TL;DR

• ConnectSafely (connectsafely.ai) mainly sells inbound LinkedIn engagement: post boosting and AI auto-commenting. Its developer module, REST API plus MCP server plus CLI, costs USD 10 per LinkedIn account per month (USD 9 per month billed annually, per its FAQ).
• Curviate, a LinkedIn API, CLI, MCP server and TypeScript SDK for AI agents, is the developer layer as a whole product: EUR 20 per account per month (EUR 16 per month billed annually), excl. VAT, with every action included.
• Curviate's public OpenAPI spec has 159 operations to ConnectSafely's 101, including 12 Sales Navigator and 23 Recruiter operations (beta).
• ConnectSafely covers Sales Navigator messaging and Sales Navigator search by pasted URL. I found no lead list, account list, Sales Navigator profile or Recruiter-specific endpoints in its spec.
• Curviate delivers 19 webhook event types and ships a TypeScript SDK. ConnectSafely's docs describe a message.received webhook, and I found no ConnectSafely SDK package.
• ConnectSafely logs in with your LinkedIn email and password, can store your 2FA secret (encrypted) to re-authenticate, or connects through a Chrome extension. Curviate runs each account in its own cloud browser, connected with email and password or a session cookie.

Both products put a LinkedIn account behind an API key, an MCP server and a CLI, and both bill per connected account. They are built for different buyers. ConnectSafely sells inbound LinkedIn growth and offers a developer module next to it. Curviate is the developer module, built for AI agents. I build Curviate. For this comparison I worked from each vendor's public pricing page, docs and API spec as they stood on October 2, 2026, and every ConnectSafely fact links to its own pages.

Should you choose ConnectSafely or Curviate?

If price per account is all that matters, ConnectSafely costs less. If your agent needs Sales Navigator lists, Recruiter, a typed SDK or webhooks beyond new messages, Curviate has all four.

ConnectSafely's module is USD 10 per account per month (USD 9 billed annually, per its FAQ). It covers classic LinkedIn: profiles, messages, connections, posts, comments and search. It also makes sense if you want its core product, post boosting and AI auto-commenting for inbound leads, on the same account, or if you already build in n8n or Make.

Curviate covers what the module leaves out:

• Sales Navigator lead lists and account lists, or Recruiter projects, pipelines and applicants, on accounts that hold the matching LinkedIn licence.
• A typed TypeScript SDK, or an OpenAPI 3.1 spec to generate your own client.
• Webhooks beyond new messages: messaging, connection and account lifecycle events.
• An EU-hosted vendor with a German legal entity behind the contract.

How do Curviate and ConnectSafely compare at a glance?

Curviate has the larger API, with Sales Navigator lists and Recruiter. ConnectSafely has the lower price per account. Every cell comes from the vendor's own pages.

Prices are list prices in each vendor's own currency (USD for ConnectSafely, EUR for Curviate), unconverted. The yearly figures assume yearly billing for every account. ConnectSafely lists custom agency plans and Curviate a custom Scale plan, both unpriced. ConnectSafely's USD 9 annual rate comes from its pricing FAQ ("10% discount"). The same page elsewhere says yearly billing "saves over 1 month free", so check the checkout price.

What does each product actually sell?

ConnectSafely sells inbound LinkedIn growth with a developer module next to it. Its home page leads with "LinkedIn Leads That Come to You": post boosting, creator targeting and keyword monitoring, priced as modules you mix and match on its pricing page. The developer product is one more module there ("One plan covers all three": API, MCP and CLI). Each LinkedIn profile and each company page counts as one account, 1 to 100 per plan.

Curviate sells a seat: one connected LinkedIn account, with all actions and all four interfaces included. There are no tiers and no per-action metering. See pricing.

What can each API do on LinkedIn?

Both APIs cover classic LinkedIn: profiles, messaging, connections, search, posts, comments and reactions. They differ on premium surfaces, events and how much control you get over reads.

ConnectSafely publishes its spec at api.connectsafely.ai/linkedin/openapi.json: OpenAPI 3.0, 101 operations over 100 paths. It covers profiles, messaging (incl. attachments and InMail credits), connections, follows, search (people, companies, jobs, groups, posts, schools), posts with scheduling and media, comments, reactions, company pages, group members, event attendees and creator analytics. The spec documents per-minute limits per account (for example 30 searches and 15 writes per minute) plus daily and weekly quotas per endpoint.

Curviate's OpenAPI 3.1 spec lists 159 operations. That count includes non-LinkedIn operations (webhooks, accounts, safety settings), so the two numbers are not like-for-like. Curviate delivers 19 webhook event types across messaging, connections and account lifecycle. ConnectSafely's docs describe webhooks for message.received.

