Apollo vs Cognism: coverage and GDPR

Apollo announces five interface languages, then names only four on the same page

Apollo’s own page announces 5 interface languages but names only 4 — English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian — without splitting English into a US or UK variant, while Cognism ships exactly 3 languages, English, French, and German, switchable in-app and saved per user. Scope compared, criterion by criterion. Checked 7 September 2026.

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Apollo

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Apollo vs Cognism: scope compared, criterion by criterion — checked September 7, 2026
Apollo	Cognism
What each one covers
Its core job
A filterable B2B contact database, claimed at over two hundred forty million verified contacts and thirty million companies, with no stated measurement date.	Supplying verified B2B contact data, notably manually validated mobile numbers, positioned by the vendor as a quality and compliance foundation.
What it also does, more lightly
Deal management, call recording, and automated workflows exist but are capped: from two workflows per team on Free to five hundred on Organization.	It aggregates signals — funding, hiring, job changes, technologies, M&A, and buying intent — the last of these sourced from a third party, Bombora.
What it does not do at all
No European hosting option is offered: the DPA names only US data centers, and no alternative region appears on the security page.	Qualified absence: neither email sending nor sequence cadences appear among the features listed on the Pricing page as of 2026-09-02, which stop at export to third-party tools.
If you only take this one
What you give up
Bulk extraction capacity: even on the most expensive plan, a selection tops out at ten thousand records at a time, versus twenty-five on the free plan.	You lose downstream measurement: Cognism delivers the contact and its context, but since execution moves to Outreach or Salesloft, no reply rate flows back into the tool.
The workaround, and what it costs
Moving to the Organization plan raises selection to ten thousand records: one hundred nineteen US dollars per seat per month, three-seat minimum, billed annually.	The workaround is the Data-as-a-Service add-on, piping data into Snowflake, S3, Google Cloud, Databricks, or SFTP. Its price is not published: it depends on volume and delivery method.
The point where it stops being enough
Bulk import is indexed to annual spend: one hundred thousand rows per week from one thousand dollars, ten million from one hundred thousand dollars.	The fair usage ceiling of two thousand records exported per month per user marks the tipping point: beyond it, you buy credits or move to the enrichment APIs.
If you take both
What it exposes to connect
A REST API with scoped keys, an OAuth 2.0 authenticated MCP server at mcp.apollo.io, CSV import and export, and bidirectional CRM sync.	A REST API over HTTPS returning JSON, with Search, Preview, Redeem, Enrich, and MyEntitlement endpoints for both contacts and accounts, under a Bearer token.
Which one becomes the source of truth
The CRM. The perpetual license attaches to contact data incorporated into your own systems, and platform access ends immediately upon termination.	The CRM stays the system of record: Cognism describes itself as an enricher of existing records, updating the customer's Salesforce instance on demand.
What the tool answers
What it measures or produces
Apollo produces verified B2B contact data — emails and phone numbers — plus outbound sequences, a dialer, and lead scores, all metered as credits per action.	A B2B contact and company database — work emails, verified mobile numbers, firmographic and technographic attributes — plus buying signals, delivered through search, a browser extension, CRM sync, or API.
The job it equips
The outbound SDR: account search, contact reveal, multichannel sequences, and outbound calling all live in one seat-based interface.	The outbound sales rep — SDR, BDR, or AE — hunting for contact details and an angle of approach, with sales and revenue leaders as the admin users.
What it cannot tell you
Apollo publishes aggregate monthly refresh volumes but never the verification date of any individual record, and none of those figures carries a publisher date.	The vendor publishes no database size or per-segment coverage figure: its FAQ redirects any estimate to a sales call, so you cannot size your addressable data before buying.
Cold outreach
Channels covered
Automated and manual email, calls via built-in dialer, LinkedIn and free-form tasks. LinkedIn steps are manual tasks to be completed, not automated sends.	Qualified absence: the official product suite has three products, all data-related. No sending channel — email, phone, LinkedIn — is operated by Cognism itself.
Sending limits
Apollo publishes no sending cap per pricing tier. It publishes recommendations: 50 to 100 emails per day per mailbox, 10 to 20 per hour.	No sending volume is published, since the vendor sends nothing. The only official caps cover viewing and exporting: 2,000 records per user per month.
Mailbox warm-up
