Cognism vs Lusha
Both are popular B2B contact data tools for European teams. Cognism is a full-featured sales intelligence platform with phone-verified EU data. Lusha is a simpler, cheaper contact finder — Chrome extension focused, community-sourced data. Different scale, different compliance posture.
Choose Cognism if…
- You run cold calling at scale with a full SDR team
- You need phone-verified mobile numbers checked against TPS/CTPS
- Your DPO requires rigorous GDPR documentation on all vendors
- You need a team-level platform with shared workflows, not individual credits
Choose Lusha if…
- You’re an individual SDR or recruiter doing LinkedIn research
- Budget is tight — Lusha’s entry price is much lower with a free tier
- You want a simple Chrome extension with immediate results
Cognism vs Lusha — Feature comparison
| Feature | Cognism | Lusha |
|---|---|---|
| Target user | Sales team (5–500 people) | Individual SDR / recruiter |
| Phone-verified mobile numbers | Yes — Diamond Data® verified | Available — community-sourced |
| TPS/CTPS DNC compliance | Yes | No |
| GDPR compliance posture | Strong — GDPR-first by design | Basic — US-based |
| LinkedIn Chrome extension | Yes | Yes — core use case |
| Bulk list building | Yes — ICP filters, team lists | Basic |
| Bulk CRM enrichment | Contact push | No |
| EU data quality | Strong — EU focus | Moderate |
| Free plan | No | Yes — 5 credits/month |
| Starting price | $200–$1,000+/month (negotiated) | From $29/month |
The scale and compliance gap is significant
Lusha is an individual tool. Cognism is a team platform. If your sales team is larger than 2–3 people running coordinated outbound, Lusha’s individual credits model and limited list-building features become a bottleneck. Cognism’s shared workspace, team-level list building, and compliance features are built for actual sales team infrastructure.
On GDPR, the gap is also real: Cognism checks numbers against TPS/CTPS registries — which is a legal requirement for cold calling in the UK. Lusha doesn’t. For teams cold calling into UK or EU markets, this compliance difference has practical and legal implications.
What both tools miss: keeping your CRM fresh
20–30% of B2B contacts change roles every year. Neither Cognism nor Lusha continuously monitors your existing CRM database for job changes, updates records automatically, or surfaces intent signals when your contacts show buying behavior. Both are contact acquisition tools, not CRM maintenance tools. For the ongoing data quality problem, a dedicated enrichment layer is needed.
Enrich-CRM — real-time enrichment for the contacts you already have
Enrich-CRM is complementary to both Cognism and Lusha: use either to find and acquire contacts, use Enrich-CRM to keep those contacts accurate over time. Real-time lookups via a proprietary LLM (AWS EU Paris, no US AI dependency), continuous job change detection, intent signals, and native HubSpot or Salesforce integration.
250+ company datapoints, 50+ contact datapoints. From €29/month, 100 free credits, no annual lock-in. Full GDPR documentation at our Trust Center.