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Quick Answer: Apollo wins on price you can see: seats from $49 a month billed annually, each with 30,000 credits a year, and a single seat is enough to start. Cognism sells by quote, both of its prospecting packages include 5 seats, and its pricing scales with seats and shared credits. In our tests Cognism's data was a few points more accurate, and it describes its data as compliant. For US-heavy campaigns, Apollo. For European compliance-first ops, Cognism.
Corrected on 29 September 2026: we re-checked every price, plan limit, database count and company fact on this page against Apollo's pricing, data, security, DPA and about pages and Cognism's pricing, data and about pages (Cognism's DPA link opens a PDF we could not read). Earlier versions put Apollo's database at 260M+ (Apollo states 240M+) and Cognism's at 150M+ (Cognism publishes no count), quoted an Apollo plan that is not on Apollo's pricing page ($65 a month for five users with 100 searches, when five Basic seats cost $245 a month billed annually) and Cognism prices that Cognism does not publish, which made Apollo look cheaper than it is; they also understated Apollo's GDPR paperwork. The accuracy, deliverability and client figures below come from the original article and were not re-tested.
Quick Summary Table
| Feature | Apollo | Cognism |
|---|---|---|
| Database Size (vendor's own count) | 240M+ contacts, 30M+ companies | Not published on its data page |
| Accuracy Rate (our tests) | 91-93% | 94-96% |
| GDPR Paperwork | GDPR compliant as processor and controller; DPA incorporated by default; SOC 2 and ISO 27001 | Describes its data as compliant; publishes a customer DPA (terms not reviewed here); security certifications not checked |
| Starting Price | $49 a seat a month billed annually ($65 month to month) | Quote only; both prospecting packages include 5 seats |
| Per-Seat Cost (10 users) | $49 (Basic) to $119 (Organization) a month, billed annually | Quote only |
| Email Verification | Credits charged only for emails Apollo can verify; free plan 75 credits a month | Verified emails per its data page; on-demand mobile verification on the Pro package |
| European Data (our tests) | Good | Superior |
| API Access | Yes | Yes (MCP and API access listed on both packages, 29 September 2026) |
| Enrichment Speed | Real-time | Real-time |
The Core Difference
Apollo is a scaled data play. Cognism is a compliance-first European player with deeper intent signals. If you run 50 cold email campaigns monthly at 1,000 prospects each, you need about 50,000 email credits a month, 600,000 a year. At list price that is the combined allowance of 20 Apollo Basic seats (30,000 credits each, $11,760 a year billed annually). Apollo grants credits per seat and its pricing page does not say whether a team can pool them, so fewer seats plus add-on credits, which Apollo sells in the app without printing the rate, may fit better. Cognism says its pricing scales with seats and shared credits, but it publishes no price for any volume, so the comparison is Apollo's list price against a Cognism quote. In our tests Cognism's data was about 3 points more accurate.
At imisofts, we've tested both with European CFO teams hunting leads across six countries. Cognism's native GDPR audit trails won over risk-averse compliance departments faster. Apollo's API and bulk export let us match against 25-domain private server infrastructure more efficiently. Different tools for different strategies.
Database Size & Coverage: What Each Vendor Publishes
Apollo says it covers 240M+ contacts and 30M+ companies. Cognism's data page does not publish a contact count, so we could not size the gap from the vendors' own pages. For high-volume prospecting, test coverage on a sample of your own target accounts before you buy.
Apollo's Advantage:
- Coverage in 190+ countries
- Tech, finance, and healthcare well-represented
- A published contact count: 240M+ contacts and 30M+ companies
- Real-time enrichment against contact changes
Cognism's Counter:
- Deeper EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) coverage
- European SMBs better represented than Apollo
- Intent signal integration (web visits, job changes)
- Verified phone numbers for 89% of UK/EU records
We worked with a Dutch recruitment firm hitting targets across Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Apollo's general accuracy dropped to 81% in local SMB databases. Cognism's Netherlands-specific data hit 93% accuracy. The flip: two Apollo seats would cost $98 to $198 a month at today's list prices (Basic billed annually to Professional billed monthly); Cognism's price for them was $399/month (Cognism does not publish prices, and its current packages include 5 seats). For a 2-person team, that's the trade, pay more, get cleaner European data.
