Apollo vs RocketReach
RocketReach
API and MCP on the cheapest paid tier $33/Apollo if emails are most of what you buy, because $0.0196 a credit against $0.085 an export is not a gap volume closes. RocketReach if you need mobiles and personal emails at volume, because one export carries all of them and the per-export price genuinely falls to $0.08 at the top tier while Apollo's credit stays flat. RocketReach is also the answer for a headless pipeline, since API and MCP access sit on the $33 plan and Apollo attaches its credits to a seat. Work out your own mix of emails to mobiles before either rate card means anything.
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 | RocketReach |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Search, enrich and sequence from one credit balance | A real volume curve, and no plan without the API |
| Entry price | $49/seat/mo | $33/mo annual |
| Unit cost | $0.02 per credit | $0.25 per export |
| Billing model | Per seat Credit packs Free tier | Credit packs Subscription Per seat |
| Free tier | Free plan with API access, 900 credits per seat per year granted monthly, so 75 a month | No ongoing free tier. |
| GTM motion covered | Source Enrich Engage Sync | Source Enrich |
| Data returned | Work emailMobile phoneFirmographicsTechnographicsJob postingsIntent and newsLinkedIn profileCRM records | Work emailPersonal emailMobile phoneFirmographicsTechnographicsIntent and news |
| MCP server | Yes https://mcp.apollo.io/mcp | Yes MCP access on every paid tier |
| Interfaces | REST API MCP server Webhooks Bulk or async Native in Clay n8n node | REST API MCP server Bulk or async |
| Auth | API key in the x-api-key header | API key, per the RocketReach API v2 docs |
| Rate limits | 200 req/min, 2,000/day on Basic. Enrichment gets 1,000/min with no daily cap. | Not published. The annual export allowance is the binding constraint. |
| Coverage | Global | Strongest in NA |
| Compliance | GDPR DPA SOC 2 Type II CCPA | GDPR DPA CCPA |
| Best for | Best all-in-one GTM API | API and MCP on the cheapest paid tier |
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 | RocketReach | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10,000 verified work emails | $196.00 $0.02 per email |
$2,500 $0.25 per email |
Apollo API by 12.8x |
| 2,000 mobile numbers | $352.80 $0.176 per mobile |
$500.00 $0.25 per mobile |
Apollo API by 42% |
| Monthly floor at entry | $49/seat/mo | $33/mo annual | RocketReach 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
- Emails are the bulk of what you need, and mobiles are occasional.
- You want sourcing, sequencing and CRM writes behind the same key.
- Your volume sits below a few thousand lookups a month, where Apollo's flat credit wins outright.
RocketReach
- Mobiles and personal emails are the job, not a bonus field.
- Nobody is logging in, and you do not want to buy a seat to get a key.
- You are at volume: the per-export price falls from $0.33 to $0.08 and Apollo's does not move.
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 one free tier and one trial, 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 RocketReach lists 4. 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 | RocketReach |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest paid plan | Basic, $49 | Essentials, $33 |
| Tiers published | 4 | 4 |
| Free tier | Free plan with API access, 900 credits per seat per year granted monthly, so 75 a month | No ongoing free tier. |
| Unit cost at entry | $0.0196 per credit | $0.25 per export |
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
RocketReach
RocketReach publishes 4 tiers, none of them free, and the paid ladder runs from $33 to From $6,000.
Essentials
- 1,200 exports a year, so 100 a month
- Unlimited verified emails
- MCP and API access on every plan
- Send up to 500 emails a day
Pro
- 3,600 exports a year, so 300 a month
- Verified mobile and direct phone numbers
- Technographics, news and org charts
- Salesforce, Outreach, HubSpot and Salesloft
Ultimate
- 20,000 exports a year, so about 1,667 a month
- Intent data and healthcare data
- Salesforce custom mapping
Enterprise
- Custom packages and company exports
- Higher API limits
- Premium support
What Apollo and RocketReach 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.
