Apollo vs People Data Labs
People Data Labs
Best for building on top of $98/This is a license question wearing a price tag. Apollo is about fourteen times cheaper per record and its terms cover your own go-to-market only. People Data Labs costs what it costs because the price includes the right to put those rows inside a product you sell. If a customer will see the data, the shortlist is one name long and the rate card is irrelevant.
Where they actually differ
Every value comes from the same record that drives the Enrichment APIs listing, so this table cannot disagree with the cards. Accented tags are data one provider returns and the other does not.
| Compare | Apollo API | People Data Labs |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Search, enrich and sequence from one credit balance | A licensed dataset you can put inside your own product |
| Entry price | $49/seat/mo | $98/mo |
| Unit cost | $0.02 per credit | $0.28 per record |
| Billing model | Per seat Credit packs Free tier | Subscription Credit packs Free tier |
| Free tier | Free plan with API access, 900 credits per seat per year granted monthly, so 75 a month | Free plan, up to 100 credits per month with contact data obfuscated |
| GTM motion covered | Source Enrich Engage Sync | Source Enrich |
| Data returned | Work emailMobile phoneFirmographicsTechnographicsJob postingsIntent and newsLinkedIn profileCRM records | Work emailPersonal emailMobile phoneFirmographicsLinkedIn profile |
| MCP server | Yes https://mcp.apollo.io/mcp | No |
| Interfaces | REST API MCP server Webhooks Bulk or async Native in Clay n8n node | REST API Bulk or async Native in Clay n8n node |
| Auth | API key in the x-api-key header | API key in the X-Api-Key header |
| Rate limits | 200 req/min, 2,000/day on Basic. Enrichment gets 1,000/min with no daily cap. | Per key, fixed window, separate per endpoint. Reported in the response headers. |
| Coverage | Global | Global |
| Compliance | GDPR DPA SOC 2 Type II CCPA | GDPR DPA SOC 2 Type II CCPA |
| Best for | Best all-in-one GTM API | Best for building on top of |
The same workload, priced both ways
Computed from each provider's published entry-plan rate. The monthly floor is shown separately, because at low volume the floor is the bill.
| Workload | Apollo API | People Data Labs | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10,000 verified work emails | $196.00 $0.02 per email |
$2,800 $0.28 per email |
Apollo API by 14.3x |
| 2,000 mobile numbers | $352.80 $0.176 per mobile |
$560.00 $0.28 per mobile |
Apollo API by 59% |
| Monthly floor at entry | $49/seat/mo | $98/mo | Apollo API is lower |
| Charged on a miss | No | No | Neither |
Rates read from each vendor's own pricing page between 8 and 19 October 2026. Bulk figures assume the entry-plan rate holds at that volume, which in practice means moving up a plan tier.
Pick each one when
Apollo API
- The rows are read by your own reps.
- You want search, sequencing and signals in the same account.
- Volume is high and per-credit cost drives the bill.
People Data Labs
- Enriched records appear inside something you charge for.
- You need bulk loads into a warehouse, not lookups.
- Legal has asked where the data came from.
Neither vendor publishes a match rate you could hold them to, so the rate card only tells you half the story. Take 500 rows from the segment you actually sell into, run them through both free tiers, verify both result sets, and divide spend by survivors. Half a day and about $20, and on a close pair it changes the answer often enough to be worth it.
What each one costs, tier by tier
Both publish a full rate card, so this comparison runs on numbers rather than on adjectives. Apollo API lists 4 tiers and People Data Labs lists 3. Every figure is read off the vendor's own pricing page, and the pages they came from are listed at the foot of this one.
| The short version | Apollo API | People Data Labs |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest paid plan | Basic, $49 | Self-Serve, From $98 |
| Tiers published | 4 | 3 |
| Free tier | Free plan with API access, 900 credits per seat per year granted monthly, so 75 a month | Free plan, up to 100 credits per month with contact data obfuscated |
| Unit cost at entry | $0.0196 per credit | $0.28 per record |
The cheapest paid plan is rarely the plan you end up on, because what moves you up a tier is usually volume rather than a feature. The two rate cards below are what you are choosing between.
Apollo API
Apollo API publishes 4 tiers, one of them free, and the paid ladder runs from $49 to $119.
