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

ZoomInfo and Cognism both sell B2B contact data with phone numbers, and neither prints a platform price. ZoomInfo is the bigger suite and also sells a pay-as-you-go API through GTM AI. Cognism is a seat-based prospecting app with verified mobiles and a European focus.

Verdict

• Pick ZoomInfo if you sell mostly in North America, want intent signals in one suite, or want a pay-as-you-go API with no seats. It has the larger claimed database and a free tier with 1,000 data credits.
• Pick Cognism if your reps dial mobiles, especially in Europe, and you want phone-verified numbers, Do Not Call screening and a prospecting app. Expect a quote before you see any price.
• Pick neither if you need volume through an API or an agent at a bill you can predict. ZoomInfo has no public price at 1M records, and Cognism has none at any volume. LeadOcean is one option: Pro is $499 a month, flat.

Side by side

Data and coverage

Both vendors give size claims, and neither claim is checkable from the outside. ZoomInfo's numbers also differ by page: the MCP docs say 500M+ contacts, and the Sales page says 420M+. Cognism gives no total.

ZoomInfo is the volume play. Its Sales page lists 174M-plus verified email addresses, 120M+ direct dials and 300+ filter attributes (ZoomInfo Sales, October 2026). It also sells buyer intent signals. These are marketing claims, and ZoomInfo gives no accuracy rate for any of them.

Cognism is the phone-quality play. Its Diamond Data page 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). That is a smaller pool that has been checked, not a bigger one.

Do not compare the two phone figures as if they measure the same thing. ZoomInfo's 120M+ counts direct dials. Cognism's 10M+ counts numbers it verified. A rep who dials all day cares about the second number. A team that enriches a CRM cares about the first.

On geography, Cognism positions itself around Europe, and rival vendors describe ZoomInfo as deepest in North America (Crustdata, July 2026). Both are positioning claims, not published coverage by country. Test a sample of your own target accounts in each region before you sign.

On search depth, ZoomInfo says you can filter on 300+ attributes. Cognism's people and company search schema has 34 top-level filter fields (Cognism API reference, September 2026). The fields are not the same thing, so a raw count says little.

API and developer experience

Both APIs use OAuth 2.0 client credentials, so both start with a token call. ZoomInfo's API is open to a free GTM AI account. Cognism's needs a package that includes API access.

ZoomInfo exchanges a client ID and secret for a token, then searches and enriches. Enrich takes up to 25 contacts per call, and a record found costs one credit (ZoomInfo Enrich Contacts, September 2026; client credentials flow, September 2026).

curl -X POST "https://api.zoominfo.com/gtm/oauth/v1/token" \
  -u "$ZI_CLIENT_ID:$ZI_CLIENT_SECRET" \
  -d "grant_type=client_credentials"

curl -X POST "https://api.zoominfo.com/gtm/data/v1/contacts/enrich" \
  -H "authorization: Bearer $ZI_TOKEN" \
  -H "content-type: application/vnd.api+json" \
  -d '{"data":{"type":"ContactEnrich","attributes":{"matchPersonInput":[{"personId":123456789}],"outputFields":["id","firstName","jobTitle","email"],"requiredFields":["email"]}}}'

Cognism issues client credentials under Settings, M2M Connect. Tokens last 20 minutes. Search returns 1 to 100 records a page, and the contacts view returns contact details at one credit per person (Cognism authentication; credits and search tokens, September 2026).

TOKEN=$(curl -s https://cognism-production.eu.auth0.com/oauth/token \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d "{\"grant_type\":\"client_credentials\",\"client_id\":\"$COGNISM_CLIENT_ID\",\"client_secret\":\"$COGNISM_CLIENT_SECRET\",\"audience\":\"https://api.cognism.com\"}" \
  | jq -r .access_token)

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

On limits, Cognism's 500 requests a minute is about 8 a second, per operation. ZoomInfo's Builder package gives 5 a second and 10,800 an hour, and Standard gives 25 a second and 54,000 an hour. Higher limits are by request on both.

Both have an MCP server for Claude, Cursor and other agents. ZoomInfo's is gated by a free GTM AI account or a subscription with credits. Cognism's has 15 tools and uses the same credits as the API.

Pricing

ZoomInfo has a public per-credit price up to 100,000 credits and nothing above it. Cognism has no public price at any size. So only ZoomInfo can be priced here, and only at 10,000 records.

At 10,000 records a month. ZoomInfo's GTM AI lists $0.38 a data credit at the $1,000 spend tier, which covers 2,500 to 10,000 credits (GTM AI pricing, September 2026). One credit enriches one record, so 10,000 x $0.38 = $3,800. Search and lookup are free, and a record already enriched in the last 12 months costs no extra credit (ZoomInfo docs, September 2026).

Cognism publishes no price per plan, seat or credit, so a 10,000-record month cannot be priced. Each seat includes a credit allocation of an unpublished size, and one credit reveals one contact (Cognism pricing, September 2026). Ask for the allocation in writing.

At 1M records a month. ZoomInfo's slider stops at 100,000 credits for $25,000, which is $0.25 a credit and the lowest published rate. Above that is Enterprise, by quote, so there is no public 1M price. We do not multiply a rate out to 1M.

Cognism has no public 1M price either. The credit count is easy: 1M work-email lookups is 1M credits, plus search tokens per record returned. With no list price to multiply, there is no dollar figure (Cognism pricing, September 2026).

Time matters as well as money. At 25 records per call, 1M enrichments on ZoomInfo is 40,000 calls. On Builder's 10,800 an hour that is about 3.7 hours, and on Standard's 54,000 an hour about 45 minutes. On Cognism, 1M records at 100 a page is 10,000 search calls, about 20 minutes at 500 a minute.

The platform side. ZoomInfo says most paid plans are billed annually upfront (ZoomInfo, October 2026). Its plan prices sit behind a human check on zoominfo.com/pricing, so this page leaves them out. Cognism's Standard and Pro plans each include 5 seats, and neither shows a price.

Monthly and yearly list prices do not exist for either platform, so there is no billed-yearly figure to quote. Only GTM AI has a public monthly top-up price.

Where ZoomInfo wins

• A public price to start. GTM AI is free with 1,000 data credits, then pay as you go from $20, with no seats and no contract.
• A larger claimed dataset and more data types. It sells buyer intent signals alongside contacts, and claims 300+ filter attributes.
• Faster API limits. Up to 35 requests a second on Scaling, against about 8 a second per operation on Cognism's default.
• Open API access. A free GTM AI account gets you the API and MCP server. Cognism needs a package first.

Where Cognism wins

• Verified mobiles. Cognism checks phone numbers and says it holds over 10M verified contacts. For a dialing team, that is the reason to pay.
• Do Not Call screening. It cross-references Do Not Call lists in 15 territories, a feature we did not find on the ZoomInfo pages we read.
• A prospecting app for reps. Standard and Pro each include 5 seats, and Pro adds intent data from Bombora Company Surge.
• European focus. Cognism is built around European outbound. Test the numbers for your own countries.

If you need volume through an API

We build LeadOcean, so weigh this section accordingly. It holds 693M people and 63M companies behind one REST API and one MCP server. Free is 1,000 records, one-off, with no card. Pro is $499 a month, flat, with no credits and 100 requests per second per key (LeadOcean pricing, September 2026).

For bulk work, POST /v1/exports returns up to 50,000 rows per request, so 1M rows is 20 calls over two days (LeadOcean exports docs, September 2026). LeadOcean has no dialer and no rep workspace. If your reps need those, keep ZoomInfo or Cognism for them.

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