ZoomInfo vs Apollo

Sales teams know the struggle: messy data, endless prospecting, pricey contracts. ZoomInfo and Apollo both claim to solve this with smarter B2B lead databases, enrichment, and outreach tools sourced from multiple data providers. 

You’re stuck weighing one against the other.

But the real question isn’t just “ZoomInfo or Apollo?” It’s which one works best for your team and whether there’s a third option that can offer even more. 

Here’s a closer look at each platform, where they shine, and what else you might want to consider.

ZoomInfo overview

ZoomInfo is a go-to-market intelligence platform designed to give sales and marketing teams accurate data and AI-powered tools for reaching buyers. It combines verified contact and company records with intent signals, account insights, and sales automation features.

ZoomInfo packs in more than just contact data. It offers:

• Large database: Over 135M verified phone numbers, 174M+ emails, and 600M+ professional profiles captured; 260M+ published
• Buyer intent tracking: 55M weekly buying signals across 11K+ topics
• Website visitor tracking: Real-time identification of companies visiting your site
• Conversation intelligence: Analysis of calls, meetings, and emails to understand deal progress
• ZoomInfo Copilot: An AI sales assistant that summarizes accounts, highlights buying committees, and generates outreach
• GTM Studio: A workspace for RevOps to connect systems, run plays, and keep teams aligned
• Integrations: Compatible with Salesforce, HubSpot, Outreach, Salesloft, Gong, Marketo, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Microsoft Dynamics, and others

ZoomInfo’s strength is in how different teams put it to work. 

For instance, SDRs use it to build and filter prospect lists, then push them straight into cadences without exporting spreadsheets. At the same time, AEs lean on Copilot to prep for calls, using account summaries and deal histories to personalize conversations.

RevOps relies on ZoomInfo for territory planning, enrichment, and workflow automation. That way, records in Salesforce or HubSpot stay clean without hours of manual updates. And even Marketing teams get value by using segmentation and buyer intent data to launch campaigns faster and hit the right audience at the right time.

Apollo overview

Apollo calls itself an AI-powered outbound engine. The platform combines prospecting data, enrichment, and outreach tools, so sales teams can find leads, personalize messaging, and manage campaigns in one place.

Here are the features that make Apollo so useful:

• Database: 210M+ contacts and 35M+ companies, with 91% verified email accuracy and real-time refreshes
• Pipeline Builder: 65+ filters, multi-channel outreach, and AI assistants to help prioritize leads
• Call Assistant: Meeting scheduling, pre-call insights, transcription, and automatic follow-ups
• Data enrichment: Enriches CRM records, CSVs, or any system through an API
• Workflow automation: Drag-and-drop builder with branching logic and prebuilt templates
• Chrome extension: Find emails and phone numbers directly on LinkedIn, Gmail, or in your CRM
• Integrations: Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Marketo, SendGrid, Clay, Gmail, Outlook, and more

With Apollo, you can prospect, enrich, and run outreach instead of juggling multiple tools, which is great for smaller teams. Plus, the free plan and transparent tiers make it easy for startups to test outbound without big upfront costs. And as teams grow, features like branching workflows and AI research help cut repetitive tasks.

Key differences between ZoomInfo and Apollo

ZoomInfo and Apollo overlap in some areas but are built with different sales teams in mind. Here’s how they compare at a glance.

Data quality and coverage

ZoomInfo is all about size and reach. Its lead database includes over 600 million professional profiles, 135 million phone numbers, and 174 million verified email addresses. That size is hard to beat.

The data is refreshed through its FuZion system, which blends proprietary crawling, third-party data providers, and a contributory network. Accuracy is reported above 95%, but most of that depth is concentrated in North America (expansion outside the US is ongoing, but not as mature). So if your sales motion is US-heavy, ZoomInfo’s scale is a clear advantage.

Apollo takes the freshness angle. Its “living data network” mixes contributions from over 2 million users with web crawling, engagement data, and third-party sources. The result is very impressive: over 210 million contacts and more than 35 million companies, with 91% email accuracy and fewer than 1% invalid phone numbers.

