RealEstateAPI Alternative — A Published Per-Match Price for Skip Tracing

What is Ava Data?

Ava Data, LLC is a skip-tracing API and data platform for real-estate investors, agents, collections teams and developers. The REST API exposes POST /standard-search for a synchronous single-record lookup, POST /deep-search for the related-persons graph, and a three-call bulk flow — POST /bulk/upload, GET /bulk/{jobId}/status, GET /bulk/{jobId}/download. Every endpoint and example response on the documentation page is generated from openapi.json, so the site and the API cannot drift apart.

Pricing is per matched component: 1 credit ($0.02) for a phone, 2 credits ($0.04) for phone plus email, 10 credits ($0.20) for a Deep Search. A List Builder pull is 1 credit per record and Digital Matching is 2 credits per matched contact. Credits sit on the account rather than on a seat, the $9/month plan includes 100 of them and covers API use, the API is rated at 60 requests per minute, and the identity graph behind the results refreshes every 24 hours.

What is RealEstateAPI?

RealEstateAPI — commonly shortened to REAPI — is a developer-facing real-estate data API. Its published documentation covers property detail, comps, and listing and price search alongside a SkipTrace endpoint and demographics data, which makes it a property-intelligence platform with contact data attached rather than a contact-data product. For an application that needs to value a property and reach its owner, that breadth is the point of it.

On the skip-tracing side, its documentation describes a SkipTraceBatch endpoint accepting a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 1,000 skip request objects per call with a maximum payload of 256KB, and a Bulk SkipTrace flow that calls your webhook endpoint at up to 50 queries per second. Its rate-limiting page defines usage windows from midnight to midnight UTC and notes that those daily limits will likely only come up on Enterprise Property Data or Enterprise Skip plans, because the other plans do not carry enough credits to reach them.

What its own pages do not state is a per-lookup price, a plan price, or what happens to a credit when a lookup returns nothing. Pricing is arranged through its console and intake flow. No figure for RealEstateAPI appears anywhere on this page for that reason, and none should be inferred from the Ava Data numbers next to it — ask RealEstateAPI directly before budgeting.

How Ava Data Knows the Numbers Are Good

There's a harder question than price: how do you know the numbers are good? Most skip tracing services never find out what happens after they hand you a phone number. Ava Data does — through partnerships with high-volume dialing networks placing over 100 million calls a month, Ava Data sees real connect signals and tests its data head-to-head against major data vendors. Every outcome gets scored: right-person connects, numbers that don't connect, wrong numbers. Those signals feed a custom ranking layer that orders every contact's phone numbers by real-world connect performance — so the number most likely to answer is first on your list.

These are aggregate network connect signals — no customer lists or uploaded records are ever shared, sold, or used.

Side-by-Side Comparison

Why does a published price matter more than the price itself?

A published per-lookup price changes what a developer can do before talking to anyone. Sizing a build against 2¢ per matched phone takes one multiplication: 40,000 records a month at a phone-only match is $800 at the very most, and less for every record that returns nothing. That number can go in a spreadsheet, a pull request description or a pricing model on the same afternoon the ticket is opened.

A quoted credit plan cannot. It needs an intake form, a call, and a rate that may be scoped to a volume commitment — which is fine for a team that already knows its volume and expensive for a team trying to find out whether the feature is worth building at all. The asymmetry is not about who is cheaper; on a large enough commitment a negotiated rate may well beat a list price. It is about which model lets you test the idea first.

This is the same argument the skip-tracing cost guide makes across the rest of the market, and it survives either side changing its prices, because it is about the shape of the pricing rather than the number.

Two bulk shapes: a 1,000-object call versus a 250,000-row file

The two bulk designs suit different jobs, and picking the wrong one is a real cost in engineering time. RealEstateAPI's documented SkipTraceBatch takes 10 to 1,000 skip request objects in a single call under a 256KB payload ceiling, with the Bulk SkipTrace flow delivering to a webhook at up to 50 queries per second. That is the right shape for a service that traces continuously — a queue worker holding records in memory, chunking them, and receiving results as they land.

Ava Data's bulk flow is a file job. POST /bulk/upload accepts up to 250,000 records in one file, GET /bulk/{jobId}/status returns uploading, queued, processing, completed or failed with a progress percentage and the match count, and GET /bulk/{jobId}/download returns the enriched file with up to 35 export columns. That is the right shape for a list that arrives as a list — a county pull, a CRM export, a partner file — where nobody wants to build chunking, retry and webhook-receipt logic to move 60,000 rows once a week.

A team that needs both patterns runs the synchronous POST /standard-search endpoint for the per-record path and the file job for the backlog, on one credit balance. Bulk processing runs Standard Search only; a Deep Search is a single-record call.

When RealEstateAPI Is the Right Choice

RealEstateAPI is the right choice when the product needs property intelligence, not just contact data. Comps, property detail, listing and price search are endpoints Ava Data does not have and is not adding — an application that values a property, ranks a market or surfaces active listings is describing RealEstateAPI's core, and swapping in a skip-tracing API would leave most of the job undone.

It is also the better fit for a team that already knows its annual volume and would rather negotiate one contract covering property data and tracing together than assemble the stack from two vendors. A single invoice has real operational value, and this page will not pretend otherwise.

Ava Data is the better fit when the missing piece is the phone number: the property data already comes from somewhere — a county feed, an MLS export, an existing property API — and the gap is turning an owner name and address into a number that connects. It also fits a team that wants to prototype this week, because the rate is published and the $9/month plan is the entire commitment.

Common Objections, Answered Honestly

Frequently Asked Questions

What does RealEstateAPI cost per skip trace?

RealEstateAPI does not publish a per-lookup skip-trace price on its own pages. Its documentation describes credit-based plans, with daily rate limits that its own rate-limiting page says will mostly matter on Enterprise Property Data or Enterprise Skip plans, and pricing is arranged through its console and intake flow. Check directly with RealEstateAPI for a current figure — this page quotes none because none is published.

What does Ava Data charge for the same lookup?

1 credit — 2 cents — for a matched phone, 2 credits (4 cents) for phone plus email, and 10 credits (20 cents) for a Deep Search that adds the related-persons graph. Nothing is charged when a lookup returns no match. API access runs on the same $9/month plan as the dashboard, which includes 100 credits, and the API is rated at 60 requests per minute.

How large a batch can each API take?

RealEstateAPI's documented SkipTraceBatch endpoint accepts between 10 and 1,000 skip request objects in a single call, with a maximum payload of 256KB, and its Bulk SkipTrace flow calls your webhook at up to 50 queries per second. Ava Data's bulk flow is a file job instead: POST /bulk/upload takes up to 250,000 records per file, and GET /bulk/{jobId}/status reports progress until the enriched file is ready to download.

Is Ava Data a replacement for RealEstateAPI?

Only for the contact-data half. RealEstateAPI is a broad property-data API with property detail, comps, and listing and price search behind it; Ava Data has none of those endpoints and is not building them. If an application needs property intelligence, RealEstateAPI is doing something Ava Data was never built to do, and the two are often run side by side.

Can I try Ava Data's API without talking to sales?

Yes. Create an account at app.avadata.ai on the $9/month plan, which includes 100 credits, and request API access for the account by emailing support@avadata.ai. The published spec at /docs/ is generated from openapi.json, so the endpoints, request bodies and example responses on the site are the ones the API actually serves.

Further reading: Skip Tracing API · Contact Enrichment API · Phone Number Lookup API · API Documentation · Bulk Skip Tracing · People Search API · Skip Tracing Cost Guide · Pricing