Apollo vs Cognism (2026): Data Coverage, Phone Numbers, Compliance and Price Compared

Apollo sells a sales platform with a free plan and seats from $49 a user a month. Cognism sells verified B2B data on annual contracts and publishes no prices at all. The three Cognism quotes Spona heard on sales calls ran $24,500 to $48,000 a year. The three Apollo quotes ran $140 to $1,080 a month.

That gap frames the whole Cognism vs Apollo question. Apollo fits a US team that wants data, sequences and a dialer in one tool at a low price. Cognism fits a UK or EMEA calling team that wants mobile numbers, contact notification and register screening done for it. The sections below show why, with a 200-contact test and five buyers' own words.

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Cognism vs Apollo pricing: public plans against six recorded quotes

Apollo publishes its plans: Apollo's pricing page lists Free, Basic, Professional and Custom. Basic costs $49 a user a month and Professional $79, both billed annually. Monthly billing costs more and runs month to month. Every seat on an account sits on the same plan, and unused credits expire at the end of each billing cycle, add-ons included.

Our Apollo.io pricing post covers the credit types and the fair-use cap in detail.

Cognism publishes no prices. Its pricing page names two packages, Standard and Pro, each with five seats included, and asks you to "get a personalised quote for your team". Each seat carries a credit allocation, and one credit reveals one contact. Our Cognism pricing post walks through both packages.

So what do teams pay? Spona's reps logged every competitor price heard on 52 recorded sales calls over about four months. Cognism came up in eight of those calls, three of them with a figure. Apollo came up in 16 calls, also three with a figure.

A quote here means a vendor quote the prospect showed or read out; list prices do not count.

• Cognism: $24,500 to $48,000 a year, three quotes. They covered five to twelve seats on 12-month terms that auto-renew. Renewal uplift ran 3% to 7%.
• Apollo: $140 to $1,080 a month, three quotes. They covered three to ten seats, month to month and auto-renewing.

Per seat, that is Spona's arithmetic: Cognism came to $4,000 to $4,900 a seat a year. Apollo came to $47 to $108 a seat a month. The Cognism quotes also priced data in units per contract year, so an idle seat still consumes budget.

A third-party check points the same way. Vendr's purchase data on 106 Cognism deals puts the median at $36,000 a year. Its range runs $18,500 to $95,240. Buyers there saved 26% on average, and Vendr warns that renewals often carry automatic price increases unless capped.

G2 collects discounts too. Its reviewers report 11% on Apollo and 15% on Cognism on average.

Apollo vs Cognism comparison: 12 rows side by side

Most cells come from Apollo's or Cognism's own pages, so they are vendor claims. The two G2 rows and Cognism's billing term, from Spona's quotes, are the exceptions. Spona's test and the call rules follow in their own sections.

Which has better data coverage, Apollo or Cognism?

Apollo states its size: 240M contacts and 30M companies. It says the data comes from over two million contributors and from vetted third-party providers, over 200 million records a month. Apollo also claims 98% verified email accuracy. Those are Apollo's figures, not a test.

Cognism states no size. Its FAQ promises "hundreds of millions of company and contact profiles" across EMEA, the US and APAC. Its pricing page claims 4,000+ customers; Apollo claims 600,000.

That difference tells you who each tool serves. Apollo's reviewers on G2 are mostly small businesses, and Cognism's are mostly mid-market. Reviewers there give Apollo 4.7 and Cognism 4.5. Apollo has 9,848 reviews on the site and Cognism 1,376.

SoftwareReviews turns it round. Cognism scores 9.0 there and Apollo 8.5. On "cost is fair relative to value", Cognism gets 83% and Apollo 77%.

Apollo vs Cognism on 200 contacts: one sample, one verifier

Spona ran one same-sample test. We fixed a list of 200 named decision makers before querying any tool: VP Sales, Head of Sales or CRO at companies with 50 to 500 staff. Half were US contacts; the UK and Germany had 50 each, drawn by a seeded random sort.

We gave each tool the same name, employer domain and profile URL and took one work email per person. Every returned email went through MillionVerifier on the same day. Nobody sent an email, so there is no bounce rate.

Read it with care. Apollo and Cognism tied on verified emails, 166 each, by different routes. Apollo found more addresses; Cognism's passed the verifier more often.

