BlitzAPI vs Cognism (2026): Data, Pricing and API Compared

BlitzAPI is the better buy when you want a public price and an API you can call today. Cognism is the better buy when your reps dial mobiles in Europe and can live with a quote. Only BlitzAPI prints a price, though its 1M figure holds for accounts opened by September 30, 2026.

Verdict

• Pick BlitzAPI if you are a developer or a data team that enriches by API and wants flat monthly pricing. Verified work emails start on Plus at $499 a month. US phones need Full at $599.
• Pick Cognism if your team phones buyers, especially in Europe, and wants phone-verified mobiles and Do Not Call checks. Expect a sales call before you see a number.
• Pick neither if you want a CSV export or an MCP server that returns records. BlitzAPI documents no export, and its MCP server reads docs only. LeadOcean Pro is $499 a month with both, and it has no rep workspace.

Side by side

All figures checked in September 2026. Where a vendor prints nothing, the cell says "Not published".

Data and coverage

BlitzAPI publishes sizes and Cognism does not. BlitzAPI lists 550M+ profiles, 65M+ companies, 65M+ verified work emails and 45M+ US phone numbers (BlitzAPI quality docs, September 2026). Cognism's FAQ says "hundreds of millions" of profiles and adds that it does not usually make general coverage claims (Cognism FAQ, September 2026).

Phones are where the two split. BlitzAPI phone coverage is US only, and phone endpoints are not available on the free trial (BlitzAPI docs, September 2026). Cognism claims over 10M phone-verified contacts worldwide, on-demand verification in under 48 hours and Do Not Call cross-referencing in 15 territories (Cognism Diamond Data, September 2026).

The two claims do not compare cleanly. One is a count of US numbers and the other is a count of verified mobiles with no country split. A team dialing outside the US should not read 45M as coverage for its market.

Neither vendor publishes a country split for emails. If you need one region, test it on a real list before you sign.

The result unit differs. One BlitzAPI result is one person, company, email, phone or job posting returned, and a call that finds nothing counts nothing (BlitzAPI pricing, September 2026). One Cognism credit is one revealed contact, and viewing it again is free unless the contact changes jobs (Cognism pricing, September 2026).

BlitzAPI also lists 100M+ job postings (BlitzAPI quality docs, September 2026). Cognism's search schema has 13 person filters and 21 company filters, including an intent filter (Cognism API reference, September 2026).

API and developer experience

BlitzAPI is self-serve and Cognism is gated. Every BlitzAPI account starts with 1,000 free credits and no card, and you pass a key in the x-api-key header (BlitzAPI docs, September 2026). Cognism needs a package with API access and uses OAuth 2.0 client credentials, with tokens that last 20 minutes (Cognism authentication, September 2026).

BlitzAPI work email lookup, from its docs. It takes a LinkedIn profile URL and costs 1 record (BlitzAPI docs, September 2026).

curl --request POST \
  --url https://api.blitz-api.ai/v2/enrichment/email \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --header 'x-api-key: '"$BLITZAPI_API_KEY" \
  --data '{"person_linkedin_url":"https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-doe"}'

Cognism person search, from its docs. You first exchange your client ID and secret for a bearer token, then post filters (Cognism API reference, September 2026).

curl --request POST \
  --url 'https://api.cognism.com/persons/filter?limit=10' \
  --header 'authorization: Bearer '"$COGNISM_TOKEN" \
  --header 'content-type: application/json' \
  --data '{"person":{"jobTitle":{"include":["Marketing Manager"],"match":"ONCE"},"location":{"country":{"include":["Ireland"]}}}}'

The shapes differ. BlitzAPI starts from a person you already know and returns an email. Cognism starts from filters and returns a page of people, with contact details on a separate view that spends credits.

Paging differs. BlitzAPI Find People returns 50 results a page and stops at 50,000 per query (BlitzAPI docs, September 2026). Cognism cursor paging runs to 100,000 records per journey, with pages of 1 to 100 (Cognism pagination, September 2026).

