Apollo.io vs ContactOut: Data Enrichment Tool Comparison
Compare Apollo.io and ContactOut side by side. See pricing, features, and integrations to choose the right data enrichment tool for your needs.
Apollo.io is a prospecting platform priced per seat from $49 a month billed annually, with sequencing and a dialer included. ContactOut is a browser-extension contact finder priced per company, capped at one user, from $49 a month billed annually. The number of people who need access decides this comparison before volume does.
Key takeaways
- ContactOut caps every self-serve tier at one user per company, so it fits a solo sourcer and does not fit a team.
- Apollo grants 30,000 credits per seat per year upfront on Basic, and prices an email at 1 credit and a phone number at 8.
- ContactOut's $49 and $99 are annual rates; the same page prices those tiers at $99 and $199 billed monthly.
- Apollo includes sequencing, a dialer and CRM enrichment on the same bill, while ContactOut stops at a verified contact and exports.
Reviewed and updated August 28, 2026
Apollo.io vs ContactOut: Data Enrichment Tool Comparison
ContactOut restricts every self-serve tier to one user per company. Apollo sells seats and grants 30,000 credits to each one. Those two facts explain why these tools rarely end up on the same shortlist for long.
The Quick Answer
Apollo is a prospecting platform: database, sequences, dialer and CRM enrichment on one bill. ContactOut is a browser extension for finding contact details, mostly from LinkedIn.
A team that wants to send from the tool has one option here. A single sourcer who wants cheap, accurate lookups has the other.
Teams weighing this decision often want the neighbouring comparison too, and how the same platform compares against a credit-bundle database covers it.
Who Should Pick Which
Pick Apollo when more than one person needs the tool. Its whole model is per seat, so growth is a line item rather than a plan change. The upfront annual credit grant suits bursty work: a rep can build a large list in one week without waiting for a monthly reset.
Pick ContactOut when one person sources and somebody else sends. Unlimited email lookups underneath a 300 or 600 export allowance is a good deal for a solo operator, and the free tier is a standing daily allowance rather than a countdown.
Do not compare the headline rates without the billing basis. ContactOut's $49 and $99 are annual prices, and the same page carries $99 and $199 for the same tiers billed monthly. Apollo's $49 is per seat per month billed annually, so it doubles at two seats and triples at three, while ContactOut's does not move at all until the company needs a second login and discovers it cannot have one.
Understanding the Core Difference
Apollo.io is an all-in-one prospecting platform that bundles a contact database, sequences and a dialer. Apollo is what teams reach for when they want sourcing, sending and dialling on one bill.
ContactOut is a browser-extension contact finder built around LinkedIn sourcing. ContactOut is a recruiter-shaped sourcing tool a sales team can use, and the per-company seat limit is what decides whether it fits.
One tool is a platform priced per person; the other is a lookup tool priced per company.
Pricing Comparison
Basic
Apollo.io Pricing
| Plan | Price | What that rung carries |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 900 credits per seat per year, granted monthly |
| Basic | $49 | 30,000 credits per seat per year, granted upfront |
| Professional | $79 | 48,000 credits per seat per year, granted upfront |
| Organization | $119 | 72,000 credits per seat per year, granted upfront, minimum 3 seats |
Billing basis: per seat per month billed annually, with the page advertising annual billing at a saving of 24 percent.
Source: Apollo.io Pricing
ContactOut Pricing
| Plan | Price | What that rung carries |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 5 emails, 5 phones and 5 exports a day |
| $49 | 300 exports a month, unlimited emails | |
| Email + Phone | $99 | 600 exports a month, unlimited emails and phones |
| Team / API | Contact us | bulk license, Salesforce and ATS integrations |
Billing basis: the $49 and $99 rates are the ANNUAL prices; the same page prices those two tiers at $99 and $199 billed monthly.
Source: ContactOut Pricing
Reading The Two Ladders Together
Apollo.io. Apollo is what teams reach for when they want sourcing, sending and dialling on one bill. Apollo prices an email at 1 credit and a phone number at 8 credits.
ContactOut. ContactOut is a recruiter-shaped sourcing tool a sales team can use, and the per-company seat limit is what decides whether it fits. Every self-serve tier carries a 1 user per company limit, which comparisons of this tool rarely quote.
Trials. Apollo.io offers a 14-day trial on the paid tiers, and the page stamps the whole ladder as introductory pricing that may change, and ContactOut offers a free tier that is a standing daily allowance rather than a time-boxed trial.
What The Bill Actually Looks Like
The scenario below is two people sourcing 500 contacts a month between them.
