Apollo vs Breeze

Choosing between Apollo and Breeze isn’t simply a comparison of similar features. You’re choosing between two different approaches.

One is built to help you discover an audience from scratch. The other is designed to enrich and turn your existing CRM into an automated outreach engine.

Apollo overview

Apollo acts as a data-first powerhouse, offering a massive, multi-provider database to fuel high-volume prospecting. It’s one of the go-to solutions for teams that need to find new leads and execute outreach within a single, self-contained platform.

The platform’s core features include:

• Pipeline builder: Search a built-in database of 210M+ contacts, create custom lead lists and multi-channel outreach workflows.
• Call assistant: Schedule calls and have AI record them, transcribe, analyze, and send automated follow-ups.
• Data enrichment: Keep your CRM data fresh and actionable by filling in 30+ data points and easily cleaning your CSV files.
• Go-to-market (GTM) platform: Run the entire sales cycle on unified customer data synced to a single database.

Apollo integrates with over 50 third-party tools (Salesforce, Zoho CRM, Pipedrive) and comes with a Chrome extension for prospecting anywhere.

Pricing starts with a free plan and runs from $49 to $119 per month. Higher tiers unlock perks like: 

• Unlimited outreach sequences
• Up to 500 automated workflows 
• Tracking up to 500 new website visitors daily
• Support for up to 15 mailboxes per user

Apollo is GDPR-compliant and rated 4.7 out of 5 based on 9,000+ customer reviews.

Breeze overview

Breeze, HubSpot’s AI layer, takes the opposite approach by ignoring external databases entirely. It focuses exclusively on the contacts already inside your HubSpot portal, using AI agents to automate engagement and research for leads you’ve already captured.

Breeze Assistant lives across the HubSpot platform. It can pull from your CRM data and any documents you upload, showing up as a chat where you can ask questions or as a menu with functions such as Rewrite, Expand, Shorten, and Change Tone. 

Popular features include:

• AI blog writer: Asks you questions and spins answers together into a ready-to-publish post.
• AI email writer: Generates personalized sales outreach and marketing emails.
• Sales reporting: Tracks your sales team’s performance in real time and generates reports.
• Conversation intelligence: Integrates customer feedback into CRM to improve team coaching.

Breeze Agents go further, acting like virtual teammates for more complex tasks. Right now, two of them are live, while more are in beta. Here’re some of them:

• Customer Agent: Responds to customer queries and support tickets using data from your website and knowledge base.
• Prospecting Agent: Researches your prospects, identifies buyer signals, and crafts personalized outreach messages using your brand voice and CRM data.
• Personalization Agent (beta): Creates tailored one-page websites and calls-to-action (CTAs) for different audience segments.
• Data Agent (Beta): Answers specific business questions by combining CRM data, web insights, customer conversations, and other documents.
• Knowledge Base Agent (beta): Turns customer support conversations into self-service knowledge base articles.
• Breeze Studio (beta): Allows you to customize pre-built agents and create custom ones without actually writing code.

One catch: you can’t only connect the agents you need as they come in bundles. 

Key differences between Apollo and Breeze

Apollo vs Breeze isn’t just the question of a standalone platform vs HubSpot’s add-on. The two tools are built on completely different foundations, from how they source data to how they handle outreach and pricing.

Here’s a side-by-side breakdown:

Data quality and coverage

Apollo runs its own global lead database, built from multiple sources, verified, and regularly updated. There are four main pipelines that supply data:

• Contributor network of 2M+ users sharing buyer intent signals 
• Engagement signals from Apollo’s tools 
• Proprietary web crawlers aggregating public data on companies and people 
• Vetted third-party data providers

Apollo uses a 7-step verification process for email addresses and real-time checks for phone numbers. The buyer signal feed refreshes weekly and can alert you by email.

Data enrichment runs automatically for contacts already in Apollo’s database. For imported lists, you can schedule recurring enrichment jobs to keep data current without manual effort.

Breeze takes a different route as it has no external B2B lead database. The AI tools only work with your existing CRM database and any additional contacts you import. However, it does offer data enrichment functions, such as:

• Automatic enrichment for new records 
• Automatic monthly enrichment for all existing records 
• Single-record and bulk enrichment 
• An Intelligence tab that adds context like website activity

Breeze’s data processes are SOC 2 and GDPR-compliant, though some enrichment actions require HubSpot credits.

Pricing models and contracts

Both Apollo and Breeze run on subscription tiers and credits (internal currency). Credits are bundled into plans or sold as add-on packages. But how each platform prices access is very different.

