Apollo.io: What It Is, Pricing and How to Use It (2026 Guide)

What is Apollo.io?

Apollo.io is a go-to-market platform that combines a B2B contact database with the tools to act on it: email sequences, a dialer, a meeting scheduler, enrichment and AI agents. The company, Apollo.io, reports more than 600,000 customer companies and holds SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certifications. Its database holds 240 million contacts and 30 million companies at the time of writing, with 65 or more data points per record.

The product has three layers, which is how Apollo itself describes it. Data unifies Apollo’s own database with your CRM data and third-party signals such as job changes, funding rounds and website visits. Intelligence is the AI layer: an AI Assistant, AI Research that reads the web to qualify a prospect, lead scoring and agents that run in the background. Execution is where you work: the Workspace for prospecting, sequencing and calling, plus “Apollo Anywhere”, which pushes the same data into Gmail, LinkedIn, Salesforce, HubSpot, ChatGPT and Claude through extensions and an MCP server.

The problem it solves is tool sprawl. A typical outbound stack is a data provider, an email sequencer, a dialer and an enrichment service. Apollo bundles all four into one subscription, which is why it is popular with small teams that cannot afford ZoomInfo plus Outreach.

Who it is for

• SDR and outbound sales teams that build lists, run multichannel sequences and want calls and emails logged in one place.
• Founders and solo sellers who need a free or cheap way to find decision-makers and email them.
• RevOps and marketing teams that enrich CRM records, identify website visitors and route inbound leads.
• Agencies running outbound for several clients, using lists, folders and shared sequences.

Apollo is not the right choice if you need a full CRM for a complex sales process, if your market is one where Apollo’s coverage is thin (some non-English regions and very small businesses), or if you want a dedicated deliverability-first cold email tool with unlimited mailboxes on the entry plan. Teams that only need a database and already own a sequencer can also find cheaper per-seat data.

Key features

• Contact and account search. Filter people by job title, seniority, location, persona, time in role and more, combined with company filters such as headcount, industry, technologies and buying intent. Lookalikes find companies similar to your best customers.
• Sequences. Multi-step campaigns mixing automatic emails, manual emails, calls and LinkedIn tasks, with sending schedules, rulesets and A/Z testing (Professional and above). AI can draft the whole sequence from your context.
• AI Assistant and AI Research. Ask the assistant to find and qualify prospects or build a sequence; run research prompts against a contact or account to surface pain points and decision-maker fit. Research costs 1 credit per run.
• Chrome extension. Shows Apollo data on LinkedIn, Gmail, your CRM and company websites, reveals emails and phones, and adds people to lists or sequences without leaving the page. Free on every plan.
• Dialer and call recording. Click-to-call from Apollo with recordings and AI call insights (150 minutes on Free and Basic, 4,000 on Professional, 8,000 on Organization). The Advanced Dialer add-on brings the Parallel Dialer, Power Dialer, local presence and international calling.
• Waterfall Enrichment. Checks more than 20 data sources in turn to fill missing emails and phones, with built-in verification, for CSV uploads, CRM records and API calls.
• Deliverability suite. Email warmup, domain and mailbox purchasing and sending controls, available from the Basic plan.
• Workflows, lead and deal management, meetings. Automate next steps (add to list, assign task, update field), track deals and book meetings with a scheduler. Website visitor identification and inbound routing are limited on standard plans and expanded by the Inbound add-on.

Pricing

Apollo has a Free plan and three paid tiers. The prices below are per seat per month on annual billing, as shown on the pricing page at the time of writing; monthly billing costs more (the page advertises a 24% saving for annual). All seats on an account must be on the same plan. Apollo labels the current pricing “introductory” and says features and prices may change, so check apollo.io/pricing before buying.

