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

Cognism and RocketReach both sell B2B contact data, but to different buyers. Cognism is a quote-only platform built on phone-verified mobiles and Do Not Call checks. RocketReach is a self-serve contact finder with a free tier, public monthly prices and a credit-based API.

Verdict

• Pick Cognism if your reps cold-call and want phone-verified mobiles and Do Not Call cross-referencing. You must be fine buying through a quote.
• Pick RocketReach if you want to start without a sales call, with a free plan and monthly prices you can read. It suits contact lookups for a small team.
• Pick neither if you need volume through an API at a price you can read. Neither publishes a price at 1M records. LeadOcean is one option: Pro is $499 a month, flat, with no credits.

Side by side

Data and coverage

Neither vendor gives a clean database size, so you cannot rank them on paper. Cognism's FAQ says "hundreds of millions" of profiles and adds that it does not usually make general coverage claims (Cognism FAQ, September 2026). RocketReach's docs give no people count, so this page quotes none.

RocketReach's docs also disagree with each other on companies. The docs home says 60M+ and the API account page says 35M. Treat both as unconfirmed until you ask.

Cognism does publish one phone number. It claims over 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). Verified is a smaller set than every number a database holds. It is also the set a rep can dial with fewer wrong numbers.

RocketReach grades emails instead. Credits are charged on an A or A- grade, and no credit is charged when nothing is found or the grade is B or F. Re-looking up a profile is free while your plan is active (RocketReach FAQ, September 2026).

Test on your own list before you buy. Run the same 30 people, in your target countries, through both. Compare match rate and bounce rate.

API and developer experience

Both have a REST API and an official MCP server, and both gate access. Cognism says API and MCP access need a package that includes it. RocketReach says to email its API team to set up an API plan (RocketReach rate limits, September 2026).

Cognism uses OAuth 2.0 client credentials. You create a client_id and client_secret under Settings, M2M Connect, and exchange them for a token that lasts 1,200 seconds (Cognism authentication, September 2026). Search is a POST with a filter body. The contacts view returns contact details:

curl -X POST "https://api.cognism.com/persons/filter?limit=100&view=contacts" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $COGNISM_ACCESS_TOKEN" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{"person":{"jobTitle":{"include":["Marketing"]},"seniority":{"include":["Vice President"]}}}'

The person search schema has 13 person filter fields and 21 company filter fields (Cognism API reference, September 2026). Search tokens are charged at 1 per record returned, and credits at 1 per person record with the contacts view (Cognism credits and search tokens, September 2026).

RocketReach uses an API key header and a GET. A lookup spends export credits (RocketReach People Lookup, September 2026):

curl --request GET \
  --url "https://api.rocketreach.co/api/v2/person/lookup?linkedin_url=www.linkedin.com/in/jane-doe" \
  --header "Api-Key: $ROCKETREACH_API_KEY"

The response can carry a status of progress. You then poll the status endpoint or register a webhook to get the fully verified emails.

On limits, Cognism's 500 requests a minute is about 8 a second, per operation. RocketReach allows 10 a second globally, but each plan also caps the minute. Person lookup is 15 a minute on Essentials, 50 on Pro, 100 on Ultimate and 250 on Custom (RocketReach rate limits, September 2026). Monthly person lookups top out at 5,000, 20,000, 50,000 and 200,000 on the same four plans.

On MCP, Cognism's 15 tools map one to one onto its API. RocketReach's 9 tools include person_search, person_lookup and email_verify.

Pricing

RocketReach prints monthly prices. Cognism prints none. That decides which one you can budget before a sales call.

The monthly list prices below are as reported by G2, which copies them from RocketReach's pricing page (G2, September 2026).

RocketReach also sells yearly plans, which this page does not price. The lookup caps come from the RocketReach rate limits page.

RocketReach publishes no dollar price per Universal Credit and no API plan price. Credit costs: 1 per page of up to 100 in person search, 2 for a professional email, 3 for a personal email, 6 for a phone (RocketReach credits, September 2026).

Cognism lists Standard and Pro, each with 5 seats, and no dollar amount. One credit reveals one contact. Each seat carries an allocation of unpublished size, and extra credits have no published price (Cognism pricing, September 2026).

10,000 records a month

• Cognism: 10,000 credits for 10,000 revealed contacts, plus search tokens at 1 per record returned. No public price.
• RocketReach, work emails by API: 10,000 x 2 = 20,000 credits. That fits under the 20,000 monthly lookup cap on Pro, but the credit price is unpublished.
• RocketReach in the app: 10,000 exports is 10 times Ultimate's 1,000 a month (G2, reported). No public price for that volume.

1M records a month

• Cognism: No public 1M price. It needs 1,000,000 credits plus search tokens, and no list price exists to multiply. At 100 records a page, 1M records is 10,000 search calls, about 20 minutes at 500 requests a minute.
• RocketReach: No public 1M price. 1,000,000 work emails is 2,000,000 credits, and no dollar price per credit exists to multiply. The highest published person lookup cap is 200,000 a month, so the published ceiling is five months of lookups.

Get a written quote from each at your volume. Ask both what a miss costs, and whether API and MCP calls draw on the same pool as the app.

Where Cognism wins

• Phone-verified mobiles. Cognism claims 10M+ phone-verified contacts and on-demand verification in under 48 hours (Cognism Diamond Data, September 2026).
• Do Not Call checks. It cross-references Do Not Call lists in 15 territories. That matters if you cold-call across borders.
• Intent data. Pro adds Bombora Company Surge topics, with up to 12 from over 11,000 (Cognism pricing, September 2026).
• Deeper pagination. Cursor pagination runs to 100,000 records per journey (Cognism pagination, September 2026).
• One limit. 500 requests a minute per operation, instead of a table that changes by plan.

Where RocketReach wins

• You can start today. A free plan and monthly prices, no quote and no call.
• Lower entry cost. $69 a month for Essentials, reported, against a quote with five seats.
• Email grading. Credits are charged only on A or A- grade emails, and re-lookups are free while the plan is active.
• Standalone verification. Email verification is its own API call and an MCP tool, email_verify (RocketReach MCP docs, September 2026).
• Documented credit costs. Every action has a credit price in the docs, even though the dollar price is not published.

If you need volume through an API

Neither tool prints a price at 1M records, and both meter by credit. LeadOcean is a data API and MCP server with a flat price. The Free plan gives 1,000 records, one-off, with no card, and Pro is $499 a month with no credits and no per-record price.

It is REST and MCP on every plan, with 100 requests per second per key. POST /v1/exports returns up to 50,000 rows per request, so a 1M-row pull is 20 calls over two days (LeadOcean exports docs, September 2026). Past the fair-usage line a very large month is paced down, not cut off.

LeadOcean has no Chrome extension or dialer. It is a data source for code and agents, not a rep tool. Compare plans on the pricing page.

FAQ