Both cache repeat reads. ConnectSafely caches profiles for 6 hours ("cached requests do not count against limit"), reads conversations with "DB-first caching" (a fromCache flag), and gives post scraping useCache, maxCacheAge (24 hours by default) and forceRefresh. Curviate stores person profiles (12-hour default), single chats and chat messages, and refreshes a chat when a message event says it changed. A stored answer makes no LinkedIn request and spends none of the account's action budget. The agent decides per read: mode (including cache_only, which never contacts LinkedIn) and max_age go in, observed_at and source come back (caching guide).

Does ConnectSafely support Sales Navigator and Recruiter?

Partly. ConnectSafely supports Sales Navigator messaging and search by pasted URL, and I found no Recruiter-specific endpoints in its spec. Its API page answers "Does the API support Sales Navigator?" with yes: the messaging API can list Sales Navigator threads, read and send messages and mark threads as read. The spec has exactly four operations tagged Sales Navigator, all messaging. Search goes a bit further than that FAQ suggests. Its people and company search endpoints accept a pasted Sales Navigator search URL (with a Sales Navigator licence), and its send endpoint can route a message through Sales Navigator. I found no lead list, account list or Sales Navigator profile endpoints.

For Recruiter, ConnectSafely has a help page on connecting a Recruiter account. It notes that "Re-authentication may be required every 24-48 hours" and "Some Recruiter-specific features may not be accessible". The public OpenAPI spec mentions Recruiter only in the premium-status and InMail-credit operations.

Curviate covers both, for accounts that hold the matching LinkedIn licence. Its spec has 12 Sales Navigator operations (search, search from a pasted URL, lead lists, account lists, profiles, messaging) and 23 Recruiter operations (hiring projects, pipelines, search, job postings, applicants, messaging).

How does each one log in to your LinkedIn account?

ConnectSafely logs in with your LinkedIn email and password or through a Chrome extension. Its connection guide asks you to "Provide your LinkedIn email and password", or to use the extension. Its "Infinite Login" feature "works by securely storing your LinkedIn email, password, and 2FA secret key", encrypted with AES-256, so it can re-authenticate on your behalf. It requires authenticator-app 2FA and states staff cannot view the password or the secret. Its security page describes a dedicated proxy per account and isolated browser sessions.

Curviate runs each account in its own cloud browser. The safety page puts it this way: "Every account you connect runs in its own cloud browser that matches your device", with a matched device profile and IP per account. You connect with email and password or a LinkedIn session cookie, and 2FA codes are answered in a checkpoint step. Credentials are stored encrypted until you disconnect the account. Both vendors hold login material. The differences are where the session runs and whether a 2FA secret is kept for automatic re-login.

No tool takes LinkedIn's enforcement risk to zero, and neither vendor claims to. ConnectSafely's about page says "No tool can promise you immunity, and we are not going to pretend otherwise." Both enforce per-account ceilings and a ramp for new accounts. In Curviate you choose per account what a crossed ceiling does: report a warning, the default, or refuse the call once you switch the account to enforce.

Which interfaces does each one give an agent?

Both give an agent a hosted MCP server and a CLI. Curviate adds a TypeScript SDK. ConnectSafely gives you a personal link to paste into Claude's custom connectors and names Cursor, Zed, n8n, VS Code and LangChain among its clients. Curviate's MCP server runs at one URL with OAuth for Claude and ChatGPT or an API key elsewhere, with Sales Navigator and Recruiter tools as opt-in toolsets.

ConnectSafely's @connectsafely/cli has 86 commands in ten groups and a csly skill install that writes eight agent skills into a project. Curviate's CLI has 16 command groups, JSON output when piped and --preview on writes, plus a Claude Code plugin with nine skills.

I found no ConnectSafely SDK package on npm. Curviate ships @curviate/sdk for TypeScript. ConnectSafely has an n8n community node, n8n templates and Make, Zapier and HubSpot pages.

Where does an agent fit in this choice?

Both let an agent act on LinkedIn through an API key instead of a browser tab. ConnectSafely sells that as a cheap module next to an inbound suite. Curviate is the whole product: one engine behind the REST API, CLI, MCP server and SDK, one budget per account, a cloud browser per account, and Sales Navigator and Recruiter for accounts that hold the licence. If your agent works LinkedIn every day, start a 3-day trial on one account and point Claude at the MCP server. Prices are from both vendors' pages on October 2, 2026; check ConnectSafely's pricing page and Curviate's pricing before you decide. Not affiliated with LinkedIn Corporation.