Each time a number or email is requested, it runs a real-time check, and on top of that, the entire database is refreshed monthly. While the overall size is smaller than ZoomInfo, the balance across regions makes Apollo attractive to teams chasing leads globally.

Integrations

Both platforms integrate with popular sales and marketing stacks, but the scope and depth differ.

ZoomInfo connects with nearly every enterprise-grade tool, including Salesforce, HubSpot, Marketo, Microsoft Dynamics, Outreach, Salesloft, Gong, and LinkedIn Sales Navigator. 

It’s designed to be a plug-in for complex outbound stacks where multiple tools already run in parallel. This is great for larger teams that need to sync data and intent signals directly into established workflows without heavy customization.

Apollo also integrates with Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Marketo, SendGrid, Gmail, Outlook, Clay, and other tools, but it emphasizes ease of use and flexibility. 

Its Chrome extension allows reps to access Apollo data directly inside LinkedIn or their CRM. This is particularly useful for smaller teams that don’t want to stitch together a dozen integrations and just work inside the tools they already use.

Pricing models and contracts

ZoomInfo follows a license-plus-credits model. Each export of a contact or company record uses one credit, and pricing depends on:

• Number of licenses
• Depth of data (basic vs advanced lead insights)
• Number of credits purchased
• Add-ons such as Streaming Intent or premium integrations

Contracts are generally annual, and exact pricing is provided only after a sales consultation.

Apollo, on the other hand, keeps its pricing simple and transparent, making it easier for smaller teams to budget and plan ahead.

• Free: $0, includes 1,200 credits per user/year and basic features
• Basic: $49/user/month (billed annually), 30,000 credits per year
• Professional: $79/user/month (billed annually), 48,000 credits per year
• Organization: $119/user/month (billed annually, min. 3 users), 72,000 credits per year

Higher plans unlock more features, such as additional intent topics, dialers, advanced reporting, and security options. Credits can be purchased as add-ons if teams need more.

The difference comes down to flexibility: ZoomInfo locks customers into annual contracts with customized pricing, while Apollo’s published tiers and monthly billing options make it easier for smaller teams to get started.

When to choose ZoomInfo or Apollo

Choosing between ZoomInfo and Apollo often comes down to your go-to-market strategy and how your team approaches prospecting.

When to choose ZoomInfo

Here is when you might prefer ZoomInfo:

• Scale is the priority: With one of the largest B2B databases, ZoomInfo is designed for building big lists of decision-makers and running ABM at the enterprise level.
• You want deep intent signals: Website visitor tracking, buyer intent data, and job-change alerts surface prospects before they raise their hands.
• Complex motions are the norm: From GTM Studio to conversation intelligence, ZoomInfo helps larger teams coordinate multi-touch campaigns and keep systems aligned.

When to choose Apollo

Here are some cases when you might opt for Apollo:

• Outbound is your starting point: You want a tool that helps you quickly build lead lists and run multichannel outreach without adding extra software.
• Freshness matters: Real-time email and phone verification means fewer bounces and cleaner data for your campaigns.
• You need flexibility: With transparent pricing, a free plan, and options for monthly billing, Apollo works well for startups and SMBs that don’t want to lock into heavy contracts.

In short, Apollo gives smaller teams a practical, affordable way to launch outbound campaigns, while ZoomInfo equips enterprises to run global-scale programs with more data and orchestration. 

Why AiSDR might be a smarter third option

ZoomInfo is built for scale. Apollo is built for affordability. 

But AiSDR combines both and adds strategist-level AI that neither of them offers. It doesn’t just support your sales process. AiSDR plans, builds, and runs it with your team.

Here’s how AiSDR fills the gaps left by ZoomInfo and Apollo.

High-quality research and prospecting

Yes, ZoomInfo offers one of the largest databases, but it’s often criticized for stale contacts. Apollo has fresher records, but the scope is smaller. 

AiSDR balances both: a global lead database of 700M+ contacts, verified with continuous live signals.

Instead of pulling static lists, AiSDR can search in the background and automatically top up campaigns with new matches that fit your ideal customer profile. It also enriches leads using multiple sources (from LinkedIn activity and social media posts to web news and tech stack changes), turning every record into a complete picture, not just a line in a CSV.

