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

Apollo is the bigger database and a full sales workspace, so it wins for reps. Prospeo is the cheaper way to buy verified emails and mobiles by credit, so it wins for small teams and light API use. At 1M records a month Prospeo's list price is lower, but neither tool has a simple 1M plan.

Verdict

• Pick Apollo if reps will work leads in the same tool: sequences, a dialer, filters and a database of 240M contacts and 30M companies (Apollo pricing, September 2026).
• Pick Prospeo if you mainly need verified work emails and mobiles, by API or Chrome extension, and you want to pay only for matches (Prospeo help center, September 2026).
• Pick neither if you pull people and company data by API at volume. Seats and credits 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 interface for building lists. Prospeo's API docs claim 200M+ contacts and 30M+ companies, and its homepage counts 143M verified emails, so the two are closer in size than in focus.

The focus is the difference. Apollo starts from an audience: filter by title, seniority and industry, then spend credits on the contacts you want. Prospeo starts from a person you already know. You send a name and a company, or a LinkedIn URL, and it returns a profile, a verified email and, if you ask, a mobile.

Prospeo charges only for verified emails and for matches, and re-enriching the same record within 90 days is free (Prospeo help center, September 2026). Apollo also bills one credit per email it can verify. On phones both charge a premium: 8 credits at Apollo, 10 at Prospeo. 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 and an official MCP server. Apollo enriches a person with POST /api/v1/people/match. Prospeo enriches with POST /enrich-person. 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. 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.

Prospeo, enrich a person by name and company website.

curl -X POST "https://api.prospeo.io/enrich-person" \
  -H "X-KEY: $PROSPEO_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"only_verified_email": true, "data": {"first_name": "Jane", "last_name": "Doe", "company_website": "acme.com"}}'

The response is synchronous, and only_verified_email and enrich_mobile control when credits are spent (Prospeo enrich docs, September 2026). Prospeo's own docs advise the bulk endpoint, up to 50 people per request, for speed.

Limits work differently. Apollo limits are 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, and enrichment reaches 1,000 a minute on paid plans (Apollo rate limits, September 2026). Prospeo's depend on the plan. Enrich is capped at 2,000 requests a day on Starter, 5,000 on Growth and 500,000 on Pro (Prospeo rate limits, September 2026).

Free plan API access is the one place Prospeo's own pages disagree. The pricing table shows no public API on Free, while the help center lists limited API access on Free (Prospeo help center, September 2026). Test a free key before you plan around it.

Pricing

Both tools sell credits on a per-seat plan, so cost scales with volume. The worked example uses work emails only, one credit each, every lookup a hit. Mobiles cost 8 credits at Apollo and 10 at Prospeo, so a phone pull costs far more on both. Prices are monthly list first, billed-yearly after.

10,000 records a month

• Apollo: Basic gives 2,500 credits a seat a month, so 10,000 / 2,500 = 4 seats x $65 = $260 a month. Billed yearly, 4 seats x $49 = $196 a month (Apollo pricing, September 2026).
• Prospeo: one Growth seat gives 5,000 credits for $99. The 5,000-credit add-on is $90. That is 10,000 credits for $189 a month. Billed yearly, 2 Growth seats at $74 give 10,000 credits a month for $148 (Prospeo pricing, September 2026).

1M records a month

• Apollo: 1,000,000 credits / 4,000 per Professional seat = 250 seats x $99 = $24,750 a month. Billed yearly, 1,000,000 / 2,500 per Basic seat = 400 seats x $49 = $19,600 a month, or $235,200 a year (Apollo pricing, September 2026).
• Prospeo: (1,000,000 - 350,000 add-on credits) / 15,000 per Pro seat = 44 seats x $249 = $10,956, plus the 350,000-credit add-on at $3,500. That is 1,010,000 credits for $14,456 a month. Billed yearly, 3 Pro seats at $2,241 plus the 500,000-credit yearly add-on at $4,500 is $11,223 once, with 1,040,000 credits upfront. For a steady 1M every month on yearly billing, 67 Pro seats is $12,529 a month, $150,348 billed yearly (Prospeo pricing, September 2026).

Apollo prints no price for extra credits, so a cheaper seats-plus-add-ons path cannot be priced. Prospeo publishes nothing above 350,000 add-on credits a month or 500,000 a year, and extended pricing is enabled on request (Prospeo help center, September 2026). Credits expire at the end of each cycle on both. Neither confirms that self-serve allows 250 or 400 seats, so ask both for a quote at 1M.

The practical split is simple. Below about 20,000 emails a month, both cost a few hundred dollars and the choice is about workflow, not price. Above 100,000, you are buying dozens of seats on either tool, and a quote from sales will beat the list arithmetic. In between, Prospeo's add-ons give it the lower published cost per email.

Where Apollo wins

Apollo is a workspace for reps. Lists, tasks, a unified inbox, deal tracking and a Chrome extension sit in one app. Sequences are on every plan, and the dialer bills 1 credit per 30 seconds in the US (Apollo pricing, September 2026).

It also adds intent topics and job change enrichment on paid plans, and its Free plan gives an individual seller real access with no card. If your team prospects and sends from one tool, Apollo does more of the job.

Where Prospeo wins

Prospeo is cheaper at small and medium volume, and the cost is easy to read. One verified email is 1 credit, a miss is free, and a repeat lookup within 90 days is free (Prospeo help center, September 2026). A solo user pays $49 for 2,000 credits.

It has a Chrome extension on every plan, and HubSpot and Salesforce sync on Growth and Pro (Prospeo pricing, September 2026). Its published price at 1M is also lower: $14,456 a month against Apollo's $24,750 on monthly billing. Prospeo is the narrower tool, and for finding contact details that is an advantage.

If you need volume through an API

LeadOcean is a people and company data API with a hosted MCP server, with no seats and no credits. Free gives 1,000 records one-off with no card, and Pro is $499 a month flat with whole-database access over REST and MCP. Export up to 50,000 rows per request with POST /v1/exports, and call count_leads first because counts are free. It is only the data layer, with no rep workspace, sequencer or Chrome extension, so reps who prospect all day should still use Apollo or Prospeo. See pricing.

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