At list price, B2B contact data costs between about 2 cents and 58 cents per contact. Apollo's annual plans work out to about 2 cents per email if you spend every credit. Lusha lands at 9 to 12 cents per email.
UpLead, which puts an email and a mobile number into one credit, lands at 37 to 58 cents per contact. ZoomInfo and Cognism publish no prices at all, and buyer contract data puts ZoomInfo's median at $33,500 a year.
That is the pricing page. What you really pay is higher, because you also pay for credits you never use and for addresses that bounce. For a founder pulling 300 new contacts a month, the real figure runs from about 13 to 66 cents per usable contact. The plan that looks cheapest per credit is not always the cheapest one to own.
Every list price below was checked on the vendor's own pricing page in September 2026, and the ZoomInfo figure comes from buyer contract data. Prices change often, so confirm the live page before you budget.
What are you actually paying for: seats, credits or a contract?
B2B data is sold in three ways, and each one hides the per-contact price in a different place.
A seat with a credit bundle. You pay per user per month and get a fixed number of credits. Apollo, Lusha, UpLead, Hunter and Kaspr all work like this. The per-contact cost depends on how many of those credits you actually spend.
A quote-only contract. ZoomInfo and Cognism do not list prices. You get a quote for a package of seats and credits. Cognism's pricing page shows two plans, Standard and Pro, each with 5 seats included, and a "talk to sales" button instead of a number.
A list bought by the row. A freelancer or a list seller sends you a spreadsheet at a flat price per contact. It looks like the simplest math of the three. I come back to it below.
What does one credit buy?
A credit is the vendor's currency for revealing data. The exchange rate differs by vendor, and phone numbers always cost more than emails:
| Vendor | Phone number | Other actions | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apollo | 1 credit | 8 credits | Enrichment up to 9 credits per record |
| Lusha | 1 credit | 5 credits | Unused monthly credits roll over up to 2 times the limit |
| UpLead | 1 credit covers email and mobile together | Included | Extra credits $0.60 each on Essentials |
| Hunter | 1 credit per email found | Not listed | 0.5 credit per email verified |
| Cognism | 1 credit per revealed contact | Not priced separately | No charge to view a contact you already revealed |
Sources: Apollo, Lusha, UpLead, Hunter, Cognism. Checked September 2026.
B2B contact data cost per contact, by provider
Here are the entry and mid plans from each public price list, converted to cost per contact. "At full use" means you spend every credit you paid for. The worked example further down shows what happens when you do not.
| Provider and plan | Billing | List price | Credits included | Per email at full use | Per phone at full use |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apollo Basic | Annual | $49 per seat per month | 30,000 per seat per year | about $0.02 | about $0.16 |
| Apollo Professional | Annual | $79 per seat per month | 48,000 per seat per year | about $0.02 | about $0.16 |
| Apollo Organization | Annual, 3 seats minimum | $119 per seat per month | 72,000 per seat per year | about $0.02 | about $0.16 |
| Lusha Starter | Monthly | $49.90 per month | 400 per month | about $0.12 | about $0.62 |
| Lusha Starter | Annual | $449.10 per year | 4,800 per year | about $0.09 | about $0.47 |
| Lusha Professional | Annual | $629.10 per year | 7,200 per year | about $0.09 | about $0.44 |
| UpLead Essentials | Monthly | $99 per month | 170 per month | about $0.58, mobile included | included |
| UpLead Plus | Annual | $149 per month | 4,800 per year | about $0.37, mobile included | included |
| Hunter Starter | Annual | EUR 34 per month | 2,000 per month | about EUR 0.017 | not listed |
| Kaspr Starter | Monthly or annual | EUR 45 to 59 per user per month | Unlimited B2B emails under a fair use policy, 100 phones per month | no per-email charge | about EUR 0.45 to 0.59 |
| ZoomInfo | Quote only | Median contract $33,500 per year | Not published | not published | not published |
| Cognism | Quote only | Not published, 5 seats included | Not published | not published | not published |
Prices checked on Apollo's pricing page, Lusha's, UpLead's, Hunter's and Kaspr's in September 2026. Hunter and Kaspr show prices in euros; Kaspr's range covers its two billing options.
