Cognism and Apollo solve the same basic problem, finding verified B2B contacts, in almost opposite ways. Cognism built its name on phone-verified mobile numbers for outbound teams selling into Europe, and it never publishes a price; every deal goes through a sales call. Apollo took the other route. It built a large self-serve database with sequencing and a dialer bundled in. Every tier is priced right on the site, no sales call required.
Teams calling heavily into the UK, DACH, or the Nordics, with Do Not Call compliance built in as a requirement, tend to find Cognism’s data holds up better. US-centric outbound teams that want to see the bill before signing anything tend to land on Apollo instead, thanks to its published pricing and larger raw database. What follows breaks down database size, pricing, review scores plus compliance between the two.
What Is Cognism?
Cognism is a B2B sales intelligence platform built for outbound teams that need verified contact data across Europe and North America. More than 4,000 revenue teams use it daily. Aircall and Notion sit on that customer list, alongside larger names like Comply Advantage and Seismic (Source: cognism.com). The company grew out of a UK sales floor. That history still shows: it leans hardest into UK, EMEA and DACH coverage with Nordics and Benelux close behind, built around phone-verified mobile numbers long before most US competitors treated cold calling as a priority. Native CRM sync with Salesforce and HubSpot pushes enriched records straight into outreach sequences, so a verified number does not sit stranded in a separate database.
No database total appears anywhere on Cognism’s own site. Its FAQ page states plainly that it doesn’t make general coverage claims, preferring to size a specific segment on a sales call instead. Third-party pricing and research sites that tracked the platform through 2026 put the database near 440 million contacts and 100 million companies, with a smaller phone-verified subset behind the Diamond Data brand (Source: third-party Cognism pricing and research guides, 2026). That 440 million figure is a reported estimate, though it isn’t a number Cognism will confirm in writing.
What Is Apollo?
Apollo.io pairs a proprietary contact database with built-in email sequencing and a dialer, plus light deal management, all from one login. More than 600,000 companies use the platform, according to Apollo’s own site. As of October 2026, the product page puts the database at 240 million-plus contacts and 30 million-plus companies, built on a network of over 2 million data contributors, with a stated 98 percent email accuracy rate.
The company leans US-centric. Teams outside North America do use it, but reviewers consistently describe stronger coverage for US and mainstream SaaS contacts than for niche industries or non-English-speaking markets. The tradeoff for that database size is a self-serve model: no sales call is required to see a price or start a trial. A full CRM this isn’t, though: it tracks deals and activity well enough for a small team to run a pipeline inside the same login, but most sales orgs connect it to Salesforce or HubSpot for full CRM functionality rather than replacing one. The closest competitors chasing the same data-plus-outreach budget are ZoomInfo, Lusha, and Cognism itself, each pitching a different mix of database size, phone accuracy, and price transparency (see UpLead’s Apollo vs ZoomInfo breakdown for that specific match-up).
Cognism vs Apollo: Side-by-Side Comparison
| Category | Cognism | Apollo |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Custom quote (not published) | $0 (Free plan) |
| Highest published tier | Not published | $119/seat/month (Organization, 3-seat minimum) |
| Database contacts | ~440M (third-party estimate, unconfirmed) | 240M+ (Apollo-stated) |
| Database companies | ~100M (third-party estimate, unconfirmed) | 30M+ (Apollo-stated) |
| Phone-verified data | Yes, Diamond Data, Cognism’s core differentiator | Limited; dialer included, no dedicated verified-mobile brand |
| Intent data | Up to 12 Bombora topics (Pro tier only) | Included on Organization tier |
| Free plan | No (live demo only) | Yes, 900 credits/seat/year |
| G2 rating | ~4.5/5 (~1,250-1,330 reviews) | 4.7/5 (~9,690 reviews) |
| Trustpilot rating | ~2.9/5 (~395 reviews) | ~2.9/5 (~1,049 reviews) |
| Compliance certifications | ISO 27001, ISO 27701, SOC 2 Type II | SOC 2 Type II |
| Strongest region | UK, DACH, Nordics, Benelux, France | US, mainstream SaaS ICPs |
| Chrome extension | Yes | Yes |
| UpLead | 95% accuracy guarantee, published per-credit pricing, real-time email verification |
Phone-data accuracy and EU compliance depth favor Cognism here, while database size, price transparency plus free-plan access go to Apollo. Where a vendor doesn’t publish a number, the table says so instead of guessing at one.
Database Size and Data Coverage
Apollo states its numbers directly: 240 million-plus contacts, 30 million-plus companies, sourced from a contributor network north of 2 million (Source: apollo.io/product/b2b-data). That figure has drifted over time. Some of Apollo’s own older marketing pages cited a higher count near 275 million. The 240 million-plus figure is what the primary data page states now, so that’s the number worth using.
