Apollo vs Seamless.AI
Seamless.AI
Search, research and outreach on one credit balance, with credits back on invalid emails Quote onlyApollo vs Seamless AI resolves on one fact: Apollo publishes the price of its API and Seamless.AI does not. Apollo is $49 a seat with 30,000 credits a seat a year, charges nothing for search or for a lookup that finds nothing, and carries API access on the free plan. Seamless.AI is worth a quote if one credit buying the email and the phones together fits a phone-first motion, because Apollo charges nine credits when a mobile comes back. Get the Public API license priced in writing before you compare.
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 | Seamless.AI |
|---|---|---|
| What sets it apart | Search, enrich and sequence from one credit balance | Search and research are charged separately, and both are priced by quote |
| Entry price | $49/seat/mo | Quote only |
| Unit cost | $0.0196 per credit | Not sold by the unit |
| Billing model | Per seat Credit packs Free tier | Per seat Credit packs Free tier |
| Free tier | Free plan with API access, 900 credits per seat per year granted monthly, so 75 a month | Free license with 50 Universal Credits that never replenish. The API needs a Public API license, which Seamless's API page says is bundled with some plans or sold as an add-on. |
| GTM motion covered | Source Enrich Engage Sync | Source Enrich Engage |
| Data returned | Work emailMobile phoneFirmographicsTechnographicsJob postingsIntent and newsLinkedIn profileCRM records | Work emailMobile phoneFirmographicsTechnographicsIntent and newsJob changesLinkedIn profile |
| MCP server | Yes https://mcp.apollo.io/mcp | Yes Hosted at mcp.seamless.ai/mcp, 57 tools, OAuth 2.1 or an API key |
| Interfaces | REST API MCP server Webhooks Bulk or async Native in Clay n8n node | REST API MCP server Webhooks Bulk or async |
| Auth | API key in the x-api-key header | API key in the Token header, created under Settings, Public API; OAuth 2.0 Bearer tokens for apps acting for many users |
| Rate limits | 200 req/min, 400/hour and 2,000/day on Basic. Enrichment gets 1,000/min with no hourly or daily cap. | 60 requests a minute per endpoint, shared by every key and user in the organization, with X-RateLimit headers and a 429 on excess |
| Coverage | Global | Global |
| Compliance | GDPR DPA SOC 2 Type II CCPA | SOC 2 Type II |
| Best for | Best all-in-one GTM API | Search, research and outreach on one credit balance, with credits back on invalid emails |
Pick each one when
Apollo API
- You want to price the API from the page rather than from a call.
- Lists are built by search, and search should cost nothing.
- Most rows need an email, where Apollo's single credit is the whole cost.
Seamless.AI
- Most rows need a phone number as well, and nine credits a mobile adds up.
- Getting a credit back on an invalid email matters to your budget.
- You want 57 MCP tools that run from search through campaigns and call logging.
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
Only one of these two publishes a rate card. Apollo lists its tiers with prices, and Seamless.AI publishes its tiers and their allowances, but no prices, 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 | Seamless.AI |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest paid plan with the API | Basic, $49 | Not published |
| Tiers published | 4 | 4 |
| Free tier | Free plan with API access, 900 credits per seat per year granted monthly, so 75 a month | Free license with 50 Universal Credits that never replenish. The API needs a Public API license, which Seamless's API page says is bundled with some plans or sold as an add-on. |
| 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 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
- $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 $357 a month the real floor
Seamless.AI
Seamless.AI publishes 4 tiers, one of them free, and every paid tier is quoted rather than priced.
Free
- 50 Universal Credits that do not replenish
- API needs a Public API license
Basic
- 250 Universal Credits a user a month
- Credits refresh on the contract date
Pro
- 10,000 Universal Credits a user a month
- Credits refresh on the contract date
Bulk credits
- A fixed pool shared by the organization
- Does not replenish; top up by buying more
What Apollo and Seamless.AI 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.
Seamless.AI
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 on the billing term each vendor publishes, annual where that is how it prices, before any discount you negotiate. Seamless.AI 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.
The priced columns move with volume, through a bigger plan or more seats.
| A year at | Apollo API | Seamless.AI |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 a month | $588 Basic | Quoted |
| 10,000 a month | $2,352 Basic | Quoted |
| 50,000 a month | $11,760 Basic | Quoted |
Seamless.AI does not publish enough to price a year, so that column is marked rather than filled. These are list prices on the published plan that covers each volume, on the billing term each vendor publishes, so they are the number before you negotiate.
How this plays out once it is running
The two credit models charge for different things. Apollo spends one credit when enrichment returns an email and nine when it returns a mobile, nothing on people search, and nothing when a lookup finds nothing. Seamless.AI spends 1 credit for every 10 rows a search returns and 1 credit per record submitted for research, and one research credit unlocks the emails and the phones together.
