TL;DR
- Choose PhantomBuster when the missing input is fresh social data: selected posts, engagers, profiles or other supported source exports. It supplies named cloud automations and meters execution time.
- Choose TexAu V3 when the input already exists and the job is enrichment, scoring and CRM or sequencer handoff. Its current product is a GTM spreadsheet engine, not the old LinkedIn automation catalogue.
- PhantomBuster Start is $672 annually, equivalent to $56 monthly, with 20 execution hours and five automation slots. TexAu Solo is $99 monthly or $79 monthly equivalent annually, with 2,500 credits and one member.
- TexAu charges on successful matches and uses a credit model; PhantomBuster separates runtime from email and other enrichment credits. A price per execution hour cannot be compared directly with a price per match.
- Use both only when they cover two needed stages: PhantomBuster for the source, TexAu for the accepted lead and handoff. If a clean CSV is already available, another collector adds little value.
Why the comparison has changed
Older comparisons described PhantomBuster and TexAu as competing libraries of social automation recipes. That description now misses the buying decision. TexAu's older LinkedIn automation pages carry a retirement notice, while its current V3 platform centres on spreadsheet-shaped enrichment, scoring and integrations. Its own account of the rewrite says it pushes leads to sending tools rather than supplying a sequencer. TexAu product history, Legacy retirement notice.
PhantomBuster still offers ready-made collection and automation workflows. The practical question is therefore whether the team lacks a source list or lacks the data and routing needed to use that list. Both can automate work, but they do not necessarily start from the same input or produce the same accepted output.
This guide compares a recurring social-engagement collection job with a contact enrichment and handoff job. It uses current official product and plan evidence checked on 30 September 2026. Examples below are planning assumptions, not claims that either product was run against a live account.
Collection and enrichment compared
| Buying dimension | PhantomBuster | TexAu V3 |
|---|---|---|
| Main job in this guide | Collect supported social/source data with named automations | Search, enrich, score and route records through a table |
| Example input | Competitor profile, selected post URL or supported search/list | CSV, existing records, saved searches or a supported integration |
| Example output | Engagement/profile rows and supported exports | Enriched fields, qualification decisions and CRM/sequencer handoff |
| Consumption model | Execution hours, automation slots and separate enrichment credits | Successful-match/action credits; costs depend on action |
| Smallest paid base used | Start $672/year; $56 monthly equivalent | Solo $99 monthly; $79 annual equivalent |
| Included allowance | Five slots, 20 execution hours/month, 500 email credits | 2,500 credits/month, one member, one workspace |
| Higher operating tier | Grow $1,536/year; 15 slots and 80 hours/month | Starter $249 monthly/$199 annual equivalent; 8,000 credits, three members |
| Sending boundary | Some named LinkedIn outreach workflows, plus external handoffs | Push to a separate sending product; not its own sequencer |
Prices exclude tax and additional tools. TexAu Teams is $649 monthly or $549 monthly equivalent annually, with 25,000 credits and five members; Enterprise is custom priced. Its pricing cards and embedded monthly offers establish these billing bases. The comparison table's anomalous “annual total” label is not used to turn $79 into a whole-year subscription. PhantomBuster pricing, TexAu pricing.
PhantomBuster for source collection
PhantomBuster's main advantage is a collection path an operator can assemble from named steps. For competitor-post engagement, its documented example uses LinkedIn Activity Extractor, Post Likers Export and Post Commenters Export. That supplies both post discovery and engagement extraction rather than assuming a lead database already contains the source event. Engagement workflow.
A narrowly configured export can retain the profile and post context for later qualification. Result files can be exported and accessed through the API, making a spreadsheet, Clay table or CRM workflow a reasonable next destination. Starting an automation and retrieving its completed results are separate operations. A successful launch response should not be mistaken for the extracted lead list. Result retrieval, n8n integration.
