IBLead vs PhantomBuster: Google Maps Scraping Comparison

PhantomBuster is a popular automation tool that offers, among other things, a "Phantom" for scraping Google Maps. The idea is simple: you enter a query, PhantomBuster scrapes the results for you.

But there's a fundamental problem that many new users discover too late: the 120-result limit. And that's just the beginning of the trade-offs.

How PhantomBuster works

PhantomBuster is a web automation platform that works through "Phantoms" — preconfigured scripts that perform automated actions. For Google Maps, the workflow is:

1. You configure the "Google Maps Search Export" Phantom
2. You enter one or more search queries (e.g., "plumber Lyon")
3. PhantomBuster launches a headless browser on its servers
4. The browser simulates a user and scrapes Google Maps results
5. Data is returned in CSV or JSON

It's a real-time process: each execution consumes Phantom minutes, and results depend on what Google Maps shows at that moment.

The central problem: the 120-result limit

PhantomBuster scrapes Google Maps in real-time. This means it's subject to the same limit as any Google Maps user: 120 results maximum per search.

Search "restaurant Paris" with PhantomBuster: you'll get 120 results. Yet Paris has over 15,000 restaurants. You're missing 99.2% of the results.

What this means in practice

• Incomplete data: you only get a fraction of businesses actually present
• Manual splitting: YOU have to create dozens/hundreds of queries to cover an area (by district, neighborhood, sub-category)
• Deduplication: results overlap massively between queries, you clean up the duplicates
• No native email enrichment: you need a 2nd tool (or a 2nd Phantom) for emails
• No completeness guarantee: even with hundreds of queries, you'll never know if you got everything

IBLead solves this problem at the root with a geographic quadtree system that divides each area into micro-cells containing fewer than 120 results, then assembles them. Result: 100% of businesses, with zero effort on your part.

No deduplication, no enrichment by default

When you run multiple queries on PhantomBuster to cover an area, the same businesses appear in multiple results. There is no automatic deduplication. You need to import the data into a spreadsheet, identify duplicates by name or address, and remove them manually.

Likewise, PhantomBuster provides no enrichment by default:

• No emails extracted from websites
• No social media profiles (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn)
• No legal data (SIRET, CEO name)
• No technology detection

To get emails, you need to configure a 2nd Phantom (Google Maps Email Extractor) or use a third-party service. Each additional step consumes execution minutes and adds complexity to your workflow.

With IBLead, every listing is automatically enriched: up to 5 emails, all social media profiles, SIRET and CEO name (France), and 160+ detected technologies. No configuration, no extra Phantom needed.

The complexity of multi-Phantom workflows

To get a result comparable to IBLead with PhantomBuster, you need to chain multiple Phantoms:

1. Google Maps Search Export: listing extraction (120 max per query)
2. Google Maps Email Extractor: email extraction from websites
3. Manual deduplication: in Excel/Google Sheets
4. Optionally a 3rd Phantom for company LinkedIn profiles

Each Phantom consumes execution minutes. Each step can fail (timeout, CAPTCHA, changed page). And you have to orchestrate all of this yourself. This is data engineering work, not sales work.

Detailed comparison

Criteria	IBLead	PhantomBuster
Method	Pre-indexed database	Real-time scraping
Result limit	None (quadtree)	120 per query
Time to get data	Instant	Minutes to hours
Emails included	Yes (up to 5)	No (2nd Phantom needed)
Social media	Yes (FB, IG, LI, X, YT)	No
SIRET matching	Yes	No
Technology detection	Yes (160+)	No
Deduplication	Automatic	Manual
Technical skill	None	Medium to high
Price	From 44 EUR/month	From 56 EUR/month
Refresh	Monthly, included	You re-run manually (and pay again)

The real cost of PhantomBuster: credits burn fast

PhantomBuster charges by execution minutes. The Starter plan at 56 EUR/month gives 20h of execution. Sounds comfortable, but here's the reality:

• Scraping a complete department (all categories): 5-10h of execution
• Extracting emails with a 2nd Phantom: 3-5h additional
• Result: a single department consumes 40-75% of your monthly quota

To cover all of France (101 departments), you're looking at several thousand euros, spread over months of execution. And the result is always incomplete due to the 120-result limit.

Concrete simulation: cost over 1 year

Item	PhantomBuster	IBLead
Subscription (12 months)	672 EUR (56 EUR x 12)	528 EUR (44 EUR x 12) — or 396 EUR/year on annual billing
Configuration time	10-20h (valued at 0 EUR here)	0h
Deduplication + cleanup	5-10h of manual work	0h (automatic)
Data completeness	Partial (120 limit)	Complete
Emails included	No (extra cost)	Yes
Minimum total	672 EUR+ (incomplete result)	528 EUR (complete result)

Data quality: what you actually get

With PhantomBuster, the data you extract is only as good as what Google Maps displays in the search results list. That means basic fields: name, address, phone, website, category, rating, and review count. Opening hours and detailed descriptions are often missing because they require clicking into each listing individually.

IBLead goes deeper. Because the database is pre-indexed with each listing fully crawled, you get the complete profile: all opening hours, postal code, city, whether the business is claimed, photo count, delivery hours, and more. On top of that, each listing's website is visited to extract up to 5 email addresses, social media profiles across 5 platforms, and over 160 technologies detected on the site.

The difference matters when you're prospecting: a file with just name and phone is a cold call list. A file with CEO name, email, technologies, and business sector is a qualified lead database.

Real-world scenarios

Scenario 1: Agency prospecting local businesses

You run a web agency and want to contact all restaurants in a city to offer them a new website. With PhantomBuster, you get 120 restaurants, no emails, and spend an hour configuring the Phantom. With IBLead, you search "restaurant" + your city, get every single one, with emails and the owner's name, and export in 30 seconds.

Scenario 2: Sales team covering a region

Your sales team needs all plumbers, electricians, and roofers in a region. That's potentially thousands of businesses across multiple cities. With PhantomBuster, you'd need dozens of queries, multiple Phantom runs, manual deduplication, and a second Phantom for emails. With IBLead, three searches and three exports. Done.

Scenario 3: Market analysis

You want to know how many beauty salons exist in Germany, filtered by rating and review count. PhantomBuster can't give you that overview because of the 120-result cap per query. IBLead's pre-indexed database lets you filter and count instantly across the entire country.

When PhantomBuster makes sense

PhantomBuster remains an excellent tool for certain use cases:

• LinkedIn scraping: this is its historical strength. For extracting LinkedIn profiles and companies, PhantomBuster is hard to beat.
• One-off, highly targeted extractions: a single query, a single result set. E.g., "notary Bordeaux" (< 120 results, no problem).
• Multi-platform automation: if you need to automate actions on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn AND Google Maps in a single workflow.
• Rapid prototyping: testing a prospecting idea before investing in a dedicated tool.

When IBLead is the better choice

• You need all businesses in an area, not just 120
• You do local B2B prospecting at scale
• You want enriched data (emails, social media, SIRET) without configuration
• You don't want to spend hours deduplicating and cleaning files
• You want a predictable, affordable cost (plans from 44 EUR/month)
• You target French businesses and need the CEO's name

Verdict

PhantomBuster is a good general-purpose automation tool. But for Google Maps specifically, the 120-result limit, lack of native enrichment, and multi-Phantom workflow complexity make it inadequate for serious prospecting at scale.

IBLead gives you every business in a country, instantly, with emails, social media, SIRET and technology detection, starting at 44 EUR/month. No configuration, no limits, no billing surprises.