. :::stats source="TrustMRR, Stripe-verified, updated 21 Oct 2026" - $266,043 | MRR - $5.47M | all-time revenue ($5,465,968) - 719 | active subscriptions - $10M | asking price, listed at 1.9x revenue ::: :::facts - Product | Phone, email and IP validation, plus enrichment, prospecting, SEO and transcription tools, on one API key - Operator | Momentum Labs, Pinedale, Wyoming (per its site) - Founder | Robby Frank (per TrustMRR; 7,554 followers on X) - Founded | January 2022, United States (per TrustMRR) - Pricing | $99 to $1,999 a month, 7-day trial - Stack | Next.js, PostgreSQL, Stripe (per TrustMRR) - TrustMRR rank | #23 ::: ## What is for sale TrustMRR lists 1Lookup at an asking price of $10,000,000, which it labels 1.9x revenue. That multiple matches the last 30 days of revenue ($430,803) times twelve, a calculation from the listing's figures. Against MRR the same price is about 3.1 times annualised MRR ($266,043 times twelve is $3.19M). The gap exists because 30-day revenue is higher than MRR, and the listing does not say why. A buyer would want to know how much of the 30-day figure repeats each month. One possible source is credit top-ups outside the monthly plan, which is a guess. The listing shows 30-day revenue **up 19% on the previous period**, 71,941 views and 75 interested buyers, all marketplace figures. The profit margin is hidden on the page, and the listing names no sale terms beyond the price. ## What it is The core is three checks, each costing 1 credit. Phone: line type, carrier, do-not-call status and a risk level. Email: syntax, mail server, SMTP and disposable-address detection. IP: VPN, proxy, Tor and hosting flags. Around that sit enrichment, B2B prospecting, SEO metrics, social data for 13 platforms and audio transcription. TrustMRR counts 34 data products and the site says 43. All draw on one credit balance. The site claims responses in under 0.3 seconds, 1,000 requests a minute, CSV uploads of up to 2 million rows and a 7-day result cache. It also runs an MCP server (a way for AI assistants such as Claude or Cursor to call the API) with five tools, signed in through OAuth. Those figures are the company's own. The audience TrustMRR lists is call centres, marketing agencies and e-commerce businesses, and the site names lead checks before CRM import, dialer number checks and bot-signup filtering. ## How it makes money | Plan | Monthly | Credits | Rate per core lookup | |---|---|---|---| | Starter | $99 | 20,000 | $0.0050 | | Growth | $299 | 85,000 | $0.0035 | | Professional | $799 | 250,000 | $0.0032 | | Enterprise | $1,999 | 1,000,000 | $0.0020 | Every plan has a 7-day trial with $5 in credits on Starter and $20 on the others. Annual billing is "2 months free", unused credits roll over for up to three months, and auto-replenish tops up with a 10% bonus when credits run low. Social lookups are billed only when they return a result. Dividing MRR by subscriptions gives about **$370 per subscription**, calculated from TrustMRR's two figures. That is well above the $99 entry plan, which suggests most revenue sits on the Growth, Professional and Enterprise tiers. The listing does not split subscriptions by plan. ## How it found customers The company has not published a launch breakdown. Visible signals: a free trial with credits, integrations with Twilio, HubSpot, Shopify and Salesforce, a Trustpilot score of 5.0 shown on its own site, a Domain Rating of 31/100 (low), and the MCP server aimed at AI-agent builders. The Domain Rating is modest for this much revenue, which suggests sales come from somewhere other than search rankings. The company does not say where. ## Assumed stack TrustMRR lists Next.js, PostgreSQL and Stripe, and the site's asset paths fit a Next.js front end. The data layer is the harder part. The site says phone and carrier data comes "direct from FCC & carrier data", refreshed daily, and credits unnamed "authoritative sources" for the rest. The real suppliers, and what they charge, are not public. ## Margins The company has not published its costs, so this is an estimate. Revenue per core lookup runs from $0.002 on Enterprise to $0.005 on Starter. Card fees are small. The open question is data cost: email and IP checks can be built cheaply, while carrier data for phone checks is where a validation API pays suppliers per lookup. :::cost date="2026-10-21" title="Estimated direct cost per subscription, USD a month" - Card processing (Stripe US rate of 2.9% plus 30 cents) | 11-15/mo - Data suppliers and carrier feeds | 55-167/mo - Servers, database and bandwidth | 11-30/mo - Support and email | 7-19/mo Assumes about $370 revenue per subscription. The data supplier range, 15% to 45% of revenue, is an assumption, since 1Lookup does not name or price its suppliers. Founder pay is not included. ::: That gives a **gross margin of roughly 38% to 77%**, with the wide range coming from the data line. If the carrier data is licensed in bulk, expect the top of that range. If most phone checks are resold from per-lookup providers, expect the bottom. A buyer would ask for supplier contracts first, and the profit margin the listing hides would settle the question. ## Best for / skip if :::verdict - Best for: founders studying a plain pay-per-use API business, and teams that want phone, email and IP checks behind one key and one balance. - Skip if: you need published accuracy figures or named data suppliers. The accuracy and speed claims here come from 1Lookup's own site. ::: :::sources - [TrustMRR: 1Lookup](https://trustmrr.com/startup/1lookup): MRR, all-time and 30-day revenue, subscriptions, asking price and multiple, buyer interest, founder, founding date, stack, rank (Stripe-verified, 21 Oct 2026) - [1Lookup](https://1lookup.io): products, credits, claims, MCP server, data-source wording, operator - [1Lookup pricing](https://1lookup.io/pricing): plans, credits, rates, trial, rollover :::