The ZoomInfo figure comes from Vendr's buyer data, a procurement platform. It is based on 1,573 purchases, with most contracts between $7,213 and $155,820 a year, last updated February 2026.
Three things jump out of that table.
First, Apollo and Hunter have the cheapest credits on paper, around 2 cents per email. Apollo's credit costs about the same on every paid tier. What changes between tiers is the features and the seat price.
Second, UpLead looks expensive until you notice that one credit gets you the email and the mobile number. On Apollo, the same pair costs 9 credits, and on Lusha 6.
Third, ZoomInfo and Cognism cannot be priced at all without a sales call. Vendr's page says ZoomInfo buyers who hold a firm budget line in negotiation often end 20% to 35% below the initial quote, so a quote is where negotiation starts.
What does a founder pulling 300 contacts a month really pay?
Per-credit prices assume you spend everything you bought. So take one small-team case instead: one seat, 300 new contacts a month, 3,600 a year, emails only, on the smallest annual plan that covers the volume.
Step 1. Divide what you pay by what you actually pull.
- Apollo Basic: $588 a year for 30,000 credits. You use 3,600 of them, 12%. That is $588 / 3,600 = about $0.16 per contact. The 2 cents only holds if you spend all 30,000.
- Lusha Starter, annual: $449.10 for 4,800 credits. $449.10 / 3,600 = about $0.12 per contact.
- UpLead Plus, annual: $1,788 for 4,800 credits. $1,788 / 3,600 = about $0.50 per contact, mobile numbers included.
- Hunter Starter, annual: EUR 408 for 24,000 credits. EUR 408 / 3,600 = about EUR 0.11 per contact.
The ranking flipped. At this volume, Lusha beats Apollo per contact, even though Apollo's credit costs a fifth as much.
Step 2. Take out the addresses that fail verification.
You paid for every row, but you can only email the ones that pass. So the cost per usable contact is your cost per contact divided by the share that survives. At 5% failures, multiply by about 1.05. At 25%, multiply by about 1.33.
| Plan, 3,600 contacts a year | Per contact pulled | If 5% fail verification | If 25% fail verification |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lusha Starter, annual | $0.12 | $0.13 | $0.17 |
| Apollo Basic, annual | $0.16 | $0.17 | $0.22 |
| UpLead Plus, annual | $0.50 | $0.52 | $0.66 |
| Hunter Starter, annual | EUR 0.11 | EUR 0.12 | EUR 0.15 |
The 5% and 25% columns are assumptions that show the effect. They are not measured rates for any vendor. UpLead's page claims 95% email accuracy, which is its own figure. Failures also grow with time, since B2B contact data goes stale at roughly a fifth a year, so verify close to the send date.
Step 3. Add the verification itself.
This part is almost free. Hunter charges half a credit per verified email, which on the Starter annual plan is under 1 euro cent per address. Checking all 3,600 contacts costs about EUR 31 a year in credits.
So for this founder, usable contact data costs somewhere between 13 and 66 US cents per address. Across a whole year, the difference between the cheapest and the most expensive plan here is about $1,340. That is real money for a small company, and it is still smaller than the cost of what comes next.
Why is a cheap list the most expensive data you can buy?
This is where I stop being neutral. Smirnov Consulting Group is a Prague-based B2B outbound lead generation agency that runs cold email and LinkedIn campaigns for founder-led B2B companies and books qualified sales calls. Every one of those campaigns starts with a list, so the list is the part of the budget I trust least on price alone.
Lists bought cheap from freelancers open poorly and bounce a lot. It was one of the problems in a UK design agency's setup I took apart on a first call. Price is only one reason to avoid them; the legal and bounce-rate reasons are in whether to buy a B2B email list at all.
A list built with real prospecting tools, for example ZoomInfo, UpLead, Apollo, RocketReach or Sales Navigator, beats a scraped one, even when it costs more per row. And no list goes into a sequence before every address is verified with a tool like NeverBounce or DeBounce. My line is a bounce rate below 0.5%.
