# Apollo.io vs ContactOut

Updated 2026-10-15. Compared from independent Reddit comments only. Methodology: https://gtmranked.com/methodology/

**Is Apollo.io or ContactOut better?** Independent users prefer ContactOut (44/100 from 18 rated comments) over Apollo.io (26/100 from 30 rated comments). ContactOut is best for Recruiters who need personal email addresses; Apollo.io is best for Budget-conscious teams prospecting into the US.

**Is Apollo.io or ContactOut cheaper?** Apollo.io: Free plan with 900 credits per seat per year. Paid plans billed annually: Basic $49, Professional $79 and Organization $119 (minimum 3 seats) per seat per month; monthly billing costs more (the page says annual saves 24%). 14-day trial on Basic and Professional. Inbound and Advanced Dialer are paid add-ons. ContactOut: Limited-time free tier (5 emails, phones and exports a day, one user). Email plan $49/mo monthly or $39/mo billed annually; Email + Phone $99/mo monthly or $79/mo billed annually; both single-user. Cheaper regional plans exclude US data (from $19/mo billed annually). Team and API plans are sales-led. Prices are from each vendor's pricing page and change often.

| | Apollo.io | ContactOut |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 26/100 | 44/100 |
| Rank in category | #10 | #3 |
| Rated comments | 30 | 18 |
| Best for | Budget-conscious teams prospecting into the US; Small teams that want data and sequencing in one tool; Building large lists that will be verified separately | Recruiters who need personal email addresses; Pulling emails for contacts found on LinkedIn |
| Starting price | $49/seat/mo | $39/mo |

## #10 Apollo.io

Apollo.io is a sales platform that combines a B2B contact and company database with email sequencing, a dialer, CRM enrichment and AI research tools. Website: apollo.io. Category: [B2B Data & Enrichment](https://gtmranked.com/best/b2b-data-enrichment/). Score 26/100 (9 positive, 7 mixed, 14 negative of 30 independent comments).

**Verdict:** Independent users treat Apollo as the budget default: far cheaper than ZoomInfo, with data and sequencing bundled in one place, and good enough for US prospecting if you accept extra cleanup. The recurring complaint is data freshness: users describe stale records, people who left years ago, wrong or switchboard phone numbers and bounce rates that stay high even after Apollo's own verification, plus renewals and credit changes that raised costs. About 40% of the Reddit mentions read as promotional, including a large, coordinated cluster of near-identical comments pitching Prospeo as the Apollo replacement, so this rests on roughly 30 independent opinions.

**What users like:**
- Costs a fraction of ZoomInfo, and users who weigh price against quality call the data good enough for the money [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/sales/comments/10fgs1h/_/j4y09yz/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/sales/comments/17w7rit/_/k9ifhh4/) [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/salestechniques/comments/1wahwda/_/p94kztz/) [4](https://www.reddit.com/r/sales/comments/wt9v9r/_/il3svpp/) [5](https://www.reddit.com/r/LeadGeneration/comments/1g8wjra/_/lt1ngdq/)
- Several users who had both Apollo and ZoomInfo preferred Apollo overall [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/sales/comments/1k0rrmq/_/mnktquu/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/sales/comments/wt9v9r/_/il48i8b/) [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/sales/comments/1lldaph/_/mzyzs35/)
- Database, sequencing and dialing live in one tool, which users find simple for early-stage or low-volume outbound [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/LeadGeneration/comments/1g8wjra/_/lt1mp0b/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/sales/comments/wt9v9r/_/il5mt66/) [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/CRM/comments/1s9hxbh/_/oz1wkoa/)
- Works without major issues for some users, particularly when targeting the US [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/sales/comments/1gqbk44/_/lwwq46h/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/gtmengineering/comments/1wjqc2o/_/pam8hat/) [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/sales/comments/17w7rit/_/k9fnxdm/)

**What users complain about:**
- Stale records: users find people who left months or years ago (one found a contact who died 20 years earlier still listed), with bounce rates around 9% even after running lists through a verifier [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/growmybusiness/comments/1spv96y/_/p79wx63/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/agency/comments/1pzieop/_/p29p8mw/) [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/gtmengineering/comments/1rq05wt/_/o9p59j9/) [4](https://www.reddit.com/r/sales/comments/wt9v9r/_/il5mt66/) [5](https://www.reddit.com/r/agency/comments/1pzieop/_/nzr8p3t/)
- Phone numbers are a weak spot: inactive, wrong-person or HQ switchboard numbers returned instead of no result, and one user reports half the numbers were unreliable [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/sales/comments/wt9v9r/_/il5dzbg/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/sales/comments/1l9aymu/_/mxb8via/) [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/gtmengineering/comments/1wjqc2o/_/pal6uc2/) [4](https://www.reddit.com/r/sales/comments/wt9v9r/_/il5mt66/)
- Costs have crept up: a long-time customer's renewal tripled after a credit system change, and others say enrichment is expensive for what it returns [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/UseApolloIo/comments/1r76u10/_/o75bxw2/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/gtmengineering/comments/1rq05wt/_/o9owhey/) [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/gtmengineering/comments/1wjqc2o/_/pcdcb8c/)
- Coverage thins outside the US and in some niches: it lost to ZoomInfo and Cognism in one team's US and EMEA test, and a health tech team found it missed many people after leaving ZoomInfo [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/sales/comments/17w7rit/_/k9fk2w1/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/sales/comments/17w7rit/_/k9fnxdm/) [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/gtmengineering/comments/1rq05wt/_/o9op0jf/)
- The app can feel slow, clunky and complicated, and one user says it fragments work across contact, sequence and notes views [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/UseApolloIo/comments/1r76u10/_/o5zrhi4/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/gtmengineering/comments/1wjqc2o/_/pal6uc2/) [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/CRM/comments/1s9hxbh/_/oz1wkoa/)