Free
- Full API access, not a trial of it
- Granted monthly, so 75 credits a month in practice
- 2 sequences and basic filters
Basic
- US$588 a seat a year, credits granted upfront and pooled across the team
- 2,500 credits a month, at $0.0196 each
- Annual billing saves 24% against paying monthly
Professional
- 4,000 credits a month, at $0.0198 each
- AI lead scoring and multi-touch outreach
Organization
- 72,000 credits a seat a year, so 6,000 a month
- $0.0198 a credit, so the rate is flat across every paid tier
- The three-seat minimum makes US$357 a month the real floor
People Data Labs
People Data Labs publishes 3 tiers, one of them free, and the paid ladder runs from From $98 to Custom.
Free
- Full access to the Person APIs for testing
- Contact data is obfuscated, so emails and phones are masked
- No commitment, sign up and go
Self-Serve
- Contact data included and unmasked
- Access to premium fields
- Monthly or annual subscription
- CSV enrichment and email support
Enterprise
- Custom volumes and annual contracts
- Access to all APIs, plus Data License Feeds
- Formal data testing before you commit
- Additional field bundles
What Apollo and People Data Labs cost at your volume
Put your own volume in. The model picks the cheapest published plan that covers it on each side, which is the question a rate card cannot answer and the one that decides the bill.
Apollo API
Priced on the volume you use, so the plan that covers a normal month is the one that decides the bill.
People Data Labs
Priced on the volume you use, so the plan that covers a normal month is the one that decides the bill.
Plans are read from each vendor's own pricing page and the model picks the cheapest one that covers you, so these are list prices before any discount you negotiate and before annual billing, which most of these vendors discount.
What a year costs at three volumes
The same plan-fit arithmetic as the model above, run out to a year, because an annual number is what a budget actually asks for. Every column moves with volume, because all of these meter usage rather than seats.
| A year at | Apollo API | People Data Labs |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 a month | $588 Basic | Quoted |
| 10,000 a month | $2,352 Basic | Quoted |
| 50,000 a month | $11,760 Basic | Quoted |
1 of the 2 providers here publish enough to be put in this table. These are list prices on the published plan that covers each volume, so they are the number before you negotiate and before annual billing, which most of these vendors discount by between a fifth and a half.
How this plays out once it is running
The fourteenfold price gap makes no sense until you read what each contract actually permits. Apollo licenses you to run your own go-to-market with the data, at $0.0196 a credit. People Data Labs licenses you to redistribute it, at $0.28 a record. Those are different products that happen to return similar-looking rows, and the second one is priced as a data license because that is what it is.
The failure mode here is one-directional and expensive. Teams that pick People Data Labs for ordinary outbound overpay and eventually notice. Teams that build a product on Apollo do not notice until an account gets suspended, usually after the product has customers. If there is any chance the rows become customer-facing, that asymmetry should decide it.
What each one is genuinely good at
Not a feature list. These are the things that make somebody keep paying after the novelty has worn off, which is a different question from what the marketing page leads with.
Apollo API
About fourteen times cheaper per record
$0.0196 an Apollo credit against $0.28 a People Data Labs record. On an internal list of 10,000 that is roughly $196 against $2,800, and the gap is the license rather than the quality of the row.
Search, sequencing and signals on the same balance
Apollo covers sourcing, enrichment, sending and CRM sync behind one key, with the sequence, contact and task endpoints costing nothing to call. People Data Labs is a dataset vendor, so everything downstream of the lookup is somebody else's product and somebody else's invoice.
A free plan with the full API on it
Nine hundred credits a seat a year, with no fields masked. People Data Labs' free plan gives 100 credits a month with contact data obfuscated, so you can check the shape of the records and not the quality of the emails and phones, which is the part you needed to evaluate.
People Data Labs
A stated redistribution position
If enriched rows appear inside a product your customers log into, this is the one provider here licensed for it. No alternative replaces that at any price, and the question arrives late and expensively: usually after the product has users.
Built for the warehouse rather than the row
Person, company, job title and school datasets under one key, with bulk and search endpoints designed for loads rather than lookups, and Data License Feeds above that. Apollo's rate limits assume a pipeline enriching contacts, not a nightly million-row sync.