Available but not native: provided by a third party, Warmbox.ai. One mailbox per seat on paid plans; each additional mailbox costs 200 credits per 30-day period.	Qualified absence. Neither the official three-product suite nor the “Using the Product” documentation category mentions any mailbox warm-up or sending-inbox management.
Personalization
Dynamic variables with nested conditional logic, comparators and case modifiers. AI research consumes one run per enrichment field, per saved contact.	Qualified absence on the message side. Sales Companion personalises signals and recommendations per seller, not emails: no copywriting, variables or send templates are documented.
Reply detection
Default rules distinguishing a human reply from an out-of-office: contact marked finished on reply, paused on out-of-office reply, resuming if a return date is detected.	Qualified absence. No reply, unsubscribe or bounce detection appears in the official documentation, consistent with a vendor that sends no messages at all.
Where the contacts come from
Three sources: the built-in database, file import, and a Chrome and Edge browser extension working on LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, Gmail, company websites and CRMs.	Declared sources: first-party, third-party providers, publicly available sources, manual research and partnerships. The privacy policy adds recruiters and customers as third-party sources.
CRM synchronization
Bidirectional sync with HubSpot, Salesforce or Pipedrive, one CRM connected at a time. The required tier is not named in the publisher's documentation.	Six official connectors, with documented object mapping. The described flow is export and sync from Cognism into the CRM or sales engagement tool.
Outreach compliance
The unsubscribe link is optional and can be switched off by the user. Three GDPR settings can forbid prospecting, sending and tracking towards European residents.	The agreement bars the customer from sending unsolicited commercial email. On the data side, numbers listed on an opt-out registry are flagged and masked before any use.
The data and how fresh it is
Database size
The publisher states “240M+ contacts and 30M+ companies” on its homepage. No measurement date accompanies this figure, and no counting method is published.	Dated 18 March 2025: over 440 million contacts and 100 million mobiles. No company count is published anywhere; the FAQ stays unquantified and undated.
Freshness and verification
Real-time refresh on signal, monthly database checks, seven-step email verification. Two different accuracy rates coexist across the publisher's own pages.	Stated refresh: 95% of director-level and above contacts every 30 days. Human phone verification. No numeric accuracy rate is published, therefore no definition exists.
Intent data
Present, but the publisher contradicts itself on the provider and the topic volume. Two official pages give two providers and two incompatible orders of magnitude. I do not arbitrate.	Intent supplied by Bombora, measured across a 4,000-site consent-based cooperative. Eleven thousand selectable topics. Positioned in the Pro tier on the pricing page.
Phone numbers
“Do Not Call” screening against seven countries' national registries, off by default and activatable by an administrator only. Credits are charged even for a listed number.	One hundred million mobiles claimed, of which over ten million call-verified. Fifteen named national opt-out registries; matched numbers are flagged and masked inside the platform.
Credit model
Email, mobile and export credits. Renewal on the first day of the billing cycle; expiry at cycle end, no rollover. Annual plans unlock everything at the start of the cycle.	Three credit types: view, bulk, enrichment. They expire at term end, do not carry over and are non-refundable. Fair-use cap: 2,000 records monthly per user.
GDPR compliance
Legal basis invoked: legitimate interests. Email notification of new contacts in the European Union, United Kingdom and Switzerland. Outsourced DPO and named Article 27 representative.	Legal basis invoked: legitimate interest, Article 6.1(f). Notification of individuals claimed within GDPR timeframes. Data processing addendum published, version 2, July 2026.
US geographic coverage
No US volume published: only undated global totals, 240M+ contacts and 30M+ companies, appear on the pages tested as of 2026-09-07. No regional breakdown at all, so no imbalance to report. The product page sends the buyer to run a search inside a free account instead.	The only US volume published is 11,314,167 direct dials, announced in a 25 April 2019 press release and never updated since. No US mobile volume: the Diamond Data page gives only an undated “10m+ phone-verified contacts globally”, and US growth is published only as a percentage.
What comes out of it
Export formats
The documented export format is CSV. The real ceiling is the record selection limit: 25 on Free, 1,000 on Basic, 2,500 on Professional, 10,000 on Organization.	CSV download or CRM sync, under a fair usage policy: 25 records viewed at a time, 2,000 records exported per month per end user, and 2,000 monthly contact views.
Shareable reports
