Apollo.io vs Groove by Clari: Cross-Category Comparison

Apollo's plan cards list Unlimited Sequences from the $49 Basic tier upward, so the sending side stops scaling at the first paid step while the credit grant keeps climbing from 30,000 to 72,000 per seat per year. The ladder reads like a features ladder and prices data. Groove sits on the other side of that line and names no price on its own page, because it is sold as one product inside the Clari platform. Reading those two shapes together is what this comparison is for.

Why Compare These Two Tools?

Data enrichment tools provide the contact data that sales engagement platforms use for outreach sequences. The question for buyers is often whether an all-in-one platform that includes data can replace a dedicated enrichment tool.

Apollo.io is a data enrichment tool focused on B2B lead data and contact enrichment. Apollo.io is an all-in-one sales intelligence platform with 240M+ contacts, AI-powered campaigns, and built-in email sequencing.

Groove by Clari is a sales engagement platform focused on multi-channel sales outreach. Sales engagement and prospecting platform (part of Clari, which merged with Salesloft in December 2025) that automates email sequences, logging, and analytics, and integrates with Salesforce to keep activity data in the CRM.

That framing is close and it hides the thing worth reading this page for. Apollo.io lists unlimited sequences and a deliverability suite with email warmup, so these two are not neatly either side of a line. What follows prices both shelves from their own published figures and answers whether Groove earns a second line on the invoice at all.

Where Each Tool Fits in Your Workflow

1. Step 1Lead sourcing and data

   Apollo.io covers B2B lead data and contact enrichment, on a free entry plan.

2. Step 2Outreach orchestration

   Groove by Clari covers multi-channel sales outreach.

What Each Side Actually Does in a Cold Outbound Run

A cold outbound run has a fixed shape, and this pair straddles it in a way the category labels hide. Targeting comes first, and that is a decision about who is worth writing to rather than a piece of software. Then the list gets built and a mailbox gets resolved for every person on it, which is squarely Apollo.io's half: search filters, an extension over a profile, a spreadsheet pushed back through enrichment, and a verification pass that discards anything the provider could not confirm.

Sending is where the line blurs. Groove by Clari owns sender accounts, sending windows, daily caps, reply detection and the record of who answered, and Apollo.io ships unlimited sequences and a deliverability suite with email warmup of its own. So the honest question here is whether that included sender is enough for the wave being planned. RevenueFlow runs one message per campaign either way, so nothing on that side is a bump step or a thread reply waiting to fire. A prospect who stays quiet gets re-approached later in a new campaign with a different angle, never with a second message stacked under the one they ignored, and on LinkedIn that second message does not get sent at all.

The last stage belongs to neither product. Somebody reads the reply and somebody books the meeting, and the meeting counts only against qualification criteria written down before the campaign launched.

Pricing Comparison

Apollo.io Pricing

Every paid price above is the per seat per month rate billed annually, and the Organization tier carries a three seat minimum.

Source: Apollo.io Pricing

Groove by Clari Pricing

Groove is sold as one product inside the Clari platform rather than on its own ladder, and Clari's pricing page ends at a quote form.

Groove's product and pricing pages on clari.com now redirect to Salesloft. Clari and Salesloft completed their merger on December 3, 2025, and Salesloft's merger page says the two "are now operating as one company, with Salesloft as our go-forward company and platform brand." Salesloft's site still offers a Groove login, and the merged company's customer FAQ says it has no current plans for required migrations from one product to the other. The Groove details above describe the product as Clari listed it, so confirm current packaging and price with Salesloft.

Sources: Clari and Salesloft complete merger, Salesloft and Clari are now one company, merger customer FAQ

Reading the Two Price Shapes Together

Apollo's plan cards publish a per seat per month rate billed annually: Basic at $49, Professional at $79 and Organization at $119, with a three seat minimum on Organization and Save 24% on the annual toggle. What moves up that ladder is the interesting part. Sending stops scaling immediately, since the free plan lists 2 Sequences and every paid tier from Basic upward lists Unlimited Sequences, while the credit grant climbs the whole way, from 900 credits per seat per year on free to 30,000, 48,000 and 72,000 granted upfront. On Apollo's own page the tier decision is a data decision.

