Apollo vs Lusha vs Hunter: which B2B contact data tool is worth paying for?

Every outbound campaign starts with the same problem: you know which companies you want to reach, but you don't have the right person's email address or phone number. Contact data tools solve that, and Apollo, Lusha and Hunter are three of the most widely used.

They aren't the same kind of tool. Apollo is a large prospecting platform where you search a database by company and role and email people from the same place. Lusha is a quick lookup tool that's especially strong on phone numbers. Hunter finds the email addresses at a company's domain and verifies them, cheaply. Choosing well depends mostly on how you prospect.

Prices side by side

Published prices, checked on October 7, 2026.

What a usable email costs

Credits only matter in terms of what they buy. On the entry plans, at one credit per email:

• Hunter Starter: $49 for 2,000 credits, about 2.5 cents an email, or 1.7 cents billed annually.
• Lusha Starter: $49.90 for 400 credits, about 12.5 cents an email, or 62 cents a phone number.
• Apollo: depends on the credits in the plan you choose, at one credit per email.

Not every email found is usable. Some bounce, some belong to people who've left, and some are generic addresses. The real cost is per verified, deliverable email for the right person, which is why a test on your own list matters more than the headline price.

Apollo

Apollo is the broadest of the three. It's a searchable database of companies and people that you filter by industry, size, location, job title and other criteria, with email sequences, a dialer and a browser extension built in. For many early-stage teams it replaces a separate data tool and a separate sending tool.

It has a free plan for getting started, a Basic plan from $49 per user a month, and a Professional plan at $99 per user a month on monthly billing, with lower prices on annual billing and custom plans above that. Credits are pooled across your team, renew at the start of each billing cycle and don't roll over. An email costs one credit.

Best for: founders and small teams who want to find prospects by filter and email them from one tool. Watch for: credits running out faster than you expect once phone numbers and other enrichment are added, and sending cold email from the same domain you use for everything else.

Lusha

Lusha is built around quick lookups. Its browser extension shows contact details when you view a profile on LinkedIn or a company website, and it's known for direct-dial phone numbers, which matter if your sales process includes calls.

The free plan includes 40 credits a month. Starter costs $49.90 a month for 400 credits, or $449.10 a year for 4,800. Professional costs $69.90 a month for 600 credits, and Premium $399.90 for 3,400. An email costs one credit and a phone number five. Lusha asks teams of more than five users to talk to sales.

Best for: salespeople who prospect on LinkedIn and call as well as email. Watch for: the cost per contact, which is the highest of the three for emails alone.

Hunter

Hunter starts from the company. Enter a domain, and Hunter shows the email addresses it has found there, the pattern the company uses, and the public sources where each address appeared. Its Email Finder guesses and checks a specific person's address from their name and company, and its Email Verifier checks whether an address will accept mail.

Hunter also includes simple email sequences, so a small team can find, verify and email from one place. The free plan includes 50 credits a month and one connected email account. Starter costs $49 a month, or $34 billed annually, for 2,000 credits, three connected email accounts and up to 2,500 recipients per sequence. Growth costs $149 a month for 10,000 credits and ten email accounts, and Scale $299 for 25,000 credits and twenty accounts. Finding an email costs one credit and verifying one costs half a credit.

Best for: founders who already know the companies they want and need verified emails cheaply. Watch for: no phone numbers, and a smaller set of search filters than Apollo for finding new companies.

A month of prospecting, priced

Take a founder who emails 400 new contacts a month and wants a phone number for the 50 most promising.

• On Hunter Starter, 400 emails cost 400 credits, and verifying them costs another 200, well within 2,000 credits for $49. Phone numbers would need another source.
• On Lusha Starter, 400 emails would use all 400 credits, leaving nothing for phone numbers. Fifty numbers alone cost 250 credits, so this founder would need the Professional plan and still fall short, or a mix of tools.
• On Apollo, emails cost one credit each from the plan's allowance. Check how many credits your plan includes, and what a phone number costs on it, before relying on it for calls.

The pattern is common: Hunter for volume email at low cost, Lusha or Apollo for the smaller number of contacts worth calling.

Seats and teams

Pricing works differently as a team grows. Apollo charges per user, and every seat on an account must be on the same plan, so adding a salesperson adds a full seat. Hunter's plans each come with a set number of connected email accounts, from one on the free plan to twenty on Scale. Lusha's self-serve plans cover small teams, and it asks teams of more than five users to talk to sales. If you expect to add salespeople this year, price the plan for the team you'll have, not the one you have today.

How to test data quality yourself

Data accuracy varies by country, industry and company size, so no comparison can tell you which tool is most accurate for your market. Test it:

• Build a sample list of 50 people you want to reach, with names and companies.
• Run it through each tool's free plan, and record how many emails each finds.
• Verify every found email with the same verification tool, so the results are comparable.
• Send a small, real campaign from a warmed mailbox, and count bounces.

The tool with the most deliverable emails for the right people is the best one for you, whatever its price per credit.

Finding new companies vs finding people at known ones

The biggest difference between the three is where you start.

If you're starting from filters, such as "software companies with 20 to 100 employees in Texas, and their heads of finance," you need a searchable database. Apollo is built for this. Lusha has prospecting search too.

If you're starting from a list of companies, such as attendees of a trade show or companies using a particular tool, you need to find people at known domains. Hunter's domain search does this well and cheaply.

Many founders combine them: a database to build the company list, and a cheaper email finder or verifier to fill gaps and check addresses before sending.

Verify before you send

Whichever tool you use, verify every address before it goes into a campaign. Bounced emails damage your sender reputation, and data goes stale as people change jobs. Hunter's verifier costs half a credit per email, and most cold email tools offer verification as well. Remove anything invalid or risky. Our guide to setting up a domain for cold email covers why bounce rates matter so much.

Using the data responsibly

Having someone's email address doesn't remove your obligations. In the US, every commercial email has to follow CAN-SPAM: accurate headers, honest subject lines, a valid postal address and a working opt-out, honored within 10 business days. The FTC says the law makes no exception for business email. The EU, the UK and Canada have stricter rules, and data about people in those places carries extra obligations. If your list includes them, check the rules before you email or call.

Keep your lists focused too. A smaller list of the right people produces more replies and fewer complaints than a large list built because credits were available.

Which one should you pick?

• Pick Hunter if you know your target companies, want verified emails at the lowest cost and can live without phone numbers.
• Pick Lusha if you prospect on LinkedIn and want phone numbers alongside emails, with a simple tool.
• Pick Apollo if you want to find prospects by filter and run sequences in the same place, starting from a free plan.

Not sure yet? Start with the free plans of all three, test them on 50 contacts from your own market, and pay for whichever gives you the most deliverable emails for the right people. Our guide to building a B2B lead list covers the free sources to use first, and our guide to cold email for B2B startups covers what to do with the list once you have it.