So the cheaper vendor depends on your mix, and only one side of the sum has a price. At $0.0196 a credit Apollo is $0.0196 an email and $0.1764 a mobile. Seamless.AI publishes allowances rather than prices: 250 Universal Credits a user a month on Basic and 10,000 on Pro, both by quote, plus 50 once on the free license.
The license line matters as much as the rate. Apollo's free plan carries API access at 900 credits a seat a year, granted monthly. Seamless.AI's API needs an organization-level Public API license on top of the seats, and calls without one return 422 missingLicense, so a free Seamless.AI account is not a free API.
What each one is genuinely good at
These are the things that keep somebody paying after the first month, which is a different question from what the marketing page leads with.
Apollo API
The rate card is the API price
Basic is $49 a seat a month on annual billing with 30,000 credits a seat a year, which is $0.0196 a credit, and the free plan includes the API. Seamless.AI publishes credit allowances and no prices, and its own API page says keys are bundled with some tiers or sold as an add-on. Only one of these can be budgeted before a sales conversation.
Search and misses are free
People search costs no credits and an enrichment call that finds nothing costs none either, so filtering a list is free to iterate on and you pay only for what comes back. Seamless.AI charges a credit for every ten rows a search returns and a credit per record submitted for research, with a refund only when its check finds an email invalid.
More requests, and enrichment has its own lane
Two hundred requests a minute, 400 an hour and 2,000 a day on Basic, with enrichment at 1,000 a minute and no hourly or daily cap. Seamless.AI defaults to 60 requests a minute per endpoint, shared by every key and user in the organization. Seamless.AI batches 500 records into one research call, which helps, but Apollo's lane is wider for single-record work.
Seamless.AI
One credit is the email and the phones
A research credit returns the contact with emails, phones, location and job history. Apollo charges nine credits when a mobile comes back. On a list where most rows need a direct dial, that is the difference that could justify a quote, provided the price per Seamless.AI credit comes in under nine times Apollo's.
Credit back on an invalid email
When Seamless.AI's point-in-time check finds an email invalid, the credits for that contact return to the balance automatically. It covers emails, not phones or company data, and Seamless.AI says plainly that it is not a deliverability guarantee. Apollo charges nothing on a miss but has no equivalent for an address it returned that does not work.
Research without searching first
If you already hold an email, a LinkedIn URL, or a name and company, Seamless.AI researches the record directly with no search charge, up to 500 records a call, and delivers results by poll or webhook. That makes it usable as an enrichment step on rows you sourced somewhere else, not only on its own search results.
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 per seat per year
30,000 credits on Basic is per seat per year, so 2,500 a month, and reaching more volume means buying seats. Organization adds a three-seat minimum. The cheapest entry-plan email unit here comes attached to a seat even when no human ever logs in.
A mobile is nine credits
One credit for the email and eight more when a number comes back, so a phone-heavy list costs nine times what the headline suggests. Count your ratio of emails to dials before deciding the comparison is closed.
The daily cap stops a backfill
Two hundred requests a minute, 400 an hour and 2,000 a day on Basic. Sizing a job against the minute figure and meeting the hourly and daily ones is the standard Apollo mistake; enrichment at 1,000 a minute with no hourly or daily cap is the exception to build on.
Seamless.AI
No published price, and a separate API license
Seats are by quote, credits are by quote, and the Public API license is a further line whose terms Seamless.AI's own pages describe two ways: included for owners and admins in one help article, bundled or sold as an add-on on the API page. Until it is in a quote, there is nothing to compare Apollo's $0.0196 against.
Search is a charge, and research is too
Search returns previews with no email or phone at 1 credit per 10 rows, and unlocking a row is a further credit. A team used to Apollo's free search will spend credits filtering. Search does not start a research job, so a search and a research on the same person are two charges.
One rate limit for the whole organization
60 requests a minute per endpoint, shared by every key and user, with higher limits through sales. An agent on the MCP server and a pipeline on the REST API draw from the same budget, so give the pipeline its batches of 500 and keep the agent off the research endpoint.
Using Apollo and Seamless.AI together
Teams comparing these two often end up running both, and the arrangement below is the one they settle on.
If both are on the table, run Apollo first. Its search and its misses cost nothing, so it absorbs every row its database covers at $0.0196 an email and costs you nothing on the rest. What is left is the residue: rows with no email, and rows where you need a phone and Apollo would charge nine credits for one.
