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Quick Answer: Apollo is the B2B database we default to for US-focused cold email. Apollo states 240M+ contacts and 30M+ companies, our tests found 91% of its emails valid (Apollo claims 98%), and paid seats start at $49 a month billed annually, $65 month to month. Paid plans bundle the database with sequences, email warm-up and a US dialer (calls use credits). Weaknesses: in our tests, thinner European data and weaker phone data; on Apollo's own plan table, a 250-emails-a-day sending cap on Free and Basic. Verdict: the right default for US prospecting, but not the cheapest option for every job.
Corrected on 1 October 2026: we re-checked the vendor facts listed below, and the competitor prices quoted in the body, against Apollo's pricing page, data page, home page and API documentation, Cognism's pricing and data pages, the pricing pages of RocketReach, Hunter, Instantly, Snov.io and Seamless.ai, RocketReach's home page, and Lusha's home and data pages. Several old errors flattered Apollo: the page put its database at 260M+ (Apollo states 240M+), called it 1.7x larger than competitors (RocketReach and Lusha both publish bigger headline counts, RocketReach in profiles and Lusha in contacts), said it refreshes every 24 hours (the Apollo pages we read give no refresh interval for contact records), gave its API a limit of 5,000 requests a minute and 5,000-record bulk requests (Apollo's docs say 1,000 a minute at most and 10 people per enrichment request), quoted Apollo's own accuracy claim as 93% (its data page says 98%, so the gap to our 91% is 7 points, not 2), and printed prices for Cognism ($299) and Seamless.ai ($99) that neither company's pricing page shows. Other errors ran against Apollo: the page said it has no built-in verification, no sending and no native warm-up, and Apollo's own pages describe all three. One flattered Cognism: a 48-hour refresh, when Cognism states 30 days for Director-level and above data. A deleted stack line priced Instantly, our other affiliate, at $25 a month, which flattered it (Growth is $47, or $37.60 a month billed yearly). We also removed unsupported lines: a 15 to 20 percent European coverage estimate (which ran against Apollo), an API comparison that knocked Cognism and RocketReach, a claim that RocketReach refreshes weekly, and a "real-time triggers" webhook claim. Search filters, coverage and data-age statements, and the test, audit and campaign figures come from the original article and were not re-tested.
Real Data Audit: 50,000+ Apollo Records Tested
At imisofts, we've validated Apollo data on 50,000+ prospect records across multiple campaigns. This isn't vendor-generated claims, this is operational data from real cold email campaigns.
Audit results across 50K records:
- Email accuracy: 91%
- Email verification coverage: 87%
- Job title accuracy: 89%
- Company size accuracy: 92%
- Industry categorization: 94%
- Phone number quality: 65%
- LinkedIn profile match: 96%
Apollo's core data, email, company details, job titles, is consistently accurate. Peripheral data (phone, LinkedIn) is decent but not exceptional.
What Apollo Does Right
1. A Large B2B Database
Apollo states 240M+ contacts and 30M+ companies. That is a big database, but not the biggest headline number in this market: RocketReach states 700M profiles and 60M companies, and Lusha states 525M+ contacts and 29M+ companies. Each count is the vendor's own, measures something slightly different (profiles versus contacts), and has not been audited by us, so treat them as marketing figures rather than a ranking.
For cold email, what matters is how many records match your target list, not the headline total.
Our high-volume 200-domain proposal client needed 100,000 tech founders across US. Apollo found 94,000 matching records. Cognism found 67,000. RocketReach found 71,000.
For that search, Apollo returned 27,000 more matches than Cognism and 23,000 more than RocketReach.
2. Email Accuracy at 91%
Apollo's data page claims a 98% email accuracy rate. Our real-world testing shows 91%, seven points lower. That is still strong for cold email, but it is our number, not Apollo's.
Test of 10,000 Apollo emails (accuracy measured on a 1,000-email sample):
Apollo accuracy: 91% (910 valid emails in the 1,000-email sample)
Hard bounce rate: 4%
Soft bounce rate: 5%
This 91% accuracy is crucial for cold email. Bad emails tank your domain reputation. Apollo's accuracy is high enough for cold email once you verify before large sends.
Our business funding firm tests emails against verified databases. Apollo's accuracy aligns perfectly with third-party audits.
3. $49 a Seat a Month, Billed Annually
Apollo Basic plan: $49 per seat per month, billed annually ($588 a year paid upfront, 30,000 credits a year), or $65 per seat month to month (2,500 credits a month).
Cognism: no price on its pricing page (read October 1, 2026). It sells Standard and Pro packages, each with 5 seats included, by quote.
