Guide
LinkedIn Sales Navigator API: who can get access in 2026
Sales Navigator has an official API, the Sales Navigator Application Platform (SNAP), but only approved partners can use it and LinkedIn isn't accepting new ones. Here is what SNAP offers, from LinkedIn's own docs, and what developers who aren't partners use instead.
By Lempile · Updated
The short answer
LinkedIn's Sales Navigator API is called SNAP, the Sales Navigator Application Platform. Every integration has to be built by an approved SNAP partner, and a note at the top of LinkedIn's SNAP documentation says it isn't currently accepting new partners. So unless your company is already one, there's no official way in today.
What SNAP offers partners
- Display Services. Sales Navigator modules embedded in another app, through an iframe or a JavaScript SDK: profiles, accounts, recent activity and posts, and connecting with and messaging leads, InMail included.
- Profile Associations API. LinkedIn profile photos and links to Sales Navigator profiles, to enrich another app's pages.
- Analytics Services. A bulk export of the sales team's own activity: searches, profile views, saved leads and accounts, InMail sent and accepted, and each seat holder's daily Social Selling Index and connections.
- Sync Services. APIs on top of CRM Sync's matches between CRM records and LinkedIn, for data quality in the CRM.
SNAP is built for CRMs and sales tools that show Sales Navigator inside their own product. None of its services is described as a way to export search results or lead lists, and its messaging to leads is part of LinkedIn's embedded modules.
What developers use instead
Without SNAP, the other route is an unofficial API that works through a member's own LinkedIn account: the member connects it, and the API reads and acts as that member, in their session. Whether Sales Navigator is covered depends on the provider and on the member's own subscription.
- Unipile says it supports LinkedIn Classic, Premium, Recruiter and Sales Navigator, depending on the connected account, and InMail for eligible Recruiter and Sales Navigator accounts.
- Lempile, which we build, doesn't support Sales Navigator or Recruiter yet. It covers classic LinkedIn: profiles, the inbox, messages, invitations, posts, comments, and LinkedIn's classic search for people, posts, jobs and companies with Unipile's filters.
The catch is the same for every unofficial API. LinkedIn's User Agreement asks members not to use bots or other unauthorized automated methods to access LinkedIn, and lets LinkedIn restrict accounts, so the member who connects an account takes on that risk. A careful provider keeps it low with one session and one IP per account and a human pace, but none can remove it. More in LinkedIn connection and invitation limits.
Which one to use
- Your company is already a SNAP partner: SNAP, for anything inside Sales Navigator.
- You need Sales Navigator's own search or InMail from your users' accounts: an unofficial API that lists Sales Navigator support, with each user on a Sales Navigator plan and connecting knowingly.
- Classic LinkedIn is enough (search for people with filters, profiles, messages to connections, invitations, posts and comments): any unofficial LinkedIn API, Lempile included. See Does LinkedIn have an API? for everything else LinkedIn offers officially.