--- title: "Clearbit vs Cognism: which one, and why" description: "Clearbit and Cognism compared on unit cost, billing model, data returned, license and MCP support. Verified pricing, October 2026." url: https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/compare/clearbit-vs-cognism updated: 2026-11-12 --- Head to head · Verified 24 Oct 2026 # Clearbit vs *Cognism* ## Clearbit No longer sold on its own, now HubSpot data enrichment $20/HubSpot seat/mo vs ## Cognism Best for notified, DNC-screened contact data Quote only Short answer Clearbit vs Cognism is no longer a like-for-like: Clearbit is now HubSpot data enrichment, included with paid HubSpot seats on Starter and up. Pick it if you are a HubSpot customer enriching inbound records with company data and the rows never leave HubSpot. Pick Cognism if you need contacts and mobiles, a compliance answer for European calling, or an API you can point at any destination. Neither publishes a per-record price, so measure a sample of your own rows before either conversation. Side by side ## Where they actually differ Every value comes from the same record that drives the [Enrichment APIs](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/enrichment-apis) listing, so this table cannot disagree with the cards. Accented tags are data one provider returns and the other does not. | Compare | [Clearbit](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/enrichment-apis/clearbit-api-review) | [Cognism](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/enrichment-apis/cognism-api-review) | | --- | --- | --- | | What sets it apart | Joined HubSpot, and the standalone product went with it | Three quotas, and none of them is a price | | Entry price | $20/HubSpot seat/mo | Quote only | | Unit cost | Not sold by the unit | Not sold by the unit | | Billing model | Credit packs Subscription Per seat | Per seat Subscription Credit packs | | Free tier | Not sold standalone. Requires a paid HubSpot seat. | No free tier and no published price. Both plans include 5 seats. | | GTM motion covered | Enrich Signal | Source Enrich Signal | | Data returned | Firmographics Technographics Intent and news | Work email Mobile phone Firmographics Technographics Intent and news Job postings Job changes | | MCP server | No | Yes https://mcp.cognism.com/mcp | | Interfaces | REST API | REST API MCP server Bulk or async | | Auth | Through HubSpot, not a standalone Clearbit key | OAuth 2.0 client credentials, from M2M Connect in platform settings | | Rate limits | No separate meter: enrichment runs on paid HubSpot seats and uses no credits. Intent signals spend HubSpot Credits, which reset monthly. | 500 req/min per operation, separate windows. Plus search tokens and credits. | | Coverage | Global | Global | | Compliance | GDPR DPA SOC 2 Type II CCPA | ISO 27001 ISO 27701 SOC 2 Type II GDPR notified data | | Best for | No longer sold on its own, now HubSpot data enrichment | Best for notified, DNC-screened contact data | The decision ## Pick each one when ### Clearbit - You are a HubSpot customer and the enriched records stay in HubSpot. - Inbound enrichment is the job: company size, industry and stack on a form fill. - One fewer vendor matters more than owning the pipeline. ### Cognism - You need mobiles and contacts, not just company fields. - The list is European and somebody will ask how the contacts were sourced. - The data has to reach Salesforce, a warehouse or an agent, not only a HubSpot record. The test that settles it 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 a small paid top-up on each side, 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. Plan by plan ## What each one costs, tier by tier Only one of these two publishes a rate card. Clearbit lists its tiers with prices, and Cognism 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 | Clearbit | Cognism | | --- | --- | --- | | Cheapest paid plan with the API | Starter, $20 | Not published | | Tiers published | 3 | None | | Free tier | Not sold standalone. Requires a paid HubSpot seat. | No free tier and no published price. Both plans include 5 seats. | | Unit cost at entry | Not sold by the unit | 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. ### Clearbit Clearbit publishes 3 tiers, none of them free, and the paid ladder runs from $20 to $75. #### Starter $20 /seat/mo, a HubSpot Core Seat with data enrichment - Data enrichment included, no credits used - Core Seat lists enriched data and Smart CRM - 500 HubSpot Credits a month for intent and AI features #### Professional $50 /seat/mo, a HubSpot Core Seat with data enrichment - Data enrichment included, no credits used - 3,000 HubSpot Credits a month, 5,000 with Data Hub or Customer Platform - Credits reset monthly, no rollover #### Enterprise $75 /seat/mo, a HubSpot Core Seat with data enrichment - Data enrichment included, no credits used - 5,000 HubSpot Credits a month, 10,000 with Data Hub or Customer Platform - Extra credits at $0.010 each, or $10 per 1,000 ### Cognism Cognism 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. Cost model ## What Clearbit and Cognism 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. ### Clearbit Priced per seat, so the bill moves with headcount rather than with volume. Cheapest seat with the API **Starter** Per seat **$20 a month** Monthly **$60 for 3 seats** Twelve months **$720** ### Cognism Publishes no price, so there is nothing here to model and the lines below say what to ask for. Published price **None** Monthly **Quoted** Twelve months **Quoted** Ask for **the per-unit rate at your volume and the annual minimum** 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. Cognism publishes no price, so nothing is modeled there and the panel says what to ask for instead. Twelve months ## 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. Clearbit is priced per seat, so one row says it all: the figure is 3 seats for a year. | A year at | Clearbit | Cognism | | --- | --- | --- | | At any volume | $720 Starter | Quoted | Cognism 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. In practice ## How this plays out once it is running The two are sold so differently that the comparison is mostly about access: [Clearbit](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/enrichment-apis/clearbit-api-review)'s site now reads "Clearbit has joined [HubSpot](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/crm-apis/hubspot-api-review)!" and offers a customer login rather than a signup. The enrichment runs inside HubSpot as data enrichment, launched as Breeze Intelligence, and comes with paid seats on Starter and up; HubSpot says it does not consume HubSpot Credits. [Cognism](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/enrichment-apis/cognism-api-review) is a standalone contract with an API, an [MCP server](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/mcp-servers) and two prospecting plans, each including five seats and neither carrying a number. What each one enriches differs too. Clearbit advertised company depth: 6-digit NAICS, GICS and SIC codes, corporate hierarchies, normalized role and seniority, and IP intelligence to reveal the companies visiting your site. Cognism sells contacts, with mobiles screened against 15 Do Not Call and TPS registers and business contacts notified inside GDPR timeframes. One credit reveals one contact, and a revealed contact can be reused for the rest of the contract unless the person changes jobs. Strengths ## 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. ### Clearbit #### Inside the CRM you already pay for For a HubSpot team, HubSpot data enrichment is enrichment with no second contract, no second key and no sync. It works on HubSpot contacts and companies directly, so the fields appear where reps and workflows already look, and there is nothing to keep in step between two systems. #### Company detail aimed at scoring and routing Clearbit built its reputation on firmographics for routing inbound leads: industry codes down to 6-digit NAICS, GICS and SIC, parent and subsidiary hierarchies, and titles normalized into role and seniority. If the job is deciding which rep gets a form fill, those fields are the job. #### No meter on the enrichment itself HubSpot says data enrichment does not consume HubSpot Credits, so the cost is the paid seat rather than a count of records. Its intent signals do spend credits, 10 a company a month, and an admin can cap that spend for the account, for an individual tool and for an individual action. Cognism publishes nothing comparable, because it publishes no price to control. ### Cognism #### The compliance posture is the product Notified data, phone numbers screened against 15 DNC and TPS registers including UK TPS and CTPS, and ISO 27001, ISO 27701 and SOC 2 Type II. For European calling that is the purchase, and HubSpot's enrichment carries a GDPR DPA, SOC 2 Type II and CCPA, which is a lighter and different claim. #### A revealed contact stays paid for Cognism spends one credit per revealed contact and lets the team keep using that record for the life of the contract. A credit is only spent again when the contact changes jobs. The same credits work across the prospecting platform, Enrich and the API, so a pipeline and a rep do not pay twice for the same person. #### An API and an MCP server you can point anywhere OAuth 2.0 client credentials from M2M Connect, 500 requests a minute per operation, and an MCP server at mcp.cognism.com/mcp. The rows can land in any CRM, a warehouse or an agent workflow. HubSpot data enrichment fills HubSpot records and nothing else. Limits ## 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. ### Clearbit #### You cannot buy it on its own at any price There is no standalone Clearbit contract and no Clearbit key for new buyers. Access needs a paid HubSpot seat on Starter and up, and the HubSpot developer reference page for the enrichment returned a 404 when this directory fetched it, noting that API reference content had moved. If you are not a HubSpot customer, this comparison has one option in it. #### Enrichment rides on the seat, not on the record Data enrichment comes with paid HubSpot seats on Starter and up and uses no HubSpot Credits, so the price of enriching a record is the seat, and there is no way to buy enrichment for a team that does not otherwise need HubSpot. The credit-metered part is intent, at 10 credits a company a month, and those credits reset monthly and expire unused. #### No mobiles and no MCP server Clearbit's data here is work email, firmographics, technographics and intent, with no mobile numbers. There is no MCP server either, so a calling motion or an agent workflow has nothing to work with on this side. ### Cognism #### No published price, and five seats underneath it Both Cognism plans include five seats whether or not five people will use them, and neither carries a number. A headless pipeline buys a team license to get an API key, and the only way to learn what that costs is a sales process. #### Three meters, and the binding one is rarely the obvious one Search tokens count the rows a query returns, credits count the contacts you reveal, and requests are capped at 500 a minute per operation with a separate window each. Teams size against credits because the contract talks about credits, then run out of tokens on a broad search that returned far more than it revealed. Both ## Using Clearbit and Cognism together Teams comparing these two often end up running both, and the arrangement below is the one they settle