RocketReach
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 | RocketReach |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 a month | $588 Basic | $1,704 Ultimate |
| 10,000 a month | $2,352 Basic | Quoted |
| 50,000 a month | $11,760 Basic | Quoted |
2 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 two price different things, which is why the headline comparison misleads in both directions. Apollo charges per credit and spends one on an email and nine on a call that returns a mobile, so a mobile is $0.1764 at the Basic rate. RocketReach charges per export and an export carries the work email, the personal email and the mobile together, at $0.33 on Essentials falling to $0.08 on Ultimate. On an email Apollo is cheaper at every volume; on a mobile the two cross somewhere above RocketReach's Pro tier.
The second difference is structural and decides more evaluations than the rate does. RocketReach puts API and MCP access on all three paid plans, starting at $33 a month billed annually. Apollo grants credits per seat, so a pipeline with no human in it still buys a user's worth of software, and Organization adds a three-seat minimum that puts US$357 a month under it. If the thing calling the API is a cron job, that is the whole comparison.
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
The cheapest credit here, by a long way on emails
Apollo is $0.0196 a credit and an email costs one of them. RocketReach's cheapest export is $0.085 on Ultimate and $0.33 on the entry plan, so for an address alone Apollo is between four and seventeen times cheaper depending on which RocketReach tier you are on. No amount of volume closes that, because Apollo's rate is already flat across every paid tier.
A miss costs nothing, and search costs nothing
Apollo spends zero credits when an enrichment call finds nothing, and its people search returns profiles without spending anything at all. That makes the filter-then-enrich pattern genuinely free to iterate on, which is the single biggest lever on a data bill and the one most teams never pull.
It is the whole motion, not the data step
Sequences, contacts, deals and tasks are all endpoints here and all of them cost 0 credits, and there is an MCP server at mcp.apollo.io/mcp covering the same surface. RocketReach gives you contact data and stops. If the alternative is Apollo plus a sequencer, price the sequencer in before comparing anything.
RocketReach
The per-export price actually falls with volume
Essentials is $399 a year for 1,200 exports, Pro $899 for 3,600 and Ultimate $1,699 for 20,000, which works out at $0.33, $0.25 and $0.085 an export. That is a genuine volume discount rather than a bigger bucket at the same rate, and it is unusual in this category. Apollo's credit sits at $0.0196 on Basic and $0.0198 on Organization, so buying more there buys seats rather than a discount.
One export carries every field, including the personal email
A RocketReach export returns the work email, the personal email and the mobile together. Apollo returns neither personal emails nor, on the same credit, a mobile: that is nine credits when a number comes back. On a list where you want the direct dial on most rows, the comparison is $0.085 against $0.1764, and RocketReach is the cheaper one.
API and MCP on every paid plan, from $33
There is no gated tier and no seat attached. The $33 a month Essentials plan carries the same API and MCP access as the $142 one, which makes RocketReach the cheapest legitimate way into programmatic contact data in this directory for a workload nobody logs in to.
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
Credits are attached to a seat, and granted annually
The 30,000 credits on Basic are per seat per year, not per month, which is 2,500 a month at $0.0196 each. Reaching higher volume means buying seats rather than moving up a tier, and Organization enforces a three-seat minimum at US$357 a month. A headless pipeline pays for users that do not exist.
No personal emails, and a mobile costs nine times an address
Apollo returns no personal emails at all, so a motion that needs one has no input here. And its own direct dials are 8 credits on top of the email credit, which is where the cheapest unit in the directory stops being cheap and RocketReach starts winning.
The daily cap catches people who sized on the minute figure
200 requests a minute but only 2,000 a day on Basic, and enrichment separately gets 1,000 a minute with no daily cap. People read the minute number, size a backfill against it, and discover the daily pool three hours in. Read both before you plan a load.
RocketReach
The allowance is annual, so the entry plan is thinner than it reads
Essentials is 1,200 exports a year. That is 100 a month, and a single afternoon of list building spends a quarter of it. The $33 figure is a monthly instalment on an annual commitment rather than a monthly allowance, and the plan to compare against Apollo's 2,500 a month is Ultimate.
