Ploid: people search for agents, with a big UK privacy question

Ploid (YC) launched an API for searching and enriching people and companies, with a command-line tool and an MCP server. It says it has indexed over 2 billion people; that's its own unverified figure. Plans start at $200 a month for 1,000 credits: bulk search rows are cheap, but a full person profile costs 25 credits ($3.75 to $5). Our check: it's a real product, but it profiles private individuals, including personal emails and phone numbers, and leaves UK GDPR compliance to you. Regulators have fined scrapers before (the ICO fined Clearview £7.5m), and LinkedIn's lawsuit shut down Proxycurl in 2025.

Why it mattersApproach with caution and don't use it to cold-contact people in the UK or EU. To see what it holds on you, its privacy policy names a contact for access and deletion requests.

Curated by Sara Simeone as part of our human editorial coverage. The original sources are linked below; curation is distinct from a Hype or Fact? assessment.

How we knowCompany figures are labelled as their own claims; anything we couldn't verify is labelled as a report or a claim.