One consistent schema
Every record comes from the same dataset with the same fields and the same semantics. Apollo returns its own database too, so this is a narrower lead than it is against a router, but the warehouse-shaped consistency is what a data team is buying.
Where each one falls down
Every provider on this site has a case it handles badly, and the people who find out are the ones who bought it for that case. These are the ones worth knowing before you sign rather than after.
Apollo API
The terms cover your go-to-market and nothing beyond it
Apollo licenses you to run your own outbound. It does not license you to put the rows inside something you sell, and the failure mode is one-directional: you do not find out until an account is suspended, usually after customers are already using the feature.
Credits are granted per seat per year
Thirty thousand on Basic is 2,500 a month, and scaling means buying seats rather than tiers. Ten thousand lookups a month is four Basic seats at $196, which is still a fraction of the alternative here but not the single-seat price the pricing page suggests.
People Data Labs
The highest price per record in this directory
About $0.28. For internal outbound that is paying a licensing premium for a permission you will never exercise, and almost anything else on this site is a better buy if the rows stay in your CRM.
The free plan obfuscates the thing you came to test
A hundred credits a month with contact data masked. You can evaluate the schema and not the data, so budget for a paid test rather than trusting the free one.
No MCP server, and not shaped for row-by-row work
Limits are reported in the response headers per key and per endpoint rather than published as one number. Design for a batch and read the headers; a tight per-row loop is the wrong pattern here.
Using Apollo and People Data Labs together
A two-way comparison assumes the answer is one of them. On this pairing it often is not, and the arrangement below is what teams actually end up running.
These are bought for different reasons rather than as a waterfall, and the arrangement that appears in practice is a split by destination rather than by coverage.
Apollo enriches the rows your reps work; People Data Labs supplies the rows that go into the product. Keeping those two pipelines separate is not tidiness, it is the thing that makes the license question answerable: when somebody asks which provider a customer-facing record came from, a single destination per provider gives you the answer in one query.
If you are already paying People Data Labs for internal outbound as well, that is the overlap worth removing first. The license premium only earns its money on the rows that leave the building.
Apollo or People Data Labs, for you
Four questions, answered from the same records as the rest of this page. Nothing is sent anywhere and there is no result to email yourself.
Each answer leans one way. The recommendation appears here once you have picked at least two.
A tool like this can only weigh what is on the page. It does not know your segment, and the one test that does is the bake-off further down: real rows, cheapest entry on each side, spend divided by survivors.
Where an answer leans on a certification or an integration, it means that vendor publishes it on the pages this directory read, which is not the same as the other one lacking it. The sources are listed at the foot of the page.
Where the data comes from, and what you may do with it
The question that arrives late and expensively is not how good the data is, it is who is allowed to hold it. These are the fields each one returns, the coverage it claims and the compliance it publishes.
| Provider | Fields returned | Coverage | Compliance | Redistribution |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apollo API | Work email, Mobile phone, Firmographics, Technographics, Job postings, Intent and news, LinkedIn profile, CRM records | Global | GDPR DPA SOC 2 Type II CCPA | Not stated |
| People Data Labs | Work email, Personal email, Mobile phone, Firmographics, LinkedIn profile | Global | GDPR DPA SOC 2 Type II CCPA | Not stated |
None of these states a redistribution position on its pricing or docs pages. Internally that never matters. Put the rows in something your customers can see and it becomes the question your legal team asks first.
Two practical notes that apply to every provider on this page. A compliance badge describes the vendor, not your use of it, so a GDPR DPA does not give you a lawful basis for the outreach you send. And every one of these vendors runs its own opt-out, which means a person who asks you to delete their record has to be removed from your copy as well as from theirs.
Moving between Apollo and People Data Labs
Most readers of this page are already on one of these two. A swap is four hours of code and a month of watching, and the order below is the one that catches the expensive mistakes while they are still free.
Measure the thing you are about to lose
Run 500 rows you already have through Apollo API and record the match rate, the fields that came back populated and the cost. Without that number a migration cannot be judged, because every provider looks cheaper per unit than the one you are paying for today.