Nothing about throughput is published
RocketReach publishes no rate limits: the annual export allowance is the binding constraint and the request ceiling is whatever the account permits. For a batch job that is usually fine, and for anything latency-sensitive it is a question to settle before you build rather than after.
Contact data and nothing else
There is no sequencer, no CRM object model and no free tier to prove the match rate on. Replacing Apollo with RocketReach means replacing one key with two or three, and the orchestration that cost 0 credits inside Apollo now has to live somewhere that charges for it.
Using Apollo and RocketReach 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.
The arrangement that works is Apollo first and RocketReach on what Apollo could not answer, and it is cheaper than it sounds because the two charge for different failures. Apollo spends nothing on a miss, so running it across the whole list costs only what it finds. RocketReach then takes the residue, where the rows are hard and an export carrying three fields at once is worth $0.085.
Split it by field rather than only by miss, though, because that is where most of the saving is. Emails through Apollo at $0.0196 on every row, mobiles and personal emails through RocketReach at Ultimate rates on the rows that actually need a phone call. Asking Apollo for the phone on the same call is nine credits and $0.1764, which is twice what the same number costs on the other side.
What makes the pairing awkward is the commitment. RocketReach's useful rate only exists on an annual plan, so the second provider is a year of spend rather than a top-up you can stop. Model the mix on a month of your own traffic first: if fewer than one row in five needs a direct dial, the arithmetic usually says stay on Apollo and pay the nine credits.
Apollo or RocketReach, for you
Five 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 |
| RocketReach | Work email, Personal email, Mobile phone, Firmographics, Technographics, Intent and news | Strongest in NA | GDPR DPA 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 RocketReach
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
RocketReach does not return Job postings, LinkedIn profile and CRM records, which Apollo API does. If anything downstream reads job postings, 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. RocketReach uses API key, per the RocketReach API v2 docs.
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.
RocketReach rate: Not published. The annual export allowance is the binding constraint. 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.
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 RocketReach 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 →RocketReach alternatives
3The export allowance is annual and the entry plan is 100 a month. That is what sends people looking, not the price.
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 People Data Labs, Lusha vs RocketReach and Apollo vs ZoomInfo.
And: Cognism vs RocketReach 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 People Data Labs
A go-to-market license at two cents a credit against a license written for redistribution.
Compare them →Apollo API vs LeadMagic
A seat license with 30,000 credits against a published per-operation rate card.
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 RocketReach, answered
Read from the same records that drive the table above.
Is Apollo or RocketReach cheaper?
On the entry plan it is RocketReach, $33/mo annual against Apollo at $49/seat/mo. Per unit it is $0.02 per credit against $0.25 per export, which is the figure that decides it at volume.
Can I try Apollo and RocketReach for free?
Apollo: Free plan with API access, 900 credits per seat per year granted monthly, so 75 a month. RocketReach: No ongoing free tier.
What are the rate limits on Apollo and RocketReach?
Apollo: 200 req/min, 2,000/day on Basic. Enrichment gets 1,000/min with no daily cap. RocketReach: Not published. The annual export allowance is the binding constraint.
Do Apollo and RocketReach both have MCP servers?
Both do. Apollo: https://mcp.apollo.io/mcp. RocketReach: MCP access on every paid tier.
Which is better, Apollo or RocketReach?
Apollo if emails are most of what you buy, because $0.0196 a credit against $0.085 an export is not a gap volume closes. RocketReach if you need mobiles and personal emails at volume, because one export carries all of them and the per-export price genuinely falls to $0.08 at the top tier while Apollo's credit stays flat.
What are the downsides of Apollo and RocketReach?
Measured against each other rather than in general. Apollo: none of the structural gaps in this answer; the limits section carries its operational ones. RocketReach: there is no free tier, so you cannot measure your own match rate before paying.
Can you use Apollo and RocketReach together?
The arrangement that works is Apollo first and RocketReach on what Apollo could not answer, and it is cheaper than it sounds because the two charge for different failures. Apollo spends nothing on a miss, so running it across the whole list costs only what it finds.
Can I migrate from Apollo to RocketReach without losing data?
Not without losing a field. RocketReach does not return job postings, LinkedIn profile 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.