Named tools need that step too. Amplemarket, a sales software company that sells a competing data product, published a comparison in March 2026 using data it gathered that February. It collected user reports of 20% to 30% bounces for Apollo and 15% or more for ZoomInfo. Treat those as user reports gathered by a rival company.
Now do the math against the 0.5% line. If 1 in 4 addresses bounces, sending unverified puts you at 50 times the ceiling. At that point you are not saving money on data. You are spending the sending domain.
Bounces are how a domain gets flagged, and they undo the weeks of mailbox warm-up that went into the domain and inbox setup behind your sends. When a campaign keeps breaking, the list is usually where the trouble starts.
Hidden costs to check before you sign
Items 1 to 7 are taken from each vendor's pricing page and FAQ, item 8 from Vendr's buyer data. None of them shows up in a headline price.
- Credits you pay for and never use. On Basic, Apollo grants the year's credits per seat upfront. A founder who pulls 3,600 contacts a year on Basic uses 12% of them.
- Rollover rules. Lusha lets unused monthly credits roll over up to twice the monthly limit, but annual credits reset each year.
- Seat minimums. Apollo's Organization plan needs at least 3 seats, which is $4,284 a year at list price. Cognism's plans each include 5 seats, so ask what you pay if you need fewer.
- Mid-term downgrades. Apollo applies downgrades immediately and does not refund the difference for a downgrade mid-term. Your lower price starts at the next billing cycle.
- Phone numbers. A mobile costs 5 credits on Lusha and 8 on Apollo, so each phone number costs 5 to 8 times what the email costs.
- Re-reveals. Cognism does not charge again to view a contact you already revealed, but it does charge again when key details change, such as a job move.
- Single-user plans. UpLead's Essentials and Plus plans are single-user accounts. A second person means a different plan.
- The first quote. On quote-only vendors, the first number is a starting point. Vendr's ZoomInfo data shows buyers saving 22% on average.
Which pricing model fits your volume?
| Your situation | Model that fits | What to check first |
|---|---|---|
| Founder testing one market, a few hundred contacts a month | Self-serve seat plan, monthly while you test | Credits used vs credits granted after month 1 |
| Steady volume from one or two senders | Annual self-serve plan sized to real use | Rollover and reset rules, cost per contact actually pulled |
| Outbound needs mobile numbers as well | A plan where the phone price is known upfront | Credits per phone (5 on Lusha, 8 on Apollo, bundled on UpLead) |
| Team of 3 or more reps | Apollo Organization or a quote-only vendor | Seat minimums, and the quote against the Vendr median |
| Large team with an annual data budget | ZoomInfo or Cognism contract | Seats included, re-reveal rules, room to negotiate |
Whatever row you land in, the calculation is the same: yearly spend divided by contacts you actually pull, divided again by the share that passes verification. Run it on your own numbers before you compare vendors on their per-credit price.
Quick answers on free data, enrichment and ZoomInfo
Is there a free B2B contact database?
Several vendors have free tiers. Apollo's free plan gives 900 credits per seat per year, granted monthly. Lusha's free plan gives 40 credits a month. Hunter's gives 50 a month. That is enough to test data quality on your own market, not enough to feed a campaign.
How much does lead enrichment cost?
It depends on how many fields you fill. Apollo's pricing FAQ says enrichment uses up to 9 credits per record, about 18 cents at the Basic plan's full-use rate. Cognism charges one credit per revealed contact and charges again only when key details, like a job, change.
Is it cheaper to buy a ready-made lead list?
It can look cheaper per row. Per usable contact, the math changes, because cheap freelancer lists tend to open poorly and bounce a lot, and bounces hurt the domain you send from. Whatever the source, verify every address and keep bounces under 0.5% before a single email goes out.
What does ZoomInfo cost if there is no price list?
ZoomInfo sells by quote. Vendr's buyer data, updated February 2026, puts the median contract at $33,500 a year across 1,573 purchases, with most contracts between $7,213 and $155,820. Vendr also reports buyers saving 22% on average.