Apollo vs ZoomInfo
ZoomInfo
Enterprise sales intelligence, priced by quote Quote onlyApollo vs ZoomInfo is decided by whether you are allowed to find out what it costs. Apollo publishes a $49 seat, a free plan with 900 credits a year, and rate limits you can read before you sign. ZoomInfo publishes no price at any tier. That makes the two genuinely hard to compare on cost, which is itself the finding.
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 | ZoomInfo |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Search, enrich and sequence from one credit balance | One credit an export, and no published price |
| Entry price | $49/seat/mo | Quote only |
| Unit cost | $0.02 per credit | Not sold by the unit |
| Billing model | Per seat Credit packs Free tier | Credit packs Per seat Subscription |
| Free tier | Free plan with API access, 900 credits per seat per year granted monthly, so 75 a month | No free tier. A free trial on the three sales plans; the marketing plans start with a demo. |
| GTM motion covered | Source Enrich Engage Sync | Source Enrich Signal |
| Data returned | Work emailMobile phoneFirmographicsTechnographicsJob postingsIntent and newsLinkedIn profileCRM records | Work emailMobile phoneFirmographicsTechnographicsIntent and newsJob changes |
| MCP server | Yes https://mcp.apollo.io/mcp | Yes ZoomInfo MCP, connected through Claude, ChatGPT and Perplexity |
| 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 or JWT, per the ZoomInfo API docs |
| Rate limits | 200 req/min, 2,000/day on Basic. Enrichment gets 1,000/min with no daily cap. | Not published. Credit consumption is the practical ceiling. |
| Coverage | Global | Strongest in NA |
| Compliance | GDPR DPA SOC 2 Type II CCPA | GDPR DPA CCPA |
| Best for | Best all-in-one GTM API | Enterprise sales intelligence, priced by quote |
Pick each one when
Apollo API
- You want to test the API before anybody signs anything.
- A published per-seat price is part of the requirement.
- Search, enrichment and sequencing behind one credit balance suits you.
ZoomInfo
- Deep North American coverage with org charts and budgets is the job.
- You need intent at enterprise scale and have the budget approved.
- An existing ZoomInfo contract already covers the credits.
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
Only one of these two publishes a rate card. Apollo API lists its tiers, and ZoomInfo quotes everything, so half of this comparison is a number you have to go and get. 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 | ZoomInfo |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest paid plan | Basic, $49 | Not published |
| Tiers published | 4 | None |
| Free tier | Free plan with API access, 900 credits per seat per year granted monthly, so 75 a month | No free tier. A free trial on the three sales plans; the marketing plans start with a demo. |
| Unit cost at entry | $0.0196 per credit | Not sold by the unit |
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, and the two cards below say what each side publishes and what it keeps off the page.
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
ZoomInfo
ZoomInfo publishes no price at all, so there is no rate card to put here. Everything is quoted, which means the number you get depends on what you ask for and on where in their quarter you ask it.
Get these in writing before you sign: the per-unit rate at your volume, the annual minimum, how many seats that price assumes, whether API access is included or an add-on. Without the first two you cannot compare this against anything else on this page.
What Apollo and ZoomInfo 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.
ZoomInfo
Publishes no price, so there is nothing here to model and the lines below say what to ask for.
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. ZoomInfo publishes no price, so nothing is modeled there and the panel says what to ask for instead.
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 | ZoomInfo |
|---|---|---|
| 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
ZoomInfo's packages quote 75,000 or 150,000 included credits with no number attached, and a credit is consumed every time a profile is exported, including by an API call. It also prices credits by depth, saying plainly that richer credits cost more than basic firmographic ones, so the same budget buys a different number of rows depending on what you ask for.
Where ZoomInfo earns its reputation is depth in North America: org charts, department budgets and intent. For most teams under a few hundred people, Apollo does the same job with a rate card, and the honest reason to buy ZoomInfo is that your segment needs the depth and somebody has already approved the budget.
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
Every number you need is on a page
A $49 seat on annual billing, $0.0196 a credit, 200 requests a minute and 2,000 a day on Basic, and a free plan with full API access. You can size the whole thing before speaking to anybody, which is the single largest practical difference between these two.
One balance covers search, enrichment and sending
Apollo is one of the few providers in this directory that covers sourcing, enrichment, sequencing and CRM sync behind one key, and the sequence, contact and task endpoints cost zero credits. The parts of the motion that run most often never touch the balance.
An MCP server, published and live
At mcp.apollo.io/mcp. If an agent rather than your own code is going to call this, that is a configuration line. ZoomInfo now ships one too, through the Claude, ChatGPT and Perplexity connector directories, so this is no longer a difference in kind.
