Apollo or Cognism: cheap breadth or verified depth?

Two different products wearing the same category

Apollo is a sales platform with a database inside it. For $49 to $119 per user per month on annual billing, according to Apollo's own comparison page (its pricing table is rendered by JavaScript, so we quote the comparison page instead), you get 240 million contacts, sequences, a dialer on Professional and above plus enough credits for a small team to run outbound end to end. There is a free plan. This is why Apollo became the default for US startups: one login, one bill, good enough data.

Cognism is a data company. It sells phone-verified mobile numbers refreshed every 30 days, European coverage first, Bombora intent on its Pro package and a compliance posture it publishes in detail: ISO 27001, ISO 27701, a SOC 2 Type II audit in 2026 and screening against fifteen do-not-call registers. It does not publish prices. Capterra shows a starting point near $1,000 a month; third-party guides report contracts of $15,000 to $60,000 a year. Contracts are annual and sales-led.

Where each one breaks

Apollo's accuracy is the recurring complaint. Reviews collected by SalesHive (a competitor of ours, so weigh it) put email accuracy at 65 to 70% and bounce rates of 15 to 35% outside the United States. Apollo's own Capterra profile shows support as its lowest sub-score at 4.2. Phone numbers cost eight credits each and draw the most accuracy complaints. The 2026 credit-system migration also left legacy and new accounts on different rules, which shows up in pricing confusion across reviews.

Cognism's weaknesses are the mirror image: opaque pricing, strict export credits, weaker US and Asia-Pacific coverage than its European core, plus a Trustpilot score of 3.0 driven largely by people whose data it holds rather than by customers. It has no meaningful sending layer, so you still need a sequencer.

What changed recently

Apollo acquired Pocus in March 2026 and continues to reposition as an AI GTM operating system. Cognism appointed a new chief executive, launched data-as-a-service and a two-way HubSpot sync in 2025, then completed its SOC 2 Type II audit in 2026. Its packages were renamed twice in two years, so any article naming Platinum or Diamond tiers is out of date.

How to choose

Choose Apollo if

• Your buyers are mostly in the United States and email is your main channel
• You want data, sequences and a dialer in one seat for a small team
• You will run every export through a separate verifier before sending, which we consider mandatory

Choose Cognism if

• You sell in Europe or the UK and your legal team needs a documented compliance position
• Cold calling is a core channel and connect rate matters more than list size
• You have annual budget and a sequencer already

Ask before either

• What does a bounced email cost you? Not the credit, the domain reputation. A 15% bounce rate ends a sending domain in weeks.
• Who is going to research the accounts? Neither product tells you which company hired a new VP of Sales last week and why that matters to your offer.

How we handle data

No single provider is right often enough, so we do not rely on one. Our enrichment runs as a waterfall: a signal is found first (a hire, a funding round, a launch), the account is confirmed against the client's profile, then providers are queried in sequence until a verified email or mobile is found. Every email is verified again immediately before sending. Anything that does not come back clean is dropped. We keep bounce rates under 2 to 3 percent by refusing to send to guessed addresses.

The result is a smaller list than a database export, made of people with a reason to answer. That is what turns into meetings.

If you would rather have the meetings than the database subscription, that is the engagement we run.