Apollo offers a free plan with basic functionality plus three paid tiers:

• Basic ($49/user/month): two outreach sequences, six intent topics/filters, CRM integrations, data enrichment, meeting scheduling
• Professional ($79/user/month): unlimited sequences, six intent topics/filters, automated workflows, AI research intelligence, five mailboxes, advanced reports
• Organization ($119/user/month, min. three users): 12 intent topics/filters, 15 mailboxes, customizable reports and dashboards, advanced security configurations, single sign-in (SSO)

Basic and Professional plans come with 14-day free trials that include a limited credit bundle (50 credits + 5 mobile credits). 

Breeze, by contrast, is available as part of the HubSpot subscription, which has a more complicated pricing structure. The exact payment will depend on the:

• Number of marketing contacts (leads or prospects)
• Number of sales seats (sales team members)
• Number of service seats (customer support team members)
• Expectations of content creation and data usage

To buy a HubSpot subscription, you need to create a customized bundle, choosing the most fitting option for every product:

• Marketing Hub
• Sales Hub
• Service Hub
• Content Hub
• Data Hub
• Commerce Hub

You can also select add-ons, such as increased ad limits and custom SSL. 

Though Breeze Assistant is included at no extra cost, Breeze Agents only come with advanced tiers: Professional (~€1,283/month) or Enterprise (~€4,610 month). The final price can swing from hundreds to thousands of dollars.

Bottom line: Apollo charges a fixed rate per user, while HubSpot’s pricing is more complex. But for large teams, the per-seat cost in HubSpot can drop sharply once you scale beyond 6–8 users.

Additional sales features

Apollo positions itself as a multichannel outreach platform with a heavy focus on calls. Its additional functionality includes:

• Built-in meeting scheduling tool
• US and international number dealer
• Parallel Dialer mode to connect with up to 100 prospects per hour inside one workspace
• Automated call recording and instant transcription
• Automated follow-ups after calls
• AI call analysis and insights (up to 4,000 minutes/month on Professional and 8,000 minutes/month on Organization)

You can connect Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams so that recordings and insights flow back into Apollo.

Breeze, meanwhile, provides email-only outreach, but it still comes with additional features, like:

• Customer support automation (via Customer Agent)
• Website creation (via Personalization Agent)
• One-page website generation (via free AI builder)
• Content repurposing (turning a successful blog post into social media posts and emails)
• Conversation intelligence (collecting customer feedback and integrating it back into CRM)

Overall, Apollo is a better fit for teams that rely on cold calls for their outreach, while Breeze makes more sense for teams that combine content marketing and email-only outreach.

When to choose Apollo or Breeze

The Apollo vs Breeze decision comes down to your team’s goals, existing tech stack, and sales approach.

When to choose Apollo

• You’re building outreach from scratch and want everything in one place
• Your top priority is generating new leads rather than working with an existing list
• You plan to make a lot of sales calls

Here are some examples of Apollo in action:

• A seed-stage SaaS with no reliable list could use Apollo’s database, enrichment, and sequences as a single ramp to find ICP accounts, reveal verified contacts, and launch a first outbound campaign.
• A mid-market SDR team doing high-volume calling could rely on the built-in dialer, recordings, transcripts, and AI summaries to capture sales objections and auto-draft follow-ups without manual notes.
• A RevOps leader fixing stale CRM data could schedule enrichment jobs and have Apollo refresh emails, phones, and job changes on a cadence so reps aren’t chasing dead ends.

When to choose Breeze

• HubSpot CRM is already your sales backbone
• You’re running a large sales team and plan to scale it further
• Your outreach is primarily email-driven

Here are some examples of how companies could put Breeze to work:

• A HubSpot-centric sales team could use Prospecting Agent to review CRM context and draft personalized, response-drawing emails in the company’s voice.
• A data-driven RevOps org could rely on AI actions in workflows and the Data Agent to analyze records, categorize accounts, and write insights back into HubSpot for routing and prioritization.
• A sales team that needs always-on customer support help could let Customer Agent answer questions using HubSpot data, while Breeze Assistant prepares account reviews and summarizes notes across devices.

Not sold on either Apollo or Breeze? That’s where the smarter alternative comes in.

Why AiSDR is a smarter third option

AiSDR can do most of what you’ve seen above: research prospects, personalize outreach, build sequences, and create customized reports. 

But AiSDR stands out because it doesn’t just run your sales plays: it helps you invent them. Think of it as a virtual team member you can strategize with, not someone waiting to be told what to do.

Here’s where AiSDR goes further than Apollo or Breeze:

AI Strategist

AI Strategist looks at your site and positioning, then proposes five tailored GTM plays you can launch right away. These plays are based on what’s already worked out well for our other clients.

