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

Apollo.io and ContactOut both sell B2B contact data, but they are built for different people. Apollo is a sales platform with seats, credits, sequences and a dialer. ContactOut is a LinkedIn-first email and phone finder for recruiters and reps, with a Chrome extension and a sales-gated API.

Verdict

• Pick Apollo if you need a published API price and sequences next to the data. It also has the only public price at 1M records, though it is a large one.
• Pick ContactOut if your reps or recruiters work in LinkedIn and want emails and phones in the browser. It claims the larger people database and has cheap seat plans.
• Pick neither if you need volume through an API at a price you can read. Apollo at 1M records is 250 to 400 seats, and ContactOut has no public API price. LeadOcean is one option: Pro is $499 a month, flat.

Side by side

Data and coverage

ContactOut claims the larger database, and the claim moves. Its data page says 800M people profiles and 40M companies. Its homepage headline says 350 million professionals, and its MCP page says 600 million plus (ContactOut data, September 2026). Apollo says 240M contacts and 30M companies (Apollo pricing, September 2026). Both are the vendors' own numbers.

Only ContactOut publishes contact counts. It claims 200M work emails, 150M personal emails and 100M direct dials. Apollo prints no email or phone count, so you cannot compare coverage on paper.

The two sources differ in kind. ContactOut is built around LinkedIn profiles, and its API takes a profile URL as the main input (ContactOut API docs, September 2026). Apollo is a database you search by filter, and it also covers company records.

Phones cost more at Apollo. A phone number is 8 credits against 1 for an email (Apollo API pricing, September 2026). ContactOut's paid plans include unlimited phones in theory, with a fair-use line of 1,000 phone credits a month (ContactOut terms, September 2026).

ContactOut states "Triple-Verified with 99% Confidence" on its data page. That is a claim, not a published test, and neither vendor gives an audited match rate. Treat both as claims until you check them on your own records.

Test on your own list before you buy. Apollo Free gives 75 credits a month. ContactOut Free gives 5 emails and 5 phones a day. Run the same 30 people through each and compare the match rate.

API and developer experience

Apollo's API is open to every plan, including Free. ContactOut's API needs a sales meeting to get a key. That gap shapes everything else.

Apollo authenticates with an x-api-key header. The enrichment call is POST /api/v1/people/match:

curl --request POST \
  --url "https://api.apollo.io/api/v1/people/match?linkedin_url=https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-doe" \
  --header "x-api-key: $APOLLO_API_KEY" \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json"

It costs 1 to 9 credits: 1 for an email, plus 8 if a mobile comes back. Phones are off by default. You set reveal_phone_number and give a webhook URL, and the phone arrives there later (Apollo docs, September 2026).

ContactOut passes the key in a token header. Its profile call takes a LinkedIn URL. It returns emails, phones and profile fields (ContactOut API docs, September 2026).

curl "https://api.contactout.com/v1/linkedin/enrich?profile=https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-doe" \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --header "Accept: application/json" \
  --header "token: $CONTACTOUT_API_TOKEN"

It uses 1 email credit if an email is found and 1 phone credit if a phone is found. The docs give no dollar price per credit. The v2 batch endpoint takes up to 1,000 profiles per job and posts the results to a callback URL, or you poll by job id.

Apollo and ContactOut also differ on how you start. Apollo gives you a key at signup, so you can test the API the same day. ContactOut makes you book a meeting first, which is a real cost if you are comparing several vendors this week.

Rate limits point in opposite directions. Apollo's are per team and per endpoint, across three windows at once. Paid plans get 1,000 enrichment requests a minute with no hourly or daily cap, and 200 search requests a minute (Apollo rate limits, September 2026). ContactOut allows 1,000 a minute on most endpoints, but only 60 a minute on People Search.

On MCP, both have official servers. Apollo's works on any plan, and enrichment through it spends the same credits as the API. ContactOut's has 15 tools and starts you with 600+ free credits (Apollo docs; ContactOut MCP, September 2026).

Pricing

Apollo charges per seat, and each seat carries a fixed monthly credit grant. ContactOut charges a flat monthly fee, but its "unlimited" plans stop at fair-use caps. Convert both to cost per record to compare them.

At 10,000 records a month

Take 10,000 work emails from Apollo. That is 10,000 credits at 1 credit each. On monthly billing, Basic gives 2,500 credits per seat at $65, so 4 seats x $65 = $260 a month. Professional needs 3 seats for 12,000 credits: 3 x $99 = $297 (Apollo pricing, September 2026).

On yearly billing, Basic is $49 a seat. So 4 seats x $49 = $196 a month, or $2,352 a year. Apollo credits expire at the end of each billing cycle.

For ContactOut, there is no public price at 10,000. Paid plans follow a fair-use line of 2,000 email credits per account per month, and every self-serve plan is one user per company (ContactOut terms, September 2026). The highest public tier is Email + Phone at $99 a month, or $79 billed yearly, with 600 exports a month (ContactOut pricing, September 2026). A 10,000-email month is above all of that, so it needs a custom API or team agreement.

At 1M records a month

For Apollo, 1,000,000 work emails is 1,000,000 credits. On monthly billing, Professional gives 4,000 credits per seat, so 1,000,000 / 4,000 = 250 seats x $99 = $24,750 a month. On yearly billing, Basic gives 2,500 a month, so 400 seats x $49 = $19,600 a month ($235,200 a year) (Apollo pricing, September 2026).

Two caveats apply. Apollo prints no price for add-on credits, so a cheaper seats-plus-add-ons path cannot be priced. Whether Apollo allows 250 to 400 self-serve seats is also not stated.

For ContactOut: no public 1M price. At 2,000 emails per account, 1M is 500 account-months. One user per company rules out 500 accounts, and Team / API shows Contact Us with no price (ContactOut pricing, September 2026). We do not multiply a rate out to 1M and call it a quote.

Where Apollo.io wins

• A published API. Every plan includes API access, Free included, and the credit costs are in the docs.
• A price you can read at 1M. It is a large number, but it is published. ContactOut's is not.
• A workspace. Sequences, a dialer and pipeline tools sit in the same product as the data.
• Faster search limits. 200 search requests a minute against 60 for ContactOut's People Search.
• Any-plan MCP. The server works on Free, with no sales call.

Where ContactOut wins

• Cheaper seats. Email is $49 a month, or $39 billed yearly, against $65 or $49 for an Apollo Basic seat.
• Cheaper phones for one person. Email + Phone at $99 a month includes phones, while Apollo charges 8 credits each.
• Published coverage. It states 200M work emails, 150M personal emails and 100M direct dials.
• Reps in a browser. The Chrome extension puts a lookup one click from LinkedIn.
• Bigger batches. Up to 1,000 profiles per bulk job against Apollo's 10 per request.

If you need volume through an API

We build LeadOcean, so weigh this section accordingly. LeadOcean holds 693M people and 63M companies, reachable over REST and an MCP server with 12 tools. Free is 1,000 records, one-off, with no card. Pro is $499 a month, flat, with no credits and a limit of 100 requests per second per key (LeadOcean pricing, September 2026).

For bulk work, POST /v1/exports returns up to 50,000 rows per request. The app also has an Exports page with a filter builder and CSV download (LeadOcean exports docs, September 2026). There is no sequencer, dialer or Chrome extension. If your reps live in Apollo or ContactOut, keep it for that. See the Apollo alternative page for a line-by-line version.

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