Send that residue to Seamless.AI by LinkedIn URL or name and company, which skips the search charge and goes straight to research in batches of 500. One credit returns the emails and phones together. Remember it charges per record submitted, so the residue is exactly where the misses concentrate; the invalid-email credit back softens that for emails and does nothing for phones.
Whether that is worth a second contract depends on two numbers only a quote can give you: the price of a Seamless.AI credit with the Public API license included, and how many rows Apollo leaves behind on your own list. If the first is under $0.1764 and the second is large, the pair pays. Otherwise Apollo alone, paying nine credits for the mobiles you need, is simpler.
Apollo or Seamless.AI, for you
Three 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 workload, and the one test that does is the bake-off on this page: your own rows, queries or records, run on the cheapest entry each side offers.
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 who is allowed to hold the data. 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 |
| Seamless.AI | Work email, Mobile phone, Firmographics, Technographics, Intent and news, Job changes, LinkedIn profile | Global | SOC 2 Type II | 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 rather than 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 Seamless.AI
Most readers of this page are already on one of these two, and the order below 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 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 which fields change
Seamless.AI does not return job postings and CRM records, which Apollo does. If anything downstream reads those fields, the switch changes your pipeline as well as your vendor.
Rewrite the auth and the limits, in that order
Apollo authenticates with an API key in the x-api-key header. Seamless.AI uses an API key in the Token header, created under Settings, Public API; OAuth 2.0 Bearer tokens for apps acting for many users.
The limits are the part that bites later. Apollo's limits: 200 req/min, 400/hour and 2,000/day on Basic. Enrichment gets 1,000/min with no hourly or daily cap.
Seamless.AI's limits: 60 requests a minute per endpoint, shared by every key and user in the organization, with X-RateLimit headers and a 429 on excess. 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
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, 400 an hour and 2,000 a day on Basic, with enrichment on a separate 1,000 a minute and no hourly or daily cap. That split 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
Sometimes the answer is neither, and the reason you are comparing these two points somewhere else entirely: Apollo alternatives and Seamless.AI 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 →Seamless.AI alternatives
4Seamless.AI charges you to find a contact and again to unlock it, at a price it will only tell you on a call.
See the alternatives →Everything in Source
28The full category these two sit in, filtered by data returned, billing model and entry price.
Browse the category →Related comparisons
The 52 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 Seamless.AI and Apollo vs Hunter.
And: Apollo vs LeadMagic and Apollo vs Prospeo. 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 standard terms that cover showing the data inside your product.
Compare them →Apollo API vs LeadMagic
A seat license with 30,000 credits against a published per-operation rate card.
Compare them →Testing providers one at a time? Run the waterfall in Clay.
Clay runs a waterfall across 150+ data providers from one table, without a separate contract with each. A lookup that finds nothing costs no data credit, and the free plan includes 500 actions a month.
Frontal is a Clay Elite Studio Partner.
Apollo and Seamless.AI, answered
Read from the same records that drive the table above.
Is Apollo or Seamless.AI cheaper?
Both have a free tier that carries the API, so neither costs anything to start; what each one includes is in the next answer.
Can I try Apollo and Seamless.AI for free?
Apollo: Free plan with API access, 900 credits per seat per year granted monthly, so 75 a month. Seamless.AI: Free license with 50 Universal Credits that never replenish. The API needs a Public API license, which Seamless's API page says is bundled with some plans or sold as an add-on.
What are the rate limits on Apollo and Seamless.AI?
Apollo: 200 req/min, 400/hour and 2,000/day on Basic. Enrichment gets 1,000/min with no hourly or daily cap. Seamless.AI: 60 requests a minute per endpoint, shared by every key and user in the organization, with X-RateLimit headers and a 429 on excess.
Do Apollo and Seamless.AI both have MCP servers?
Both do. Apollo: https://mcp.apollo.io/mcp. Seamless.AI: Hosted at mcp.seamless.ai/mcp, 57 tools, OAuth 2.1 or an API key.
Which is better, Apollo or Seamless.AI?
Apollo vs Seamless AI resolves on one fact: Apollo publishes the price of its API and Seamless.AI does not.
What are the downsides of Apollo and Seamless.AI?
Apollo: credits are per seat per year; a mobile is nine credits; the daily cap stops a backfill. Seamless.AI: no published price, and a separate API license; search is a charge, and research is too; one rate limit for the whole organization. The Limits section above has each one in full.
Can you use Apollo and Seamless.AI together?
If both are on the table, run Apollo first. Its search and its misses cost nothing, so it absorbs every row its database covers at $0.0196 an email and costs you nothing on the rest.
Can I migrate from Apollo to Seamless.AI without losing data?
Not without losing a field. Seamless.AI does not return job postings and CRM records, which Apollo does, so anything downstream that reads those fields 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.