Custom reports can be shared per user or team with three permission levels, or set to “Everyone” visibility. No PDF export or scheduled delivery is documented.	NOT VERIFIED. No dashboard or shareable report feature appears among the six help-centre categories published at this URL as of 2026-09-02.
API access
Quota is counted in requests per minute, hour, and day, per team: 50/200/600 on Free, 200/400/2,000 on Basic and Professional, 200/600/6,000 on Organization.	A REST API authenticated by Bearer token, capped at 1,000 requests per minute; the quota unit is the credit, and access requires entitlements configured by support after a dedicated upgrade.
What it connects to
Native integrations
The only publisher-stated count, “50+ tools,” appears in the marketplace page's meta description, not on the page itself. Salesforce, HubSpot, and Outreach matter most.	No total count is announced; eight connectors are named, three of them structural — Salesforce, HubSpot, and Outreach — alongside Salesloft, Pipedrive, Microsoft Dynamics, Bullhorn, and Zapier.
Google tools it connects to
Per the grid, the Free plan connects Gmail and Microsoft mailboxes; paid plans accept all providers. A Gmail extension ships on all four plans.	The extension installs from the Chrome Web Store, and Google Cloud is a Data-as-a-Service delivery destination; no Gmail or Google Sheets integration is documented.
Bringing your existing data across
CSV import requires at least one of company name, website, LinkedIn URL, or email, and the publisher advises against files over ten thousand rows.	Enrichment of records you already hold: CSV upload capped at 16MB per file, or on-demand updating of a Salesforce instance through Instant Enrich.
Getting started, and the fine print
Support
Basic email support covers all four plans; chat and priority email start at Basic; GTME expertise is reserved for the Organization plan.	One documented channel: the help centre's ticket form, written in English. No hours, phone number, email address, or support tier is published.
Where the data is hosted
The United States. The DPA names outsourced US-based data center providers and frames transfers with the EU Standard Contractual Clauses.	The DPA names AWS region eu-west-1, in Ireland, as the primary deployment location for production infrastructure.
What happens if you leave
Yes, with conditions: a perpetual license covers contact data already incorporated into your systems, but resale, redistribution, and model training remain prohibited.	Within thirty days of contract end, Cognism stops processing and, at the customer's written request, deletes or returns the customer data.
Minimum seats billed
One seat suffices on Basic and Professional; the Organization plan requires a three-seat minimum. The free plan drops to one seat after one hundred days of active use.	Both published plans include five seats each; the vendor writes “included,” not “minimum,” and publishes no contractual licence floor.
Data residency and regulated cloud
Apollo hosts in the US with no region named (AWS, Google Cloud, Databricks, Snowflake, OpenAI). Own certs: ISO/IEC 27001, SOC 2 Type II (A-LIGN), CASA Tier 2. FedRAMP, StateRAMP, GovCloud, BAA absent.	Cognism names no US hosting region: its only published infrastructure is AWS eu-west-1 (Ireland). The vendor claims ISO 27001, ISO 27701 and SOC 2 Type II for itself, but another article names only two (no ISO 27701) plus a DMA membership. FedRAMP, StateRAMP, GovCloud, and HIPAA/BAA are absent from its pages.
Interface languages shipped
Apollo announces five interface languages and names only four on the page: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian. English is not split US/UK. Help center translated into es-419, it-it, pt-br. No excluded screen documented.	Cognism ships three interface languages — English, French, German — switchable in the app and browser extension, saved per user. English stays a single label, with no US or UK variant, and no partial translation is flagged.
What it costs
The entry price and what it includes
The first paid tier, Basic, costs 49 US dollars per seat per month billed annually, with thirty thousand credits per seat per year granted upfront.	No price is published, in any currency or billing period. The entry plan, named Standard, includes five seats, filtered list building and CSV export
What pushes the bill up
Phone data: one email costs one credit, one phone number costs eight, and the US dialer costs two credits per call minute.	Credits bought beyond fair usage expire at the end of the subscription term with no carry-over and no refund, on top of the CRM Enrichment and Data-as-a-Service add-ons.
Procurement and invoicing
Net-30 in USD (ToS), late interest 1.5%/month, subscriptions non-cancelable and nonrefundable. Major cards accepted (PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay excluded). ACH only for Organization/Custom plans, on request. PO and W-9 absent.	The pricing page has no self-service path: Standard and Pro, each with 5 seats included, show no price and route to sales. A quote is the only path. Invoice billing, purchase orders, net-30, ACH, and a W-9 appear in no document.

