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

Cognism is the pick for reps who dial mobiles in Europe, and SalesIntel is the pick for US teams that want human-verified contacts under one contract. Neither tool publishes a price, so at 1M records both are a quote.

Verdict

• Pick Cognism if your reps phone buyers in Europe and want phone-verified mobiles, intent on the Pro plan, and an MCP server for Claude or Cursor. It suits sales teams that live in its app (Cognism, September 2026).
• Pick SalesIntel if you want human-verified contacts, unlimited export and enrichment credits per user, and a customer success manager on a quoted annual contract (SalesIntel pricing, September 2026).
• Pick neither if you pull people and company data by API at volume and want one flat monthly bill. LeadOcean is one option, covered below.

Side by side

Figures were checked in September 2026. Both vendors change plans and data counts, so confirm on their pages before you buy.

Data and coverage

Neither vendor publishes a database total you can test. Cognism says "hundreds of millions" of company and contact profiles and adds that it does not usually make general coverage claims (Cognism FAQ, September 2026). SalesIntel claims 200M+ verified contacts and 2,000+ human researchers on its homepage (SalesIntel, September 2026).

SalesIntel contradicts itself. Its contacts API page says 120 million contacts, calls them machine verified, and adds 18 million US decision-makers (SalesIntel API page, September 2026). The gap likely separates human-verified from machine-verified records, but the pages do not say so.

On phones, both lead with verification. Cognism 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). SalesIntel claims 54M+ verified mobile numbers. These are different claims. Cognism counts phone-verified numbers, and SalesIntel counts numbers its researchers checked.

On accuracy, SalesIntel states 95% on a 90-day refresh cycle (SalesIntel, September 2026), and its terms guarantee 95% for human-verified name and company data (SalesIntel terms, September 2026). Cognism publishes no accuracy percentage on its pricing page. We did not test either claim.

Geography is the clearest split. Cognism's homepage calls it "Europe's most trusted B2B data", and it screens against Do Not Call lists (Cognism, September 2026). SalesIntel's API page stresses US decision-makers and has an is_international filter to separate US and non-US contacts (SalesIntel people API, September 2026).

API and developer experience

Cognism asks for more setup, and SalesIntel asks you to wait for a key. Cognism needs client credentials from Settings, then a bearer token every 20 minutes. SalesIntel takes one header, but your success team issues the key. Both examples use placeholders.

Cognism: get a token, then search people with contact details.

curl --request POST \
  --url https://cognism-production.eu.auth0.com/oauth/token \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{"grant_type":"client_credentials","client_id":"YOUR_CLIENT_ID","client_secret":"YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET","audience":"https://api.cognism.com"}'

curl --request POST \
  --url "https://api.cognism.com/persons/filter?limit=25&view=contacts" \
  --header "authorization: Bearer $COGNISM_TOKEN" \
  --header "content-type: application/json" \
  --data '{"person":{"jobTitle":{"include":["VP Sales"],"match":"ONCE","exact":true}}}'

Cognism charges one search token per record returned. Asking for view=contacts also charges one credit per person returned, so a limit of 100 can spend 100 credits in one call (Cognism credits docs, September 2026). The people schema has 13 person filter fields and the company schema has 21 (Cognism API reference, September 2026).

SalesIntel: look up one contact by email.

curl --request GET \
  --url "https://api.salesintel.io/service/people?email=jane.doe@acme.com" \
  --header "X-CB-ApiKey: $SALESINTEL_API_KEY" \
  --header "Accept: application/json"

Credits are charged per record returned, not per request. A 402 means you are out of credits, and a 403 means your account lacks permission (SalesIntel API docs, September 2026). A /service/people/preview route returns masked contacts and takes no credits.

Throughput is lower than the headline limits suggest. Cognism allows 500 search calls a minute, and its cursor paging stops at 100,000 records per journey. SalesIntel allows 1,800 calls a minute per user, but a result set stops at 10,000 records.

