Apollo.io vs Lusha
Apollo is a full outbound platform — large database, built-in sequences, affordable pricing. Lusha is a simpler contact finder — Chrome extension, LinkedIn-focused, easy to start. Both are popular, both have clear trade-offs.
Choose Apollo if…
- You need a large searchable database plus built-in email sequences
- You want to build lists by ICP filters — industry, size, seniority, tech stack
- You have an SDR team doing high-volume outbound
- A single all-in-one platform is preferable to multiple tools
Choose Lusha if…
- You mainly do LinkedIn-based research profile-by-profile
- You’re an individual SDR or recruiter — not running a large team motion
- You want a simple Chrome extension with immediate email/phone reveal
- You’re just starting out and want a minimal setup
Apollo.io vs Lusha — Feature comparison
| Feature | Apollo.io | Lusha |
|---|---|---|
| Database size | 275M+ contacts | 100M+ contacts (community-sourced) |
| LinkedIn Chrome extension | Yes | Yes — core use case |
| ICP search / list building | Yes — powerful filters | Basic |
| Email sequencing built in | Yes | No |
| Bulk CRM enrichment | Limited | No |
| Phone numbers | Available — variable quality | Yes — key strength |
| Job change detection | Limited | No |
| GDPR / EU residency | GDPR claimed, US-based | GDPR claimed, US-based |
| Free plan | Yes — generous | Yes — 5 credits/month |
| Starting price | From $49/month | From $29/month (limited credits) |
Apollo scales, Lusha doesn’t
Lusha is best for individuals: you’re on LinkedIn, you click, you get a phone number or email. The workflow is frictionless for one-at-a-time research. The ceiling hits quickly when you need to build lists of 500+ contacts with ICP filtering, run multi-touch sequences, or feed data into a CRM workflow.
Apollo has no ceiling at the prospecting layer — its database filters, list building, and built-in sequencing make it the tool most growing SDR teams move to when Lusha’s scale becomes the bottleneck. The jump from Lusha to Apollo is one of the most common upgrade paths in B2B sales tools.
The shared blind spot: CRM freshness
Both tools help you find contacts. Neither helps you keep your existing CRM contacts accurate. 20–30% of B2B contacts change roles every year. The contacts you found last quarter on Apollo or Lusha and added to your CRM are already decaying. Neither tool monitors those records for job changes or updates them when contacts move.
For teams with existing CRM databases — even small ones — the enrichment and data freshness problem requires a different tool category entirely.
After Apollo or Lusha, you still need Enrich-CRM
Enrich-CRM does what neither Apollo nor Lusha does: it enriches the contacts you already have in your CRM, continuously monitors for job changes, surfaces intent signals, and writes everything back to HubSpot or Salesforce fields automatically. Real-time live web lookups via a proprietary LLM (AWS EU Paris). No static database, no staleness.
Works alongside both Apollo and Lusha: use either to get contacts in, use Enrich-CRM to keep them accurate over time. From €29/month, 100 free credits, no annual contract.