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

ZoomInfo and Coresignal both sell B2B data through an API, but they sell different things. ZoomInfo is a contact and signals database that now also sells per credit through GTM AI. Coresignal is a raw profile, company and job-posting source priced in credits.

Verdict

• Pick ZoomInfo if you need direct dials, intent signals or one suite your reps can log into. Its Sales page claims 420M+ contacts including 120M+ direct dials.
• Pick Coresignal if you need job postings, company signals or flat-file datasets, or the biggest raw profile count. It lists 907M+ employee records and 482M+ job postings.
• Pick neither if you need volume through an API at a price you can read. Neither publishes a 1M price. LeadOcean is one option: Pro is $499 a month, flat.

Side by side

Data and coverage

Coresignal is bigger on raw profiles and adds job postings. ZoomInfo is smaller but built around contact data, with direct dials and verified emails. The counts are not like for like.

ZoomInfo's own pages disagree on size. The Sales page says 420M+ contacts and 145M+ companies. The MCP docs say 500M+ and 100M+ (ZoomInfo Sales, October 2026; ZoomInfo MCP docs, September 2026). The Sales page also says 120M+ direct dials in one place and over 70M phone numbers in another. Treat all of it as marketing claims.

Coresignal lists 907M+ employee records, 70M+ companies and 482M+ job postings, with company data delivered daily (Coresignal, September 2026). Many records are profiles with no contact field. Multi-source employee records carry a professional email with four status levels: verified, matched_email, matched_pattern and guessed_common_pattern. The Base Employee API pages list no email field.

Phone is the clearest gap. ZoomInfo sells direct dials and puts mobile phone data in Enterprise packages. No phone field appears in either Coresignal employee dictionary, so a dial list needs another source.

Coresignal's MCP email lookup excludes employees in the EEA and UK (Coresignal MCP docs, September 2026). If your list is European, test that first. Neither vendor publishes a phone accuracy rate we could check.

API and developer experience

Both are REST APIs, but they work differently. ZoomInfo searches for free, then enriches the IDs you pick. Coresignal searches for free, then collects each profile by ID, URL or shorthand name.

ZoomInfo's GTM Data API uses OAuth bearer tokens and the JSON:API format. Search Contacts is free. Enrich Contacts takes up to 25 records per call and charges 1 data credit per new record (ZoomInfo docs, September 2026). A no-match result is not charged (ZoomInfo Enrich Contacts, September 2026).

curl --request POST \
  --url 'https://api.zoominfo.com/gtm/data/v1/contacts/enrich' \
  --header 'accept: application/vnd.api+json' \
  --header 'content-type: application/vnd.api+json' \
  --header 'authorization: Bearer <access_token>' \
  --data '{
    "data": [{ "type": "ContactEnrich", "attributes": { "personId": "1234567890" } }],
    "outputFields": ["firstName", "lastName", "jobTitle", "email", "phone"],
    "requiredFields": ["email"]
  }'

Coresignal sends a key in an apikey header (Coresignal docs, September 2026). The collect call takes a shorthand name from a profile URL and costs 20 credits on the multi-source API (Coresignal docs, September 2026).

curl -X GET \
  "https://api.coresignal.com/cdapi/v2/employee_multi_source/collect/jane-doe" \
  -H "accept: application/json" \
  -H "apikey: $CORESIGNAL_API_KEY"

Search differs on cost. Coresignal search by filter or Elasticsearch DSL is free and returns IDs. A search preview costs 10 to 20 credits (Coresignal docs, September 2026).

Rate limits depend on the package for both. ZoomInfo's Builder package is 5 requests a second, with hourly and daily caps of 10,800 and 129,600. A second ZoomInfo docs page lists 25 a second by default, so the two pages differ (ZoomInfo rate limits, September 2026). Coresignal runs from 5 a second on Starter to 100 on Scale.