The cloud runtime means the local browser need not remain open after launch. Start supplies five slots and 20 monthly execution hours. A slot determines concurrency; an hour allowance determines total running work. Grow's 15 slots and 80 hours solve more frequent or parallel collection, but do not increase the quality of the underlying signal. When execution time is exhausted, the pricing FAQ says automations pause until the allowance resets or the plan is upgraded. Runtime and plan definitions.
Email credits are separate from that execution budget. A collection run yielding a profile is not proof of a work email, current employment or purchase intent. Use the export as source evidence and enrich only the rows whose missing fields matter to the next decision.
Best fit: a marketer or operator needing recurring, supported source exports with limited custom development. Less suitable: a team that already has clean source data and mainly needs a multi-provider enrichment or CRM synchronization layer.
Verdict: buy PhantomBuster for the input it creates. Its real value is removing repeated collection work, not replacing every downstream qualification and sending tool.
TexAu V3 for enrichment and handoff
TexAu V3 places enrichment and actions in a table. Its current platform describes waterfall enrichment, email verification, AI columns, scoring, CRM sync, templates and schedules. An operator can take existing records, fill missing fields, score the rows and push accepted records to a destination. That makes it closer to a GTM data workflow layer than the older social-recipe comparison implies. Current platform.
The waterfall can query providers in a chosen order, stop on a verified match and retain field provenance. Separate cascades can be used for email, phone and firmographics. The benefit is broader coverage without querying every provider for every row; the cost still depends on the actions and successful outputs. Do not turn a provider count into a promised enrichment yield. Waterfall behaviour.
Solo provides 2,500 monthly credits, one member and one-way daily CRM sync. Starter supplies 8,000 credits and three members. Teams adds 25,000 credits, five members and bidirectional hourly CRM sync. The current pricing FAQ gives one successful email find and one verified email as examples of one-credit operations; other actions show their costs in the dashboard. Failed lookups are not charged. Starter and higher allow monthly credits to roll over up to twice the allowance; top-ups have a different rollover basis. Plans and credit model.
Current integrations include enrichment sources and pushes to Smartlead, Instantly, Lemlist, Apollo and Reply. Those sending products retain their own subscriptions and operating costs. For CRM work, the product describes field mapping, deduplication keys and overwrite/fill-if-empty controls. Its integration catalogue specifically marks Salesforce as coming soon, so this guide treats that native connector as a roadmap item despite broader copy listing Salesforce among supported CRMs. HubSpot, Pipedrive, Zoho and GoHighLevel are the more directly supported listed choices for this comparison. Integration catalogue, CRM field controls.
Best fit: enrichment and qualification of supplied records, with reusable rules and a supported CRM or sequencer handoff. Less suitable: buying the retired LinkedIn recipe catalogue, expecting a native sender, or relying on the listed Salesforce roadmap connector as a current production feature.
Verdict: buy the current V3 workflow when it replaces fragmented enrichment and data handoff work. Use a separate collector when the source event still needs to be obtained.
Limits and maintenance in practice
The products have different maintenance burdens. PhantomBuster collection depends on a supported input, an accessible source and, where the automation requires it, a connected account session. A stale session or changed source can interrupt the collection job. Execution time may be consumed even when a run needs correction, so budget recurring runs rather than dividing the whole subscription by the first successful export.
TexAu maintenance centres on provider credentials, credit-consuming actions, field mappings and destination behaviour. Its scheduler documentation describes cron, calendar and signal triggers, workflow concurrency controls and run histories recording duration, rows, credits and errors. Those are useful for recurring enrichment, but a sample “LinkedIn harvest” schedule is not evidence that every retired LinkedIn collection recipe has returned. Scheduler controls.
For either product, keep stable person/account identifiers and the original source evidence. Retrying an import should not create another prospect or resend to the same person. Save the accepted output and the handoff destination, not just the job's “finished” label. These are ordinary operating controls that make a recurring workflow dependable; they are not a reason to defer a buying recommendation.