You can run them as-is or tweak along the way: swap steps, change a few phrases, adjust timing, etc. Either way, you’ll move from “What should we test?” to “We’re testing it” in minutes.

How this compares: Apollo gives you the tools to build and launch outreach sequences, but the GTM strategy is still on you. Breeze’s Prospecting Agent can research prospects and draft messages, but it’s tied to your CRM processes and doesn’t do multichannel. 

AI Strategist is the only AI tool on the market that actually builds sales plays for you: ideating, setting up, and launching tailored campaigns in just a few clicks.

Campaign builder

With AiSDR, you build sequences exactly how you want them.

You can run multichannel sequences with fine-grained scheduling (including set-and-forget campaign scheduling) and step-by-step delays. Channels aren’t a limitation either: go email-only, LinkedIn-only, or mix email, LinkedIn, and SMS. And when you want to stand out, switch between plain-text and multimedia or drop in LinkedIn voice notes.

How this compares: Apollo does multichannel (email, calls, LinkedIn tasks) with interval control, but its LinkedIn layer isn’t the focus. Breeze automates research and writing but limits you to email-only campaigns. AiSDR is the most flexible builder on the market, with multichannel reach and a strong emphasis on LinkedIn.

Clear pricing

AiSDR uses all-inclusive pricing with a transparent structure. The only factor that determines the cost is the number of messages you want to send.

Starting from $900 per month, the more messages you send, the less you pay per message. Everything else is included in each tier’s price:

• Unlimited seats
• Mailboxes with automatic warm-up and deliverability checks
• Set your targeting criteria, and AiSDR finds qualified leads across the web and verifies their contact data in real time
• AI Strategist 
• Campaign Builder 
• Sequence Builder
• AI-researched emails and LinkedIn messages
• AI-generated memes, voice notes, and video
• AI-powered GTM strategies with one-click execution
• Real-time AI research and account scoring
• HubSpot and Salesforce integrations

How this compares: With AiSDR, you pay for sending volume, while with Apollo, you pay per user, and HubSpot uses a complicated pricing structure with customizable bundles. Both Apollo and HubSpot reserve their most powerful features for higher pricing tiers, but AiSDR delivers 90% of its functionality at the entry level. 

On Apollo, you’d pay a credit just to see a verified email. On AiSDR, every verified contact is included. 

Multichannel, multimedia outreach automation

AiSDR lets you build outreach sequences across multiple sales channels (email, LinkedIn, calls) and layer in rich media to make every touchpoint stand out:

• AI-generated LinkedIn voice notes
• AI videos and memes
• LinkedIn engagement (likes, comments, connection requests)

For example, you can schedule a LinkedIn like, comment, and connection request, followed by an email. After that, you can have AiSDR write a researched cold call script.

If LinkedIn is your preferred channel, you can run LinkedIn-only plays to capture momentum where it starts. And because voice notes and media are native, you don’t need a second tool to pull them off.

How this compares: AiSDR runs multichannel campaigns across email and LinkedIn, with a heavy emphasis on LinkedIn. Neither Apollo nor Breeze offers LinkedIn native multimedia or AI-generated videos.

Intent data

AiSDR tracks over 323 buyer intent signals, including:

• Visits to websites, high-intent landing pages, and LinkedIn profiles
• Job changes and new vacancies
• LinkedIn content engagement 

You can set up a prospect activity threshold for AiSDR to automatically launch a campaign. For example, if someone likes your LinkedIn post, views your CEO’s profile, and visits your pricing page, AiSDR will send an outreach sequence their way.

How this compares: AiSDR tracks more signals from multiple sources than either Apollo or Breeze does. On top of that, AiSDR can be prompted to act immediately on a particularly strong signal or their combination. The insights are updated in real time, not weekly like Apollo. That means your outreach lands while prospects are still warm, not days later when the moment has passed.

Final verdict: Which sales tool wins?

For a clearer side-by-side comparison, here’s an expanded version of the earlier table, this time including AiSDR:

Apollo is excellent when you need a big, verified B2B database plus classic multichannel sequencing and a strong dialer. 

Breeze shines if your team already lives in the HubSpot ecosystem and wants AI agents that act on CRM context. 

But AiSDR goes further on virtually every point that matters for outreach: 

• AI Strategist proposes tailored GTM plays and spins up campaigns in a few clicks 
• Flexible builder lets you design sequences exactly how you want 
• Pricing is clear and inclusive
• Intent layer activates on real-time buyer signals
• Built-in lead database gives you access to 700M+ contacts 

In other words, AiSDR does most of what Breeze and Apollo do, then adds ideation-to-execution speed and multimedia, multichannel creativity that the others don’t prioritize. If you want the fastest path from idea to outreach that actually books meetings, AiSDR is it.