The best intent data providers for 2026

Your sales team is reaching out to accounts that aren't buying. Not because your reps are bad at prospecting, but because they don't know which accounts are in-market right now. That's the problem intent data is supposed to solve.

The B2B buyer intent data tools market hit $4.49 billion in 2026 and is projected to reach $20.89 billion by 2035. The category is growing fast because the idea is compelling: know who's researching your solution before they fill out a demo form. But the gap between what intent data providers promise and what they deliver is wider than most buyers expect.

Only about a quarter of B2B companies are currently using intent data effectively. According to The Insight Collective, 55% of marketers use a combination of first-party and third-party intent data. The other 45% are either relying on one source or haven't figured out how to make any of it actionable.

What intent data is

Intent data tracks online behavior that suggests a company or individual is researching a topic related to your product. Someone at Acme Corp visits three articles about CRM migration, downloads a comparison guide, and watches a webinar on sales automation. That pattern creates an intent signal.

There are three types of intent data, and understanding the differences matters more than most vendors want you to think.

First-party intent data comes from your own properties: website visits, pricing page views, content downloads, email engagement. This is your most reliable signal because you control the collection. If someone visits your pricing page twice in a week, that's strong.

Second-party intent data comes from partner platforms like G2 and TrustRadius. When a prospect researches your category and reads competitor reviews, that's a second-party signal showing active comparison shopping.

Third-party intent data comes from aggregated web behavior across thousands of sites. Bombora tracks digital journeys across 5,000+ B2B websites through a cooperative data model. Other intent data providers scrape, crawl, or aggregate signals from ads, social media, and content consumption.

Intent data isn't a magic list of companies ready to buy.

The signal tells you someone is researching a topic. It doesn't tell you their budget, timeline, decision authority, or whether they're a student writing a paper. How you act on the signal matters more than the signal itself.

First-party vs third-party intent

Here's where most intent data conversations go wrong. They treat all signals as equally valuable. They're not.

Anonymous account-level intent sits at the top of the funnel. Bombora tells you "someone at Acme Corp is researching sales intelligence." That's useful for prioritization, but you don't know who, you don't know why, and you don't know if it's a VP of Sales or an intern writing a market report. The signal is broad by design.

The market is shifting. As buying committees get more complex and deal cycles get longer, teams are realizing that generalized account intent isn't enough anymore. Sellers want signals that sit closer to actual revenue conversations.

Job change signals are one of the strongest intent indicators in B2B sales, and most intent data providers ignore them entirely. When a past champion leaves one company and joins another, that's not anonymous account behavior. That's a named individual who already knows your product, already trusts your team, and is now sitting in a new organization with new budget and new problems to solve.

Think about the math. A cold outbound sequence to a stranger at a random company converts at 2-3%. A warm outreach to a past champion who just started a new role? That conversion rate jumps dramatically because you're not selling. You're reconnecting. The sales cycle is shorter because there's no education phase. The deal size is often larger because the champion knows exactly what they need.

According to UserGems research, companies that track and act on job changes see 3-5x higher conversion rates compared to cold outbound. That's not a marginal improvement. That's a fundamentally different pipeline motion.

The hierarchy of intent signals looks like this:

1. Past champion job changes (closest to revenue): Named individuals with existing relationships, proven trust, and immediate need to build their stack at a new company
2. First-party website intent (strong): Known visitors on your pricing page or demo page showing active evaluation
3. Second-party review intent (moderate): Prospects actively comparing solutions on G2 or TrustRadius
4. Third-party topic intent (broad): Anonymous account-level research signals aggregated across thousands of websites

The best intent data providers in 2026 aren't just tracking anonymous web behavior. They're helping you capture the signals closest to revenue and act on them before your competitors do.

The best intent data providers for 2026

Bombora

Bombora is the name most people think of when they hear "intent data." The company built its business on a cooperative model where participating B2B publishers share anonymized consumption data. In exchange, they get access to the aggregated intent signals from the entire network.

