Disclosure first: GMapsScout publishes this article and sells one of the tools in this category. Read it with that in mind. Rather than rank competitors on facts that go stale within a quarter, this covers the questions worth asking — which stay useful whichever tool you end up with.
Where does it run?
Browser extensions run on the Maps page you are already looking at. Nothing to configure, and you see results immediately. The limits are your browser and your patience.
Cloud platforms run on someone else's infrastructure. Better for large volumes and scheduled jobs, but you are configuring a job rather than using an interface, and you pay whether or not the run was useful.
Desktop applications sit between the two. Fewer of them now than there used to be.
Match this to how you work. If you want a list this afternoon, a cloud platform is overhead. If you need 100,000 rows on a schedule, an extension is the wrong shape.
What does it cost at your actual volume?
Pricing models differ enough to make headline numbers meaningless. Per-result pricing looks cheap until you run a big sweep. Monthly subscriptions look expensive until you use them weekly. Credit systems are worth converting to a per-lead figure before comparing.
Work out your realistic monthly volume, then price each option at that number. Most people badly overestimate — a focused campaign is a few hundred leads, not tens of thousands.
Does it enrich, or only extract?
This is the biggest functional divide, and it is where the value usually is.
Extraction gives you what the listing shows. Enrichment follows the website to add a public email, an owner name, social profiles, and signals like how many reviews went unanswered. The second is the difference between a directory dump and a list you can prioritise.
If a tool offers enrichment, ask what happens when it finds nothing. Any tool claiming a contact for every listing is overselling — plenty of businesses publish neither.
Where does the data go?
Some tools process on your machine. Some upload to their servers. Neither is automatically wrong, but if your prospect data is subject to handling rules, or you would rather your lead list not sit on a third party's infrastructure, ask before you commit.
Can you get your data out?
Check the export formats and whether the column schema is stable between exports. A tool that changes its columns breaks every downstream import mapping you have built.
What we would suggest
Try two or three on the free tier with the *same* search — one niche, one city — and compare what comes back. Ten minutes of that tells you more than any comparison article, including this one.
For what it is worth, GMapsScout is a browser extension with enrichment and configurable lead scoring, it processes and stores leads on your own machine, and it exports 45 columns to CSV, Excel, Google Sheets and JSON. The free plan covers 500 leads a month. Whether that shape suits you depends on the questions above.