The arithmetic below is illustrative and the volumes are invented for the comparison. List prices are the ones published on each vendor's own pricing page.
On Apollo, 500 emails a month is 500 credits, and Basic grants 30,000 credits per seat per year upfront, so the allowance is not close to binding. Two seats at $49 per seat per month billed annually is $98 a month, and both people get sequences and the dialer whether or not they use them.
On ContactOut, 500 exports a month needs the Email and Phone tier, which allows 600, at $99 a month billed annually. That is the cheaper subscription. It also covers one of the two people, because the self-serve tiers carry a 1 user per company limit, so the honest comparison is $98 for two working seats against $99 for one plus a conversation about a Team plan.
At one person the answer reverses cleanly, which is the point: this pair is decided by headcount long before it is decided by volume.
What Each One Gives Up
What Apollo gives up. Per-seat pricing punishes exactly the shape ContactOut suits, which is one sourcer working for several people, and the three-seat minimum on Organization puts a floor under the top tier. The bundled sequencer and dialer are paid for whether or not they are opened, which for a team that sends from somewhere else is a real overpayment.
What ContactOut gives up. The 1 user per company limit is a hard stop rather than a soft one, and it applies to the company rather than the seat, so growing past one sourcer means a Team plan conversation. Export allowances of 300 and 600 a month cap list building regardless of how many lookups the tier calls unlimited. There is no sending, no sequencing and no contacted history, so suppression has to live somewhere else entirely.
Features Breakdown
- 240M+ contacts database
- 30M+ companies
- AI-powered multichannel campaigns
- Email deliverability guardrails
- Anonymous visitor identification
- Real-time form enrichment
- and 4 more listed below
- Professional profiles database
- Browser extension for LinkedIn
- Email campaigns
- AI email writer
- Data enrichment
- List builder
- and 3 more listed below
Apollo.io Key Features
- 240M+ contacts database
- 30M+ companies
- AI-powered multichannel campaigns
- Email deliverability guardrails
- Anonymous visitor identification
- Real-time form enrichment
- Contact and company enrichment
- Advanced filtering
- CRM data cleansing
- Pipeline boards
ContactOut Key Features
- Professional profiles database
- Browser extension for LinkedIn
- Email campaigns
- AI email writer
- Data enrichment
- List builder
- Search portal
- Bulk license (700 million+ profiles on Team)
- CSV export
Both lists above are what each vendor publishes about itself, so they describe what is ADVERTISED rather than what is exclusive. A capability appearing under one name and not the other usually means the two companies write their feature lists differently, and the overlap between Apollo.io and ContactOut is wider than two lists side by side suggest.
Integration Ecosystem
Apollo.io Integrations
Apollo.io connects with: Salesforce, HubSpot, Outreach, SalesLoft, Marketo, SendGrid, LinkedIn.
ContactOut Integrations
ContactOut connects with: Salesforce, HubSpot, Greenhouse, Lever, Bullhorn, Zapier, Gmail, Outlook.
Shared Integrations
Both tools integrate with: Salesforce, HubSpot.
The lists above are the ones each vendor puts on its own site, and they are not exhaustive. Naming a connector under one tool and not the other says which integrations each company chose to advertise, and a connector missing from a published list is often still available through a general automation platform.
Switching Between Them
Moving from ContactOut to Apollo is additive rather than disruptive, because Apollo will enrich an uploaded CSV against its own database and the old exports stay useful. The work is in the sequencing setup, which ContactOut never held.
Moving the other way means replacing more than the data. Apollo holds the sequences, the mailboxes, the reply tracking and the contacted history, and ContactOut holds none of those. Export the suppression list first, because knowing who has already been contacted is the one thing that cannot be rebuilt from a database, and a team that loses it will eventually email somebody twice.
Where Each One Sits In A Cold Outbound Stack
Apollo can occupy both the sourcing and the sending slot. ContactOut occupies only the first, and hands over a CSV.
House practice sends one message per campaign and never a bump or a thread reply, which makes the bundled sequencer worth less than it looks on a feature list. What matters is the quality of the row and the health of the mailbox, and a bundled sender does not improve either. That is a reason to treat Apollo's sequencing as a convenience rather than as the argument for buying it.
Qualification is agreed in writing before launch, whichever tool produced the contact.
How To Run The Evaluation
A fortnight of real use answers more than a feature comparison does. The order below puts the questions that eliminate one of these tools before the questions that merely rank them.
