Namsor alternatives: when the most accurate gender API is not the right one

Namsor was the most accurate of the three gender APIs we measured on the same 991 labelled names: 96.1% end to end, against 91.6% for NameGender and 91.1% for Genderize. It also does things a gender API does not: origin, diaspora and ethnicity estimates, name-type classification, and a long record in academic research. If any of that is what you need, stay with Namsor.

People look for an alternative when the job is gender at volume, where Namsor is also the most expensive: one million names a month costs $999 on its public plans. This page was checked against Namsor's own pricing page, FAQ and home page on October 14, 2026. We run NameGender, one of the alternatives, and the full benchmark publishes the test names and every name NameGender missed, so the numbers below can be checked.

Accuracy on the same names

The difference is coverage, not correctness. Namsor answers every name; NameGender returns unknown when the evidence is thin, and the names it does answer are right about as often as Namsor's. Whether that trade suits you depends on what happens to an unknown in your system. For a salutation, unknown can fall back to a neutral greeting; for a research dataset that must classify every row, Namsor's full coverage is worth paying for.

Price at the same volume

Monthly cost of the cheapest published plan that covers each volume, checked on October 14, 2026, in each vendor's own currency.

Namsor counts a repeated name in a batch as a fraction of a credit on its larger plans, which this table ignores by assuming every name is different. A customer list with many repeated first names costs less there than the table shows. Namsor's one-time credits are valid for 120 days; NameGender's one-off credits stay on the balance until they are spent.

When an alternative fits better

• High volume, gender only. Most of the cost difference sits here, and the accuracy gap is smallest on Latin-script names.
• Personalisation. NameGender returns a ready salutation in ten languages and reads email addresses and usernames as inputs, which Namsor's gender endpoints do not.
• Occasional large jobs. A list enriched once a quarter wastes most of a monthly plan; credits that do not lapse fit that pattern.

When to stay with Namsor: you need origin or ethnicity, every row must be classified, your data is heavy in Thai or Hebrew names, or your work is cited against Namsor in published research.

Testing a switch on your own list

Take 500 to 1,000 of your own names, with a country where you have one, and run them through both. Count answered, right-of-answered and confidently wrong separately, and look at your largest market on its own. NameGender's free credits (500 at sign-up and 100 a day) cover the test; Namsor's free tier covers 2,500 names a month. The steps are described in how to compare gender APIs.

Related: the measured comparison of four gender APIs, Genderize alternatives and Gender-API.com alternatives.