Apollo.io vs Cognism
Apollo dominates on volume and price. Cognism dominates on GDPR compliance and phone-verified EU contact data. For European teams, this is often the most important comparison in B2B data.
Choose Apollo if…
- Your ICP is primarily US or global, not EU-centric
- You need email sequences and outreach in the same platform
- Budget is a constraint — Apollo’s free tier is the most generous in the space
- Cold email is your primary outbound channel (not cold calling)
Choose Cognism if…
- Your primary market is UK and EU, especially enterprise accounts
- You run cold calling campaigns needing phone-verified mobile numbers
- Your DPO or legal team requires rigorous GDPR documentation
- TPS/CTPS do-not-call compliance is a hard requirement for your market
Apollo.io vs Cognism — Feature comparison
| Feature | Apollo.io | Cognism |
|---|---|---|
| Database size | 275M+ contacts | 400M+ profiles (EU-weighted) |
| EU data quality | Weak — US-centric, seniority often wrong | Strong — EU focus, human-verified |
| Phone-verified mobile numbers | No | Yes — Diamond Data® verified |
| TPS/CTPS DNC compliance | No | Yes |
| GDPR compliance posture | Claimed, US data storage, grey area | Strong — GDPR-first by design |
| Email sequencing built in | Yes | No — outreach tool separate |
| Data freshness | Database — periodic refresh | Database — human-verified batches |
| Free plan | Yes — generous free tier | No |
| Pricing transparency | Published — $49/month entry | Negotiated — $200–$1,000+/month |
| Annual contract required | No — monthly available | Typically yes |
The EU coverage gap is Apollo’s biggest weakness
Apollo was built primarily on US data. Its 275M+ contact database is US-centric — for European companies, especially mid-market and below, seniority data, job titles, and company sizes are frequently inaccurate. Teams prospecting into UK, DACH, BeNeLux, or France routinely find Apollo’s EU coverage disappointing.
Cognism has invested specifically in EU data quality — human-verified contacts, coverage of UK/EU markets, and do-not-call registry compliance. If your ICP is European, Cognism’s data is materially better for your use case.
GDPR: grey area vs GDPR-first
Apollo claims GDPR compliance but is a US company with US data storage. For enterprise clients with demanding DPOs, or companies in fintech, healthcare, or legal, this creates a compliance gap that may block vendor approval.
Cognism was built GDPR-first — it’s one of its core marketing differentiators. TPS/CTPS verification for cold calling, documented consent frameworks, and a compliance posture that’s been audited. For EU-based teams, this is a meaningful practical difference.
Data decay: the problem neither solves for your CRM
20–30% of B2B contacts change roles every year. Both Apollo and Cognism are prospecting databases — they help you find contacts at a point in time. Neither continuously monitors your existing CRM for job changes, updates records when contacts move, or surfaces intent signals that tell you when to reach out. For that motion, a real-time enrichment layer is needed separately.
For CRM enrichment: Enrich-CRM does what neither does
Apollo and Cognism help you find and prospect new contacts. Enrich-CRM enriches the contacts you already have — in real-time, continuously, from the live web. Proprietary LLM, 100% EU pipeline (AWS Paris, no US AI), data processed in memory and never stored. Detects job changes automatically, writes results to HubSpot or Salesforce fields, works with Clay, Make, Zapier, n8n, CSV, and API.
From €29/month, no annual contract, 100 free credits to start — with full DPA and sub-processor documentation at the Trust Center.