Cognism vs Clearbit (Breeze Intelligence) (2026): Data, Pricing and API Compared

Cognism wins for reps who dial mobiles, especially in Europe. Clearbit (Breeze Intelligence) wins for teams that already run HubSpot and want records filled in. At 1M records a month neither publishes a price, so you will need a quote from Cognism and a sales answer from HubSpot.

Verdict

• Pick Cognism if your team phones people and wants verified mobiles. It claims 10M+ phone-verified contacts and a search you can run for new people (Cognism Diamond Data, September 2026).
• Pick Clearbit (Breeze Intelligence) if your contacts and companies already sit in HubSpot and you want them enriched without writing code (HubSpot docs, September 2026).
• Pick neither if you pull people and company data by API at volume. A seat quote and a CRM plan both price something you do not need. LeadOcean is one option, covered below.

Side by side

Both vendors were checked in September 2026. Cognism changes packages and HubSpot renames and reprices often, so confirm before you buy.

Data and coverage

Cognism is a database you search. Clearbit is a service that fills in records you already hold. That gap matters more than any count, because only one of them can answer "find me VPs of Sales in Germany".

Cognism does not state a total. Its FAQ says "hundreds of millions" of profiles and adds that it does not usually make general coverage claims (Cognism FAQ, September 2026). Its one hard number is phones: 10M+ phone-verified contacts, on-demand verification in under 48 hours, and Do Not Call cross-referencing in 15 territories (Cognism Diamond Data, September 2026).

HubSpot's docs say contact enrichment uses a first name, last name and work email, and company enrichment uses a domain (HubSpot docs, September 2026). Personal addresses are not enriched, and bulk enrichment from an index page runs 100 records at a time (HubSpot docs, September 2026). It adds job title, seniority and location to a contact. It does not find new people.

On company data Clearbit is stronger. Its homepage lists NAICS, GICS and SIC codes, parent and subsidiary mapping, and normalised role and seniority (Clearbit, September 2026). Neither vendor publishes an email count, so test a sample of your own list in both before you commit.

API and developer experience

Cognism has a documented API and MCP server, but both need a package that includes them. Clearbit's API docs redirect to a sign-in page, so you cannot read them first. That alone decides it for a developer who wants to check a request before a sales call.

Cognism authenticates with OAuth 2.0 client credentials from Settings, M2M Connect. Tokens last 1,200 seconds, and the base URL is https://api.cognism.com (Cognism auth docs, September 2026). A people search looks like this (Cognism API reference, September 2026):

curl --request POST \
  --url "https://api.cognism.com/persons/filter?limit=10" \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer $COGNISM_ACCESS_TOKEN" \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --data '{
    "person": {
      "jobTitle": { "include": ["VP Sales"], "match": "ONCE" }
    }
  }'

Search is metered in tokens, 1 per record returned. Credits are charged at 1 per person record returned with the contacts view (Cognism credits docs, September 2026). The request schema has 13 person filter fields and 21 company filter fields. The MCP server has 15 tools that map one to one onto the API and use the same tokens and credits (Cognism MCP docs, September 2026).

Clearbit has no public request to show. Its API docs sit behind a sign-in (Clearbit docs, September 2026), and new sign-ups since December 4, 2023 need a HubSpot account (Clearbit release notes, September 2026). Inside HubSpot, enrichment is a setting. A Super Admin turns on automatic enrichment, and it is off by default (HubSpot docs, September 2026).

On limits, Cognism allows 500 requests a minute per account, counted separately for search, count and dictionary calls, in a 60-second window. A 429 returns Retry-After (Cognism rate limits, September 2026). Clearbit publishes no rate limit. HubSpot's MCP server reads and writes CRM records such as contacts and deals, and we found no MCP server for enrichment itself (HubSpot MCP, September 2026).

Pricing

Cognism sells credits and seats on a quote. Clearbit sells nothing on its own, because enrichment rides on a HubSpot plan. Both cost models hide the number you want, which is the price of one more record.

At 10,000 work emails a month

• Cognism: 10,000 credits at 1 credit per revealed contact, plus search tokens for the records you page through. No price per credit or per seat is published, so the cost is a quote (Cognism pricing, September 2026).
• Clearbit: no per-record price. You pay the HubSpot plan, and enrichment uses no HubSpot Credits (HubSpot docs, September 2026). From an index page that is 100 batches of 100 records. Imports, segments and workflows take larger jobs.

Enrichment comes with any HubSpot hub from Starter up (HubSpot docs, October 2026). HubSpot prices by seat, and its pricing page showed us Canadian dollars, so we give no USD figure (HubSpot pricing, October 2026). Whether enrichment is cheap depends on whether you would buy that plan anyway.

At 1M work emails a month

• Cognism: 1,000,000 credits, plus search tokens per record returned. No list price exists to multiply, so there is no arithmetic to show. No public 1M price. The highest public tier is Pro with 5 seats, quote only.
• Clearbit: No public 1M price. HubSpot publishes no per-record rate and no monthly volume ceiling to size against.

Cognism does give one sizing number. At 100 records a page and 500 search calls a minute, 1M records is 10,000 calls, about 20 minutes of calls (Cognism rate limits, September 2026). The calls are quick. The credits are the cost.

Which one you pick comes down to who touches the data. If reps dial from a Cognism seat, the credit cost is the price of a call list. If a HubSpot admin keeps the CRM clean, the enrichment is a side effect of a plan you already pay for. If a script or an agent calls the data, neither model fits well. A seat has no place in a pipeline, and a CRM plan has no key to hand over.

Ask Cognism for a written quote at your monthly volume, with the credit price and what happens when you run out. Ask HubSpot sales for the enrichment ceiling on your plan before you plan a large run.

Where Cognism wins

• Phone-verified mobiles. Cognism claims 10M+, with on-demand verification and Do Not Call cross-referencing in 15 territories.
• A searchable database. You can find people you do not hold yet, not only fill in old records.
• A documented API and MCP server, with published limits: 500 requests a minute per operation.
• Intent data on the Pro plan, using Bombora Company Surge with up to 12 topics (Cognism pricing, September 2026).

Where Clearbit (Breeze Intelligence) wins

• Enrichment inside HubSpot. Automatic enrichment fills new records without anyone writing code.
• Richer company data: NAICS, GICS and SIC codes plus parent and subsidiary mapping.
• No separate vendor contract if you already own a HubSpot plan.
• Form shortening, so a form asks only for the fields it cannot enrich.

If you need volume through an API

LeadOcean is a data API and MCP server with no seats, no credits and no CRM in front of it. Pro costs $499 a month flat, and Free gives 1,000 records one-off with no card (LeadOcean pricing, September 2026). 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). It is not a sales workspace. For the Cognism side, see the Cognism alternative and pricing.

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