Rate limits differ in shape. BlitzAPI limits per endpoint: 50 requests a second on plans created before September 30, and 5 a second standard (BlitzAPI pricing, September 2026). Cognism allows 500 a minute per account per operation in a fixed 60-second window, and sets more per package (Cognism rate limits, September 2026).

Time matters at volume. One million lookups at 50 a second is 20,000 seconds, about 5.6 hours. At 5 a second it is 200,000 seconds, about 2.3 days.

MCP is the sharpest gap. BlitzAPI's MCP server gives an AI tool live access to the API documentation, not to records (BlitzAPI MCP docs, September 2026). Cognism's server has 15 tools that map one to one onto the API, on the same tokens and credits (Cognism MCP, September 2026).

Pricing

BlitzAPI prints every price and Cognism prints none. The worked example below is 10,000 and 1M work-email lookups a month, on monthly list price. BlitzAPI publishes no billed-yearly figure (BlitzAPI pricing, September 2026).

BlitzAPI arithmetic. Plus adds verified work emails for $499 a month. For accounts opened by September 30, 2026, 1M results sit under the 15,000,000 results a month fair use line, so one plan covers both rows (BlitzAPI pricing, September 2026). Only emails actually found count, so 1M lookups return at most 1M results. Core at $399 does not include emails.

Phones cost more. US phone numbers need Full at $599 a month (BlitzAPI pricing, September 2026). Core, Plus and Full carry no SLA (BlitzAPI docs, September 2026). An SLA comes with Blitz Embedded, from $2,000 a month on an annual agreement (BlitzAPI pricing, September 2026).

Read the dates before you rely on $499. The 50 requests a second and 15,000,000 results a month apply to one group. That group is accounts whose first subscription takes effect by September 30, 2026 (BlitzAPI Terms, September 2026). For later accounts the pricing page still lists $399, $499 and $599 but no fair use volume (BlitzAPI pricing, October 2026). There is no public price above 15,000,000 results.

Cognism arithmetic stops at the credit, because no price exists to multiply. One credit is one revealed contact, each seat includes an allocation and you can buy more, but no allocation or credit price is published (Cognism pricing, September 2026). Search also spends tokens, 1 per record returned. At the 500 a minute limit and 100 records a page, 1M records is 10,000 search calls, about 20 minutes of calls (Cognism credits, September 2026). Cognism's docs disagree on count calls: the credits page says 1 search token, the Introduction and Endpoints pages say free.

Where BlitzAPI wins

• A price you can read. Three flat plans on one page, so a buyer can size a purchase before talking to anyone (BlitzAPI pricing, September 2026).
• No seats. A one-person team buys one plan. Cognism's Standard and Pro plans each include 5 seats.
• Self-serve start. 1,000 free credits and no card, then a key and a request.
• Job postings. 100M+ postings sit in the same API as people and companies.

Where Cognism wins

• Phone-verified mobiles. A claimed 10M+ phone-verified contacts, with on-demand verification in under 48 hours, is the reason to pay (Cognism Diamond Data, September 2026).
• Do Not Call checks. Cognism cross-references DNC lists in 15 territories. A team that cold-calls needs that.
• An MCP server that returns records. 15 tools covering search, count, dictionary lookups and settings, on the same credits as the API (Cognism MCP, September 2026).
• Intent on Pro. Intent data uses Bombora Company Surge, with up to 12 topics from over 11,000 (Cognism pricing, September 2026).

If you need volume through an API

LeadOcean is the data layer only, with no credits and no per-record price. The Free plan gives 1,000 records one-off with no card, and Pro is $499 a month flat. Both get the same REST API, a 12-tool MCP server that returns records, and POST /v1/exports for bulk CSV, up to 50,000 rows a request. The dataset holds 693M people, 366M with an email and 166M with a phone, and the limit is 100 requests per second per key. It has no rep workspace. See pricing for the fair-use terms.

FAQ