Apollo

What it is

Apollo bundles a B2B contact database of 230M+ verified contacts, a sales-engagement layer (sequences, dialer, email tracking), and an AI layer that now runs across every tier into one tool. It is the “good enough at everything” pick for sub-$10M ARR teams that don’t want to buy ZoomInfo for data, Outreach for sequencing, and a dialer on top. You trade depth on each axis for one contract and one login.

Two things changed the buying case in 2026. Apollo replaced its old split allowances — separate mobile, export, and data credits — with one credit pool per seat, and it shipped Apollo MCP, a first-party connector that puts search, enrichment, record writes, and sequence enrollment inside Claude, ChatGPT, and Perplexity on any plan, including free.

Why it shows up in RevOps stacks

• Database + sequencer in one. Search Apollo’s database, push results into a sequence, dial out — no glue code between tools.
• Agent access with no upsell. Apollo MCP authenticates by OAuth from the AI tool’s connector directory, needs no API key or developer setup, and carries no separate subscription. Actions mirror your account’s permissions and plan limits exactly.
• Lowest-cost tier with real API access. Paid plans open at $49/seat and expose an API most data competitors gate behind an enterprise contract; API access appears on the free plan too.

Pricing reality

Four plans, per seat, cheaper on annual:

• Free — $0, 900 credits per seat per year granted monthly, 2 sequences, API access, 1 intent topic.
• Basic — $49/seat/mo annual ($69 monthly), 30,000 credits/seat/yr granted upfront, unlimited sequences, 6 intent topics, 250,000 AI writing words/mo.
• Professional — $79/seat/mo annual ($99 monthly), 48,000 credits/seat/yr, dialer, call recording and AI insights (4,000 mins), 50 automated workflows.
• Organization — $119/seat/mo annual, 3-seat minimum, 72,000 credits/seat/yr, 12 intent topics, SSO, advanced security, and the option to run AI features on your own LLM API key.

Credits are the number that matters, because everything meters against the same pool: 1 credit per verified email, 8 per phone number, 1-8 per enriched record, 1 per AI research run, and 2 credits per minute on the US dialer. That last rate is the sink. Professional’s 48,000 credits/seat/yr works out to 4,000/month, and an SDR running 500 dial-minutes plus 1,500 email reveals and 100 phone numbers is already at roughly 3,300 of them before any enrichment.

Three things push real spend above the sticker. Monthly billing runs 25% to 41% over annual depending on tier — the gap is widest on Basic. Organization’s 3-seat floor makes its true entry $4,284/yr, not $119/mo. And the two add-ons, Inbound and Advanced Dialer, are billed per team at $119/mo each on annual ($149 monthly): a 5-seat Professional team is $4,740/yr in seats, and both add-ons push that to about $7,600/yr regardless of headcount.

Best for

• Early-stage and growth teams (5-25 reps) wanting integrated prospecting and outreach on one contract.
• Teams that want an AI agent doing prospecting work against real data without an enterprise contract — Apollo MCP on the free plan is the cheapest legitimate route to that in this category.
• SDR teams that don’t need enterprise sequencing governance — the Outreach / Salesloft tier.
• Teams pairing Apollo with Clay: Apollo for the dialer and cheap base data, Clay for higher-quality enrichment and orchestration.

Not for enterprise teams whose pipeline lives or dies on contact-data accuracy, or 100+ rep orgs with mature RevOps governance. At that scale ZoomInfo’s data depth and Outreach’s admin controls earn their premium. Also not for heavy-dial teams that haven’t modeled credits — at 2 credits/minute the pool empties faster than the seat price suggests.

Versus the alternative

• vs ZoomInfo. ZoomInfo leads on data accuracy, coverage, and intent signals, and stays quote-only — no published entry price at all, against Apollo’s $49. Pick ZoomInfo when data quality is the whole thesis; pick Apollo when “close enough at a published price” wins.
• vs Outreach / Salesloft. Enterprise sales-engagement platforms with deeper sequencing logic, reporting, and RevOps governance, both quote-only. Pick them at 100+ reps with mature process; pick Apollo for the SMB and mid-market band where that overhead doesn’t pay back.
• vs Clay. The fastest-growing entrant in GTM data — an enrichment and orchestration workbench, not a bundle, from $185/mo. Most teams run both: Apollo for cheap base data and the dialer, Clay for waterfall enrichment and custom plays. Go Clay-first when data quality and bespoke workflows matter more than an all-in-one.
• vs Amplemarket. The AI-native bundle peer, at a ~$300/seat entry. Pick Amplemarket for stronger AI-personalization quality; pick Apollo for the cheaper entry and the bigger raw database.

Watch-outs

• The credit system is mid-migration, so the plan you read about is not necessarily the plan you are on. Apollo’s pricing page states that new customers land on the new credit system automatically while existing customers are being moved gradually. Guard: before you compare allowances against a renewal quote, get your team’s credit system confirmed in writing — a legacy account’s split mobile/export/data allowances don’t map onto the published pooled numbers.
• The AI layer is priced as introductory. The AI Assistant carries an “introductory free” label on every paid tier and the page states that features and pricing are introductory and subject to change. Guard: build the business case on seats plus credits alone, and price the renewal assuming AI becomes a metered or paid line.
• MCP spends the same pool with no separate budget. An agent looping enrichment burns 1-8 credits per record and 8 per phone number, charged to the seat’s allowance. Guard: cap agent runs or watch the pool weekly for the first month; there is no MCP-specific meter to alert you.
• Data accuracy sits a step below ZoomInfo. Guard: run Apollo records through a verification or enrichment pass (Clay waterfall) before high-value sends; treat Apollo’s bundled data as a starting list, not ground truth.
• The Pocus acquisition still isn’t packaged. Apollo announced the Pocus acquisition on 19 March 2026 to fold product-led and signal-based scoring in, and said at the time it would share more in the months ahead. Nothing Pocus-branded appears in the published tiers today; the closest shipped features, Recommendations and Lookalikes, are both labelled beta. Guard: evaluate what ships in your contract term, not the roadmap.