A find rate measures coverage of this one sample, not accuracy. Validity is a verifier's opinion, not a delivery result. Spona ran the test and sells data, so treat its row as a claim to check, not a verdict. One sample of 200 settles nothing on its own.

Cognism vs Apollo phone numbers: verified mobiles or volume?

A phone number often costs more than an email in a data tool, and a wrong one costs a rep's afternoon. So the question is how each vendor verifies numbers, and how many it returns.

Cognism's pitch rests on its Diamond Verified Phone Data, which it says helps users "connect with 3X more decision-makers". It also says a research team manually verifies the contacts customers want most. Its Pro package adds on-demand verification and higher-quality mobile data. Apollo says direct dial requests go through an automated, real-time verification.

In Spona's 200-contact test, Cognism returned 151 direct dials or mobiles. Apollo returned 119 and Spona 146. Nobody dialled them, so these are counts of numbers returned, not of calls connected. Cognism found the most numbers while finding the fewest emails, which fits a tool built for callers.

Then there is what a number costs you. Apollo charges credits for every phone number request, including numbers on a Do Not Call list. Only an Apollo admin can activate its screening. Once on, Apollo shows "Do Not Call" beside the number and blocks it from being dialed, but the credits are already spent.

An example: say your UK reps reveal 500 numbers a month. In Apollo, every one costs mobile credits, including the ones on the TPS or CTPS that your reps may not call without consent. Have an admin activate Apollo's screening before the first reveal, and ask Cognism how many of its UK numbers its scrub flags or removes.

Apollo vs Cognism compliance: TPS, CTPS, Do Not Call and GDPR

Neither tool makes your calls legal; your process does. The rules differ between the UK and the US, and so does each vendor's help.

UK and EMEA: TPS, CTPS and a month to notify

The ICO's B2B guidance is blunt. You need to screen against both the CTPS and TPS registers, and you cannot call a CTPS number without consent. The same page says UK GDPR applies when you process the personal data of business contacts.

Once you take a contact's data from another source, you must tell that person within one month at the latest. If you contact the person before then, the notice is due at that first contact. EU GDPR sets the same limits in Article 14.

That notification is where the two vendors split. Cognism says it notifies all business contacts when they enter its database. Apollo emails every new contact in certain regions, the EU, the UK, Switzerland and California among them.

Cognism also says it scrubs call registers across 15 countries. Apollo screens six, and calls its feature "a compliance aid, not a consent-management system".

Cognism vs Apollo for EMEA is therefore mostly a question of who does the compliance work. Cognism builds it into the data; Apollo gives you a switch and a label.

US: B2B calls, autodialers and California's deletion platform

The FTC says most calls to a business to solicit sales from that business are exempt from the Do Not Call provisions. Mobiles are the catch. Under 47 CFR 64.1200, autodialed or prerecorded sales calls to a mobile number need the called party's prior express written consent. A rep dialling a VP's mobile by hand is one case; a dialer that meets the rule's autodialer definition is another.

California adds a deletion duty, in force since August 1, 2026. Registered data brokers must check the state's Delete Request and Opt-out Platform at least once every 45 days. We did not check either vendor's registration status, so ask each how it handles those requests before you sign.

What features set Cognism apart from Apollo?

Apollo is a platform and Cognism is a data tool. Apollo's Basic plan includes email sequencing and core integrations. Professional adds AI features, call recording and advanced CRM integrations, and Custom adds SSO and dedicated support. Cognism's pricing page lists no sequencer and no dialer, a point Apollo's own comparison presses hard.

What Cognism adds sits on the data side. Its Pro package prioritises accounts by buying intent, and administrators can pick up to 12 intent topics from a library of over 11,000. Standard includes MCP and API access. Both packages plug into Salesforce, HubSpot, Dynamics, Pipedrive, Salesloft, Outreach and Zapier.

The practical split: a Cognism team runs its outreach in Salesloft or Outreach and buys the data separately. An Apollo team runs everything in Apollo and accepts Apollo's data.

Apollo vs Cognism on sales calls: what buyers told Spona

Spona's win/loss log holds 12 opportunities over about three months where a prospect named a competitor or incumbent. Three involved Apollo and two involved Cognism, so read these as voices, not statistics. "Kept both" means the team kept its incumbent and added Spona.