on. The arrangement that makes sense is HubSpot companies running both for different jobs: HubSpot data enrichment on inbound, filling form fills with company fields for routing, and Cognism on outbound, sourcing European contacts and mobiles that are safe to call. Cognism meters credits and HubSpot's enrichment comes with the seat, so there is no shared pool to collide over. The overlap to manage is the contact record. If Cognism writes a revealed contact into HubSpot and HubSpot's enrichment then fills the same record, two systems write the same fields. Decide which system owns which properties, and let HubSpot fill company fields only while Cognism owns the person, the email and the phone. For a company not on HubSpot there is nothing to combine, because one side is not for sale. The real comparison is then Cognism against the standalone enrichment APIs in this directory, and the deciding question is whether the compliance posture is a requirement or a preference. Decide ## Clearbit or Cognism, 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. Do you need to test on your own list before paying? Will an agent be calling this? Do you need work email? How many people will touch this? Are you buying one step or the whole motion? Answer the questions above 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. Provenance ## 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 | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | [Clearbit](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/enrichment-apis/clearbit-api-review) | Firmographics, Technographics, Intent and news | Global | GDPR DPA SOC 2 Type II CCPA | Not stated | | [Cognism](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/enrichment-apis/cognism-api-review) | Work email, Mobile phone, Firmographics, Technographics, Intent and news, Job postings, Job changes | Global | ISO 27001 ISO 27701 SOC 2 Type II GDPR notified data | 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. Migration ## Moving between Clearbit and Cognism 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. 01 ### Measure the thing you are about to lose Run 500 rows you already have through Clearbit 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. 02 ### Check which fields change Cognism returns every field Clearbit does, so nothing downstream has to change shape. Confirm the values rather than the keys: two providers can both return a mobile number and disagree about which one it is. 03 ### Rewrite the auth and the limits, in that order Clearbit works through HubSpot, not a standalone Clearbit key. Cognism uses OAuth 2.0 client credentials, from M2M Connect in platform settings. The limits are the part that bites later. Clearbit's limits: no separate meter: enrichment runs on paid HubSpot seats and uses no credits. Intent signals spend HubSpot Credits, which reset monthly. Cognism's limits: 500 req/min per operation, separate windows. Plus search tokens and credits. A loop tuned to the first will either crawl or get throttled on the second. 04 ### 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. 05 ### 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 ## What practitioners say about Cognism The one part of this page that is not a vendor claim. Quotes are transcribed as written, linked to the thread, and nothing here is the only source for a figure in the tables above. ### The regional split is the real difference, and practitioners buy both > Each data tool only really excels at one or two things. ZI is solid for NA mid-market and enterprise, while Cognism crushes it in EMEA and cell numbers. Every time I need one, we run a trial. If you've got the budget, use 2-3 tools to cover more ground. Right now, I'm using Clay for data infrastructure, Cognism for EMEA, and ZoomInfo for the US. sometimes Cognism finds data that ZI can't-and vice versa. [r/SalesOperations](https://www.reddit.com/r/SalesOperations/comments/1gizlml/anyone_interested_in_accuracy_benchmarks_for_b2b/) · November 2024 · 5 points The comparison pages here reach the same place from the rate cards rather than from experience: Cognism sells notified EMEA data and mobile coverage, ZoomInfo sells North American breadth, and neither of them publishes a price. This is somebody running both with Clay in front, which is the arrangement those verdicts describe rather than the either-or the question usually assumes. Coverage is the one thing nobody in this category will put a number behind, so "crushes it in EMEA" is an experienced opinion and not a measurement. The thread it sits in is itself a request for accuracy benchmarks that do not exist, which is a fair summary of the evidence available on either vendor. 14 threads read on 13 October 2026, searched by vendor name. Scores and dates are the comment's own. Nothing here is the only source for a price or a limit on this site: every figure in the tables above comes from a vendor's own page. If neither fits ## The wider field for both Sometimes the answer is neither, and the reason you are comparing these two points somewhere else entirely: [Clearbit alternatives](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/alternatives/clearbit-alternatives) and [Cognism alternatives](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/alternatives/cognism-alternatives) both start from the reason people leave. [Clearbit alternatives 4 Clearbit did not get worse. It got absorbed: the standalone API is now HubSpot data enrichment, included with paid HubSpot seats, and you need one of those seats to touch it. See the alternatives →](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/alternatives/clearbit-alternatives) [Cognism alternatives 4 Nobody leaves Cognism over the data. They leave over the quote, the five-seat floor, and the