Apollo pricing: what you'll actually pay in 2026

Apollo.io lists its plans at $49, $79, and $119 per user per month, and that’s if you sign up annually (monthly pricing is even higher). Clean numbers. Easy to compare against competitors. But if you've used Apollo for more than a few months, you already know those numbers don't tell the full story.

The gap between Apollo's listed pricing and what teams actually pay is one of the worst-kept secrets in sales tech. According to Enginy's analysis, real-world budgets routinely exceed the subscription cost by 60-80% once credit overages, mobile number reveals, and locked features are factored in.

So before you sign that annual contract, let's break down what Apollo.io really costs and whether that spend is worth it for your team.

Apollo pricing plans breakdown

Apollo offers four paid tiers plus a free plan. Here's what each one includes, and what it doesn't.

Free plan ($0/user/month): You get 10,000 email credits per month, but only 5 mobile credits and 10 export credits. That's enough to test the platform, not enough to run real outbound. You're limited to two active sequences and basic filters.

Basic plan ($49/user/month annual, $59 monthly): This is where most teams start. You get unlimited email campaigns, 30,000 credits per year (upfront), and CRM integrations with Salesforce and HubSpot. But there's no built-in dialer. And 30,000 credits sounds generous until you realize mobile numbers cost 8 credits each.

Professional plan ($79/user/month annual, $99 monthly): Apollo's most popular plan. You get 10,000 data credits per year and access to the built-in dialer, but the dialer only works for US and Canadian numbers. If your team makes international calls, you'll need a separate tool.

Organization plan ($119/user/month annual, $149 monthly): The enterprise tier requires a minimum of three users. You get 200 mobile credits and 4,000 export credits per month, plus international calling, advanced reporting, and permission profiles.

Here's the quick comparison:

Did you notice that mobile credits actually decrease relative to total credits as you move up in plans?

That's because higher tiers are built around features, not data volume. Understanding this is critical when evaluating Apollo pricing against competitors.

Hidden costs to watch for

The subscription fee is just the starting point.

Here's where Apollo pricing gets complicated.

Credit overages. Once you burn through your monthly or annual credits, additional credits cost $0.20 each with a minimum purchase of 250 monthly credits or 2,500 annual credits. According to Persana AI's pricing analysis, this is where budgets spiral. A team of five SDRs doing aggressive prospecting can easily blow through their credit allotment in the first two weeks of the month.

Mobile number reveals at 8x cost. This is the math that surprises most buyers. One mobile number costs 8 credits. On the Basic plan with 30,000 annual credits, that means your team can only reveal about 3,750 mobile numbers per year, or roughly 312 per month across your entire team. How many cold calls does your team make per day?

Waterfall enrichment cost variability. Apollo uses a waterfall model for contact enrichment, querying multiple data sources until it finds valid data. Smarte's analysis explains that this means credit consumption varies based on your ICP, geography, and industry. Teams prospecting in markets with weaker data coverage burn more credits per usable contact.

No credit rollover. Credits expire at the end of each billing cycle. There are no refunds, no extensions, no carrying unused credits into the next month. For teams with seasonal fluctuations in prospecting activity, this means you're either overpaying in slow months or running out in busy ones.

Feature gating. CRM integrations are only available on Basic and above. The dialer requires Professional. International calling needs Organization. Warmly's review notes that what looks like a modular platform is actually a feature ladder designed to push you toward higher tiers.

Apollo.io cost per contact breakdown

Let's do the math for a typical mid-market sales team.

Assume you have five SDRs on the Professional plan at $79/user/month (annual billing). That's $4,740/year per rep, or $23,700/year for the team. Each rep gets roughly 2,000 data credits per year (10,000 total split across the team).

If each rep needs 50 mobile number reveals per month (600 per year), that's 4,800 credits on mobile numbers alone (600 x 8 credits). Your 10,000 annual credits are nearly half gone on phone numbers before you touch email reveals or exports.

The overage math: you'll need at least 5,000 additional credits at $0.20 each. That's another $1,000/year minimum. Your real annual cost just went from $23,700 to $24,700, and we're being conservative.

A Capterra reviewer noted that even email-only access now costs 3-10 credits per contact due to forced waterfall enrichment. The simple workflow from Apollo's earlier days is gone.

For teams running lean, that cost per contact starts to look less competitive than alternatives with flat-rate pricing. Have you calculated your actual cost per usable contact, including bounced emails and disconnected numbers?

What users say about data quality

Pricing is only half the equation. The other half is whether the data you're paying for actually works.

SalesForge analyzed over 1,000 user reviews and found that Apollo's data accuracy hovers around 65-70%. That means roughly one in three contacts you pull could have outdated information, a wrong email, or a disconnected phone number.

NexuScale's research showed that email bounce rates for Apollo users often range between 15-25%, far above the 2-5% threshold that email providers consider acceptable. Over time, those bounces damage your sender reputation, which means even your legitimate emails start landing in spam.