The opposite approach applies on the Cognism side. Its FAQ states plainly that it doesn’t make general coverage claims, sizing a segment only on a live call. Third-party procurement and pricing guides that tracked Cognism through 2026 land on a database near 440 million contacts and 100 million companies, with a smaller phone-verified subset sitting behind Diamond Data. That’s an outside estimate, not a confirmed number, worth treating as such when sizing up this comparison.
Knowing the exact size of a database before any sales call happens is Apollo’s advantage here. Teams that care more about phone-verified accuracy than raw size will find that unpublished Cognism total matters less than what shows up in the next section.
How Much Does Cognism Cost vs Apollo?
Every tier gets a published number from Apollo, but Cognism doesn’t publish any.
(Source: apollo.io/pricing, verified 2026-10-30. See also UpLead’s Apollo.io Pricing guide for the full line-item breakdown.)
Basic and Professional both include a 14-day trial, loaded with 100 trial credits. Two add-ons sit outside the seat tiers: an Inbound package handles website-visitor identification. An Advanced Dialer adds international and parallel calling. Both run $119 per team per month on annual billing.
(Source: cognism.com/pricing, verified 2026-10-30. See also UpLead’s Cognism pricing guide for the estimated tier-by-tier breakdown.)
Every quote runs through a sales call here. The final number depends on seat count and region, plus how much phone-verification volume a team actually needs. Third-party procurement guides that tracked reported customer contracts through 2026 put a small team’s entry package in the neighborhood of $15,000 a year. Larger deployments with the full Bombora intent add-on climb well past $50,000, sometimes past $100,000. Treat that range as a directional estimate, not a rate card; confirm current pricing directly with the vendor before budgeting against either number.
So, is Cognism more expensive than Apollo? For most teams, yes, by a wide margin. The most expensive published Apollo tier runs $119 per seat per month, or roughly $1,428 per seat per year. Reported entry contracts on the Cognism side start around ten times that for a small team, before any intent-data add-on gets added. That gap narrows only when comparing Apollo’s Organization tier at scale against Cognism’s smallest reported deal, and even then, the opacity on one side makes a clean comparison impossible without a quote in hand.
Phone-Verified Data and Intent Signals
Diamond Data is the signature feature behind most Cognism shortlists. Numbers under that brand go through a human verification layer on top of the standard database, and connect rates run up to three times higher than unverified mobile records, according to Cognism (Source: cognism.com). A published case study backs that claim with real numbers: UserEvidence, a sales enablement company, switched its SDR team from ZoomInfo to Cognism and measured the change directly rather than taking the pitch on faith. Pipeline grew 33 percent within three months, moving from 121 opportunities to 161 with the same team size. The match rate hit 98 percent on Cognism versus 72 percent on the same list pulled from ZoomInfo; the call-connect rate came in at 22 percent against 14 percent (Source: Cognism case study, “UserEvidence Boosts Cold Calling Pipeline 33% With Cognism”).
No dedicated verified-mobile brand exists on Apollo’s side to match Diamond Data, though. Its dialer runs on credits, one credit per 30 seconds for US calls, and mobile numbers come from the same waterfall as the rest of the database rather than a separate verification layer. Intent data splits the two platforms further. Bombora-powered signals sit behind Cognism’s Pro tier, up to 12 topics chosen from a library past 11,000. Buying-intent signals ship on Apollo’s Organization tier instead. They track site visits and topic engagement to flag companies actively researching a category.
Diamond Data is the harder number to match for a team living and dying by phone connect rates in Europe. For high-volume email outbound in the US, though, Apollo’s larger raw database and included sequencing tend to matter more than mobile verification depth.
Compliance and Data Privacy
Thirteen major Do Not Call (DNC) registries across Europe and North America get screened before a Cognism number ever reaches a rep’s dialer. ISO 27001 and ISO 27701 certification back that up, plus a SOC 2 Type II attestation, with data handling built around GDPR and CCPA requirements from the ground up (Source: cognism.com). That compliance depth is one of the more concrete reasons an EU-facing team picks Cognism over a US-first data vendor.
GDPR compliance and SOC 2 Type II certification both appear on Apollo’s own marketing and product pages (Source: apollo.io). Advanced security controls, SSO included, sit behind the Organization tier rather than shipping on every plan. Confirming current certification scope directly with either vendor’s sales team is worth doing for any team with strict data-residency or security-review requirements, since compliance posture shifts between review cycles.