What makes Bombora different is the consent layer. The data comes from cooperative participation, not scraping. That matters for compliance and for signal quality. Bombora's Company Surge data shows when a company's research activity on a specific topic exceeds their baseline. It's the closest thing the industry has to a standard for third-party intent.

The catch is that Bombora doesn't sell directly to most sales teams. Instead, its data powers other platforms. Cognism, 6sense, Demandbase, and dozens of other tools integrate Bombora signals into their own products. You're probably already using Bombora data without knowing it.

6sense

6sense goes beyond raw intent signals to predict buying stage. The Revenue AI engine combines multiple data sources with machine learning to estimate where an account sits in their purchase journey. Is this company just becoming aware of the problem, or are they actively evaluating solutions?

According to Salesmotion's analysis, 6sense is ideal for mature ABM organizations running predictive campaigns across outbound, advertising, and nurture programs. The platform is powerful but complex. Smaller teams without dedicated RevOps or marketing ops resources typically struggle to extract full value.

Pricing is enterprise-level. Expect six-figure annual contracts for anything beyond a basic implementation.

Demandbase

Demandbase processes over 500 billion signals per month across its platform. The company positions itself as an account-based marketing platform first and an intent data provider second, which means you're buying a full ABM stack rather than just intent signals.

The strength is integration. Demandbase combines intent data with advertising, personalization, and sales intelligence in a single platform. That reduces the "so what do I do with this data?" problem that plagues standalone intent providers.

The weakness is the same as 6sense. It's built for large marketing teams with ABM budgets. If you're a five-person SDR team trying to prioritize your call list, Demandbase is more than you need.

ZoomInfo

ZoomInfo's intent data sits on top of the industry's largest B2B contact database. The combination is what makes it compelling. You don't just see that "Acme Corp is researching sales intelligence." You get the exact contacts at Acme Corp who match your buyer persona, with verified emails and phone numbers attached.

ZoomInfo processes over one billion buying signals monthly, and the always-on enrichment means the data is continuously refreshed. Plans start at $14,995/year and scale to $39,995/year for Elite features.

For teams that need intent data and contact data in one platform, ZoomInfo is the established choice. For teams that already have a contact data provider and just need intent signals, it's overkill.

G2 buyer intent

G2's intent data comes from a unique source: companies actively researching and comparing software on the platform. When someone at a target account reads reviews in your category, views your competitor's profile, or creates a comparison report, G2 captures that signal and sends it to you.

This is second-party intent data, and it's some of the highest quality available. Why? Because someone browsing G2 is actively evaluating software purchases. They're past the awareness stage and into active comparison. TrustRadius offers a similar signal from their review platform.

The limitation is scope.

G2 can only tell you about research happening on G2. It misses all the activity happening on industry blogs, analyst sites, and competitor websites. Use it as one input among your intent data providers, not your only signal.

Warmly

Warmly takes a different approach to intent. Instead of tracking anonymous topic research across the web, it identifies who's visiting your website right now, what pages they're viewing, how long they're spending, and where they came from. When Warmly can identify the specific person, you get individual-level intent data that's significantly more actionable than anonymous topic signals. When it can't identify the individual, it still tells you which company is showing interest, so your team can prioritize the account and find the right contact through enrichment.

That combination of individual and account-level identification is what makes Warmly valuable across the full range of website traffic. A VP of Sales visiting your pricing page and spending four minutes on your integration docs is the ideal scenario. But even when the visitor stays anonymous, knowing that Acme Corp hit your case studies page three times this week gives your reps a warm account to target instead of cold outbound into the void.

Warmly also layers in third-party intent from Bombora and G2, plus tracks job changes across your target accounts. The platform orchestrates automated outreach through chat, email, and LinkedIn based on real-time visitor behavior.

Where Warmly really shines is when paired with a contact data platform. Warmly identifies the visitor and the intent. The contact data platform fills in the verified phone number and email so your rep can actually reach them. We'll break down that workflow later in this post.

