Cognism vs ZoomInfo: US coverage versus EU compliance

ZoomInfo and Cognism each register as a data broker in the one state the other one skips

ZoomInfo registers as a data broker in Texas but not California or Vermont, and its own License terms admit it sells personal data, while Cognism declares itself a data broker only in California under the CCPA, with three of its own documents naming three different state lists and no broker number published. Scope compared, criterion by criterion. Checked 7 September 2026.

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ZoomInfo

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ZoomInfo vs Cognism: scope compared, criterion by criterion — checked September 7, 2026
ZoomInfo	Cognism
What the tool answers
What it measures or produces
ZoomInfo produces searchable B2B company and contact records that can be enriched on demand, plus buying-intent signals and account-level web activity data.	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 sales rep — SDR and Account Executive — is the targeted role, with prospecting automation, outreach personalization, and follow-up handled inside the tool.	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
The license bars using the data to assess a person's eligibility for credit, insurance, employment, or a government license or benefit — no FCRA-governed use case.	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.
The data and how fresh it is
Database size
ZoomInfo states “500M+ Total Professional Profiles”, “300M+ Verified business emails”, “135M+ Direct dial numbers” and “122M+ company records”. No publication date accompanies these figures on the page.	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
The publisher states the database is “updated daily” from over 38 million online sources, and publishes per-field rates without defining the measurement method.	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
Intent data is present, measured on content consumption, and capped by tier: 25 topics on Marketing Demand, 100 on ABM Lite, unlimited on ABM Enterprise.	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
Direct dials and mobiles are distinguished and counted separately. A national Do Not Call registry suppression exists, admin-activated, masking numbers across the entire instance.	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
One “bulk data credit” is consumed on a record's first enrichment; the record then goes “Under Management” for twelve months and can be re-enriched without another credit.	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 interest. The publisher states it notifies data subjects under Articles 13 or 14, and positions itself as an independent controller toward the customer.	Legal basis invoked: legitimate interest, Article 6.1(f). Notification of individuals claimed within GDPR timeframes. Data processing addendum published, version 2, July 2026.
Compliance with state privacy laws
ZoomInfo registers as a data broker in Texas only, not California or Vermont, and admits selling personal data. Fifteen state laws named, four more announced. Deletion runs through three online forms, whose content would not load.	Cognism declares itself a data broker in California (CCPA) only, no number published; three documents each name a different state list. Mechanism: third-party portal, US toll-free number, email, verified before processing.
US geographic coverage
On its “Our Data” page ZoomInfo credits North America with 79.6M+ companies, 157.8M+ contacts and 77.7M+ mobile numbers. No United States-only subtotal, no state or metro named, and no measurement date.	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
List exports produce a .csv delivered by email notification; for Salesforce, an admin caps per-object exports at up to 100,000 records at once, dropping to 5,000 through the Native App.	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
Reporting is tiered: “Audience & campaign reporting” in Marketing Demand, “Advanced reporting and analytics” reserved for Copilot Enterprise. External sharing of reports is not publicly 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
API access requires the Enterprise API or Copilot package; the billing unit is one credit per newly enriched record, free for the next twelve months, with search endpoints costing nothing.	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 vendor directory shows 185 integrations as of 2026-09-02; the three that matter for an outbound stack are Salesforce, HubSpot, and Outreach or Salesloft for sending.	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
Google Cloud is listed among the natively supported warehouses for data delivery, and a Gmail integration is published, categorized under “Email” and “Export from ZoomInfo”.	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
Existing CRM records are queried and matched in batches through the Salesforce Bulk API, 10,000 per batch, before enrichment; one credit is charged per new record.	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
Support is reached by web form or at +1 866-904-9666; the level depends on the package — “Standard support” on Professional versus a dedicated manager on Copilot Enterprise.	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 vendor places its services with three major cloud providers, with hosting data centers in the U.S.; no provider is named and no European residency option is published.	The DPA names AWS region eu-west-1, in Ireland, as the primary deployment location for production infrastructure.
What happens if you leave
The decisive contractual point: materials obtained during the term stay usable after it ends, but remain subject to the agreement, so no resale or transfer to any third party.	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
No seat minimum is published. The license defers to the Ordering Document, and the pricing page states a seat-based model with no stated floor.	Both published plans include five seats each; the vendor writes “included,” not “minimum,” and publishes no contractual licence floor.
Data residency and regulated cloud
ZoomInfo says it hosts “in the U.S.” (AWS, Google, no region), yet its Privacy Policy admits transfer to “any other country.” Own certs: SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001/27701/27017. FedRAMP, StateRAMP, TX-RAMP, 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.
What it costs
The entry price and what it includes
No price is published: no currency, no amount, no billing period. Six packages are named with their features, and a separate free tier called ZoomInfo Lite exists	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
Three stated drivers: number of licenses, monthly credit consumption for exports, and depth of intelligence required; paid add-ons such as intent, Chorus, and Copilot stack on top.	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
ZoomInfo accepts card, ACH, wire, check, and Bill.com/Ariba/Coupa; POs by email, W-9 as PDF. Net-30 by default (T&Cs), late interest 1.5%/month. No non-card threshold published; pricing page shows no price or checkout.	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

