Apollo alternative
Apollo.io Pricing, and Cheaper Verification for Your Exports
Apollo (apollo.io) is a seat-based sales platform. It verifies the emails in its own database, but it has no verification-only plan: checking an email you imported costs 1 plan credit, and Apollo puts its own verification at 91% accurate. Export from Apollo and run the list through OrbiSearch before you send, especially the catch-all and unverified rows, from $0.0002 per email. Then search the contacts Apollo had no email for: on the same 288 contacts, OrbiSearch found 79.2% to Apollo's 71.5%, and using both found 88.2%.
Reviewed by Alex Loughlin, founder of OrbiSearch, on
Apollo pricing and features checked against Apollo's own website and docs.
How much does Apollo cost?
Apollo charges per seat. Basic is $49 a month on annual billing ($65 monthly) with 2,500 credits per seat, Professional $79 ($99 monthly) with 4,000, and Organization $119, annual only with a 3-seat minimum and 6,000 credits per seat. The Free plan has 75 credits a month, and extra credits cost $0.015 to $0.025 each. Prices taken from apollo.io/pricing and Apollo's docs, checked October 28, 2026.
Free$0
75 credits per seat per month. Record selection limit of 25 per action. API access requires an account registered with a work email; enrichment endpoints are capped at 600 requests a day.
Basic$65 per seat per month, or $49 billed annually
2,500 credits per seat per month (30,000 a year on annual, granted upfront). Record selection limit 1,000. Waterfall enrichment, CSV, CRM and API enrichment. 14-day trial limited to 50 email credits per user.
Professional$99 per seat per month, or $79 billed annually
4,000 credits per seat per month (48,000 a year on annual). Record selection limit 2,500. Adds unlimited daily email sends, A/Z testing, AI lead scoring and more call recording minutes.
Organization$119 per seat per month, annual only, minimum 3 seats
6,000 credits per seat per month. Record selection limit 10,000. Adds billing and seat manager profiles and your own LLM API key. Custom volumes, SSO and dedicated support are sold through Apollo's sales team.
Add-on credits$0.025 to $0.015 per credit
Bought in tiers from 400 to 250,000 credits a month on paid plans: $0.025 per credit up to 1,000, $0.02 up to 5,000, $0.018 at 10,000, $0.016 from 20,000 to 100,000, $0.015 at 250,000. Charged immediately and renewed every billing cycle until removed.
Credit costs1 credit per verified email
A verified email, including a verified catch-all, costs 1 credit per contact; no credit when Apollo has no email. A mobile number costs 8 credits. Email waterfall enrichment through third-party sources typically uses 1 to 4 credits, and can exceed 20. Current plans spend one shared credit pool; separate export credits only apply to some legacy plans.
Credit expiryEnd of every billing cycle
Plan credits and add-on credits both expire at the end of each billing cycle and do not roll over. Credits are pooled across the team, and every seat on an account must be on the same plan.
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 75 credits per seat per month. Record selection limit of 25 per action. API access requires an account registered with a work email; enrichment endpoints are capped at 600 requests a day. |
| Basic | $65 per seat per month, or $49 billed annually | 2,500 credits per seat per month (30,000 a year on annual, granted upfront). Record selection limit 1,000. Waterfall enrichment, CSV, CRM and API enrichment. 14-day trial limited to 50 email credits per user. |
| Professional | $99 per seat per month, or $79 billed annually | 4,000 credits per seat per month (48,000 a year on annual). Record selection limit 2,500. Adds unlimited daily email sends, A/Z testing, AI lead scoring and more call recording minutes. |
| Organization | $119 per seat per month, annual only, minimum 3 seats | 6,000 credits per seat per month. Record selection limit 10,000. Adds billing and seat manager profiles and your own LLM API key. Custom volumes, SSO and dedicated support are sold through Apollo's sales team. |
| Add-on credits | $0.025 to $0.015 per credit | Bought in tiers from 400 to 250,000 credits a month on paid plans: $0.025 per credit up to 1,000, $0.02 up to 5,000, $0.018 at 10,000, $0.016 from 20,000 to 100,000, $0.015 at 250,000. Charged immediately and renewed every billing cycle until removed. |
| Credit costs | 1 credit per verified email | A verified email, including a verified catch-all, costs 1 credit per contact; no credit when Apollo has no email. A mobile number costs 8 credits. Email waterfall enrichment through third-party sources typically uses 1 to 4 credits, and can exceed 20. Current plans spend one shared credit pool; separate export credits only apply to some legacy plans. |
| Credit expiry | End of every billing cycle | Plan credits and add-on credits both expire at the end of each billing cycle and do not roll over. Credits are pooled across the team, and every seat on an account must be on the same plan. |
For comparison, OrbiSearch sells one-time credit packs from $30 (2,000 finder searches) to $2,023 (2 million), 1 credit per search, credits never expire, no seats, plus unlimited email finder plans from $249 per month.
