Apollo.io vs Cognism (2026): Data, Pricing and API Compared

Apollo.io is the better buy when you want a public price and a rep workspace. Cognism is the better buy when your reps dial mobiles in Europe and can live with a quote. Both have an API and an MCP server, and neither has a flat bill at volume.

Verdict

• Pick Apollo if you want one workspace with sequences, a dialer and a Chrome extension, and a price you can read today. Start on the Free plan and move up by seat.
• Pick Cognism if your team phones buyers, especially in Europe, and wants phone-verified mobiles and Do Not Call checks. Expect a sales call before you see a number.
• Pick neither if you pull records through an API and want one flat bill. LeadOcean Pro is $499 a month with no credits and no per-record price. It has no dialer and no rep workspace.

Side by side

All figures checked in September 2026. Where a vendor prints nothing, the cell says "Not published".

Data and coverage

Apollo publishes a size and Cognism does not. Apollo's pricing page says 240M contacts and 30M companies (Apollo pricing, September 2026). Cognism's FAQ says "hundreds of millions" of profiles and adds that it does not usually make general coverage claims (Cognism FAQ, September 2026).

Phones are where the two split. Cognism claims over 10M phone-verified contacts, on-demand verification in under 48 hours and Do Not Call cross-referencing in 15 territories (Cognism Diamond Data, September 2026). Apollo prints no phone count, and a mobile number costs 8 credits against 1 for an email (Apollo API pricing, September 2026).

Cognism exposes quality as filters. Its search schema has email, direct phone and mobile phone scores from 0 to 100, plus a last-confirmed date (Cognism API reference, September 2026). Apollo gives basic filters on Free and advanced filters on paid plans, and adds job change enrichment on paid plans (Apollo pricing, September 2026).

Neither vendor publishes a country split. If you need one region, test it on a real list before you sign.

Seats shape the buying decision too. Apollo lets one person start alone on Free, and credits are pooled across the team once you add seats. Cognism's Standard and Pro plans each include 5 seats (Cognism pricing, September 2026).

API and developer experience

Apollo is self-serve and Cognism is gated. Every Apollo plan includes API access, and you pass a key in the x-api-key header (Apollo developer FAQ, September 2026; Apollo authentication, September 2026). Cognism needs a package with API access and uses OAuth 2.0 client credentials, with tokens that last 20 minutes (Cognism authentication, September 2026).

Apollo people search, from its docs. It costs 0 credits and returns no emails or phone numbers, so you enrich afterwards (Apollo docs, September 2026).

curl --globoff --request POST \
  --url 'https://api.apollo.io/api/v1/mixed_people/api_search?person_titles[]=marketing%20manager&person_locations[]=ireland' \
  --header 'x-api-key: '"$APOLLO_API_KEY"

Cognism person search, from its docs. You first exchange your client ID and secret for a bearer token, then post filters (Cognism API reference, September 2026).

curl --request POST \
  --url 'https://api.cognism.com/persons/filter?limit=10' \
  --header 'authorization: Bearer '"$COGNISM_TOKEN" \
  --header 'content-type: application/json' \
  --data '{"person":{"jobTitle":{"include":["Marketing Manager"],"match":"ONCE"},"location":{"country":{"include":["Ireland"]}}}}'

Paging differs. Apollo search stops at 50,000 records, which is 100 a page over 500 pages (Apollo docs, September 2026). Cognism cursor paging runs to 100,000 records per journey, with pages of 1 to 100 (Cognism pagination, September 2026).

Rate limits differ in shape. Apollo limits per team, per endpoint, across minute, hour and day windows at once. Basic and Professional get 200 a minute, 400 an hour and 2,000 a day on general endpoints. Enrichment gets 1,000 a minute with no hourly or daily cap (Apollo rate limits, September 2026). A 429 means you hit a window. Cognism allows 500 a minute per account per operation in a fixed 60-second window, and sets more per package (Cognism rate limits, September 2026).

Time matters at volume. One million single enrichments at Apollo's 1,000 a minute is 1,000 minutes, about 17 hours of calls. Bulk enrichment takes up to 10 people a request, so batching cuts the call count (Apollo rate limits, September 2026).

Both have a hosted MCP server on the same credits as the API. Apollo's works on any plan with OAuth or an API key (Apollo MCP, September 2026). Cognism's has 15 tools and OAuth 2.0 (Cognism MCP, September 2026).

Pricing

Apollo prints every price and Cognism prints none. The worked example below is 10,000 and 1M work-email lookups a month at 1 credit each, on monthly list price with the billed-yearly figure after it.

Apollo arithmetic. Basic grants 2,500 credits a seat a month, so 10,000 credits needs 4 seats. Professional grants 4,000, so 1M credits needs 250 seats (Apollo pricing, September 2026). At 10,000, three Professional seats cost $297 monthly, so Basic is cheaper.

Phones cost more. At 8 credits a number, 10,000 phones is 80,000 credits, or 32 Basic seats: 32 x $65 = $2,080 monthly (Apollo API pricing, September 2026). Credits expire each cycle and do not roll over. Apollo does not say whether 250 or 400 self-serve seats are allowed. Its public pages print no price per extra credit; extra credits are bought inside the app (Apollo pricing, September 2026).

Cognism arithmetic stops at the credit, because no price exists to multiply. One credit is one revealed contact, each seat includes an allocation and you can buy more, but no allocation or credit price is published (Cognism pricing, September 2026). Search also spends tokens, 1 per record returned. At the 500 a minute limit and 100 records a page, 1M records is 10,000 search calls, about 20 minutes of calls (Cognism credits, September 2026). Cognism's docs disagree on count calls: the credits page says 1 search token, the Introduction and Endpoints pages say free.

Credits behave differently once you stop paying. Apollo credits are pooled across the team, expire at the end of each billing cycle and do not roll over, purchased add-ons included (Apollo API pricing, September 2026). Cognism lets you view a revealed contact again for free, and charges a credit again only if the contact changes jobs. A team that re-reads the same accounts often gets more from that rule.

Where Apollo wins

• A price you can read. Plans, seats and credits are on one page, so a buyer can size a purchase before talking to anyone.
• A free plan with real access. Free has API access, 2 sequences and the Chrome extensions at $0 (Apollo pricing, September 2026).
• Outreach in the same tool. Sequences, a US dialer billed in credits, and 1 to 12 intent topics by plan (Apollo pricing, September 2026).
• Looser enrichment limits. Enrichment reaches 1,000 requests a minute on paid plans, double Cognism's default per operation.

Where Cognism wins

• Phone-verified mobiles. A claimed 10M+ phone-verified contacts and on-demand verification in under 48 hours is the reason to pay (Cognism Diamond Data, September 2026).
• Do Not Call checks. Cognism cross-references DNC lists in 15 territories. A team that cold-calls needs that.
• Intent on Pro. Intent data uses Bombora Company Surge, with up to 12 topics from over 11,000 (Cognism pricing, September 2026).
• Deeper paging. Cursor paging reaches 100,000 records a journey against Apollo's 50,000 display limit.

If you need volume through an API

LeadOcean is the data layer only, with no credits and no per-record price. The Free plan gives 1,000 records one-off with no card, and Pro is $499 a month flat. Both get the same REST API, a 12-tool MCP server and POST /v1/exports for bulk CSV, up to 50,000 rows a request. The dataset holds 693M people, 366M with an email and 166M with a phone. It has no dialer and no rep workspace. See pricing for the fair-use terms.

FAQ