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

Lusha and Cognism both sell B2B contact data with direct dials, but they sell it differently. Lusha prints its prices, gives every plan an API key and adds a Chrome extension. Cognism sells seats and credits by quote and puts its weight on phone-verified mobiles and Europe.

Verdict

• Pick Lusha if you want a price you can read before you talk to anyone, a free plan, an API key on every plan and a Chrome extension. It also publishes email and phone counts and runs a 50-tool MCP server.
• Pick Cognism if your reps cold-call and want phone-verified mobiles, Do Not Call cross-referencing and European coverage, and you are happy to buy through a quote.
• 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

Lusha claims the larger and more specific database. It states 525M+ contacts and 29M+ companies, with 165M+ emails and 117M+ direct dials (Lusha homepage, September 2026). All four numbers are Lusha's own.

Cognism gives no total. Its FAQ says "hundreds of millions" of profiles and that it does not usually make general coverage claims (Cognism FAQ, September 2026). You cannot compare database size on paper.

Cognism does publish a phone number: 10M+ phone-verified contacts, and a team that verifies a mobile on request in under 48 hours. It says it cross-references Do Not Call lists in 15 territories (Cognism Diamond Data, September 2026).

Verified is a smaller set than a direct dial. Lusha's 117M+ is a bigger pool, and Cognism's 10M+ is a checked one. Which matters depends on whether your reps burn time on wrong numbers.

The products also differ. Lusha adds a Chrome extension, native Salesforce and HubSpot apps and 26 buying signals refreshed weekly (Lusha homepage, September 2026). Cognism adds intent data on its Pro plan, from Bombora Company Surge with up to 12 topics (Cognism pricing, September 2026).

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

API and developer experience

Both have REST APIs and an official MCP server. The difference is access. Lusha gives every user an API key on every plan, Free included. Cognism says API and MCP access need a package that includes it, and existing customers ask their account team (Cognism docs, September 2026).

Lusha's V3 API passes the key in an api_key header. Search takes a batch of contacts by name and domain, LinkedIn URL or email (Lusha API overview, September 2026). Revealing the email or phone is a second call to enrich, and that step spends credits.

curl --request POST \
  --url https://api.lusha.com/v3/contacts/search \
  --header "api_key: $LUSHA_API_KEY" \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --data '{
    "contacts": [
      { "clientReferenceId": "my-ref-1", "firstName": "Jane", "lastName": "Doe", "companyDomain": "acme.com" }
    ],
    "options": { "includePartialProfiles": true }
  }'

Lusha's docs disagree on misses. The API guide says a call costs at least 1 credit even with no data, and the billing FAQ says a no-match request is free (Lusha billing FAQ, September 2026). Budget for the 1 credit until Lusha settles it.

Cognism uses OAuth 2.0 client credentials. You create a client_id and client_secret under Settings, M2M Connect, then exchange them for a token that lasts 1,200 seconds (Cognism authentication, September 2026). The first request in its docs counts companies that match a filter:

curl --request POST \
  --url 'https://api.cognism.com/companies/filter/count' \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer $COGNISM_ACCESS_TOKEN" \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{
    "company": {
      "industry": { "include": ["Software"] },
      "location": { "type": "hq", "country": { "include": ["United Kingdom"] } },
      "headcount": { "gte": 200, "lte": 1000 }
    }
  }'

Cognism's docs disagree on counts. The getting-started page says count requests cost no search tokens or credits, and the credits page says each count costs 1 search token (Cognism credits and tokens, September 2026). Check your token balance after a test count.

Cognism's rate limit is simpler and higher on paper: 500 requests a minute per account for each of search, count and dictionary. Lusha sets limits per key by plan, and the lower plans are tight. Free and Starter get 100 requests a day, and Pro gets 1,500 a day (Lusha API guide, September 2026). Lusha's V3 page also sets a default ceiling of 25 requests a second per account (Lusha rate limits, September 2026).

On MCP, Lusha has 50 tools and Cognism has 15. Cognism's map one to one onto its API: search and count for people and companies, dictionary lookups and account settings.

Pricing

Lusha prints its prices. Cognism does not. That is the whole difference, and it decides which one you can budget before a sales call.

Lusha's public plans, in USD (Lusha pricing, September 2026):

An email costs 1 credit, a phone number 5 and company info 1. A bulk request adds 1 credit per 25 results, up to 100 per request (Lusha API guide, September 2026; Lusha credits, September 2026).

Cognism lists Standard and Pro, each with 5 seats, and no dollar amount. One credit reveals one contact, and each seat carries an allocation of unpublished size. More credits can be bought at an unpublished price (Cognism pricing, September 2026).

10,000 records a month

• Lusha, work emails by bulk API: 10,000 email credits + 10,000 / 25 = 400 request credits = 10,400 credits. The largest monthly step on Premium is 10,000 credits for $977.40. The remaining 400 credits have no published price.
• Lusha, email and phone: 10,000 x (1 + 5) + 400 = 60,400 credits. That is about six times the largest monthly step.
• Cognism: 10,000 credits, at 1 per person record returned with the contacts view, plus search tokens at 1 per record returned. No public price (Cognism credits and tokens, September 2026).

1M records a month

• Lusha: No public 1M price. 1,000,000 work emails by bulk API need 1,000,000 + 1,000,000 / 25 = 1,040,000 credits. The top public step is 10,000 credits a month, so that is 104 times larger. Scale is a custom quote (Lusha pricing, September 2026).
• 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.

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 Lusha wins

• A price you can read. You can size a 10,000-record month from a public page, and there is a free plan with 40 credits.
• API for everyone. An API key on every plan, with a 50-tool MCP server on the same credit pool.
• Published coverage. Email and direct-dial counts, so you can estimate coverage before you test.
• Rep tools. A Chrome extension, Salesforce and HubSpot apps and 26 weekly signals (Lusha homepage, September 2026).

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 says it cross-references Do Not Call lists in 15 territories. That matters if you cold-call across borders.
• Europe. Its homepage positions the data as Europe's most trusted B2B data (Cognism, September 2026).
• Intent data. Bombora Company Surge topics on its Pro plan, with up to 12 topics (Cognism pricing, September 2026).
• A clean API limit. One published number per operation, higher by package.

If you need volume through an API

Neither tool prints a price at 1M records, and both bill 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, dialer or phone verification. It is a data source for code and agents, not a rep tool. Compare plans on the pricing page, or read the Lusha alternatives and LeadOcean as a Lusha alternative.

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