Why do Apollo teams add OrbiSearch for the email step?
Check every Apollo export before you send
Apollo rates its own verified emails 91% accurate, and in our benchmark about one in 11 emails it returned did not verify live. Apollo labels catch-all addresses, and by default it holds high-risk ones out of sequences rather than resolving them. OrbiSearch checks catch-all, secure-email-gateway and greylisted addresses at the mailbox level, without sending email, and returns valid or invalid wherever the mailbox can be checked.
88.2% found with both, not 71.5%
Apollo alone found a live-verified email for 71.5% of the benchmark contacts. OrbiSearch found one for 48 of the 82 contacts Apollo missed, lifting coverage to 88.2%. That is about 1,670 more emails per 10,000 contacts.
No seats, no expiring credits
Apollo sells seats from $49 to $119 a month, and its plan and add-on credits expire at the end of each billing cycle. OrbiSearch sells one-time packs that never expire, plus unlimited finder plans from $249 a month, and costs 58% to 94% less per found email on every pack.
Find rate
Which finds more emails, Apollo or OrbiSearch?
Both tools were run on the same 288 real B2B contacts in August 2026, alongside Hunter, Icypeas, LeadMagic, Prospeo and People Data Labs. Every returned address was re-verified live at benchmark time, so these are deliverable emails, not database hits.
OrbiSearch
79.2%
live-verified find rate
Highest of the 7 tools. By region: 78.9% North America, 85.9% EMEA, 72.3% APAC. Full data.
Apollo
71.5%
live-verified find rate
78.8% returned before verification. By region: 71.6% North America, 70.7% EMEA, 72.3% APAC. Second of the 7 tools.
Apollo + OrbiSearch
88.2%
found by either tool
By region: 88.4% North America, 90.9% EMEA, 85.1% APAC. OrbiSearch adds 16.7 points to Apollo; Apollo adds 9.0 to OrbiSearch.
The two tools miss different people, which is why they work well together. OrbiSearch led in North America and EMEA and tied Apollo in APAC. Per-contact outcomes are in the benchmark download.
Worked example
What do 10,000 contacts a month cost?
Apollo at its benchmark 71.5% find rate on one Basic seat plus add-on credits, OrbiSearch at 79.2% on the 10,000-search pack. Our waterfall calculator lets you model your own volumes.
Apollo alone
~7,150 emails
for $165 a month
10,000 × 71.5% = 7,150 credits: one Basic seat ($65, 2,500 credits) plus 5,000 add-on credits ($100). The 350 unused credits expire at the end of the month.
Apollo, then OrbiSearch
~8,820 emails
for about $6 more
OrbiSearch runs only on the ~2,850 contacts Apollo has no email for and finds about 1,670 of them. 2,850 searches × $0.00207 = $5.90 of the $207 pack.
OrbiSearch alone
~7,920 emails
for $62
The $62 Professional pack covers 10,000 searches, about $0.0078 per found email against about $0.023 on Apollo. On the $207 pack, which covers ten months like this and never expires, it is about $21 a month.
Rates from the OrbiSearch email finder benchmark and Apollo's published pricing, checked October 28, 2026. If your team already pays for Apollo seats, the middle column is the one that applies.
Finder pricing
Is OrbiSearch cheaper than Apollo for finding emails?
Apollo charges per verified email; OrbiSearch charges per search. To compare like with like, this table shows cost per 1,000 found emails, converting OrbiSearch at its 79.2% benchmark find rate and buying Apollo enough credits for the same contacts at 71.5%.
| OrbiSearch pack | OrbiSearch $/1K found | Apollo credits bought | Apollo $/1K found | You Save |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter ($30, 2,000 searches) | $18.94 | Basic seat ($65, 2,500 credits) | $45.45 | 58% |
| Professional ($62, 10,000 searches) | $7.83 | Basic + 5,000 add-on ($165, 7,500 credits) | $23.08 | 66% |
| Business ($103, 20,000 searches) | $6.50 | Basic + 20,000 add-on ($385, 22,500 credits) | $26.92 | 76% |
| Enterprise ($207, 100,000 searches) | $2.61 | Basic + 100,000 add-on ($1,665, 102,500 credits) | $23.29 | 89% |
| Premium ($311, 200,000 searches) | $1.96 | Basic + 250,000 add-on ($3,815, 252,500 credits) | $26.68 | 93% |
| Ultra ($2,023, 2,000,000 searches) | $1.28 | Lowest published credit price ($0.015) | $15.00 | 91% |
| Unlimited Starter ($249/mo, 10K searches/day) | ~$1.05 | Basic + 250,000 add-on ($3,815, 252,500 credits) | $17.79 | 94% |
Apollo: 1 credit per verified email, priced at the full monthly cost of one Basic seat plus the smallest add-on that covers the emails found, divided by those emails; unused credits expire at the end of the month. Annual billing lowers the Basic seat to $49 a month, paid a year upfront, which would make the Starter row $34.27 and its saving 45%. Apollo's largest self-serve add-on is 250,000 credits a month, so the Ultra row uses its lowest published credit price; larger volumes are quoted by Apollo's sales team. OrbiSearch: 1 credit per search, found or not, converted at 79.2% found, so the searches that find nothing are already priced in. The Unlimited Starter row assumes the full 10,000 searches a day for 30 days; larger unlimited plans cover 30,000 a day for $499 and 75,000 a day for $999. Prices checked October 28, 2026.