Email Accuracy: Cognism's Slight Edge
Apollo claims 98% email accuracy on its data page; Cognism's data page prints no email accuracy rate (it promises a 3x improvement in connect rates on phone-verified mobiles, compared to the industry average). Our own tests put Apollo below its claim.
Real-world testing from our campaigns:
Apollo's accuracy: 91-93% across first-pass searches. Bounces creep in after 60 days without re-verification.
Cognism's accuracy: 94-96% on first lookup. Lower bounce rate because they re-verify on internal ingestion (takes 48 hours).
For cold email deliverability, that 3% gap is material. On 10,000 prospects, Apollo's bounce rate sinks you 300 bad emails. Cognism sinks you 200. Partner that with private server infrastructure, and Cognism's data keeps your domains cleaner longer.
Our test: AlwaysConvert.ai needed 175 inboxes across 25 domains to hit daily volume targets. With Apollo data, inbox placement hovered at 71%. Switching to Cognism for the same prospect list lifted it to 79%. That's 8 percentage points of recovery just from cleaner email data.
GDPR Compliance: Cognism Wins Decisively
Cognism, founded in 2015 according to its about page, describes its data as precise, compliant B2B data.
Apollo's GDPR posture:
- GDPR compliant as both data processor and data controller, per its security page, with ISO 27001 and SOC 2 certifications from A-LIGN
- Audit trails exist but require support tickets to access
- Consent framework unclear for EU prospect lists
- A published Data Processing Addendum (apollo.io/dpa) that is incorporated into the agreement by default, with Standard Contractual Clauses
Cognism's GDPR posture:
- A published customer DPA (cognism.com/DPA links to its customer terms DPA)
- Native consent tracking for every contact record
- Audit reports exportable on-demand for ISO/GDPR audits
- Legal team pre-vetted for European contracts
- Explicit "do not contact" flags for legally-protected prospects
This is the silent win in our clients' experience. When you're selling cold email to an EU-based law firm, accountancy, or healthcare provider, Cognism's compliance documentation closes deals in about 2 weeks, while Apollo's goes through a longer legal review, adding 4-6 weeks to sales cycles. Both vendors publish a DPA, so check which one your buyers' counsel accepts.
Real case: European CFO firm managing compliance for pension funds. Their legal team rejected Apollo outright. Cognism was approved in one call. That firm is now a $8K/year client running 25-50 verified meetings monthly.
Pricing: Apollo's Published Seats vs Cognism's Quote
Apollo publishes per-seat prices. Billed annually, Basic is $49 a seat a month ($588 a year) with 30,000 credits a seat a year, Professional is $79 ($948) with 48,000, and Organization is $119 ($1,428) with 72,000 and a three-seat minimum. Month to month, Basic is $65 and Professional $99; Organization is sold annually only. An email costs 1 credit and a phone number 8, so a Basic seat works out at about 2 cents an email.
Cognism does not publish prices. Its pricing page sells two prospecting packages, Standard and Pro, each with 5 seats included, says pricing scales with seats and shared credits, and says it is tailored to your team setup and how you use the platform. A credit reveals one contact, viewing a previously revealed contact is free, and the same contact costs a credit again only if that person changes jobs. Pro adds intent data (Bombora's Company Surge, up to 12 topics), a premium mobile filter and on-demand mobile verification.
At 10 users:
- Apollo: $5,880 a year on Basic or $9,480 on Professional, billed annually
- Cognism: quote only
At 50 users:
- Apollo: $29,400 a year on Basic; no flat-rate cap is published, and Apollo points large teams to custom plans
- Cognism: quote only
One condition matters for agencies: Apollo's pricing page says the plans shown are "permitted for internal business use only", and that using them to power external products, share data with customers or resell Apollo data "is not allowed under our standard terms" and needs a separate agreement.
So the only difference you can read off the two websites is packaging: Apollo sells one seat at a time, and Cognism's prospecting packages include five. Above that, put a written Cognism quote next to Apollo's list price. Prices read on 29 September 2026 on apollo.io/pricing and cognism.com/pricing.
However: in our clients' quotes, Cognism often included more, integration setup, dedicated success manager, custom data pulls, bundled into the quote. Any list-price advantage Apollo has disappears if you need 40 hours of custom implementation work.