Check the fields, not the field count
People Data Labs does not return Technographics, Job postings, Intent and news and CRM records, which Apollo API does. If anything downstream reads technographics, that is a change to your pipeline and not just to your vendor.
Rewrite the auth and the limits, in that order
Apollo API authenticates with API key in the x-api-key header. People Data Labs uses API key in the X-Api-Key header.
The limits are the part that bites later. Apollo API rate: 200 req/min, 2,000/day on Basic. Enrichment gets 1,000/min with no daily cap.
People Data Labs rate: Per key, fixed window, separate per endpoint. Reported in the response headers. A loop tuned to the first will either crawl or get throttled on the second.
Run both for one billing cycle
Keep the old key live and route a slice of real traffic to the new one. A month is the shortest honest test, because credit expiry, rollover and the overage rate only show up at renewal and those are where the surprises live.
Cancel on the renewal date, not before
Credits on most of these plans do not survive a downgrade. Check what happens to the balance you have already paid for, and time the switch so you are not buying the same records twice.
The step people skip is the first one, and it is the only one that cannot be done after the fact. Once the old key is off you have nothing to compare the new match rate against, so a provider that is quietly worse on your segment looks like a provider that is fine.
What practitioners say about Apollo
The one part of this page that is not a vendor claim. Quotes are transcribed as written, linked to the thread, and nothing here is the only source for a figure in the tables above. Where a comment makes its point in crude words, we summarize it in our own words instead of quoting it.
The rate limit, not the credit price, is what people actually hit
In our words: A practitioner building on the API says the rate limits are what their team hit, that they got past them by routing requests across three Apollo accounts, and that Apollo charges per request even when a lookup returns nothing.
r/gtmengineering · May 2026 · summarized rather than quoted
Two halves worth separating. The limit is real and it is on this page: 200 requests a minute and 2,000 a day on Basic, with enrichment on a separate 1,000 a minute and no daily cap, which is why a bulk job and a per-row loop feel like different products.
The charge-on-no-output half needs care, because Apollo publishes 0 credits when nothing is found and that matches what we read. What a miss does spend is a request against the rate limit, and when the limit is the binding constraint that is the cost you feel. Pooling accounts to get round a published limit is a terms question before it is an engineering one.
The answer to the limit is the bulk endpoint, and it gets missed
Are you using bulk enrichment? You should be able to compress 10 enrichments per call, and based on the documentation I'm reading, the limit should be 600 calls, so that's 6000 total contacts per hour. If you have more, you can write some code to stagger them with 60 minute delays per 6000.
r/gtmengineering · May 2026 · 1 point
This is the right instinct and it is the same one the batch endpoints exist for: ten records in one call is one request against the limit rather than ten. The arithmetic here is this person's reading of Apollo's documentation rather than ours, so check the current bulk limit on Apollo's own reference before sizing a job around 6,000 an hour. The shape of the advice holds whatever the number is.
11 threads read on 13 October 2026, searched by vendor name. Scores and dates are the comment's own. Nothing here is the only source for a price or a limit on this site: every figure in the tables above comes from a vendor's own page.
What practitioners say about People Data Labs
The one part of this page that is not a vendor claim. Quotes are transcribed as written, linked to the thread, and nothing here is the only source for a figure in the tables above.
The accuracy spread between vendors is smaller than the one inside your own list
it's nearly all the same at the end of the day... there's a marginal 5-10% difference between the vendors but overall 55-65% data accuracy / validity overall. [...] have a team of 20+ (or however many) outsourced data integrity workers through fiver or whatnot... it's what the rich tech companies like AirBnB and Uber do to have the most up to date data...
r/SalesOperations · November 2024 · 3 points
The range here lands on the assumption the waterfall stack on this site is modeled with, which is a 55% first pass. That figure is labeled as modeled on every page that uses it, because no provider in this category publishes a match rate you can hold it to, so an independent practitioner arriving at 55 to 65% is the closest thing to corroboration available. It also makes the case for the waterfall itself: if the best single source clears about 60%, the second provider is not a luxury.
The 5 to 10% spread between vendors is this commenter's estimate and nothing here verifies it, and the thread it comes from is a request for benchmarks that were never published. Read it as a reason to run your own test on your own rows rather than as a reason to skip one, and note that it argues against paying a premium for coverage claims, which is a different question from paying a premium for a redistribution license.