Multichannel outreach + conversation management

Apollo stands out for offering email, phone, and LinkedIn outreach in one place. ZoomInfo mostly stays within email and phone. But both platforms stop once a prospect replies, leaving reps to take over manually.

AiSDR goes further, supporting multichannel outreach across email and LinkedIn, with media like GIFs, memes, and AI-generated videos. It also provides call script generation and dialing to make cold calls more effective.

What’s great is that conversations don’t stop at the first reply: AiSDR continues follow-ups and manages responses until the lead replies, a meeting is booked, or the sequence times out after the last touch.

AI Strategist

ZoomInfo and Apollo give you data and tools, but they don’t tell you what campaigns to run. AiSDR’s AI Strategist can.

By analyzing your product or landing page, it creates five tailored GTM outreach plays, complete with audiences, messaging angles, and recommended channels. You can launch a play with one click or refine it before going live. Even competitors like Clay, experimenting with GTM Alpha, can’t match this level of strategy built into the platform.

Campaign builder

Apollo offers workflow automation, but it’s limited compared to AiSDR’s builder. ZoomInfo doesn’t have much flexibility here at all.

AiSDR’s campaign builder lets you define every detail:

• Add custom time delays between actions
• Switch between plain-text and multimedia formats
• Include LinkedIn voice notes
• Adjust timing and channel mix on the fly

Campaigns can run fully on autopilot or with manual oversight – your call. This flexibility means teams can test, scale, and adapt outreach without rebuilding workflows from scratch.

Sales personas

Neither ZoomInfo nor Apollo lets you define outreach styles by persona. This is a core feature of AiSDR.

You can create custom personas that shape the tone, message length, and engagement style. 

For example, use a short, data-heavy persona for technical founders and a conversational persona for marketing leaders. AiSDR applies these personas to targeting and messaging, so outreach feels relevant to each audience and not at all robotic.

Intent and signal capture

ZoomInfo surfaces intent data and job-change alerts. Apollo enriches CRM data with contact updates. AiSDR combines both approaches and adds more:

• Web visitor tracking and de-anonymization
• LinkedIn engagement and profile views
• Product champions moving between companies
• Public signals like news mentions or hiring trends

This broader signal set means campaigns are always timed to reach prospects when interest is highest.

Integrations

ZoomInfo integrates with nearly every enterprise tool, but adds complexity. Apollo keeps to core CRMs and email platforms. 

AiSDR connects to Gmail, Outlook, HubSpot, Salesforce, Calendly, and Aircall out of the box. That’s enough to keep data flowing without stacking more apps on top of your SDRs.

Clear pricing

ZoomInfo requires a sales call before you see a quote. Apollo lists prices but still ties usage to credits and upsells.

But AiSDR keeps it simple: one price based on messages sent. Plans start at $900/month for 1,200 messages, with everything included: verified leads, bounce checks, domain warm-up, and deliverability management. 

No hidden add-ons, no credit math, and no annual lock-ins.

Workflow compression

With ZoomInfo or Apollo, your team still needs to stitch together data, signals, and outreach execution. 

AiSDR compresses the entire loop into one workflow: research, list building, campaign setup, enrichment, and reply handling all happen in one place. Campaigns move from idea to execution in minutes, without extra tools or manual busywork.

Final verdict: Which sales tool wins?

To help you decide, here’s an expanded version of the earlier table, this time including AiSDR for a side-by-side view:

Choosing between ZoomInfo and Apollo depends on your priorities. ZoomInfo works best for enterprises that need huge data coverage, advanced intent signals, and complex multi-touch campaigns. Yet, it comes with higher costs and rigid contracts.

Apollo offers fresher data, simpler workflows, and transparent pricing that appeal to startups and SMBs. It’s easier to adopt, though less powerful for large-scale orchestration.

AiSDR bridges the gap. It combines global data and intent tracking and adds strategist-level AI that plans and runs entire campaigns. For teams that want inbound and outbound in one flow without the overhead of a big GTM stack, AiSDR is the way to go.