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

Apollo is the bigger database and a full sales workspace, so it wins for reps. Hunter is the cheaper way to find work emails by API, so it wins for developers and small teams. At 1M records, Hunter sells 1M credits for $6,900 once, and Apollo's list price is a seat count most teams will not buy.

Verdict

• Pick Apollo if reps will work leads in the same tool: sequences, a dialer, filters and a contact database with 240M contacts and 30M companies (Apollo pricing, September 2026).
• Pick Hunter if you mainly need work emails by domain or name, by API or in bulk, and you want a price per credit with no seats (Hunter pricing, September 2026).
• Pick neither if you pull people and company data by API at volume. Seat pricing and credit packs both get awkward there. LeadOcean is one option, covered below.

Side by side

Data and coverage

Apollo holds more people and more fields. Its 240M contacts and 30M companies come with firmographics, titles and a filter UI for building lists. Hunter publishes no database size. Its data is email addresses tied to domains and names, so it is narrower by design.

Hunter starts from a company domain. Domain Search lists the addresses it has found there, and Email Finder returns the likeliest address for a name. Apollo starts from an audience. You filter by title, seniority and industry first, then spend credits on contacts.

Phones are where the two differ most. Apollo charges 8 credits per phone number, against 1 for an email (Apollo API pricing, September 2026). Hunter's API responses include an optional phone_number field, but its docs list no phone endpoint (Hunter API docs, September 2026). Neither publishes a phone count, so test a sample of your own list before you buy.

API and developer experience

Both tools have a REST API on every plan, and both put a key in a header. Apollo enriches a person with POST /api/v1/people/match. Hunter finds an email with GET /v2/email-finder. 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 (Apollo API pricing, September 2026). Phones are off by default. To get one you set reveal_phone_number and supply a webhook_url, or set poll_only (Apollo docs, September 2026). Bulk enrichment takes up to 10 people per request.

Hunter, find an email by name and domain.

curl -G "https://api.hunter.io/v2/email-finder" \
  -H "X-API-KEY: $HUNTER_API_KEY" \
  --data-urlencode "domain=acme.com" \
  --data-urlencode "first_name=Jane" \
  --data-urlencode "last_name=Doe"

Hunter's call is a plain GET with a synchronous answer, and a miss costs no credit (Hunter help, September 2026). One quirk to plan for: a rate-limited call returns 403, and 429 means you ran out of credits or plan quota (Hunter API docs, September 2026).

On limits, Apollo is per team and per endpoint across three windows at once. General endpoints allow 200 a minute and 2,000 a day on Basic and Professional. Enrichment reaches 1,000 a minute on paid plans (Apollo rate limits, September 2026). Hunter limits are per endpoint, not per plan: 500 a minute on Email Finder, 300 on Email Verifier.

Both ship an official MCP server. Apollo's is a built-in connector in Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Replit and Cursor, and MCP enrichment spends the same credits (Apollo MCP docs, September 2026). Hunter's takes your API key in a header and is included on every plan (Hunter MCP, September 2026).

Pricing

Apollo bills per seat, and each seat carries a monthly credit allowance. Hunter bills per credit, and the credits sit in one pool for unlimited team members. Figures below 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).
• Hunter: Growth includes 10,000 credits for $149 a month, or $104 a month billed yearly (Hunter pricing, September 2026).

At this size Hunter is cheaper: $149 against $260 monthly, $104 against $196 yearly. Apollo's extra cost buys the rep workspace.

At 1M work emails

• 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 ($235,200 a year) (Apollo pricing, September 2026).
• Hunter: 1,000,000 Search credits on the Data Platform cost $6,900, paid once and valid 12 months, which is $0.0069 a credit (Hunter Data Platform, September 2026). Above 1M is custom, so 1M every month is a quote.

The all-in-one route costs more on Hunter. Scale is $299 a month for 25,000 credits, and credit packs cap at 180,000 per purchase (Hunter help, September 2026). At 1M, use the Data Platform.

Two caveats on Apollo. It 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.

Phone numbers change the sums. At 8 credits each, a phone pull on Apollo costs eight times an email pull.

Where Apollo wins

• A larger, richer database: 240M contacts and 30M companies, filterable by title and industry.
• A rep workspace in the same product, so lists go straight to sequences and calls.
• A higher enrichment rate limit, 1,000 a minute on paid plans against Hunter's 500 on Email Finder.
• More data per seat: titles, firmographics and phones next to the email.
• MCP available as a built-in connector in several AI clients.

Where Hunter wins

• A far lower published price at volume: $6,900 for 1M credits (one-off, valid 12 months) against $19,600 to $24,750 a month.
• Cheaper at 10,000 emails a month: $149 against $260.
• Simple credits with no seat minimums, and no charge when nothing is found.
• A cleaner API: one GET, a synchronous answer, and a key in a header.
• Bulk Email Finder takes 50,000 rows per file.
• Limits documented per endpoint, so you can plan capacity without a plan table.

If you need volume through an API

LeadOcean is a data API and MCP server with no seats and no credits. 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, and POST /v1/exports returns up to 50,000 rows per request (LeadOcean exports docs, September 2026). Compare it with Apollo and Hunter on a list you already know, then read Apollo alternatives and pricing.

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