Both have an official MCP server. ZoomInfo's needs a free GTM AI account or a ZoomInfo subscription with data credits, and accounts with only recurring monthly credits cannot use it. Coresignal's signs in with OAuth 2.1. Its entity_search costs 20 credits a call,. The live server says an email lookup costs 20 credits when found and nothing on a miss. Its MCP docs page still says 10, so budget for 20 (Coresignal MCP docs, September 2026).

Pricing

ZoomInfo's platform prices are not public, so this section prices GTM AI, its self-serve credit plan. Both vendors meter per record. To compare them, price both as contact lookups: 1 data credit on ZoomInfo, 20 credits on Coresignal.

We could not read platform plan prices: zoominfo.com/pricing returned a human check in September 2026. For context, Vendr reports a median of $33,500 a year across 1,574 platform purchases (Vendr, February 2026).

At 10,000 records a month

ZoomInfo GTM AI: 10,000 contacts is 10,000 data credits. That sits in the $1,000 spend tier at $0.38 a credit, so 10,000 x $0.38 = $3,800 at list. A record is charged once per 12 months, so re-enriching it inside that window costs nothing (GTM AI pricing, September 2026; ZoomInfo credit docs, September 2026). The 70% first-purchase offer is a promotion, not a list price.

Coresignal: 10,000 lookups x 20 credits = 200,000 credits. Contact enrichment starts at Pro, and Growth stops at 150,000 credits. That leaves Premium: $1,500 a month for 1,000,000 credits, or $1,350 a month billed yearly ($16,200 a year). You use a fifth of it, so $0.15 a lookup on the monthly price (Coresignal pricing, September 2026).

Premium shows a Get started button, but the pricing page data also marks it as contact-sales, so expect a sales step (Coresignal pricing, September 2026).

At 10,000 a month, Coresignal Premium is cheaper per lookup: $0.15 against $0.38. The unit differs. A ZoomInfo credit returns one contact with email and phone fields. A Coresignal lookup returns an email from a multi-source record, and no phone.

At small scale the order flips. Coresignal Pro is $499 for 35,000 credits, which is 1,750 lookups, or about $0.29 each. ZoomInfo's $250 tier is $0.41 a credit.

At 1M records a month

ZoomInfo: No public 1M price. The GTM AI slider stops at 100,000 data credits for $25,000, which is $0.25 a credit. Past that is Enterprise, quote only (GTM AI pricing, September 2026). Whether you can buy the 100,000 pack repeatedly on self-serve is not stated, so we do not multiply it out.

Coresignal: No public 1M price. 1,000,000 lookups x 20 credits = 20,000,000 credits, and no public plan reaches that. The top plan, Elite, is $5,000 a month for 10,000,000 credits, which covers 500,000 lookups (Coresignal pricing, September 2026).

Buying two Elite plans in one month is not documented. Ask for a quote. Do not read a derived number as a price.

Where ZoomInfo wins

• Direct dials and signals. It claims 120M+ direct dials, and intent data sits beside the contacts. Coresignal has no phone field.
• A suite. ZoomInfo connects to CRMs and sales tools, and your reps can log into it. Coresignal is an API.
• Charged once a year per record. Re-enriching a record inside 12 months costs no extra credit.
• A free tier you can use. 1,000 data credits and 1,000 AI credits, with API and MCP access, against a 7-day trial.

Where Coresignal wins

• Signals. 482M+ job postings, historical headcount and company data, sold as their own datasets.
• Raw size. 907M+ employee records against ZoomInfo's claimed 420M+ contacts.
• A public price ladder. Eight plans from $49 to $5,000 a month, with 100+ requests a second at the top.
• Bulk and datasets. Bulk Collect takes 10,000 records per request, and flat-file datasets start at $1,000 a month.
• Cheaper at 10,000 lookups. About $0.15 a lookup on Premium, against $0.38 a credit on GTM AI.

If you need volume through an API

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

For bulk work, POST /v1/exports returns up to 50,000 rows per request. The app also has an Exports page with a filter builder and CSV download (LeadOcean exports docs, September 2026). It has no sequencer, dialer or job-posting data. See the ZoomInfo alternative page for a line-by-line version.

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