Apollo, UK, SDR manager, 51 to 200 staff, kept both: "We will keep the sequencer and bring in data when our saved search runs out."

Apollo, US, SDR manager, 51 to 200 staff, stayed with Apollo: "A familiar browser workflow is more important to us."

Apollo, Germany, head of sales, 11 to 50 staff, chose Spona: "We spend too long stitching together the missing fields."

Cognism, UK, sales director, 51 to 200 staff, kept both: "Our calling team likes the numbers; we still need more target companies."

Cognism, France, founder, 11 to 50 staff, chose Spona: "Let us prove the segment with one list before committing to a larger contract."

Across these five opportunities, Apollo buyers stayed for the sequencer and a familiar browser workflow, and one picked Spona to fill missing fields. One Cognism buyer kept it for the phone numbers, and both looked to Spona for niche accounts or a smaller first contract.

Apollo or Cognism: which is better for your team?

Why choose Apollo over Cognism: price, the free plan and one tool for data and outreach. Why choose Cognism over Apollo: mobile numbers, notification of every contact and screening in 15 countries.

If you still cannot decide, run your own sample. Pull the same 50 target contacts from Apollo's free plan and Cognism's free data sample. Verify the emails with one tool and count the mobiles. That takes an afternoon and beats every vendor comparison, this one included.

Spona next to Apollo and Cognism: per-lead pricing and its limits

Spona is a third model. You describe your ideal customer in a chat; the AI mines 40+ sources, verifies every lead and delivers a scored list in about 4 minutes. You pay per lead, in credits.

A lead with email and mobile on Standard Search costs $0.28 to $0.55. A Deep Search lead costs $0.48 to $2.00. Each new search session costs a one-time 1,000 credits. That is $8 to $10, and every search starts with a free sample.

The Free plan carries 3,000 one-time credits, and Pro costs $99 a month. The UK buyers quoted above kept Apollo and Cognism for their workflows and added Spona for the accounts those databases ran out of.

In the same-sample test, Spona returned 192 work emails and 187 passed the verifier. It returned 146 dials or mobiles. Spona ran that test, so weigh it as a vendor's result.

Where Spona does not fit: it has no sequencer and no dialer. Spona has announced a dialer, but it is not available yet. HubSpot is the only native CRM integration, so Salesforce teams work from CSV exports. The API runs on the Expert plan only, at $999 a month.

Spona does not list TPS, CTPS or Do Not Call screening among its features, so a calling team needs that elsewhere. If you want data, sequences and calls in one login, that is Apollo. If you want a vendor that notifies contacts and scrubs call registers for you, that is Cognism.

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Apollo vs Cognism FAQ

Is Apollo cheaper than Cognism?

Yes, at every size Spona has seen. Apollo's public plans run $49 to $79 a seat a month billed annually. The Apollo quotes Spona heard ran $140 to $1,080 a month for three to ten seats. Cognism's lowest quote was $24,500 a year for five seats, and Vendr's lowest recorded purchase is $18,500.

Does Cognism have a free plan or trial?

No. Cognism's pricing page lists no free plan and mentions no trial; its site offers a free data sample instead. Apollo has a free plan. Ask Cognism for the sample on your own target accounts, not a generic one.

Which is better for UK calling, Apollo or Cognism?

Cognism, for most UK teams. Cognism says it screens the TPS and CTPS and notifies every contact, and it returned the most phone numbers in Spona's test. Apollo screens the same two UK registers once an admin activates the feature, and charges credits for the numbers it then blocks. The ICO expects you to screen both registers whichever tool you use.

Who is Apollo's biggest competitor?

By what people search for, ZoomInfo first, then Cognism and Lusha. Our ZoomInfo vs Apollo post covers the top of the market, and best Apollo alternatives covers the rest.

Is there anything better than Apollo?

Better for what. Cognism returned more phone numbers in Spona's test and does more of the compliance work. A per-lead tool can cost less for small, niche lists. Our best Apollo alternatives post ranks the options by job.

Who are Cognism's competitors?

Apollo at the low end, ZoomInfo at the high end, and a field of data vendors between them. Our Cognism alternatives post covers nine of them with prices.