ZoomInfo tells Texas it is a data broker, and tells no one else

ZoomInfo registers as a data broker in Texas alone, not in California or Vermont, even though its own License terms and conditions admit to selling personal data. Deletion runs through three separate online forms, none of which would load their content at the time of the survey. Fifteen state privacy laws are named on its own pages, with four more announced as coming.

Cognism registers in the one state ZoomInfo skips, and skips the one state ZoomInfo names

Cognism declares itself a data broker under the CCPA in California only, with no broker registration number published anywhere. Three of its own documents each name a different list of states covered, and its stated deletion mechanism runs through a third-party portal, a US toll-free number, or email, verified before any request is processed.

Neither company’s hosting story backs up a US-first claim

ZoomInfo states it hosts “in the U.S.” across AWS and Google Cloud, naming no region, yet its own Privacy Policy admits transfer of data to “any other country.” Cognism names no US hosting region at all: its only published infrastructure is AWS eu-west-1, in Ireland. Neither publishes FedRAMP, StateRAMP, GovCloud, or a HIPAA business associate agreement.

Buying either one still means calling sales first

ZoomInfo accepts card, ACH, wire transfer, check, and purchase orders routed through Bill.com, Ariba, or Coupa, with net-30 terms applying by default and a W-9 available as a PDF — but no price appears anywhere on its own pricing page. Cognism’s Standard and Pro plans, five seats each, show the identical absence: no price, no checkout, invoicing terms mentioned nowhere, and a quote as the only way in.

Two different registration footprints, the same unresolved gap

Between the two, no state appears covered by both vendors’ own broker declarations at once: Texas has ZoomInfo but not Cognism, California has Cognism but not ZoomInfo, and Vermont, a state ZoomInfo’s own text names as skipped, gets no mention from Cognism at all. This piece does not decide which registration list is the more complete one — it reports what each company put its own name to.

Frequently asked questions

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Does Cognism host its production data in the United States?

No: Cognism’s data processing agreement names only the AWS eu-west-1 region, in Ireland, as the primary location of its production infrastructure, with no US region published at all. The vendor claims ISO 27001, ISO 27701, and SOC 2 Type II, though another document names only two of those. FedRAMP, StateRAMP, GovCloud, and a HIPAA BAA are absent from its pages. At ZoomInfo, hosting stays in the US with no region named, with the same regulated certifications absent.

Does ZoomInfo register as a data broker in the state of California?

No: ZoomInfo registers as a data broker only in Texas, not in California or Vermont, while admitting it sells personal data; fifteen state laws are named, four more announced, and deletion runs through three online forms. Cognism, by contrast, declares itself a data broker only in California, under the CCPA, with no number published, and 3 documents each name a different state list. For a buyer bound by these state laws, each vendor covers the state the other one skips.

Does Cognism publish a price without going through a sales quote?

No: Cognism’s pricing page offers no self-service path; the Standard and Pro plans, each with 5 seats included, show no price, and only a quote opens access. No invoicing, purchase order, net-30 term, ACH, or W-9 appears in its documents. At ZoomInfo, those same non-card payment methods do exist, but its pricing page likewise shows no price. For a buyer, both vendors require a sales call before any pricing is revealed.