If you're shopping for lead-gen tools, you might've heard both names. But they solve completely different problems. Hunter.io finds email addresses. Mentioned tracks whether AI knows your business exists.
Here's how to think about them.
What Hunter.io Does Well
Hunter.io is the fastest way to find business email addresses from a domain name. You plug in a company URL, it scrapes public data and company databases, returns a list of emails with confidence scores. Then you verify them before sending outbound campaigns.
It's a workhorse for cold email at scale. If your workflow is "find 100 electricians in Texas, get their emails, blast them," Hunter.io is the move. Thousands of agencies and freelancers run their outbound through Hunter every day.
Good product, simple job, proven market fit.
Where Mentioned Is Different
Mentioned answers a question Hunter doesn't touch: Does AI know you exist?
When a homeowner asks ChatGPT "find an HVAC contractor near me" or a facility manager searches Perplexity for "commercial electrical services," are you in the results? Or is your competitor? Or nobody local?
That's what Mentioned measures. It audits whether you're mentioned (with accuracy, contact info, authority signals) across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini. We found the median contractor scores 32/100. Top performers hit 79. That's a 47-point gap, and it maps directly to lead velocity.
Mentioned is open-source. We've published 137 real audits in our CC-BY-4.0 dataset. No black-box scoring. You can see exactly what we checked, why, and how to fix it.
We also focus on trades specifically. HVAC, electrical, plumbing, general contracting. Not SaaS companies or e-commerce. The audit knows your niche.
Best For
| Tool | Best If You Need... | Not For... |
|---|---|---|
| Hunter.io | Email addresses for cold outbound campaigns. List building at scale. Email verification. | Understanding how you show up in AI search. Measuring organic brand presence. Local service visibility. |
| Mentioned | Knowing if AI knows you exist. Audit + roadmap to increase AI mentions. Competing in the AI search layer. | Finding contact lists quickly. Building cold email sequences. Mass prospecting. |
Use Both
These tools don't fight each other. They sit in different parts of your GTM stack.
The flow: First, audit your AI visibility (Mentioned). Fix the gaps. Build content and citations that move the needle. Then, run outbound to contractors in your space (Hunter.io to find emails). You're now reaching people both through AI search AND direct outreach.
One is about pull. One is about push. Both matter.
Get Your Free Audit
Run a 90-second Mentioned audit at mentionedinai.com. See your AI Visibility Score across all four models, plus your top gaps.
Taking new founders into the cohort through July 4. Lock in $297/mo or $1,497 lifetime. Price jumps after.
Open methodology. Public dataset. Built for operators who want to understand what they're paying for.