Key takeaways

Apollo’s own count of its languages does not match its own list

Apollo announces five interface languages on its page, then names only four: English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. English is not split into a US or UK variant, and the help center itself is translated into three additional locale codes — es-419, it-it, pt-br — without the page ever naming which screen, if any, stays untranslated.

Cognism names three languages and does not contradict itself doing it

Cognism ships exactly three interface languages — English, French, and German — switchable inside the app and browser extension, and saved per user. English stays a single label with no US or UK split, and no partial translation is flagged anywhere on its pages.

Both companies host in different countries, and certify themselves for it

Apollo hosts in the US without naming a region, across AWS, Google Cloud, Databricks, Snowflake, and OpenAI, claiming ISO/IEC 27001, SOC 2 Type II, and CASA Tier 2 for itself. Cognism names no US hosting region at all: its only published infrastructure is AWS eu-west-1, in Ireland, with ISO 27001, ISO 27701, and SOC 2 Type II claimed for itself on one page, though a second article on Cognism’s own site drops ISO 27701 and adds a DMA membership instead.

Buying Apollo means a card and net-30; buying Cognism means a phone call

Apollo bills net-30 in US dollars at one and a half percent monthly late interest, accepting major cards while excluding PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Pay, with ACH reserved for Organization or Custom plans. Cognism’s own pricing page shows no self-service path at all: Standard and Pro, five seats each, name no price, with invoice billing, purchase orders, net-30, ACH, and a W-9 absent from every document.

A count that should be simple, and isn’t, on one side only

Cognism’s three named languages match its own three-language claim exactly. Apollo’s does not: five announced, four listed, with no explanation offered anywhere on its own page for the missing fifth.

Frequently asked questions

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How many interface languages does Apollo actually list, of the five it announces?

Apollo announces five interface languages but names only 4 on the same page: English, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian, with English kept as a single entry with no US or UK variant. Cognism instead ships three consistently: English, French and German, switchable in the app and the browser extension.

Does Cognism host any of its infrastructure in the United States?

No: Cognism names no US region at all, its only published infrastructure being AWS eu-west-1 in Ireland. Apollo does host in the US, though without naming an exact region. Neither vendor publishes a FedRAMP, StateRAMP, GovCloud certification or a HIPAA business associate agreement.

Can a buyer get self-service pricing from Cognism?

No: Cognism’s pricing page offers no self-service path at all; its Standard and Pro plans, each including 5 seats, show no price and route to a sales quote, with invoice billing, purchase orders, net-30, ACH or a W-9 documented nowhere. Apollo, by contrast, does publish net-30 terms by contract, with ACH reserved for its Organization or Custom plans.