Apollo vs UpLead
UpLead
One credit for the email and the mobile together $99/Apollo in almost every case, because $0.0196 a credit against $0.582 a contact is a gap no bundling closes, and Apollo publishes an API you can buy at the listed price. UpLead is worth the conversation only if a single credit buying both the email and the direct dial fits your motion exactly and the list is North American. Before you take that conversation, note that Essentials and Plus do not include full API access at all: that sits on Professional, which is annual and quote only. Measure the match rate on your own rows during the seven-day trial, because it is the only number that could justify the difference.
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 | UpLead |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Search, enrich and sequence from one credit balance | A credit buys the whole contact, but the API is quote only |
| Entry price | $49/seat/mo | $99/mo |
| Unit cost | $0.02 per credit | $0.582 per contact |
| 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 | 7-day free trial with 5 credits. No ongoing free tier. |
| GTM motion covered | Source Enrich Engage Sync | Source Enrich |
| Data returned | Work emailMobile phoneFirmographicsTechnographicsJob postingsIntent and newsLinkedIn profileCRM records | Work emailMobile phoneFirmographicsTechnographicsIntent and news |
| 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 |
| Auth | API key in the x-api-key header | API key, per the UpLead API docs |
| Rate limits | 200 req/min, 2,000/day on Basic. Enrichment gets 1,000/min with no daily cap. | Not published. Credits are 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 | One credit for the email and the mobile together |
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 | UpLead | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10,000 verified work emails | $196.00 $0.02 per email |
$5,820 $0.582 per email |
Apollo API by 29.7x |
| 2,000 mobile numbers | $352.80 $0.176 per mobile |
$1,164 $0.582 per mobile |
Apollo API by 3.3x |
| Monthly floor at entry | $49/seat/mo | $99/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
- You want a published price for the thing you are actually buying.
- Emails are most of the volume, where the gap is thirty times rather than three.
- Sequencing, CRM writes and an MCP server behind the same key matter to you.
UpLead
- Every row needs the direct dial as well as the address, every time.
- The list is North American and coverage there is the binding constraint.
- A quote-only annual contract is a normal way for your business to buy software.
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 UpLead 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 | UpLead |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest paid plan | Basic, $49 | Essentials, $99 |
| Tiers published | 4 | 4 |
| Free tier | Free plan with API access, 900 credits per seat per year granted monthly, so 75 a month | 7-day free trial with 5 credits. No ongoing free tier. |
| Unit cost at entry | $0.0196 per credit | $0.582 per contact |
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
UpLead
UpLead publishes 4 tiers, one of them free, and the paid ladder runs from $99 to Quote.
Free trial
- Verified emails and mobile direct dials
- Chrome extension
- No ongoing free tier
Essentials
- $74 a month billed annually
- $0.582 a credit at the monthly rate
- CRM integrations, no API
Plus
- $149 a month billed annually
- $0.498 a credit
- Data enrichment, technographics, advanced filters
- Still no API access
Professional
- The only tier with full API access
- Custom seats and custom credits
- Buyer intent and bi-directional CRM sync
What Apollo and UpLead 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.
UpLead
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 | UpLead |
|---|---|---|
| 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 headline gap is thirty times and the real gap depends entirely on what you ask for. Apollo charges one credit for an email at $0.0196 and nine for a call that returns a mobile, so a direct dial is $0.1764. UpLead charges one credit for the contact and gives you the work email and the mobile together, at $0.582 on Essentials and $0.498 on Plus.
So on an address Apollo is thirty times cheaper, and on an address plus a phone number it is about three times cheaper. Three times is still three times, but it is a different argument from thirty, and which of the two you are having depends on a ratio only your own list can tell you.
The structural point is the one that usually ends it. UpLead publishes $99 and $199 on its pricing page and puts full API access on a Professional tier with no published price and annual billing only. This is a directory of APIs, and on that reading UpLead has no published price at all: the numbers on the page buy the interface. Apollo publishes a rate card for the API itself, with the caveat that its credits attach to a seat and Organization enforces a three-seat minimum at US$357 a month.
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 rate card is for the API, not for the app
Basic at $49 a seat a month carries 30,000 credits a seat a year with full API access, and the free plan carries API access too. You can buy Apollo programmatically at the price on the page. UpLead's published tiers are the interface, and the programmatic product is a quote, which is the difference between comparing two prices and comparing one price to a meeting.
A miss costs nothing and search costs nothing
Apollo spends no credits when an enrichment call finds nothing and none at all on people search. That makes filtering before enriching free to iterate on, so your effective cost per found contact is the rate rather than the rate divided by your match rate. On a vendor charging $0.582 a contact, the same discipline is worth thirty times as much and costs you a trial to establish.
It is the motion, not the data step
Sequences, contacts, deals and tasks are endpoints here and all cost 0 credits, and there is an MCP server at mcp.apollo.io/mcp. UpLead returns contact data and stops, with no MCP endpoint at all. If the comparison is really Apollo against UpLead plus a sequencer, price the sequencer in before the rate cards mean anything.
UpLead
One credit is the contact, phone included
The work email and the mobile direct dial come back together for the same single credit. Apollo charges nine credits when a number is returned, so on a phone-first motion the practical ratio is $0.582 against $0.1764 rather than against $0.0196. In a category that meters direct dials separately and dearly, bundling them is a genuine design choice rather than an accident.
