Most sales teams believe high-quality B2B leads must be expensive. Platforms like Cognism or Lusha charge thousands of euros per year — for data that's often outdated. With the right free data sources and a little automation, you can find hundreds of qualified leads every month without spending a cent.
Why free B2B lead generation works
Publicly accessible data sources like Google Maps, industry directories, and company websites contain everything you need for your sales work. The goal is to use these sources systematically and automatically, rather than researching manually.
1. Google Places API — The underrated goldmine
Google Maps contains data on over 200 million businesses worldwide, including industries, opening hours, reviews, and websites. The Google Places API gives you programmatic access to all of it.
Best part: Google gives you $200 free credit per month — enough for thousands of API calls. For most small and medium sales teams, it's completely free.
- Create a project in Google Cloud Console
- Enable the Places API (New)
- Search by industry and region (e.g. "Software companies Munich")
- Export company name, address, phone and website
2. Web crawler for email extraction
You have a list of company websites — but no email addresses yet? A simple web crawler can automatically visit contact pages and recognize email patterns.
Many companies don't hide their emails — they're on /contact, /imprint or the About page. A crawler finds in seconds what others spend hours looking for.
3. AI for automatic lead scoring
Not every lead found is equally valuable. AI-powered scoring helps you focus your time on the most promising contacts. Modern LLMs like Claude can evaluate how well a company fits your offer based on industry, description, and size — automatically, for hundreds of leads at once.
Conclusion: The systematic approach wins
The combination of Google Places API (company data), web crawler (emails), and AI scoring (prioritization) creates a complete, free lead generation process. That's exactly what anilead.io automates — you describe your target customers, and the system finds and evaluates leads while you focus on selling.