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

Apollo is the one to pick if reps will work leads in the same tool. Crustdata is the one to pick if you want an API-first index with live and change data. At 1M work emails a month, Apollo's list price is a seat count most teams will not buy, and Crustdata publishes no dollar price at all.

Verdict

• Pick Apollo if people will prospect and send from the same product, and you want a contact database with 240M contacts and 30M companies behind sequences and a dialer (Apollo pricing, September 2026).
• Pick Crustdata if you build in code or with agents, want search at 0.03 credits a result, and need job, post or change-watcher data that a plain contact database does not carry (Crustdata pricing docs, September 2026).
• Pick neither if you pull people and company data by API at volume and want a price you can forecast. Seats and credits both get awkward there. LeadOcean is one option, covered below.

Side by side

Data and coverage

Apollo holds a smaller people index and a richer product around it. Its 240M contacts and 30M companies come with firmographics, titles, intent topics and a filter UI for building lists (Apollo pricing, September 2026). You filter an audience first, then spend credits on the contacts you keep.

Crustdata claims 1B people on its homepage. Its homepage gives two different company counts, so we quote none (Crustdata, September 2026). Its index also covers jobs, social posts and company signals, not just contacts.

Bigger is not the same as more reachable. Neither vendor publishes how many of its people have an email or a phone. Apollo charges 1 credit per email and 8 per phone (Apollo API pricing, September 2026). Crustdata charges +1 for a business email and +2 for a phone on enrich (Crustdata pricing docs, September 2026).

Email status differs too. Crustdata's contact endpoint returns four values: deliverable, catch_all, invalid and unknown (Crustdata contact docs, September 2026). Test a sample of your own list on both before you buy.

API and developer experience

Both have a REST API, a hosted MCP server and OAuth for agents. They differ in how you pay for a call and how fast you can make them. Placeholders below stand in for real people.

Apollo, match a person by name and company domain.

curl --request POST \
  --url "https://api.apollo.io/api/v1/people/match?first_name=Jane&last_name=Doe&domain=acme.com" \
  --header "x-api-key: $APOLLO_API_KEY" \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json"

The call costs 1 to 9 credits: 1 for an email or demographics, plus 8 if a mobile is returned. Nothing is charged when no credit-consuming data is found (Apollo docs, September 2026). Bulk enrichment takes up to 10 people per request. Every plan includes API access, and limits rise with the plan (Apollo developer FAQ, September 2026).

Crustdata, enrich a person by profile URL.

curl --request POST \
  --url https://api.crustdata.com/person/enrich \
  --header "authorization: Bearer $CRUSTDATA_API_KEY" \
  --header "content-type: application/json" \
  --header "x-api-version: 2025-11-01" \
  --data '{"professional_network_profile_urls": ["https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-doe/"]}'

That returns the base profile for 1 credit (Crustdata docs, September 2026). The self-serve pricing docs bill a business email at +1 and a phone at +2 on top, so a work email is 2 credits (Crustdata pricing docs, September 2026). The enrichment reference points email and phone lookups to Contact Enrich, so confirm the cost on your key with GET /account/endpoints.

Contact Enrich needs an enterprise plan. Self-serve keys get a 403 (Crustdata contact docs, September 2026).

Rate limits are where the two split. Apollo limits are per team and per endpoint across three windows at once. Enrichment reaches 1,000 a minute on paid plans, and search allows 50,000 a day (Apollo rate limits, September 2026). Crustdata defaults to 15 a minute on person enrich and 30 on search (Crustdata rate limits, September 2026).

At those limits, 1M single lookups take about 17 hours on Apollo (1,000,000 / 1,000 a minute) and about 46 days on Crustdata (1,000,000 / 15 a minute). Crustdata's answer is batch jobs of up to 10,000 identifiers, which are asynchronous.

Pricing

Apollo bills per seat, and each seat carries a credit allowance. Crustdata bills per credit and prints no dollar price per credit. Figures use the monthly list price first, with the billed-yearly price after it.

At 10,000 work emails a month

• Apollo: 10,000 credits at 1 credit per email. Basic gives 2,500 credits a seat, so 4 seats x $65 = $260 a month, or 4 x $49 = $196 billed yearly (Apollo pricing, September 2026).
• Crustdata: 10,000 x 2 credits (1 base + 1 business email) = 20,000 credits on /person/enrich, or 10,000 credits on the enterprise-only contact endpoint. No public price per credit, so no dollar total (Crustdata pricing docs, September 2026).

At this size Apollo is the only one you can price from public pages, and you get the workspace too. A Crustdata blog post reports a lowest tier from $95 a month, but the pricing page does not list it (Crustdata blog, September 2026).

At 1M work emails a month

• Apollo: 1,000,000 credits. Professional gives 4,000 credits a seat, so 250 seats x $99 = $24,750 a month. On yearly billing, 400 Basic seats x $49 = $19,600 a month, or $235,200 a year (Apollo pricing, September 2026).
• Crustdata: 1,000,000 x 2 = 2,000,000 credits on /person/enrich, or 1,000,000 on the contact endpoint. No public 1M price (Crustdata pricing docs, September 2026).

Do not multiply Crustdata's credits by a guessed rate. Get your price per credit from sales, or call GET /account/endpoints with your key to see the credit cost on your own account.

Search is cheaper. Crustdata charges 0.03 credits a result, so 1,000,000 search results is 30,000 credits before any enrichment.

Caveats on each side. Apollo prints no price for extra credits on the pages we read, so a seats-plus-add-ons mix cannot be priced. It also does not say whether a 250-seat self-serve account is allowed, so ask for a quote. Apollo credits expire each cycle and do not roll over.

Crustdata's docs say purchased credits expire 12 months after purchase (Crustdata credits, September 2026). A Crustdata blog post from 30 July 2026 says 6 months (Crustdata blog, September 2026), so confirm the term in your dashboard before you buy in bulk.

Where Apollo wins

• A rep workspace in the same product: sequences, a dialer, lists and a Chrome extension.
• A price you can read. Seat and credit rates are public, so a 10,000-email month is $260 or less.
• Far higher enrichment limits: 1,000 a minute on paid plans against 15 on Crustdata's person enrich.
• Contact data on every plan, Free included. Crustdata gates its contact endpoint behind enterprise.
• MCP as a built-in connector in Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Replit and Cursor (Apollo MCP docs, September 2026).

Where Crustdata wins

• A larger claimed people index: 1B on its homepage, against Apollo's 240M contacts.
• Job search, social posts, live web fetch and change watchers in the same API.
• Cheap discovery. Search is 0.03 credits a result, and a contact lookup with no match is not billed.
• No seat minimums. You buy credits, not seats.
• Built for code and agents first, with a hosted MCP server that takes OAuth or an API key.

If you need volume through an API

LeadOcean is a data API and MCP server with no credits and no per-record price. It is not a sales workspace, so reps would still need a sending tool. Pro costs $499 a month flat, with unlimited searches, enrichments and lookups, and the Free plan gives 1,000 records one-off with no card. Both plans get the same REST API and 12-tool MCP server, at 100 requests per second per key. POST /v1/exports returns up to 50,000 rows per request (LeadOcean exports docs, September 2026). Compare it with Apollo and Crustdata on a list you already know, then read Apollo alternatives and pricing.

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