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

Apollo.io and Dealfront both sell B2B contact data, but they are built for different jobs. Apollo is a prospecting workspace that charges per seat. Dealfront has traded as Leadfeeder since March 24, 2026. It is a website-visitor platform that also sells contacts for credits (Leadfeeder rebrand FAQ, September 2026).

Verdict

• Pick Apollo if reps need sequences and a dialer next to the data, or if you want a 1M price you can read. Its email credit works out to about $0.02 to $0.03, and the API works on every plan.
• Pick Dealfront if the main job is seeing which companies visit your site, with European coverage and CRM push. Contacts are an add-on, and the API and MCP server start on its paid plans.
• Pick neither if you need volume through an API at a price you can read. Apollo at 1M records is hundreds of seats, and Dealfront has no public 1M price. LeadOcean is one option: Pro is $499 a month, flat.

Side by side

Data and coverage

Dealfront claims 400M verified contacts and 60M companies. Apollo lists 240M contacts and 30M companies. Both are the vendors' own numbers, and Dealfront does not define "verified contact" on its page.

Neither vendor publishes how many contacts carry an email or a phone number. You cannot compare coverage on paper. Test on your own list before you buy.

The two also sell different things around the contacts. Apollo adds sequences, a dialer, job postings and its own website-visitor feature, with contacts for US visitors only (Apollo pricing, September 2026). Dealfront's core is Web Visitors, which identifies companies from your own site traffic. Plans are sized by identified companies a month, from 100 on Lite (Leadfeeder pricing, September 2026).

Phones cost more at Apollo on paper. A phone number is 8 credits against 1 for an email, and it arrives by webhook or poll (Apollo docs, October 2026). Dealfront charges 1 credit for email plus phone, and email alone is 0.2 credit. A credit unlocks that record for 12 months for the whole account (Leadfeeder credits help, September 2026).

Run the same 500 people through each free plan and compare the match rate. Both free plans are small. Apollo gives 75 credits a month, and Dealfront's Lite gives 20 credits and no API.

API and developer experience

Both have REST APIs and an official MCP server. Apollo is one call per person with an x-api-key header. Dealfront works in jobs, takes an account_id on most endpoints, and is built around the platform's account and credit pool.

Apollo's enrichment call is POST /api/v1/people/match (Apollo docs, October 2026):

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"

The call costs 1 to 9 credits: 1 for an email, plus 8 if a mobile comes back. A request that finds nothing billable costs 0. Phones are off by default. You set reveal_phone_number and a webhook URL, or poll_only. Bulk enrichment takes up to 10 people per request (Apollo rate limits, September 2026).

Dealfront's contact data comes from an asynchronous job. You send contact IDs, get a 202 with a job ID, and poll for the result. The IDs come from POST /v1/contacts/search, which costs no credits (Leadfeeder OpenAPI, October 2026).

curl --request POST \
  --url "https://api.leadfeeder.com/v1/contacts/find-contact-data-jobs?account_id=123456" \
  --header "X-Api-Key: $LEADFEEDER_API_KEY" \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --data '{"data":{"type":"find_contact_data_job","attributes":{"contact_ids":["1515122"],"enrichment_type":"email_only"}}}'

enrichment_type is email_only or full, and full is the default. A job takes up to 100 contact IDs, or a list_id for a whole list. Credits are spent as contacts are enriched (Leadfeeder OpenAPI, October 2026). Auth is an X-Api-Key header or OAuth 2.0 (Leadfeeder API docs, September 2026).

Rate limits differ in shape. Apollo's are per team and per endpoint, in three windows at once, and paid plans reach 1,000 enrichment requests a minute. Dealfront's are 10 requests a second per key with a monthly quota of 100,000 requests, which the account manager can raise (Apollo rate limits; Leadfeeder API docs, September 2026).

On MCP, both have hosted servers with OAuth. Apollo's works on any plan, and enrichment spends the same credits as the API. Dealfront's is in beta and built around website visits, ICP matching and finding contacts at target accounts. It follows the same credit rules as its API (Leadfeeder MCP docs, October 2026; Apollo MCP docs, September 2026).

Pricing

Both tools meter by credit, and neither lets you buy a record at a posted price. Apollo's credits come with seats. Dealfront's come with the plan tier. 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 Dealfront, 10,000 email-only contacts at 0.2 credit is 2,000 credits. Activate tops out at 1,500 credits ($729 a month billed annually, $1,041 billed monthly), so you land in Scale. Scale runs from 1,000 credits at $599 a month to 5,500 credits at $2,089, billed annually (Leadfeeder pricing, September 2026).

We could not read a price for the 2,000-credit step, so we give the range: it sits between $599 and $2,089 a month. With phones at 1 credit each, 10,000 contacts is 10,000 credits, which is more than Scale's top tier holds in a month.

Apollo's $196 to $297 is well below that range, but the units differ. A Dealfront credit unlocks a record for 12 months, and a Dealfront plan also buys website-visitor identification. Apollo's price buys seats and credits, and phones cost extra.

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 Dealfront: no public 1M price. Dealfront publishes no price per extra credit. 1M email-only contacts is 200,000 credits, and Scale's ceiling is 5,500 credits a month, about 36 months of the top tier. With phones it is 1,000,000 credits (Leadfeeder pricing; credits help, September 2026).

Batching keeps the request count manageable. At 100 contact IDs a job, 1M contacts is 10,000 job requests, well under the 100,000 monthly cap. Calling one contact at a time would hit it. Credits are the real limit, and above Scale it is an Enterprise quote.

Where Apollo.io wins

• A workspace. Sequences, a dialer, lists and deal tracking sit in the same product as the data. Dealfront pushes to your CRM instead.
• A price you can read at 1M. It is a large number, but it is published. Dealfront's is not.
• Low cost per email at small scale. About $0.02 to $0.03 per email credit, before phones.
• API on every plan. Free included, with an MCP server that works on any plan too.

Where Dealfront wins

• Website visitor identification. It shows which companies visit your site, worldwide. It is the core of the product and the reason most teams buy it.
• Fewer credits per email. 0.2 credit for an email-only contact against Apollo's 1, and a record you unlocked stays free for 12 months.
• European focus. Its data comes from trade registers and chambers of commerce, and it is built and hosted in the EU (Leadfeeder, October 2026).
• No seats. Plans are sized by identified companies and credits, so a larger team does not multiply the bill.

If you need volume through an API

We build LeadOcean, so weigh this section accordingly. LeadOcean holds 693M people and 63M companies, and you reach them over REST and MCP. 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). It has no sequencer, dialer or visitor tracking. If your reps live in Apollo or you need visitor identification, keep those and compare the data source. See the Apollo alternative page for a line-by-line version.

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