ZoomInfo
Depth in North America that Apollo does not match
Org charts, department budgets, intent and job-change signals, which is the combination ZoomInfo's reputation rests on. For an enterprise motion that targets a named list of large accounts, the extra fields are the product rather than a nice-to-have.
Job-change signals, which Apollo does not return
ZoomInfo carries job-change as a data type and Apollo does not. A reactivation play built on people who moved roles has no input from Apollo at all, so on that one motion this is not a price comparison.
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 granted per seat per year
Thirty thousand on Basic sounds generous until you read the period: it is a year, so the monthly figure is 2,500. Scaling means buying seats rather than moving up a tier, and ten thousand lookups a month is four Basic seats at $196.
The daily cap, not the per-minute rate, is what stops a backfill
Two hundred requests a minute and 2,000 a day on Basic. Sizing a job against the minute figure and discovering the daily one is the most common Apollo mistake. Enrichment is the exception, at 1,000 a minute with no daily cap.
ZoomInfo
No published price at any tier
Packages quote 75,000 or 150,000 included credits with no number attached to them. That makes a cost comparison impossible until you have had a sales conversation, and the evaluation cost of finding out is itself part of what you are comparing.
A credit is consumed on every export, including by the API
One credit per profile exported, whether a human clicks it in the app or your pipeline requests it. There is no separate API allowance, so an automated job and a curious rep draw on the same pool.
Credits are not all the same size
ZoomInfo prices credits by depth, so richer records cost more than basic firmographics. The same budget therefore buys a different number of rows depending on what you ask for, which makes forecasting harder than a flat per-credit rate.
Using Apollo and ZoomInfo 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.
This is a replacement decision rather than a stack, because both are general-purpose contact databases and paying twice for overlapping coverage is the thing a waterfall is supposed to avoid.
Where both do turn up, it is usually a large organization running ZoomInfo for named enterprise accounts and Apollo for everything else, and the arrangement works because the segments do not overlap. If you are considering it, draw the line by account size before buying rather than after, or you will enrich the same companies twice at two different rates.
The honest test is the one this directory recommends everywhere: run 500 of your real rows through Apollo's free plan and compare the match rate and the field coverage against what ZoomInfo returns today. For most teams under a few hundred people the answer is that Apollo does the same job with a rate card, and the reason to buy ZoomInfo is that your segment genuinely needs the depth.
Apollo or ZoomInfo, 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 |
| ZoomInfo | Work email, Mobile phone, Firmographics, Technographics, Intent and news, Job changes | 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 ZoomInfo
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
ZoomInfo 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. ZoomInfo uses API key or JWT, per the ZoomInfo 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.
ZoomInfo rate: Not published. Credit consumption is the practical ceiling. 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 ZoomInfo 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 →ZoomInfo alternatives
4Nobody leaves ZoomInfo because the data is bad. They leave because the contract is annual, the price is a secret and the credits run out faster than the plan suggests.
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, Cognism vs ZoomInfo and Apollo vs RocketReach.
And: Lusha vs ZoomInfo 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 ZoomInfo, answered
Read from the same records that drive the table above.
Is Apollo or ZoomInfo cheaper?
ZoomInfo does not publish a price at any tier, so the two cannot be compared on cost. Apollo starts at $49/seat/mo, which is as far as the comparison goes.
Can I try Apollo and ZoomInfo for free?
Apollo: Free plan with API access, 900 credits per seat per year granted monthly, so 75 a month. ZoomInfo: No free tier. A free trial on the three sales plans; the marketing plans start with a demo.
What are the rate limits on Apollo and ZoomInfo?
Apollo: 200 req/min, 2,000/day on Basic. Enrichment gets 1,000/min with no daily cap. ZoomInfo: Not published. Credit consumption is the practical ceiling.
Do Apollo and ZoomInfo both have MCP servers?
Both do. Apollo: https://mcp.apollo.io/mcp. ZoomInfo: ZoomInfo MCP, connected through Claude, ChatGPT and Perplexity.
Which is better, Apollo or ZoomInfo?
Apollo vs ZoomInfo is decided by whether you are allowed to find out what it costs. Apollo publishes a $49 seat, a free plan with 900 credits a year, and rate limits you can read before you sign. ZoomInfo publishes no price at any tier.
What are the downsides of Apollo and ZoomInfo?
Measured against each other rather than in general. Apollo: none of the structural gaps in this answer; the limits section carries its operational ones. ZoomInfo: there is no free tier, only a trial, so test your own list inside its limits before paying; nothing is priced publicly, so every comparison starts with a sales call.
Can you use Apollo and ZoomInfo together?
This is a replacement decision rather than a stack, because both are general-purpose contact databases and paying twice for overlapping coverage is the thing a waterfall is supposed to avoid.
Can I migrate from Apollo to ZoomInfo without losing data?
Not without losing a field. ZoomInfo 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.