Reviews: What Real Users Say
Apollo holds a 4.7 out of 5 rating on G2 across roughly 9,690 reviews, a number corroborated by the company’s own site and independently by two separate third-party review roundups (Sources: apollo.io/pricing; rb2b.com; salesforge.ai). Pinning Cognism’s G2 standing to one exact figure is harder, though. A direct attempt to load Cognism’s G2 review pages during this research hit a bot-detection wall, a recurring issue on G2 for automated research. Search-result snapshots of G2’s own comparison and product pages put the score near 4.5 out of 5 across roughly 1,250 to 1,330 reviews, with review counts shifting by snapshot date. Readers after the exact current number should check G2’s Cognism listing directly.
Trustpilot ratings diverge more for both vendors than their G2 scores suggest. Roughly 2.9 out of 5 across about 1,049 reviews is where Apollo sits, a notably lower score than its G2 standing, with complaints concentrated on billing and cancellation friction (Source: salesforge.ai, citing Trustpilot; reported secondhand since Trustpilot’s own site also blocked automated verification during this research). A similar 2.9 out of 5 across roughly 395 reviews shows up for Cognism, with a recurring complaint theme involving individuals objecting to their personal contact details appearing in the database without direct consent, a criticism common across the sales intelligence category rather than something unique to one vendor.
Named customer quotes add texture beyond the aggregate scores. Amanda Newman, SDR Manager at UserEvidence, ran Cognism and ZoomInfo side by side before switching: “Cognism’s match rate was 98% vs. 72% by ZoomInfo, and we found that Cognism returned a ton more phone numbers.” On the Apollo side, Predictable Revenue CEO Collin Steward credits the platform with a 50 percent cost reduction from consolidating three separate tools into one, and GTM Ops founder Jay Filiatraut reports 4x the meetings booked with a single SDR compared to three previously (Source: apollo.io). Both of those, though, are vendor-published testimonials rather than independent reviews, so they’re worth reading as proof points rather than neutral evidence.
Who Should Choose Cognism?
Who Should Choose Apollo?
Need Transparent, Verified Data Instead? Try UpLead
A sales call or credits that expire unused are the price of entry with both Cognism and Apollo. UpLead takes a third path: a 95 percent accuracy guarantee on delivered contact data, with email addresses verified in real time at the point of export rather than on a periodic bulk cleanup (Source: uplead.com). Pricing is published and starts at $99 a month, with no annual lock-in required.
Frequently Asked Questions: Cognism vs Apollo
What to Remember About Cognism vs Apollo
These two aren’t really competing for the same buyer. Outbound teams calling into Europe who need phone-verified mobile data and compliance built into the platform are who Cognism is built for, priced through a custom quote that runs into five or six figures a year. Self-serve, US-centric prospecting teams wanting a large database, built-in sequencing, and a price visible before any sales call fit Apollo better.
A pipeline leaning EU/UK with calling central to the sales motion makes Cognism’s data quality worth the opaque pricing. Published costs that are predictable, plus a platform that gets a rep calling and emailing within a day, point toward Apollo instead. Either way, running a side-by-side evaluation against your own list beats trusting either vendor’s marketing claims at face value. UpLead’s published per-credit pricing and real-time verification are worth testing for free if neither pricing model fits what your team needs.
Yes, for most teams. The highest published Apollo tier runs $119 per seat per month, about $1,428 per seat per year. Cognism doesn’t publish a rate card, but third-party procurement guides put small-team contracts in the neighborhood of $15,000 a year, climbing well past $50,000 to $100,000 for larger deployments with the full intent-data add-on. Confirm current pricing directly with Cognism before budgeting against either estimate.
Not in the same sense. A credit-based dialer and mobile numbers pulled from the standard database are what Apollo offers, with no dedicated human-verification layer comparable to Diamond Data. Cognism built its reputation specifically on that extra verification step for mobile numbers.
By the numbers each vendor is willing to state, Apollo does: 240 million-plus contacts, stated directly on its own product page. No total gets published on the Cognism side; third-party research guides estimate it near 440 million contacts, but that figure is an outside estimate, not a number Cognism confirms.
No. A live demo is what Cognism offers instead, where a rep pulls a small sample of targeted leads so a buyer can judge data quality before committing to anything. Apollo’s Free plan is permanent, with 900 credits per seat per year.
For most EU-facing teams, Cognism wins this one. ISO 27001 and ISO 27701 certification back that, plus a SOC 2 Type II attestation and a screen against 13 Do Not Call registries before a number reaches a dialer. GDPR compliance and SOC 2 Type II certification both appear on Apollo’s side too, though advanced security controls like SSO stay gated to its highest tier.
Some teams do. A typical split runs Apollo for US-centric volume prospecting and self-serve sequencing, with Cognism handling phone-heavy European outbound where Diamond Data’s verification matters more. Cost stacks on both sides, so confirming the overlap in your ICP before paying for two data providers is worth the time. For a broader read on where each platform sits against the rest of the category, see UpLead’s Cognism vs ZoomInfo and Cognism vs LeadIQ comparisons, or the wider list of Apollo.io competitors.