14 threads read on 13 October 2026, searched by vendor name. Scores and dates are the comment's own. Nothing here is the only source for a price or a limit on this site: every figure in the tables above comes from a vendor's own page.
Where each one sits in a working pipeline
Neither of these is bought in isolation. These are the worked stacks on this site that use one or both, with the cost run end to end.
Waterfall email enrichment
$0.0364Four providers chained cheapest-first, each taking only what the last one missed, then verification routed per source.
Hiring signal to outbound
$0.13A company hiring three SDRs has already decided to spend. Turn that job posting into a sequenced contact inside a day.
Inbound speed to lead
<60sForm submission to enriched, verified, routed and sequenced in under a minute, with no human in the path.
The wider field for both
A two-way comparison assumes the answer is one of these two. Often it is not, and the reason you are comparing them at all points somewhere else entirely: Apollo alternatives and People Data Labs alternatives both start from the reason people leave.
Apollo API alternatives
6Apollo's credit is level with the specialists once you read the period on it. What sends teams looking is the seat it is attached to, the license, or a European list.
See the alternatives →People Data Labs alternatives
4A license written for redistribution, at the highest price per record in this directory. People leave over the second half.
See the alternatives →Everything in Source
13The full category these two sit in, filtered by data returned, billing model and entry price.
Browse the category →Related comparisons
The 26 providers behind every pairing here are in the main listing.
Pairings that share a side with this one: Apollo vs ZoomInfo, People Data Labs vs Clearbit and Apollo vs RocketReach.
And: Clay vs People Data Labs and Apollo vs UpLead. Every comparison in the directory is on the compare hub.
Apollo API vs Clay
One key for the whole motion against a router sitting in front of 150 vendors.
Compare them →Apollo API vs LeadMagic
A seat license with 30,000 credits against a published per-operation rate card.
Compare them →Apollo API vs Prospeo
Two $49 plans that look identical and meter completely differently.
Compare them →Comparison pages end at the rate card. Your list does not.
We run the bake-off on your actual data, pick the provider order, and build the pipeline behind it: waterfall routing, credit ceilings and the write-back that puts a verified contact in front of a rep the same day.
Worked with 300+ companies. A senior operator runs your account.
Apollo and People Data Labs, answered
Read from the same records that drive the table above.
Is Apollo or People Data Labs cheaper?
On the entry plan it is Apollo, $49/seat/mo against People Data Labs at $98/mo. Per unit it is $0.02 per credit against $0.28 per record, which is the figure that decides it at volume.
Can I try Apollo and People Data Labs for free?
Apollo: Free plan with API access, 900 credits per seat per year granted monthly, so 75 a month. People Data Labs: Free plan, up to 100 credits per month with contact data obfuscated.
What are the rate limits on Apollo and People Data Labs?
Apollo: 200 req/min, 2,000/day on Basic. Enrichment gets 1,000/min with no daily cap. People Data Labs: Per key, fixed window, separate per endpoint. Reported in the response headers.
Do Apollo and People Data Labs both have MCP servers?
One of them. Apollo ships one (https://mcp.apollo.io/mcp); People Data Labs documents none.
Which is better, Apollo or People Data Labs?
This is a license question wearing a price tag. Apollo is about fourteen times cheaper per record and its terms cover your own go-to-market only. People Data Labs costs what it costs because the price includes the right to put those rows inside a product you sell.
What are the downsides of Apollo and People Data Labs?
Measured against each other rather than in general. Apollo: none of the structural gaps in this answer; the limits section carries its operational ones. People Data Labs: there is no documented MCP server, so an agent has to go through your own code.
Can you use Apollo and People Data Labs together?
These are bought for different reasons rather than as a waterfall, and the arrangement that appears in practice is a split by destination rather than by coverage.
Can I migrate from Apollo to People Data Labs without losing data?
Not without losing a field. People Data Labs does not return technographics, job postings, intent and news and CRM records, which Apollo does, so anything downstream that reads it has to change. Either way, measure your match rate on 500 rows before you switch, because that number is the one you cannot recover afterwards.