The data accuracy issue hits harder when you consider the credit cost. You're paying credits for contacts that don't convert. A phone number that costs 8 credits and doesn't connect is $1.60 in wasted credits. Multiply that across hundreds of reveals per month and the waste adds up.

Where Apollo data does work well is US-based companies with 50+ employees.

The accuracy drops significantly for international contacts, smaller companies, and recently changed job titles. Factor that into your Apollo pricing ROI calculation.

When Apollo pricing makes sense (and when it doesn't)

Apollo isn't overpriced for every team. Here's the honest breakdown.

Apollo works well for:

• Early-stage startups doing low-volume outbound in the US market
• Teams that primarily need email data (not phone numbers)
• Solo founders who want an all-in-one platform without managing multiple tools
• Teams with less than five reps who won't hit credit limits quickly

Apollo gets expensive for:

• Mid-market teams with five or more SDRs doing high-volume prospecting
• Teams that rely heavily on cold calling (8 credits per phone number compounds fast)
• Companies selling into European or APAC markets where Apollo's data coverage is thin
• Organizations that need predictable monthly costs without credit volatility

If your team falls in the second category, the alternatives typically offer better value. The sales intelligence market reached $4.85 billion in 2025, which means there's no shortage of competitors offering different pricing models and data approaches.

Apollo alternatives to consider

If Apollo's credit system and data accuracy don't work for your team, here are the main alternatives and how their pricing compares.

LeadIQ has a free offer that comes with 50 credits/month to spend in verified email or phone numbers, with access to a database of 750 million contacts and real-time data refresh, so you're not prospecting against records that went stale months ago. The Pro plan starts at $15/user/month billed annually with 2,400 credits to spend as you like, per year. The Pro plan includes Prospector Hub, champion tracking, AI-powered email writing through Scribe. For teams that prospect on LinkedIn, LeadIQ's one-click capture workflow and its integrations with Salesloft, Outreach, Gong, Salesfinity, and others, replaces Apollo's multi-step process. Paid plans come with substantially higher credit allocations than Apollo's tiers, so your team isn't rationing phone reveals or watching credits evaporate mid-month. The same data powers sales, RevOps, and marketing workflows from a single platform.

ZoomInfo is the enterprise option at $14,995-$39,995/year. Massive database, powerful ABM tools, but the price tag puts it out of reach for most SMBs. User reviews consistently report contacts with job titles that are months or even years out of date, and ZoomInfo's own engineering team has acknowledged that records verified six months or more ago may be less reliable than machine-generated data.

Cognism offers custom pricing with a focus on European data (200 million contacts). If EMEA is your primary market, Cognism's phone-verified data justifies the premium.

Lusha ranges from free to $79/month and keeps things simple. Good for solo reps or teams that need basic contact data without platform complexity.

Hunter.io is the email specialist at $0-$199/month. If you only need verified email addresses with low bounce rates, it's the most cost-effective option.

The comparison that matters most isn't sticker price.

It's cost per usable contact. A tool that charges more per seat but delivers 90%+ accurate data costs less per qualified lead than a tool with a cheap subscription and 65% accuracy.

Better ways to spend your budget

Apollo built its reputation on being the affordable alternative to ZoomInfo. That positioning worked when the credit system was simple and the data was good enough. But as the platform has grown, the pricing model has gotten more complex and the total cost of ownership has climbed with it.

The smartest move isn't just switching tools. It's rethinking how your team approaches sales intelligence. Do you need a massive database, or do you need accurate data in the specific segments you're targeting? Do your reps need 700 million profiles, or do they need verified contacts pushed into their CRM in one click?

Try LeadIQ free for 30 days and compare the data quality and workflow against what you're paying for Apollo today. No credit math required.

Apollo.io pricing: FAQs

How much does Apollo.io cost per year for a team of 5? On the Professional plan (annual billing), you'd pay $79/user/month x 5 users x 12 months = $4,740/year per user, or $23,700 total. But expect 60-80% more in actual costs once credit overages, especially mobile number reveals at 8 credits each, are factored in. Budget $30,000-$40,000 for realistic annual spend.

Is Apollo.io free plan good enough for prospecting? The free plan works for testing. You get 10,000 email credits but only 5 mobile credits and 10 export credits per month with a cap of two active sequences. Most teams outgrow it within the first week of serious prospecting.

Why do Apollo.io credits expire? Apollo's credit expiration policy means unused credits don't roll over between billing cycles. This creates urgency to use credits before they expire but also means teams in slower months waste their allocation. There are no refunds or extensions available.

‍What's the cheapest Apollo.io alternative with good data? LeadIQ's Essential plan at $36/user/month and Lusha's free-to-$79/month plans offer the best value for B2B data at lower price points. Hunter.io is cheapest for email-only needs at $0-$199/month.

Does Apollo.io pricing include a dialer? No. The built-in dialer requires the Professional plan ($79/user/month) or higher, and it only supports US and Canadian phone numbers. International calling requires the Organization plan at $119/user/month. Many teams end up paying for a separate dialer tool on top of Apollo.