Feature Comparison: Where They Separate
Apollo Strengths:
- API for custom integrations (critical for our private server setups)
- Bulk list export (handles our 25-domain infrastructure rotation)
- Real-time email finder on LinkedIn profiles
- Competitor/lookalike audience building
- Credits charged only for emails Apollo can verify, plus a free plan with 75 credits a month
Cognism Strengths:
- Intent signals (job changes, funding rounds, hiring patterns)
- Account-based marketing lists (pre-segmented by company size/vertical)
- Intent-triggered alerts
- Phone number verification at higher confidence
- Pre-built compliance reports for regulated industries
For cold email ops specifically, Apollo's API and bulk export win. We use Apollo's API to match prospects against our 25-domain infrastructure and rotate inboxes by contact job level. Cognism now lists MCP and API access on both of its packages; we have not tested it for this workflow.
Verdict: Pick by Use Case
Choose Apollo if:
- You're running US/Canada-heavy prospecting
- You want a published per-seat price ($49 to $119 a month, billed annually)
- You use private email infrastructure (API is essential)
- You want to pay only for emails the vendor can verify
- You want to start with one or two seats (Cognism's packages include 5)
Choose Cognism if:
- European prospects are 40%+ of your pipeline
- Compliance documentation is required (legal approval needed)
- You want fresher intent signals
- Phone number accuracy matters
- Your legal team requires GDPR audit trails
Our Recommendation
At imisofts, we recommend Apollo for startups and SMBs running outbound cold email at 50-200 prospects/week. The API integration with our private server rotation system works seamlessly. Cost scales linearly with seats.
For European enterprises with legal/compliance teams? Cognism stops the objections faster. Yes, it is sold by quote, and its prospecting packages include five seats. Yes, in our clients' experience it closes Europe-facing deals about 4 weeks faster.
Combined strategy: Use Apollo for research, lead finding, and bulk list export to your private server infrastructure. Use Cognism for the final 20% of prospects where GDPR proof is non-negotiable. Apollo's side of that costs $49 to $119 a seat a month billed annually; Cognism's side is a quote, so there is no fixed combined figure.
Data Freshness: How Often Each Platform Updates
Data freshness impacts your bounce rates directly. Stale data means invalid emails, which means bounces above 3%, the threshold that triggers deliverability problems.
Apollo refreshes its database through a combination of user-contributed data and automated crawling. Apollo says 2M+ users help keep its data fresh every day through inbox connections and CRM syncs. In practice, we see email accuracy degrade after about 90 days for smaller companies. Enterprise contacts stay accurate longer because they change jobs less frequently.
Cognism says its Director-level-and-above data is refreshed on a 30-day basis, and it invests heavily in human-verified data through its "Diamond Data" program. Phone numbers are verified by real people, which is why their phone accuracy is notably higher. For email addresses specifically, Cognism's freshness is comparable to Apollo's, with manual verification adding an extra layer for premium contacts.
Our recommendation for imisofts clients: pull leads from Apollo for email campaigns, then always run the list through a dedicated verification tool before loading into Instantly. This two-step process keeps bounce rates under 3% regardless of which database you use for sourcing.
Integration Capabilities
Apollo integrates natively with most CRMs and outreach tools. The API is well-documented and works with n8n, Zapier, and Make for automation workflows. We use Apollo's API extensively for automated list building and enrichment pipelines.
Cognism has strong Salesforce and HubSpot integrations but fewer native connections to cold email platforms. If you're using Cognism data with Instantly or SmartLead, expect to export CSVs manually or build custom API integrations.
For cold email infrastructure managed by imisofts, Apollo's integrations are far more practical. We can automate the entire pipeline from prospecting to campaign launch with Apollo's API + Clay enrichment + Instantly sending. Read our Clay data enrichment guide for the full workflow.
Final Verdict
Choose Apollo if cold email is your primary outbound channel and you want to know the price before a sales call. At $49 a seat a month billed annually for 30,000 credits a year, about 2 cents an email, it is the only one of the two with a published price. Pair it with private server infrastructure from imisofts for maximum deliverability.
Choose Cognism if you need verified European phone numbers and your outreach includes heavy cold calling. Whatever Cognism quotes pays off only if you actually use its compliance and phone features.