**Best for:** Budget-conscious teams prospecting into the US; Small teams that want data and sequencing in one tool; Building large lists that will be verified separately.
**Skip it if:** Teams that need reliable direct dials for cold calling; Senders who cannot run a separate verification step; Prospecting outside the US or in niche verticals.
**Pricing (vendor-stated, checked 2026-10-14):** Free plan with 900 credits per seat per year. Paid plans billed annually: Basic $49, Professional $79 and Organization $119 (minimum 3 seats) per seat per month; monthly billing costs more (the page says annual saves 24%). 14-day trial on Basic and Professional. Inbound and Advanced Dialer are paid add-ons.

Full review: https://gtmranked.com/tools/apollo/

## #3 ContactOut

ContactOut finds email addresses and phone numbers for professionals through a browser extension and search portal, with list building, email campaigns and enrichment on paid plans. Website: contactout.com. Category: [B2B Data & Enrichment](https://gtmranked.com/best/b2b-data-enrichment/). Score 44/100 (10 positive, 4 mixed, 4 negative of 18 independent comments).

**Verdict:** About 18 first-hand, non-promotional comments, many from recruiters, give a mixed but mostly favourable picture: ContactOut is rated for personal emails and for pulling contacts from LinkedIn profiles, while several senders report that not every email is verified and bounces follow, and views on its phone numbers are split. Promotion is heavy: the corpus filter already dropped 81 repeat-promoter comments, an Apollo employee called out astroturfing for ContactOut in one r/coldemail thread where several accounts praised it within days in February 2026, a September and October 2025 burst of 'tried it, tech team was great' testimonials was excluded, and many criticisms came only inside pitches for Prospeo, FullEnrich and other tools, so those are not counted either.

**What users like:**
- Strong on personal email addresses; a tech recruiter who tried it alongside RocketReach found it the stronger of the two for personal emails [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/Recruiter_Advice/comments/1n7n8o6/_/ood5tqe/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/DigitalMarketing/comments/1jo7ozq/_/nm5vsyc/)
- Works well for LinkedIn-sourced lists; one user who has used a dozen data tools says it stands out across almost every vertical when starting from LinkedIn [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/b2bmarketing/comments/1o94lpl/_/nk0bf2e/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/coldemail/comments/1jtipl7/_/njytr81/) [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/LeadGeneration/comments/1kai8ol/_/mpvhc72/)
- Email accuracy is rated well by some users, including one team reporting under 2% bounces on LinkedIn-sourced lists [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/DigitalMarketing/comments/1jo7ozq/_/nm5vsyc/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/coldemail/comments/1tkxq0p/_/onl901x/)
- Helps recruiters find hard-to-reach passive candidates [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/salestechniques/comments/1gb5u54/_/o75t41c/)
- Some users rate its mobile numbers well, though others found phone coverage weak, so this is contested [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/SaaS/comments/1r1r54w/_/o5mtycf/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/coldemail/comments/1srtisf/_/ohjli5n/) [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/sales/comments/1ohius0/_/nlocohq/)

**What users complain about:**
- Not every email it returns is verified; several users report bounces and say results need a separate verification pass [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/coldemail/comments/1iyj9im/_/mfxdt95/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/LeadGeneration/comments/1jso32u/_/mm08mcr/) [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/sales/comments/1msl0yj/_/n96unpv/)
- Phone coverage was poor for SaaS contacts in one user's experience, and another found its numbers less accurate than ZoomInfo's (other users rate its mobiles well) [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/work/comments/1wd4bvn/_/p9zpyaq/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/sales/comments/1msl0yj/_/n96unpv/)
- Has grown from a lookup tool into a broader sales platform; a user who only needed LinkedIn lookups found it overkill and left, and another barely used it because the interface was confusing [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/b2bmarketing/comments/1sl0ip0/_/og32x51/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/LeadGeneration/comments/1iz04os/_/mf8bhbf/)
- You are locked into its credit-based pricing model, which one user cites as a reason to build their own sourcing instead [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/coldemail/comments/1txui1f/_/opypd00/)
- People listed in its database report opt-out requests being ignored twice before an escalated email got them removed [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/gdpr/comments/1ndbfae/_/ndm5n90/)

**Best for:** Recruiters who need personal email addresses; Pulling emails for contacts found on LinkedIn.
**Skip it if:** Sending to its emails without a separate verification step; Users who only want a simple LinkedIn lookup.
**Pricing (vendor-stated, checked 2026-10-14):** Limited-time free tier (5 emails, phones and exports a day, one user). Email plan $49/mo monthly or $39/mo billed annually; Email + Phone $99/mo monthly or $79/mo billed annually; both single-user. Cheaper regional plans exclude US data (from $19/mo billed annually). Team and API plans are sales-led.

Full review: https://gtmranked.com/tools/contactout/