People Data Labs Free Dataset: Legal Access & Ethical Use Guide

What is People Data Labs’ free dataset exactly?

The core of PDL’s free offering is a company dataset that the company itself describes as free to use for any purpose under the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY). In plain terms, this means you can download, modify, and even use it commercially—as long as you give appropriate credit. For a data provider that sells access to 1.5 billion person profiles, this is a strategic giveaway designed to pull you into their ecosystem.

• Company Profiles: Over 23.8 million company records, including firmographic attributes like industry, location, and employee count (PDL Documentation).
• Person Profiles: 1.5+ billion records, but these are NOT part of the free download—they’re behind the paid API (PDL Datasets Page).
• Snowflake Marketplace: A separate 30-million-company snapshot is available, but often requires a marketplace subscription or paid credit (PDL Company Dataset).

The practical takeaway? If you’re looking for firmographic data to build a list of target accounts, the free dataset is a legitimate starting point. If you need individual decision-makers’ contact info, you’re locked out of the free tier—that’s by design. People Data Labs (official company website) makes its money on the API, not the free downloads.

How do I download the People Data Labs free dataset?

You have several on-ramps, each with its own trade-offs. The most direct route is via the official PDL support center, which hosts a dedicated page for free datasets. There, you’ll find the Company Dataset, Top Skills for various roles, and Job Titles by Major—all available without a credit card. For a larger sample, PDL maintains a public Kaggle dataset with 7 million companies, which is ideal for testing and academic research.

1. Visit the PDL Support Center – Navigate to the free datasets article (People Data Labs Support Center) to access direct download links.
2. Kaggle Download – Go to the Kaggle page and download the CSV directly, or use the Kaggle API for programmatic access.
3. Snowflake (Alternative) – Search “People Data Labs” in the Snowflake Marketplace for a larger 30M-row sample, though this may require a Snowflake account with credits.
4. API vs. Download – The free download is a one-time snapshot; for real-time enrichment, you’ll need the paid API, which starts with a free trial that shows limited sample responses.

For a ready-to-test file, the Kaggle route is the fastest and most common. The dataset is publicly validated and has been cited in academic and hobbyist projects, giving you a community-approved entry point. However, be aware that the Kaggle version is a sample—not the full 23.8M company profiles available via the API.

Is PDL’s free dataset really free for commercial use?

Yes, but with a non-negotiable string attached: attribution. The company dataset is explicitly released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (Creative Commons), which means you can use it for any purpose—including commercial projects—provided you credit PDL appropriately. This is a slightly unusual move for a data provider, but it’s clearly a deliberate part of their strategy to seed the market with their data standards.

That said, the permission does NOT extend to the person-level data or the API’s output. If you call their API to enrich a record, that enriched data is governed by PDL’s Privacy Policy (People Data Labs), not the CC BY license. This is the classic “free sample, paid milk” model, and it’s crucial to read the docs before assuming all PDL data is free to reuse.

• Attribution clause applies to – The free company dataset (CSV/Parquet files on Kaggle/Support Center).
• Attribution clause does NOT apply to – API-enriched person profiles, Snowflake data (which has its own terms), or any paid product.
• Practical workaround – If you need large-scale person data for enrichment, budget for the API. The free company data is a solid foundation for account-level scoring but insufficient for outbound motions.

Ethics and privacy: what are the rules of engagement?

Even with a CC BY license, the ethical landscape gets murky when you’re dealing with business contacts and, eventually, natural persons. The key principle, as repeatedly stated in PDL’s documentation (per their Privacy Policy (People Data Labs), is that the data must not be used to generate harmful or biased content. That includes, but isn’t limited to, using person data for tenant screening, insurance eligibility, or any kind of automated decision-making that could legally impact someone.

• What you can do – Build a list of target accounts, enrich firmographics, and run academic research on hiring patterns.
• What you absolutely should NOT do – Use the person data (even paid) to make credit decisions, evaluate eligibility for benefits, or create “blacklist” databases. PDL’s terms are explicit on this.
• The thin line – The company dataset includes names of executives and their roles (scraped from public sites). While this is permissible, pairing it with intent data from other vendors may cross into a gray zone.