RocketReach: $27/month billed annually for its email-only Essentials plan ($329 a year, 1,200 exports a year), $69/month billed annually for Pro with phone numbers (3,600 exports a year), both re-read on RocketReach's pricing page on October 1, 2026
Seamless.ai: no price on its pricing page (read October 1, 2026), which is an inquiry form.
So Apollo is not the cheapest seat: RocketReach Essentials costs less. Per unit the two price differently: an Apollo email costs 1 credit, about 2 cents on an annual Basic seat ($588 for 30,000 credits) or 2.6 cents month to month ($65 for 2,500), while RocketReach Essentials advertises unlimited verified emails but includes 1,200 exports a year, about 27 cents an export, and caps sending at 500 emails a day. A credit and an export are not the same unit, so test both on your own list before you compare. You can start on Apollo for $49 a seat a month on an annual plan, or $65 month to month.
Our Dutch recruitment firm pays $49/month and sources roughly 500 prospects/month. Cost per prospect: $0.10. Cost per discovery: <$1.
4. A Strong API, With Plan Limits
Apollo's API is the one we build on for cold email.
Features:
- Real-time prospect lookups (2-4 second latency in our use)
- Bulk enrichment of up to 10 people per request, charged per person 1 credit for demographics or an email plus 8 if a mobile number is returned, and nothing if no credit-consuming data is found (before waterfall enrichment)
- Custom fields you can create and update through the API
- Rate limits set per team and per endpoint: Apollo's general plan limits allow 200 requests a minute on paid plans (400 an hour and 2,000 a day on Basic and Professional, 600 and 6,000 on Organization), enrichment endpoints allow 1,000 a minute with no hourly or daily cap, and database search allows 200 a minute, 6,000 an hour and 50,000 a day. The Free plan is 50 a minute, 200 an hour and 600 a day (20 a minute and 100 an hour on bulk enrichment). Your credit balance still limits how much you can enrich.
- In the app, the record selection limit is 25 records on Free, 1,000 on Basic, 2,500 on Professional and 10,000 on Organization
- A webhook-result endpoint you can poll
This API is how we integrate Apollo with our private server infrastructure. Match prospects to domains, rotate inboxes by company vertical, auto-send from appropriate sender addresses.
One caveat from Apollo's pricing page: for more advanced or custom integrations, API access is available on Custom plans. Cognism's pricing page lists MCP and API access on its Standard package, which Pro includes, so check both vendors' current terms against what you plan to build.
5. Advanced Search Filters
Apollo's search interface is powerful:
- Filter by job title, company size, revenue, industry
- Location-based targeting (country, state, city)
- Technology stack (what tools they use)
- Company signals (hiring, funding, recent updates)
- Lookalike audience building
- Competitor analysis
For precise targeting, Apollo gives you control. You can narrow searches from Apollo's 240M+ contacts to exactly your ICP.
Our European CFO firm searches for "CFO at companies with 50-200 employees in financial services" across 6 countries. Apollo returns 8,000 qualified matches. Cognism returns 4,000. Apollo's filters are more granular.
6. Data Freshness (Apollo's Claim)
Apollo describes a regularly refreshed database and says 2M+ users help keep its data fresh every day through inbox connections, CRM syncs and engagement signals. It also describes real-time email and phone verification on every record. The Apollo pages we read give no refresh interval for contact records.
Cognism does publish one for its senior data: Director-level and above records are refreshed on a 30-day basis. The two statements describe different things, so neither is a like-for-like freshness ranking.
What Apollo Does Poorly
1. Weak on European Data
Apollo's 240M+ is a global count, and the Apollo pages we read give no regional split, so we judge its European coverage from our own searches.
For European prospecting, Cognism is superior. Their EMEA focus means better SMB data, verified local details, and GDPR compliance documentation.
Our healthcare podcast client needed German decision-makers. Apollo found 1,200. Cognism found 2,100. For German SMB targeting, Cognism wins.
2. Verification Is Built In, but 4% Still Hard-Bounced
Apollo describes seven-step email verification and real-time email and phone verification on every record. Even so, 4% of the Apollo emails in our test hard-bounced and another 5% carried soft-bounce risk, and our audit found verification coverage on 87% of records.
If you send at volume, run a separate email verifier before large sends. The original version of this review suggested Hunter.io, whose Starter plan is $49 a month billed monthly or $34 a month billed yearly; we did not re-test its verifier for this update.
In our accuracy comparison further down, RocketReach emails were 88% valid against Apollo's 91%, so switching databases does not remove the need for a second check.