Plan	Price (annual billing)	Credits	Key limits
Free	$0	900 per seat per year, granted monthly	2 sequences, basic filters, 25-record selection limit, 1 mailbox, 250 emails per day, AI Assistant limited to 5 chats, 2 workflows per team, 150 call-recording minutes
Basic	$49 per seat per month	30,000 per seat per year, granted upfront	Unlimited sequences, advanced filters, 1,000-record selection, CRM integrations, Waterfall Enrichment, deliverability suite and warmup, US dialer (credits apply), 5 workflows per team, 250 emails per day
Professional	$79 per seat per month	48,000 per seat per year, granted upfront	Adds A/Z testing, unlimited lead scoring, 2,500-record selection, unlimited Google and Microsoft mailboxes plus 5 SMTP mailboxes per user, unlimited daily sends, 4,000 recording minutes with AI insights, 50 workflows
Organization	$119 per seat per month, minimum 3 seats	72,000 per seat per year, granted upfront	12 intent topics, 10,000-record selection, 15 SMTP mailboxes per user, unlimited meeting events and inbound routers, 8,000 recording minutes, 500 workflows

How credits are spent: 1 credit per verified email, 8 per phone number, 1 to 8 per enrichment, 1 per AI research run, 1 per 30 seconds on the US dialer. Credits are pooled across the team, do not roll over, and extra credits can be added under Settings > Manage Subscription > Customize Credits (they recur each cycle until removed). The 14-day trial of a paid plan includes 75 credits.

Add-ons, billed per team per month on annual billing: Inbound (Essentials $119, Max $639) for website visitor identification, lead routing and forms; Advanced Dialer ($119) for international calling, the Parallel Dialer, the Power Dialer and local presence.

How to use Apollo.io: step-by-step

1. Create an account and connect a mailbox

1. Go to apollo.io and click Sign up for free.
2. Connect your mailbox when prompted. The pricing FAQ says the Free plan connects Gmail only, while Professional and above can connect Microsoft and other providers. Sequences send from the mailbox you choose when you enrol contacts, so connect the address you want prospects to see.
3. Install the Chrome extension from the Chrome Web Store and log in. It works on LinkedIn, Gmail and company websites straight away.
4. Fill in the AI context center (your product, ideal customer, pain points, proof points). Apollo’s AI uses it for research prompts and sequence drafts, so a thorough paragraph here improves everything downstream.

2. Build a prospect list

1. Click People in the left sidebar, then Show Filters > More Filters.
2. Add person filters (job titles such as “Head of Sales” and “VP Sales”, seniority, location) and company filters (employees 51-200, industry, technologies used, intent topics on paid plans). Apollo uses AND logic across filters and OR logic within a filter, so every new filter narrows the list and every extra value inside a filter widens it.
3. Save the search so it refreshes automatically, and set an alert if you want to be told when new people match.
4. Check Bulk Selection and choose how many to select, with Max people per company set to two or three so one account does not dominate.
5. From the action bar choose Save (adds them as contacts), List (organises them by campaign), Research with AI (runs a qualification prompt) or Sequence (enrols them directly). Exporting to CSV also saves them as contacts and spends credits on revealed data.

Record selection limits apply per action: 25 on Free, 1,000 on Basic, 2,500 on Professional, 10,000 on Organization.

3. Reveal and verify contact data

1. Email addresses are revealed when you save or export a contact, at 1 credit each. Phone numbers cost 8 credits, so reveal them only for people you will actually call.
2. For an existing list in a spreadsheet or your CRM, use Enrich to upload a CSV or map CRM records. Waterfall Enrichment tries multiple vendors in sequence and verifies results, which improves coverage at a higher credit cost per record.
3. Track consumption under Settings > Credit usage, filtered by user and credit type. Admins can set per-user credit caps in team settings.

4. Create a sequence

1. Click Sequences, then Create Sequence.
2. Choose a starting point: AI-assisted (Apollo drafts a short outbound sequence from your AI context center), Template, Clone or From scratch.
3. For a manual build, click Add a step and assemble something like: Automatic email (day 1), Call (day 3), LinkedIn connection task (day 4), Automatic email (day 6), Call (day 9), Automatic email (day 13). Keep the first email under 100 words.
4. Click Settings to name it, pick a folder and tags, set the sending schedule (business hours in the prospect’s time zone) and choose a ruleset that stops the sequence when someone replies or books a meeting.
5. On Professional and above, open an email step and add an A/B test variant to compare subject lines or openers.
6. Toggle each step on and click Activate. Then add contacts from a list or search with the Sequence action, choosing the sending mailbox at that point.