second allowance nobody mentioned. See the alternatives →](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/alternatives/cognism-alternatives) [Everything in Enrich 23 The full category these two sit in, filtered by data returned, billing model and entry price. Browse the category →](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/enrichment-apis) Keep comparing ## Related comparisons The 52 providers behind every pairing here are in the [main listing](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis). Pairings that share a side with this one: [People Data Labs vs Clearbit](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/compare/people-data-labs-vs-clearbit), [Cognism vs Seamless.AI](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/compare/cognism-vs-seamless-ai) and [Clearbit vs ZoomInfo](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/compare/clearbit-vs-zoominfo). And: [Cognism vs Lead411](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/compare/cognism-vs-lead411) and [Cognism vs RocketReach](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/compare/cognism-vs-rocketreach). Every comparison in the directory is on the [compare hub](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/compare). [vs People Data Labs vs Clearbit One of these is still a product you can buy. Compare them →](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/compare/people-data-labs-vs-clearbit) [vs Apollo API vs Cognism A $49 published seat against a notified, DNC-screened database that publishes no price. Compare them →](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/compare/apollo-vs-cognism) [vs Cognism vs Lusha Neither publishes the number you need, but they withhold opposite halves. Compare them →](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/compare/cognism-vs-lusha) [See all 103 comparisons](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/compare) ## 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. [Try Clay](https://go.frontal.so/clay) [See the stacks](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/stacks) Frontal is a Clay Elite Studio Partner. FAQ ## Clearbit and Cognism, answered Read from the same records that drive the table above. **Is Clearbit or Cognism cheaper?** Cognism does not publish a price for the API, so the two cannot be compared on cost. Clearbit starts at $20/HubSpot seat/mo, which is as far as the comparison goes. **Can I try Clearbit and Cognism for free?** Clearbit: Not sold standalone. Requires a paid HubSpot seat. Cognism: No free tier and no published price. Both plans include 5 seats. **What are the rate limits on Clearbit and Cognism?** Clearbit: No separate meter: enrichment runs on paid HubSpot seats and uses no credits. Intent signals spend HubSpot Credits, which reset monthly. Cognism: 500 req/min per operation, separate windows. Plus search tokens and credits. **Do Clearbit and Cognism both have MCP servers?** One of them. Cognism ships one at https://mcp.cognism.com/mcp; Clearbit documents none. **Which is better, Clearbit or Cognism?** Clearbit vs Cognism is no longer a like-for-like: Clearbit is now HubSpot data enrichment, included with paid HubSpot seats on Starter and up. Pick it if you are a HubSpot customer enriching inbound records with company data and the rows never leave HubSpot. Pick Cognism if you need contacts and mobiles, a compliance answer for European calling, or an API you can point at any destination. **What are the downsides of Clearbit and Cognism?** Clearbit: you cannot buy it on its own at any price; enrichment rides on the seat, not on the record; no mobiles and no MCP server. Cognism: no published price, and five seats underneath it; three meters, and the binding one is rarely the obvious one. The Limits section above has each one in full. **Can you use Clearbit and Cognism together?** The arrangement that makes sense is HubSpot companies running both for different jobs: HubSpot data enrichment on inbound, filling form fills with company fields for routing, and Cognism on outbound, sourcing European contacts and mobiles that are safe to call. Cognism meters credits and HubSpot's enrichment comes with the seat, so there is no shared pool to collide over. **Can I migrate from Clearbit to Cognism without losing data?** The fields survive: Cognism returns everything Clearbit does. What changes is the auth and the limits. Either way, measure your match rate on 500 rows before you switch, because that number is the one you cannot recover afterwards. Published by ## [Frontal](https://frontal.so/) Frontal is the go-to-market partner for B2B tech companies past product-market fit. It publishes this directory. Every price, tier requirement and rate limit on this page was read from the vendor's own pricing page, developer documentation or knowledge base on the date below. Nothing on it is restated from a press release or a third-party listing. Where a vendor publishes no public figure, this page says so rather than estimating. [How we checked](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis#method). Reviewed by [Kenny Damian](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenny-damian-90aba221a/) Co-founder & Head of GTM, Frontal **Verified** 24 Oct 2026 **Sources** 6 vendor documents Read from - [clearbit.com](https://clearbit.com/) - [knowledge.hubspot.com/records](https://knowledge.hubspot.com/records/get-started-with-data-enrichment) - [legal.hubspot.com/hubspot-product-and-services-catalog](https://legal.hubspot.com/hubspot-product-and-services-catalog) - [cognism.com/pricing](https://www.cognism.com/pricing) - [docs.cognism.com/docs](https://docs.cognism.com/docs/endpoints) - [docs.cognism.com/docs/getting-started](https://docs.cognism.com/docs/getting-started)