Intent and technographics on the same record
UpLead carries work email, mobile, firmographics, technographics and intent. Apollo carries the first four and no intent data at all. If the segment you are building is defined by what a company runs or what it is researching rather than by who works there, that is a field Apollo cannot return at any price.
The price per contact falls at the published tiers
Essentials is $99 for 170 credits and Plus is $199 for 400, which is $0.582 and $0.498 a contact. That is a real if modest volume curve, and Apollo's credit is flat at $0.0196 to $0.0198 across every paid tier. The curve does not come close to closing the gap, but it is there and Apollo's is not.
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 attach to a seat and are granted by the year
30,000 credits on Basic is per seat per year, which is 2,500 a month. Reaching more volume means buying seats, and Organization adds a three-seat minimum that puts US$357 a month under a workload with no human in it. The cheapest unit in the directory comes with the least convenient license.
No intent data and no personal emails
Apollo returns neither, and both are fields UpLead carries. A reactivation play built on personal addresses or a segment built on intent has no input here, and that is a coverage gap rather than a pricing one.
A mobile is nine credits, which people forget
One credit for the email, eight more when a number comes back. Teams model Apollo at $0.0196 a row, then discover a phone-heavy segment costs nine times that. Model your own ratio of emails to dials before either rate card tells you anything useful.
UpLead
The API is not on the published plans
Full API access sits on Professional, annual billing, quote only. The $99 and $199 tiers on the pricing page do not carry it. For an API directory that makes UpLead effectively unpriced, and it is the single most important thing to establish before a trial convinces you of anything.
Thirty times the unit price on an email
$0.582 a contact against $0.0196 a credit. Even on the Plus tier at $0.498 and even counting the bundled mobile, nothing about the volume curve brings these together. This is a coverage-and-convenience argument, and it has to be made on a measured match rate rather than on price.
North American coverage, no free tier, no published limits
Seven days and five credits is the whole trial and there is no ongoing free allowance, so there is no way to keep a staging environment alive afterwards. Rate limits are not published at all and credits are the binding constraint. And the database is North American, so an EU list belongs somewhere else entirely.
Using Apollo and UpLead 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.
There is a real arrangement here and it is narrow: Apollo across the whole list, UpLead only on the rows where you need a direct dial and Apollo did not return one. Apollo charges nothing for the miss, so the first pass costs only what it finds, and UpLead is then answering a question that is worth $0.582 because a phone number on a qualified account usually is.
What makes that hard to run in practice is the license rather than the arithmetic. UpLead's API lives on an annual quote-only tier, so the second provider is a year of committed spend rather than a top-up you can switch off when the residue shrinks. Most teams that price it honestly find the residue is not large enough to justify an annual contract, and go back to paying Apollo nine credits.
If intent data is the reason UpLead is on this page, the pairing changes shape and gets easier to defend. Intent is a field Apollo does not hold at any price, so you are not paying thirty times for the same row, you are buying something else and getting contact data with it. Price that as a signal subscription rather than as enrichment, and compare it against the signal providers in this directory instead.
Apollo or UpLead, 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 |
| UpLead | Work 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 UpLead
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
UpLead 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. UpLead uses API key, per the UpLead API 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.
UpLead rate: Not published. Credits are 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 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 →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 UpLead and Apollo vs ZoomInfo.
And: Cognism vs UpLead and Apollo vs RocketReach. 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 UpLead, answered
Read from the same records that drive the table above.
Is Apollo or UpLead cheaper?
On the entry plan it is Apollo, $49/seat/mo against UpLead at $99/mo. Per unit it is $0.02 per credit against $0.582 per contact, which is the figure that decides it at volume.
Can I try Apollo and UpLead for free?
Apollo: Free plan with API access, 900 credits per seat per year granted monthly, so 75 a month. UpLead: 7-day free trial with 5 credits. No ongoing free tier.
What are the rate limits on Apollo and UpLead?
Apollo: 200 req/min, 2,000/day on Basic. Enrichment gets 1,000/min with no daily cap. UpLead: Not published. Credits are the binding constraint.
Do Apollo and UpLead both have MCP servers?
One of them. Apollo ships one (https://mcp.apollo.io/mcp); UpLead documents none.
Which is better, Apollo or UpLead?
Apollo in almost every case, because $0.0196 a credit against $0.582 a contact is a gap no bundling closes, and Apollo publishes an API you can buy at the listed price. UpLead is worth the conversation only if a single credit buying both the email and the direct dial fits your motion exactly and the list is North American.
What are the downsides of Apollo and UpLead?
Measured against each other rather than in general. Apollo: none of the structural gaps in this answer; the limits section carries its operational ones. UpLead: there is no free tier, only a trial, so test your own list inside its limits before paying; there is no documented MCP server, so an agent has to go through your own code.
Can you use Apollo and UpLead together?
There is a real arrangement here and it is narrow: Apollo across the whole list, UpLead only on the rows where you need a direct dial and Apollo did not return one. Apollo charges nothing for the miss, so the first pass costs only what it finds, and UpLead is then answering a question that is worth $0.582 because a phone number on a qualified account usually is.
Can I migrate from Apollo to UpLead without losing data?
Not without losing a field. UpLead 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.