3. Sending Is Capped on Free and Basic
Apollo does send email: campaigns are included on every account, and free plans can connect Gmail accounts only. The limits are in the plan table. Free and Basic allow 250 emails a day and one mailbox per user. Professional and Organization remove the daily cap and allow unlimited Google and Microsoft mailboxes plus 5 or 15 SMTP mailboxes per user, though Apollo says features labeled Unlimited may still be subject to its Fair Use Policy.
For a cold email program that sends from many domains, that means Professional ($79 per seat per month billed annually, $99 month to month) or a dedicated sending tool. Instantly's Growth plan, for example, is $47 a month, or $37.60 a month billed yearly, with unlimited email accounts and warm-up but limits of 5,000 emails a month and 1,000 uploaded contacts on either billing basis. Snov.io's Starter plan bundles lead finding and sending for $39 a month.
4. Phone Data Is Weak
Apollo's phone number coverage is 60%. Data quality is adequate, not exceptional.
For teams doing email-to-phone follow-up, RocketReach (84% coverage) is better.
For cold email only, phone data is nice-to-have but not essential.
5. Warm-Up Only on Paid Plans
Apollo lists its Deliverability Suite and email warm-up on the Basic, Professional and Organization plans, not on Free. Instantly, a paid sending tool, lists unlimited warm-up on every plan we read.
This is minor if your mailboxes already live in a dedicated sending tool, where warm-up usually sits anyway.
Performance Metrics: Data Accuracy Deep Dive
Email Accuracy (91%)
Our testing puts Apollo at 91% valid. Not 98% (Apollo's claim on its data page), but 91% (operational reality in our campaigns).
Breakdown:
- Valid emails: 91%
- Potentially deliverable (soft bounce risk): 5%
- Invalid/hard bounce: 4%
Compare:
- Apollo: 91% valid, 4% hard bounce
- Cognism: 94% valid, 2% hard bounce
- RocketReach: 88% valid, 7% hard bounce
Apollo is strong. Cognism is 3 points better. RocketReach is 3 points worse.
For 10,000 emails:
- Apollo reaches inbox: 8,736 (91% × 96% deliverability)
- Cognism reaches inbox: 9,024 (94% × 96% deliverability)
- RocketReach reaches inbox: 8,448 (88% × 96% deliverability)
Cognism wins marginally. Apollo is very close.
Job Title Accuracy (89%)
Apollo's job title parsing is 89% accurate. Cognism is 91%. Difference is minimal.
What matters is whether the person actually has that title when you reach out. Apollo's title accuracy comes with a caveat: titles in Apollo database may be 30-90 days old.
A "VP Sales" in Apollo database might now be "VP Revenue" or have left the company.
For fresh intent, you'd layer job change signals (Clay, Clearbit) to filter for recent title changes.
Company Data (92% Accurate)
Company size, revenue, industry, Apollo is 92% accurate. This is reliable.
For segmentation and personalization, you can trust Apollo's company data. It's accurate enough to build sequences around (financial services company = financial messaging, tech company = tech stack messaging).
Real Audit Results: Email Finding Accuracy
We searched for "VP of Sales at B2B SaaS companies with $10-50M revenue in NYC" across Apollo and Cognism.
Apollo results: 340 matches
Cognism results: 280 matches
Spot-checked 50 of Apollo's results:
- 49/50 were actually VP+ sales role
- 48/50 companies were confirmed $10-50M revenue range
- 47/50 were NYC-based
Apollo's accuracy on filtered searches: 96% (matches actual criteria).
This validates that Apollo's search filters work. You can trust the results.
Real Campaign Results: Apollo's ROI
We tested Apollo-sourced lists across multiple campaigns.
Campaign 1: Tech Founders (US-focused)
- List source: Apollo (tech founders, US, $1-10M revenue)
- Emails sourced: 2,000
- Emails valid (passed verification): 1,820 (91%)
- Emails sent via Instantly: 1,820
- Inbox placement: 79%
- Inboxes reached: 1,437
- Open rate: 52%
- Reply rate: 2.1%
- Conversations: 30
Cost: Apollo $49/month ÷ (2,000 emails sourced) = $0.0245 per email sourced
Cost per conversation: $49 ÷ 30 conversations = $1.63 per conversation
Campaign 2: European CFOs (Cognism-sourced, for comparison)
- List source: Cognism (CFO role, 50-200 employees, Germany/Netherlands/Belgium)
- Emails sourced: 2,000
- Emails valid: 1,920 (96%)
- Emails sent: 1,920
- Inbox placement: 78%
- Inboxes reached: 1,498
- Reply rate: 2.0%
- Conversations: 30
Cost: Cognism $399/month (the figure in our original campaign write-up; Cognism's pricing page prints no price and its packages include 5 seats) ÷ 2,000 emails = $0.20 per email sourced
Cost per conversation: $399 ÷ 30 conversations = $13.30 per conversation
Apollo is $0.0245 per email sourced. Cognism is $0.20 per email. Apollo is about 8x cheaper per email.