5. Work the daily queue

1. Open the Task Execution Center each morning. Calls, manual emails and LinkedIn tasks that are due appear here; complete them in order.
2. Use the Dialer to call from the contact record. Calls are recorded and logged, and on Professional the AI insights summarise them.
3. Replies land in the Unified Inbox. Mark interested replies, book a meeting with the Meeting Scheduler link, and move the contact to a deal stage.

6. Measure and improve

1. Open Analytics & Reports and compare sequences by open, reply and meeting rates. Filter for low performers and pause or rewrite them.
2. Archive sequences you no longer use; archiving finishes all enrolled contacts and clears scheduled emails.
3. Review bounce rates weekly. If they rise above a few percent, tighten the verification step and slow the daily send volume.

7. Connect your CRM (Basic and above)

1. Go to Settings > Integrations and connect Salesforce or HubSpot.
2. Decide the direction of sync for contacts, accounts and activities, and which team owns new records. Apollo’s documentation on contact and account ownership is worth reading before you turn on bidirectional sync.
3. Use Push to CRM from search results for one-off pushes, or let Workflows push new contacts automatically.

Tips to get better results

• Write the AI context center first. Every AI feature, from sequence drafts to research prompts, reads it. Include your ideal customer, three pain points and two proof points.
• Filter on signals, not just titles. Job changes, funding rounds, hiring trends and website visits (paid plans) produce better reply rates than a static title search.
• Reveal phones sparingly. At 8 credits a number, a 500-contact list with phones costs 4,000 credits, more than a month of Basic’s allowance.
• Verify before you send. Use the deliverability suite and warmup for new mailboxes, and keep daily sends per mailbox modest even on plans with unlimited sends.
• Use A/Z testing on one variable. Subject line or first sentence, not both at once, so you learn something.
• Set Max people per company. Emailing six people at one company in the same week reads as spam to the recipient and to the company’s mail filters.
• Let AI Research qualify, then you decide. Run the Qualify Contact prompt in bulk to rank a list, but read the summaries before enrolling anyone senior.
• Clean up lists monthly. Archive dead sequences and remove bounced contacts so credits are not wasted on re-enrichment.

Limitations and common problems

• Credit budgeting. The yearly credit grant sounds generous until phone reveals and enrichment eat it. Check Credit usage weekly for the first month.
• Data accuracy varies. Coverage is uneven: it tends to be best for larger companies in English-speaking markets, while phone numbers and very small companies are less reliable. Verify before any large send and expect some bounces.
• Deliverability is your responsibility. Apollo sends from your mailboxes. Cold volumes without warmup, custom domains and plain-text emails will damage your domain reputation.
• Plan uniformity. All seats are on the same plan, so one rep who needs A/Z testing pushes the whole team to Professional.
• Organization minimums. Three seats on annual billing, and SSO, custom reports and advanced security live only there.
• Add-on costs. International calling, the Parallel Dialer and website visitor identification at volume are separate per-team charges.
• Cancellation terms. Annual plans cannot be downgraded mid-cycle; switching from annual to monthly means waiting for the term to end. Read the terms before committing a team.

Alternatives

• ZoomInfo - deeper enterprise data, intent and org charts at a much higher price; usually paired with a separate sequencer. See our sales and CRM tools.
• RocketReach - simpler contact finder with strong email and phone coverage; no sequences or dialer.
• lemlist or Reply.io - stronger cold-email deliverability features and multichannel sequences; both have their own smaller databases.
• Close - a CRM with built-in calling, SMS and Workflows for teams that already have lists and need a system of record. See our Close guide.
• Clay - spreadsheet-style enrichment across many data vendors, better for custom research workflows than for sending.

For writing research prompts and sequence copy that the AI can work with, see our guide on how to write better prompts, and our ChatGPT review if you draft outside Apollo.

Verdict

Sign up for Apollo.io if you run outbound and want data, sequences and a dialer in one place for less than most data subscriptions alone. Start on the Free plan to test list quality in your market, then move a working rep to Professional for A/Z testing, unlimited sends and call insights. Skip it if you need a true CRM, sell into regions where its coverage is thin, or want a deliverability-first cold email tool with unlimited mailboxes from the first dollar.