Groove names no price and no package ladder on that page. It is sold as one product inside the Clari platform, Clari's pricing page ends at a Get a quote form, and the only public commercial detail is Clari's statement that the platform carries no extra platform fees for integrations or continuous support. The buying question is rarely Groove on its own; it is what the Clari contract covers, since the same agreement carries forecasting and revenue capture a team may not want yet.

Those are two different kinds of number and they do not compare directly. Apollo.io publishes a rate a team can multiply out before speaking to anybody; Groove by Clari publishes a shape and produces the rate on a call. Half of this stack can be budgeted today and half cannot, so a plan treating the Groove line as an estimate is guessing at the larger of the two numbers.

What One Year of This Stack Actually Costs

Take an invented but ordinary case: two people running outbound. The rates below are Apollo's own published figures; the team and the seat count are invented to make the arithmetic concrete.

Apollo Basic at $49 per seat per month billed annually is $1,176 a year for two seats and grants 60,000 credits across them. Apollo Professional at $79 is $1,896 a year for 96,000 credits, so the step costs $720 and buys 36,000 extra Apollo credits, which is $0.02 a credit. The same step buys no additional sequencing, since Apollo lists sequences as unlimited at Basic. Apollo Organization at $119 cannot be bought for two people at all, because the card carries a three seat minimum, so its real number for this team is $4,284 a year for three seats.

The Groove side of that year cannot be added, which is the finding rather than a gap in the research. Groove is quoted as part of the Clari platform, so the figure in a plan for it depends on what else in that platform the contract carries.

Feature Highlights

Apollo.io Key Capabilities (Data Enrichment Tool)

• 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

Groove by Clari Key Capabilities (Sales Engagement Platform)

• Multi-channel engagement flows
• Auto-logging of all activities to Salesforce
• Email tracking with open and click analytics
• Dialer with call logging and recording
• Meeting scheduler with calendar integration
• Analytics dashboards for sequence performance
• Template and snippet management
• Revenue intelligence (via Clari platform)
• Account-based engagement workflows

Where the Two Actually Overlap

Apollo is the reason the overlap question is real on this page. Its plan cards list Unlimited Sequences from Basic upward and a Deliverability Suite with email warmup, so Apollo lists a sender as well as a database. Groove lists no database. Its defining claim is where the record lands rather than what it can do: Clari's own page sells Groove as capturing every sales activity into Salesforce as a single source of truth.

Both lists are the vendors' own wording, so the honest reading is that Apollo.io lists these capabilities and Groove by Clari lists those. A feature named on a plan card is a claim about scope rather than a measure of quality, and the overlap that matters in practice sits at Salesforce, where both products write to the same record.

Integration Ecosystem

Apollo.io Integrations

Apollo.io connects with: Salesforce, HubSpot, Outreach, SalesLoft, Marketo, SendGrid, LinkedIn.

Groove by Clari Integrations

Groove by Clari connects with: Salesforce, Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft 365, Google Calendar, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Clari, Zoom, Slack.

Shared Integrations

Both tools integrate with: Salesforce. This shared ecosystem means they can work together in your tech stack.

When to Choose Which

Choose Apollo.ioData Enrichment Tool, lead sourcing and data

• Your biggest gap is in lead sourcing and data
• You already have a solid sales engagement platform and need specialized B2B lead data and contact enrichment capabilities
• You want an affordable entry point ($0/mo)
• Your team's primary bottleneck is B2B lead data and contact enrichment

Choose Groove by ClariSales Engagement Platform, outreach orchestration

• Your biggest gap is in outreach orchestration
• You already have a data enrichment tool and need better multi-channel sales outreach
• You need enterprise-grade multi-channel sales outreach features
• Your team's primary bottleneck is multi-channel sales outreach

Read that split as a question about which gap is open rather than about which product is better. Apollo.io answers a sourcing question and Groove by Clari answers a sending one, and a team that names the wrong gap buys a capable tool that changes nothing.