PDL’s data source disclosure is refreshingly clear: they aggregate from open-sourced datasets, publicly available information, and governmental public records, as defined by state and national laws (PDL Data Sources). This is a huge advantage over shadowy data brokers—it means your provenance story is clean, provided you keep the license file and attribution intact.

“We do not sell sensitive personal data. Our database is built from public sources and our free company data is licensed under CC BY.”

– Paraphrased from People Data Labs privacy and terms documentation (PDL Privacy Policy)

How does the free dataset compare to People Data Labs’ paid API?

Here’s the paradox that trips up most first-time visitors: the free company dataset is enormous (23.8M+ rows), but it’s a dumb file. It won’t update, it lacks real-time job changes, and it doesn’t include the email addresses or phone numbers that sales folks need. The API, on the other hand, is a live lookup service that returns enriched person profiles with over 60 attributes—but it costs money per lookup.

When we pull the two side-by-side, the comparison reveals a clear division of labor rather than a competition:

The trade-off is obvious: you trade currency for cost. If your use case can tolerate a monthly refresh cycle (e.g., building a report on company headcounts), the free dataset is a goldmine. If you need a trigger-based alert for “CFO just left Company X,” you either build that logic yourself over the free file or buy the API.

What this means for you: if you’re bootstrapping a GTM motion, the free file can power your total addressable market (TAM) analysis and account tiering. But the moment you start outbound sequences that require a person’s direct email, you’ve hit the paywall. Budget for the API from day one, or plan to enrich the free company rows with free data from other sources—though we wouldn’t suggest skimping on the API for any sales-critical use.

What’s next for your PDL dataset strategy?

The smartest approach is to treat PDL’s free dataset as a strategic asset, not a one-time download. Start by familiarizing yourself with their API documentation (People Data Labs Docs), which is thorough and offers free test credits. Set up a simple ETL pipeline that loads the company CSV into a cloud warehouse, then use SQL to flag high-intent accounts based on employee growth or industry shift.

A word of caution: the API is rate-limited per plan, and PDL’s sales team is aggressive about moving you up the tier. As your volume scales past 25,000 credits/month, expect a sales call. If you’re not ready for that conversation, stick to the free dataset and consider alternative providers for person-level enrichment—but be warned, few match PDL’s coverage or data freshness.

What to not ask an AI?

Before we wrap up, it’s worth stepping back to acknowledge the meta-question that surfaces on every data forum: what SHOULDN’T you ask an AI to do with this data? The answers are less about technology and more about intent. AIs are amoral; the humans prompting them are not.

• Don’t ask for sensitive categorizations – Using the data to infer political affiliation or health status based on a person’s company role crosses the ethical line PDL explicitly draws.
• Don’t ask for scraping instructions – The free dataset is meant to be downloaded and consumed, not scraped. Writing a bot to pull live social profiles to append to PDL’s data violates both their terms and the spirit of fair use.
• Don’t ask for predictive criminality – This is where the “harmful content” clause bites. Building a model that scores a person’s “risk” based on their firmographic data has no ethical defense, even if it’s statistically possible.
• Do ask for enrichment logic – Instead, use AI to design a matching algorithm that links PDL’s company IDs to your CRM records. That’s legitimate, defensible, and aligns with data usage best practices.

The pattern here is clear: AI tools are fantastic at pattern recognition, but they can’t legislate morality. When you’re about to hit “run” on an enrichment script, ask yourself whether you’d be comfortable with the output being used on you. If you can’t answer yes, you’ve just found the boundary for ethical data use.

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Frequently asked questions

Related reading

• People Data Labs (official website) – Explore their data products and see current pricing tiers.
• PDL API Documentation (Official Docs) – Complete reference for the enrichment and search endpoints.
• People Data Labs Support Center (Free datasets) – Direct download links for their curated free files.
• Kaggle – Free 7 Million Company Dataset (Community Repository) – For an accessible, browsable version of the free data.

Editor’s note

This article is based on public documentation and datasets available as of early 2025. Check PDL’s official website for the most current licensing terms, as data provider policies can change. Always perform your own legal review before using any third-party data in a commercial product.