- Yes: Write down the one job the tool has to do, in a sentence, before opening either site
- Yes: Read the billing basis on both pages, since a monthly rate and an annual rate are routinely compared as though they were the same number
- Yes: Count the people who need access, and check what each vendor charges for the second one
- Yes: Run the same real sample through both, rather than a demo dataset
- Yes: Check the ceiling that is not the price: contacts, exports, credits, seats or daily volume, whichever this pair meters
- Depends: Confirm the export path works before committing, because leaving is the expensive half
The Decision In One Table
Three rows have been dropped from the summary this article used to carry. Two of them counted the bullet lists further up this page rather than anything either vendor publishes, and the third was a founding year with no bearing on a purchase. What is left is the set of things that actually decide it.
| Apollo.io | ContactOut | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry paid rung | $49 | $49 |
| What it charges for | seats | credit bundles |
| Free option | Yes | Yes |
| Where it sits | an all-in-one prospecting platform that bundles a contact database, sequences and a dialer | a browser-extension contact finder built around LinkedIn sourcing |
Final Thoughts
Apollo is the better buy for a team, and it prices that accordingly. ContactOut is a strong tool for one person and an awkward fit for two, for a reason printed on its own pricing page.
Count the logins before comparing the rates. That number decides this one.
Related Reading
- Best Apollo.io Alternatives in 2026
- Best ContactOut Alternatives in 2026
- Apollo.io vs ZoomInfo: Which B2B Data Platform Should You Choose?
- Apollo vs Clay: Choosing the Right Data Enrichment Tool for B2B Sales
- ContactOut vs ZoomInfo: Data Enrichment Tool Comparison
If you would rather have this run for you, RevenueFlow books qualified meetings on a pay-per-meeting basis and publishes client results.
Pricing and features are taken from the vendors' own pages. Verify current terms with the vendor before relying on them.
Frequently asked questions.
Frequently asked questions- Which should a two-person team buy?
- Apollo, in almost every case. ContactOut's self-serve tiers carry a 1 user per company limit, so a second person cannot simply be added and a second subscription does not help. Two Apollo seats on Basic is $98 a month billed annually, which is close to ContactOut's single-user Email and Phone tier at $99.
- Is Apollo's free tier enough to start with?
- For a very early team, often yes. It grants 900 credits per seat per year, granted monthly, along with two sequences and the extensions. That is enough to test coverage and to run a small first campaign. It is not enough to build lists continuously, which is what the 30,000-credit Basic tier exists for.
- Does ContactOut do anything Apollo does not?
- Its free tier is a standing daily allowance of five emails, five phones and five exports rather than a countdown, which suits occasional lookups. Its Team and API tier advertises a bulk license over 700 million+ profiles alongside ATS integrations, which points at recruiting workflows more than at sales ones.
- What happens to my contacted history if I switch?
- Apollo holds sequences, mailbox connections and a contacted history; ContactOut holds none of those. Moving from Apollo to ContactOut means exporting that history before the seat lapses, because it is a suppression list under another name and it cannot be rebuilt from any database. Moving the other way, there is nothing to lose.
About the author.
Tim Carden is CMO / CTO at RevenueFlow, which builds and operates outbound revenue engines for B2B companies. Studied at McGill University.
Tim Carden · CMO / CTO
Connect on LinkedIn →Explore more.
Ready to scale your outreach?
We build GTM engines that book real meetings. See the receipts.
Related articles.
Apollo.io vs LeadIQ: Data Enrichment Tool Comparison
Compare Apollo.io and LeadIQ side by side. See pricing, features, and integrations to choose the right data enrichment tool for your needs.
ContactOut vs Seamless.AI: Data Enrichment Tool Comparison
Compare ContactOut and Seamless.AI side by side. See pricing, features, and integrations to choose the right data enrichment tool for your needs.
Apollo.io vs ContactOut: Cross-Category Comparison
Apollo.io meters seats and credits; ContactOut caps exports and leaves emails unlimited. The miss rate on your own list decides whether the second line is worth $99.
Datanyze vs Lead411: Data Enrichment Tool Comparison
Compare Datanyze and Lead411 side by side. See pricing, features, and integrations to choose the right data enrichment tool for your needs.
Datanyze vs UpLead: Data Enrichment Tool Comparison
Compare Datanyze and UpLead side by side. See pricing, features, and integrations to choose the right data enrichment tool for your needs.
Clearbit vs Lead411: Data Enrichment Tool Comparison
Compare Clearbit and Lead411 side by side. See pricing, features, and integrations to choose the right data enrichment tool for your needs.