Choose the allowance around the actual bottleneck. Twenty execution hours can support many short exports or very few long jobs. Two thousand five hundred credits can cover many simple matches or fewer rows with several chargeable actions. Neither unit is inherently more generous without the workload.
A monthly collection-to-contact scenario
Assume four weekly collections from 20 selected posts each, producing 1,000 source rows and 600 unique people during the month. Qualification leaves 200 ICP matches; 140 produce the required found-and-verified email result; 120 are approved for the chosen outreach. Those yields are editorial assumptions.
For runtime planning, assume the post collection averages eight minutes per post: 80 posts use 640 minutes, or 10.67 hours. If an additional profile operation averages 20 seconds for each of 600 unique people, it adds 200 minutes, or 3.33 hours. The total is 14 execution hours, within PhantomBuster Start's 20-hour allowance in this hypothetical. Slower jobs or repeated failed runs can change the tier required; the example does not claim an observed vendor speed.
For the enrichment example, assume 140 successful email finds and 140 successful verifications, each at the one-credit example rate. That is 280 credits before any search, scoring, phone or other action charges. It is not a claim that all 600 people can be fully enriched for 280 credits. TexAu Solo's 2,500-credit allowance can accommodate this defined action subset.
The annual-equivalent subscription bases are $56 for PhantomBuster and $79 for TexAu Solo: $135 per month equivalent, backed by annual cash commitments of $672 and $948 respectively. Assume four hours of human qualification and handoff work at $50/hour, adding $200. The resulting $335 subtotal divided by 120 approved records is $2.79 per record, before sending tools, extra usage and other costs.
If the team already has the same source CSV, omit the collector: TexAu's $79 annual-equivalent base plus the assumed $200 labour gives $279, or $2.33 per approved record. That lower subtotal reflects an existing input, not proof that TexAu collected the data more cheaply. Conversely, if PhantomBuster's export and existing contact tool already finish the job, a new TexAu subscription must remove enough work to justify itself.
At $50/hour, adding Solo's $79 annual-equivalent base needs 1.58 hours of monthly value, roughly 95 minutes. At its $99 monthly invoice it needs 1.98 hours. Compare that with the time the table, waterfall and handoff actually remove. The signal-based outbound playbook helps define which records are worth processing before spending credits on every raw row.
Which product to buy
Choose PhantomBuster for recurring source collection that its named automations directly support. Start is appropriate when the workload fits five slots and 20 hours; Grow earns its higher cost through runtime and parallelism.
Choose TexAu Solo or Starter when the source list exists and enrichment, scoring or handoff is the missing capability. Choose Teams when its higher volume and bidirectional/hourly CRM scope matter. Keep a separate sender in the budget and use the catalogue's current connector status.
Use both when collection and enrichment are genuinely separate recurring jobs. Do not buy TexAu based on its retired LinkedIn recipes, or dismiss PhantomBuster because an enrichment platform has a larger integration count. The better purchase is the one that produces the next required output with less ongoing operator work.
FAQ
Is TexAu still the same LinkedIn automation product?
Its current V3 offering is a table-based enrichment and GTM workflow platform. Older LinkedIn automation pages carry a retirement notice. Current supported actions and integrations should define the purchase.
Can TexAu replace my outreach sequencer?
Its current product description says it pushes records to sending tools rather than supplying its own sequencer. Include that destination's cost when the workflow requires sending.
Is PhantomBuster's displayed $56 a monthly invoice?
It is the monthly equivalent of the $672 annual Start subscription used here. Execution and enrichment allowances are monthly, but the annual cash commitment is separate.
Are failed TexAu lookups charged?
Its current pricing says unsuccessful lookups cost no credits. Successful actions have their own credit basis; a fully enriched row can require more than one chargeable action.
Which is cheaper for an existing CSV?
A collector may be unnecessary. TexAu or the enrichment tool already in place can work on the supplied records. The meaningful comparison includes successful output and labour, not a collector subscription charged to a job with no collection requirement.