Do You Need Both, and in Which Order?

Most teams reading this page do not need both yet. Apollo.io lists unlimited sequences and a deliverability suite with email warmup, which is enough to run a first wave and find out whether the list is the problem. Buying Groove by Clari alongside it in the same month buys a better sending experience before anyone knows whether sending is what is failing.

The order that works is data first, sending second, for reasons of measurement rather than preference. A sending platform bought onto a thin list delivers that list faster and its reporting will blame the quiet quarter on copy. A list deep enough to keep a wave fed shows its problems within one campaign, and those problems are the brief for the sending purchase.

One case honestly reverses it. A team already booking meetings and losing them to disorganised follow-through has a workflow gap rather than a data gap. Groove is a reasonable answer there, particularly for a team whose reporting already lives in Salesforce, because auto-logging removes the step reps skip.

Whichever way round, the two connect through Salesforce, and that is the surface to test during a trial rather than after one. A handoff needing a CSV in the middle is a handoff somebody stops doing in week three.

Using Both Together

Many sales teams use both a data enrichment tool and a sales engagement platform as part of their complete workflow. Apollo.io handles lead sourcing and data while Groove by Clari covers outreach orchestration.

Since both tools integrate with Salesforce, connecting them in your workflow is straightforward.

Rolling It Out Without Breaking the Run

Start with Apollo, because it is the half a team can buy and use in an afternoon and the half that tells you whether the target list exists. Run one wave on Basic, count how many of the accounts that matter come back with a verified mailbox, and only then decide whether the sending side needs its own product. Groove lands second, and its rollout is a Salesforce project as much as a sales one. Its Salesforce focus is the reason to buy it and also the reason the implementation touches objects, permissions and reporting that outbound does not normally touch.

Whichever order the two arrive in, keep the sending inventory out of it. Sender domains, mailbox warmup and daily caps are their own project, and a stack change made in the same week as a sending change leaves nothing to attribute a bounce rate to. Change one layer, let a full wave run, then change the next.

Two habits save real money. Trial on accounts already worked rather than on a fresh list, because the only coverage question that matters is coverage on the segment being sold to. And export what the incumbent already found before a subscription lapses: records bought once are cheap to keep and expensive to buy twice.

Decision Framework

1. Name the gap before naming a tool. Write down which stage is costing meetings: a list that runs out, addresses that bounce, or messages that never go out on time. A decision made without that sentence is a preference.
2. Check what the existing stack already covers. Overlapping spend is the normal failure here, and it is invisible because the two products sit under different budget lines.
3. Price the whole year, not the entry tier. Seat minimums, annual billing and per-credit top-ups move the real number more than the headline does.
4. Trial on the accounts being sold to. Coverage is a property of a segment rather than of a database, so a sample drawn from the target list is the only test worth running.
5. Measure at the pipeline, not per tool. Both products feed one funnel, so the honest measure is meetings booked against criteria fixed in advance.

The Short Version

• Apollo.io can be priced from its own page today, starting at $49 a month on the terms in the table above.
• Groove by Clari names no price on its own pricing page, so the Groove line in any budget is a quote until a call happens.
• Apollo.io lists unlimited sequences and a deliverability suite with email warmup, so a first wave can run without buying Groove at the same time.
• Buy the data side first when the list runs out, and the sending side first when meetings are being lost after the reply.
• Measure the change in meetings booked against criteria fixed before launch, because that is the only number both products are trying to move.

Related Reading

• Best Apollo.io Alternatives in 2026
• Best Groove by Clari 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
• Groove by Clari vs Outreach: Sales Engagement Platform Comparison
• Best Outreach Alternatives

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.