Cognism

Cognism combines Bombora's third-party intent data with its own 200 million European contacts and phone-verified mobile numbers. The integration means you get the "who's in-market" signal alongside the "here's how to reach them" contact data in one platform.

For teams selling into EMEA markets, Cognism's combination of GDPR-compliant contact data and intent signals is hard to beat. The 16-step email verification process and phone-verified direct dials mean you're not just finding interested accounts, you're finding reachable people within those accounts.

LeadIQ

LeadIQ approaches intent from the prospecting workflow side. Rather than starting with a dashboard of intent signals and asking your reps to figure out what to do with them, LeadIQ's Pro plan integrates intent data and account tracking directly into the LinkedIn-native prospecting experience.

When a tracked account shows buying signals, your reps see that context alongside the verified contact data and AI-generated personalized outreach from Scribe. It's intent data that's already baked into the action your rep is taking.

LeadIQ also tracks job changes across your saved accounts and contacts. When a past champion moves to a new company, your team gets alerted with their updated role, company, and verified contact data. That's the strongest intent signal in B2B sales turning into an actionable outbound motion within hours instead of weeks. Your reps aren't cold prospecting. They're reaching out to someone who already knows and trusts your product.

The Pro plan starts at $15/user/month includes intent data, job change tracking, 2,000 verified emails, 100 phone numbers, and lookalike account search. For mid-market SDR teams, it's one of the most accessible entry points to intent-driven prospecting.

Choosing an intent data provider

The market breaks down into three categories, and knowing which one you need saves you from buying the wrong thing.

Cooperative/aggregated providers (Bombora, LeadSift): Best for teams that need broad topic-level intent signals across thousands of accounts. Works well as input for ABM platforms and prioritization models. Not great for individual-level targeting.

Platform-specific providers (G2, TrustRadius): Best for teams selling software to buyers who actively research on review platforms. High signal quality but narrow coverage. Usually used as a supplement to other sources.

Real-time website intent (Warmly): Best for teams that want to act on first-party website visits within minutes. Identifies visitors at both the individual and company level, tracks behavior, and orchestrates outreach. Strongest when paired with a contact data provider for enrichment.

Full-stack platforms (6sense, Demandbase, ZoomInfo, Cognism, LeadIQ): Best for teams that want intent signals combined with contact data, advertising, or prospecting tools. Higher cost but less integration work.

Here's the comparison:

What size is your sales team, and do you have dedicated RevOps or marketing ops to manage a complex platform? That question alone eliminates half the options for most companies.

Getting intent data to work

Buying an intent data provider doesn't automatically improve your pipeline.

According to industry surveys, the top challenges with intent data are making the insights actionable, integrating them into existing workflows, and ensuring teams actually use the information.

Combine first-party and third-party signals. Your own website analytics and CRM data tell you who's already engaged with your brand. Third-party intent tells you who's researching your category but hasn't found you yet. Neither source alone gives you the full picture. Use lead scoring to weigh both signals.

Build workflows, not dashboards. A dashboard showing 500 accounts with high intent is useless if your reps don't check it. Pipe intent signals directly into the tools your team actually uses. Push high-intent accounts into your sequencing tool. Trigger Slack alerts for target accounts. Make the data impossible to ignore.

Set realistic expectations. Intent data tells you someone is researching a topic. It doesn't mean they're ready to buy, have budget, or even make decisions. Treat intent as a prioritization tool, not a crystal ball. Your reps still need to qualify the opportunity through actual conversations.

Track signal-to-meeting conversion. Measure how many intent-flagged accounts convert to meetings versus cold accounts. If the conversion rate isn't meaningfully higher, your intent data source might not be accurate enough, or your team isn't acting on the signals fast enough.

From intent signal to outreach

The fundamental problem with most intent data setups isn't the data. It's the gap between spotting a warm prospect and actually reaching them.