But Cognism's European data is better (96% valid vs 91%). For US-focused prospecting, Apollo dominates.
Pricing: Entry to Scale
Apollo pricing:
- Free: $0/month (900 credits/year)
- Basic: $49 per seat per month, billed annually (30,000 credits per seat per year)
- Professional: $79 per seat per month, billed annually (48,000 credits per seat per year), Apollo's most popular tier
- Organization: $119 per seat per month, billed annually, minimum 3 seats (72,000 credits per seat per year)
At startup scale, Basic's 30,000 credits/year, about 2,500/month on average, is accessible at $49 per seat per month. At SMB scale needing more volume, Professional's 48,000 credits/year at $79 per seat per month is the mid-tier. Larger teams land on Organization: $119 per seat per month with a 3-seat minimum, so at least $357 a month billed annually, with 72,000 credits per seat per year.
Month to month, Basic is $65 per seat (2,500 credits a month) and Professional $99 (4,000 credits a month). Organization is annual only: the monthly view shows $149 per seat marked Annual Only. The 14-day trial includes 75 credits. Credits do not roll over: unused credits, including purchased add-on credits, expire at the end of each billing cycle. On an annual plan, mid-cycle downgrades are not permitted and switching to monthly means waiting for the annual term to expire; where a downgrade is allowed, it takes effect at once and unused time is not refunded.
Agencies should read one clause before buying: Apollo's pricing page says the plans are for internal business use only, and using Apollo data to "power external products, share with customers, or resell" needs a separate agreement with custom pricing.
Real scenario: Our Dutch recruitment firm sources roughly 500 prospects/month. That's well within the Basic plan's annual allotment, so the Basic tier ($49 a seat a month, billed annually) covers them without needing to upgrade.
This tier structure is straightforward: on annual billing, credits are granted upfront for the year (monthly Basic and Professional get a monthly allowance instead), and price scales with volume and seats.
Before you pay, the free tier is worth a fortnight of real use: it is 900 credits per seat per year, granted monthly, which is 75 a month, and the search, filters and Chrome extension all work on it. The limits that do not appear on the plan card are listed in our Apollo free plan limits guide, and is Apollo.io worth it runs the break-even math on a paid seat.
Verdict: Who Should Use Apollo
Essential if:
- US-focused prospecting (70%+ of targets)
- Building private server infrastructure (API integration required; check whether your integration needs a Custom plan)
- Wanting the database, sequences and a dialer in one self-serve subscription
- Cold email is revenue channel
Consider if:
- Testing cold email (start on the free plan or a $65 month-to-month Basic seat before committing to a year)
- Scaling beyond 5,000 monthly emails (on Professional, since Free and Basic cap sending at 250 a day)
- Integrating with custom tools (API required; Apollo points advanced or custom integrations at its Custom plans)
- European expansion planned (after validating US first)
Skip if:
- European or APAC prospecting is primary
- You need phone numbers at volume (RocketReach Ultimate works out cheaper per email-plus-phone contact if you use its 20,000 exports a year)
- You will share Apollo data with customers or resell it (Apollo's standard plans are for internal business use only)
- Your budget cannot cover a paid seat ($588 a year upfront, or $65 a month) and the free plan's 75 credits a month are too few
Our Recommendation
Apollo is the B2B database we recommend first for cold email.
For US-focused prospecting, Apollo's combination of 240M+ contacts (Apollo's count), 91% valid emails in our tests, sequences on the same seat and a $49 per seat per month entry price on annual billing is the best all-round package we have tested. It is not the cheapest at everything: RocketReach Essentials is the cheaper seat, and for email-plus-phone contacts at volume RocketReach Ultimate works out at about 8.5 cents an export, if you use all 20,000 a year, against about 17.6 cents for Apollo's 9 credits on a Basic annual seat. Our Apollo vs RocketReach comparison has the full arithmetic.
At imisofts, Apollo is the default recommendation for clients launching cold email. It's how we source prospects for our private server infrastructure. It's how we've scaled to managing 50,000+ monthly prospects across clients.
The API integration is seamless. The search filters are powerful. The pricing is fair.
For European operations, you'd layer Cognism for specific countries. For global operations, you'd use Apollo + Cognism hybrid approach (Apollo for US, Cognism for Europe).
But if you're choosing one database for cold email? Apollo.