Is OrbiSearch cheaper than Apollo for email verification?
The check to run on an Apollo export before you send, and on any contacts you imported, edited or synced from a CRM. Apollo has no verification-only plan; inside Apollo, verifying an unverified email costs 1 credit, priced here as one Basic seat ($65, 2,500 credits) plus the smallest add-on that covers the rest. OrbiSearch: one-time packs, 1 credit = 5 validations.
| Emails | Apollo | OrbiSearch | You Save |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10,000 | $245 | $30 | 88% |
| 25,000 | $865 | $39 | 95% |
| 50,000 | $865 | $62 | 93% |
| 100,000 | $1,665 | $103 | 94% |
| 250,000 | $3,815 | $207 | 95% |
On a Basic seat's own credits the same checks cost about 1.7 times as much. Apollo verifies catch-all addresses with its data network, lets you filter them in or out of a search, and by default blocks high-risk catch-all contacts from sequences. OrbiSearch checks catch-all, secure-email-gateway and greylisted addresses at the mailbox level and resolves them to valid or invalid wherever the mailbox can be checked, without sending email. See the catch-all domains research.
How do Apollo and OrbiSearch features compare?
| Feature | OrbiSearch | Apollo |
|---|---|---|
| Work email finder by name + domain | ||
| Work email finder by LinkedIn profile URL | 1 credit per search | 1 credit when an email is returned |
| Live-verified find rate (same 288 contacts) | 79.2% | 71.5% |
| Charged when no email is found | Yes, 1 credit per search | No email credit; an API match can still use 1 credit for person data |
| Standalone email verification | From $0.0002 per email | No verification-only plan; 1 plan credit to verify an imported email |
| Catch-all handling | Checked at the mailbox level, resolved to valid or invalid | Verified with its data network; catch-all status shown and filterable, high-risk ones blocked from sequences by default |
| SEG-protected and greylisted email resolution | Not advertised | |
| People and company database search | Included on every plan | |
| Mobile phone numbers | 8 credits each | |
| Sequences, dialer and deal management | ||
| Waterfall across third-party data providers | Paid plans, credits per source that returns data | |
| Company enrichment (firmographics) | 1 credit per company, by LinkedIn URL or domain | 1 credit per company |
| Billing | Per search (any outcome), or unlimited plans | Per seat per month, with a credit allowance per seat |
| Pay-as-you-go (no subscription required) | ||
| Credits expire | Never | End of every billing cycle, add-ons included |
| Free tier | 500 validations or 100 searches, no card | 75 credits per seat per month |
| REST API | Every pack | Every plan; Free limited to 600 enrichment requests a day |
| Published benchmark with downloadable data | Yes, 7 tools, Aug 2026 | Own claim (91% verification accuracy) |
| MCP server | ||
| Native Salesforce and HubSpot integrations | ||
| Private dedicated infrastructure | Not advertised |
When should you use Apollo, OrbiSearch or both?
Choose OrbiSearch when you want:
- To check Apollo exports before you send, from $0.0002 per email, with catch-all, secure-email-gateway and greylisted addresses resolved at the mailbox level
- The highest live-verified find rate of 7 tools tested, 79.2% against Apollo's 71.5% on the same contacts, or 88.2% when run after Apollo
- $1.28 to $18.94 per 1,000 found emails instead of $15.00 to $45.45: 58% to 94% less on every pack
- Credits that never expire, with no seats and no subscription required, or unlimited finder plans from $249 a month for heavy use
Keep Apollo for:
- Building lists from a people and company database, with sequences, a dialer and deal management in the same seat
- Mobile numbers (8 credits each) and waterfall enrichment across third-party providers
- Paying only when an email is returned, with an automatic credit refund if it bounces within 30 days
- Native Salesforce and HubSpot integrations and an MCP server
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I replace Apollo with OrbiSearch or use both?
Can Apollo verify a list of emails I upload?
How much does Apollo cost?
How does Apollo charge for emails?
Is the Apollo API available on every plan?
How does OrbiSearch compare to Apollo on find rate?
What does OrbiSearch add after Apollo in a waterfall?
Do Apollo credits expire?
How does Apollo handle catch-all emails?
Does OrbiSearch have a contact database or phone numbers like Apollo?
Compare OrbiSearch with other email finders:
And with email verifiers:
Where OrbiSearch fits: data platforms validating millions of contacts per month, and cold outreach agencies running Clay-based prospect workflows.