Here's what that looks like without the right integration. Warmly identifies a high-intent visitor on your website, either the specific person or at minimum the company they work for. Your rep sees the alert. Then they spend 30-60 minutes manually hunting for the right contact's phone number and email address across LinkedIn, ZoomInfo, or whatever tools they have access to. By the time outreach happens, the intent signal has gone cold. The prospect has moved on. Traditional cold outbound reply rates sit below 5%.

The Warmly + LeadIQ integration flips that timeline. Warmly identifies the visitor or the company in real time. LeadIQ automatically enriches the contact profile with verified phone and email, or surfaces the right contacts at that company if only account-level identification is available. The lead gets pushed directly into a sequence or rep alert in under two minutes. Reply rates on warm, intent-triggered outreach jump to 22-27%.

That's not a marginal improvement over cold outbound. That's a fundamentally different conversion rate because you're reaching people at the exact moment they're thinking about your category.

The two products are positioned as a "better together" story. Intent data meets contact intelligence. Warmly tells you who's interested right now. LeadIQ tells you exactly how to reach them with verified data. You can get both through LeadIQ at special bundle pricing that's cheaper than purchasing Warmly separately.

How quickly does your team currently act on website intent signals? If the answer is hours or days instead of minutes, you're losing deals to competitors who move faster.

Should you use intent data?

B2B buyers complete an average of 12 online searches before visiting a specific brand's website. By the time they fill out your demo form, they've already narrowed their shortlist. Intent data lets your team engage during the research phase, before competitors lock in their position.

But the market is moving past generalized account signals. The teams winning pipeline in 2026 are the ones tracking job changes from past champions, acting on real-time website visits in minutes instead of hours, and combining multiple intent layers to get as close to revenue conversations as possible.

The right provider depends on your team's size, budget, and how you plan to operationalize the data. Enterprise ABM teams should evaluate 6sense or Demandbase. Teams focused on European markets should look at Cognism. Mid-market SDR teams that need intent data baked into their prospecting workflow should start with LeadIQ's Pro plan and pair it with Warmly for real-time website intent.

Try LeadIQ free for 30 days and see what intent-driven prospecting looks like when job changes, website visits, and verified contact data all feed into the same workflow.

Intent data providers: FAQs

What is intent data in B2B sales? Intent data tracks online behavior that suggests a company is researching a topic related to your product. This includes content consumption, search queries, review site visits, and other digital signals. It helps sales teams prioritize outreach to accounts that are actively in-market rather than cold prospecting randomly.

How much does intent data cost? Costs range widely. Standalone intent signals through platforms like Bombora are typically sold through partners at custom pricing. Full-stack platforms like 6sense and Demandbase run six-figure annual contracts. More accessible options like LeadIQ's Pro plan include intent data, starting at $15/user/month alongside contact data and prospecting tools.

What's the difference between first-party and third-party intent data? First-party intent data comes from your own properties (website visits, email engagement, content downloads). Third-party intent data is collected from external sources across the web. First-party is more reliable but limited to people already engaging with your brand. Third-party reveals accounts researching your category who haven't found you yet.

Are job changes really an intent signal? Yes, and one of the strongest ones. When a past champion moves to a new company, they already know your product, trust your team, and are often building a new tech stack from scratch. Companies that track job changes see 3-5x higher conversion rates compared to cold outbound. It's a named individual with a proven relationship, not an anonymous account signal.

Do small sales teams need intent data? Not necessarily for third-party topic signals. If your team has fewer than three reps and a clearly defined ICP, start with job change tracking and first-party website analytics before investing in expensive third-party intent platforms. LeadIQ's Pro plan gives you job change alerts plus topic intent starting at $15/user/month billed annually. Pair it with Warmly through the bundle for real-time website visitor identification.

Which intent data provider is best for startups? LeadIQ's Pro plan offers the most accessible entry point with intent data and job change tracking included alongside verified contact data and AI email writing starting at $15/user/month. Pairing it with Warmly through the LeadIQ bundle adds real-time website intent at better-than-market pricing. G2 buyer intent is also worth exploring if you sell software and want high-quality second-party signals.