Apollo.io vs Hunter.io
 Apollo.io |  Hunter.io | |
|---|---|---|
| Sentiment | ||
| Score | 26/100 | 46/100 |
| Rank in category | #10 | #2 |
| Rated comments | 30 | 19 |
| 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 | Finding the work email of a specific, already-identified person; Checking a company's email pattern and verifying addresses before sending; Low-volume, hand-built prospect lists |
| 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 | Bulk enrichment of large uploaded lists; Small startups and contacts that are not published anywhere on the web |
| Starting price | $49/seat/mo | $34/mo |
| Pricing (vendor-stated) | 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. | Free plan with 50 credits a month. Starter from $34/mo billed yearly ($49 monthly) for 2,000 credits a month; Growth $104/mo yearly ($149 monthly) for 10,000; Scale $209/mo yearly ($299 monthly) for 25,000; Enterprise is custom. One credit pool covers finding (1 credit) and verifying (0.5 credit), with unlimited users on every plan. An API-only Data Platform sells search and verification credits separately. Figures are USD list prices; UK visitors are shown GBP (Starter £28/mo billed yearly). |
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.
Users like
- Costs a fraction of ZoomInfo, and users who weigh price against quality call the data good enough for the money[1][2][3][4][5]
- Several users who had both Apollo and ZoomInfo preferred Apollo overall[1][2][3]
- Database, sequencing and dialing live in one tool, which users find simple for early-stage or low-volume outbound[1][2][3]
- Works without major issues for some users, particularly when targeting the US[1][2][3]
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][2][3][4][5]
- 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][2][3][4]
- 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][2][3]
- 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][2][3]
Independent users mostly treat Hunter as a narrow, cheap tool: punch in a name and domain, get the work email or the company's email pattern, and run its verifier before sending. About 19 non-promotional comments carry an opinion, most of them brief; the detailed ones put accuracy around 70 to 80 percent, better at large companies than small startups, and two buyers who tried bulk list enrichment report poor yields and refused refunds. A large share of Reddit mentions are promotional, including several 2026 comments from different accounts pushing Hunter's own MailTracker extension, repeated plugs for unrelated tools that name Hunter in passing, and a reply from a Hunter employee.
Users like
- Reliable for the classic use: take a name from LinkedIn and get the person's work email or the company's email pattern[1][2][3][4]
- Its built-in verifier is used to check addresses before sending; a two-year user says it saved them from many bounces[1][2][3]
- Holds up for low-volume, targeted outreach and for domain lookups at known organisations, such as company or school domains[1][2][3][4]
Users complain about
- Accuracy is decent but not dependable: a two-year user estimates 70 to 80 percent of emails work and says it does better at big companies than startups, and another calls its pattern guesses fairly but not entirely accurate[1][2][3]
- Weak on bulk lists: one buyer says only about 7% of an uploaded list came back usable after hours of manual cleanup, and another found too few verified addresses in its database and the interface clunky[1][2]
- Two dissatisfied buyers say refund requests were refused; one was offered credits instead and filed a chargeback[1][2]
- Relies on published web data and email patterns, so critics say it misses contacts that are not public and returns generic addresses for small businesses[1][2]