For agents, only Cognism ships an MCP server. SalesIntel's developer docs list REST, webhooks and a Snowflake share. Its terms also bar extracting its materials with crawlers, bots, scripts or intelligent agents, in section 1.5(c) (SalesIntel terms, September 2026). SalesIntel does not say publicly how that applies to API use, so ask before you wire an agent to it.

One Cognism docs conflict is open. The Credits page says each count call costs one search token, while its Introduction and MCP tool pages say counts are free (Cognism docs, September 2026). Ask your account team which one bills.

Pricing

Neither vendor publishes a dollar price, so the worked examples below show units, not invoices. Prices are monthly list first, and neither vendor shows a billed-yearly figure.

Cognism lists Standard and Pro, each with 5 seats, and says pricing is tailored to product, team setup and usage. Each seat includes a credit allocation, more credits can be bought, and no allocation size or credit price is published (Cognism pricing, September 2026).

SalesIntel lists unlimited export and enrichment credits per user and a "Request Pricing" button. The terms say a user cannot reveal more than 3000 companies or contacts per month (SalesIntel terms, September 2026). No contract value is published.

At 10,000 records a month.

• Cognism: 10,000 credits if every record is a revealed contact, plus 10,000 search tokens. At 100 records a page that is 100 search calls. No public price.
• SalesIntel: 10,000 / 3,000 = 3.33, so 4 users at the reveal cap in the app. By API it is 10,000 credits and 10,000 / 50 = 200 calls, inside one result set. No public price.
• LeadOcean Pro: $499 a month flat (LeadOcean pricing, September 2026).

At 1M records a month.

• Cognism: no public 1M price. 1,000,000 credits plus 1,000,000 search tokens. 1,000,000 / 100 = 10,000 search calls, about 20 minutes at 500 a minute. Cursor paging caps a journey at 100,000, so at least 10 journeys.
• SalesIntel: no public 1M price. 1,000,000 / 3,000 = 333.3, so 334 users at the cap. By API, 1,000,000 / 50 = 20,000 calls, about 11 minutes at 1,800 a minute, over at least 100 result sets of 10,000. API credits sit in your order form.
• LeadOcean Pro: $499 a month flat. 1,000,000 / 50,000 = 20 export calls, and the daily export ceiling of 500,000 rows makes it two days (LeadOcean exports docs, September 2026). A very large month may be paced down, and one email to support raises the headroom.

The 334-user figure is a floor on seats, not a quote. Volume deals are negotiated, and no buyer would sign for 334 seats at list. Ask both vendors for a written price at your volume, term length and renewal increase.

Where Cognism wins

• Phone-verified mobiles, a claimed 10m+, with on-demand verification and DNC screening in 15 territories.
• European focus. It positions itself as Europe's most trusted B2B data, which matters if your reps cold-call EU buyers.
• An official MCP server with 15 tools that works with Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor.
• Intent data on Pro, using Bombora Company Surge with up to 12 topics from over 11,000 (Cognism pricing, September 2026).
• Native exports to Salesforce, HubSpot and Pipedrive (Cognism, September 2026).

Where SalesIntel wins

• Human-verified contacts, with a verified parameter in the API that filters to them, and a contractual 95% accuracy guarantee on verified name and company data.
• Unlimited export and enrichment credits per user in the app, so reps never count credits.
• 60,000+ intent topics and 42,000+ technologies tracked (SalesIntel, September 2026). A dedicated customer success manager and onboarding are listed on the pricing page (SalesIntel pricing, September 2026).
• A free preview endpoint that checks a match before you spend credits.
• A higher per-user request rate, 1,800 a minute, and no per-operation split.

If you need volume through an API

LeadOcean is a data API and MCP server with no credits and no seats. Free gives 1,000 records one-off with no card, and Pro is $499 a month flat with unlimited searches, enrichments and lookups at 100 requests per second per key. Both plans get the same REST API and 12-tool MCP server, and POST /v1/exports returns up to 50,000 rows per request. It is not a sales suite: it has no dialer, no intent data and no human-verified tier. Compare it on a list you already know, and read Cognism alternatives and pricing.

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