Features, use cases, pros and cons, and pricing side by side — and which one to pick.
Quick verdict: Apollo.io and Lusha are essential B2B data tools, but they serve two different fundamental needs. Apollo.io aims to be your full sales platform, managing outreach sequences and data workflow. Lusha specializes in providing highly accurate contact details with real-time buying signals.
Best for: Outbound sales teams that want contact data and sequenced outreach in one tool, SDR teams trying to cut manual prospecting time
Read the full Apollo.io reviewBest for: SDR and BDR teams doing phone-first outbound prospecting, RevOps and marketing ops teams automating lead enrichment in Salesforce or HubSpot
Read the full Lusha reviewCommission may apply at no extra cost
Compare key features side by side
Feature Comparison Summary
Lusha claims specific, high accuracy rates; Apollo.io users widely report frequent data reliability issues.
Apollo.io users complain that too many "verified" emails bounce or are marked as risky. Data quality is a frequently cited pain point in user reviews for Apollo.io. Lusha actively claims 98% email deliverability and solid 85% phone accuracy for its 280M+ contacts. Lusha focuses on verified contacts to ensure your outreach lands. Lusha provides concrete numbers for accuracy, giving sellers more confidence in their data and reducing bounces. When data quality is paramount for avoiding email blacklisting, Lusha’s explicit accuracy claim is a safer bet.
Apollo.io is an end-to-end sales platform; Lusha focuses specifically on contact data and signals.
Apollo.io wants to be your ultimate command center, combining prospecting, outreach, and AI tools. Apollo.io aims to replace tools like Outreach and Gong with a unified platform. Lusha focuses on being the best source for high-quality contact data and real-time signals. Lusha plugs into your existing GTM stack to enrich data and synchronize workflows. The key trade-off is breadth versus depth; Apollo.io is wide, covering everything, while Lusha is deep in contact accuracy. If you need sequences and call tracking integrated, Apollo.io offers the necessary full suite within one tool.
Apollo.io includes a full AI Call Assistant suite; Lusha’s AI features focus primarily on lead generation.
Apollo.io's Call Assistant provides pre-meeting insights, instant transcription, and automatic follow-up emails. This helps streamline the entire deal flow process and reduces administrative work. Lusha’s AI powers real-time leads and buying signals delivered daily, helping reps know *when* to execute outreach. Lusha also uses AI for custom candidate lists. Apollo.io delivers richer AI tools specific to conversation intelligence and post-meeting automation. If you prioritize automating post-call administrative tasks, Apollo.io is superior here.
Lusha prioritizes delivering daily streams of buying signals; Apollo.io focuses more on large-scale list building.
Lusha provides real-time leads and buying signals to help shorten the sales cycle and prioritize hot leads. Daily streams are curated from signals and lookalike audiences, keeping data fresh. Apollo.io focuses heavily on utilizing its existing 210M contact database for long-running sequences. Signal data is not Apollo.io's core, advertised focus area. Lusha helps you strike while the iron is hot by delivering intent and buyer signals directly to your homepage. Choose Lusha if acting on purchasing intent signals right away is critical to your strategy.
External reviews indicate serious support deficiencies for both platforms; neither is reliable.
Apollo.io users widely report customer support as consistently unresponsive and entirely ineffective. Help tickets often go unresolved for issues like sequence failure. Lusha users also report slow support responses, particularly around resolving auto-renewal challenges. The volume of unresolved complaints appears lower than Apollo.io's. Neither platform delivers the reliable support necessary for mission-critical sales workflows. You should factor in potential downtime when using either Apollo.io or Lusha. Neither tool is the support winner here; users must accept a high risk of poor customer care for both platforms.
Apollo.io bundles prospecting data, email sequencing, a dialer, and CRM sync in one platform, with 240M+ contacts and a 4.7/5 rating across nearly 10,000 reviews. The free plan is genuinely useful, but annual-only billing and yearly credit limits mean you should estimate usage first. Overall, it's a strong pick for teams consolidating their sales stack.
Lusha pairs a large verified contact database with named, dated buying signals and deep integrations across Salesforce, HubSpot, Sheets, and AI assistants via MCP. Accuracy looks strong on paper but varies by segment, and phone reveals burn credits five times faster than emails. Overall, it's a solid pick for teams that already run a connected sales stack and check data quality on the free tier first.
Apollo.io is an AI sales platform that combines prospecting data, outreach automation, inbound lead conversion, enrichment, and deal management. Its database spans 240M+ contacts and 30M+ companies. The site targets sales leaders, account executives, SDRs, RevOps, marketers, and founders. You can sign up free without a credit card, and a Chrome extension lets you prospect from other tools.
Lusha is a B2B data and intelligence platform for go-to-market teams. It provides verified contact and company records — 290M+ contacts across 29M+ companies, with 77 verified fields — plus buying signals such as funding events, hiring surges, and leadership changes. Sales, ops, and recruiting teams use it to find decision makers, enrich leads automatically, and feed the same data into CRMs, workflow tools, or AI assistants like Claude and ChatGPT.
List prices from each vendor's pricing page, before taxes and add-ons. Costs are per month.
| Pricing compared | Apollo.io | Lusha |
|---|---|---|
| From (cheapest paid plan) | $49/mo Basic · per user | $37.45/mo Starter |
| Free plan | Yes 25 record selection limit; 5,000 AI writing words/month; 1 mailbox per user; 250 daily email sends; CRM enrichment limited to 100 records/month; 1 meeting event; 1 intent topic | Yes 40 credits per month; 1 seat included; no credit card required |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| Money-back guarantee | Not stated | Not stated |
| Annual billing savings | — | — |
| Pricing model | Per user | Flat price |
| Cost for 1 user | Free Free plan, billed annually | Free Free plan, billed annually |
| Cost for 5 users | $245/mo Basic plan, billed monthly | $52.45/mo Pro plan, billed annually · price per account (user limit not stated) |
| Cost for 10 users | $490/mo Basic plan, billed monthly | $52.45/mo Pro plan, billed annually · price per account (user limit not stated) |
| Cost for 25 users | $1,225/mo Basic plan, billed monthly | $52.45/mo Pro plan, billed annually · price per account (user limit not stated) |
| Plans | 4 | 5 |
| Prices checked | Vendor page checked Oct 13, 2026 | Checked Oct 13, 2026 |
| Price history | Tracking prices since Sep 30, 2026. No price change detected yet. | Tracking prices since Sep 30, 2026. No price change detected yet. |
For 1 user (billed annually), Apollo.io and Lusha both cost $0/mo.
Computed from published list prices on the dates shown. Excludes taxes, add-ons and promotions.
Apollo.io provides a full multichannel sequence builder for managing emails and calls directly within the platform. Lusha focuses on data accuracy and CRM syncing rather than offering a full native outreach management system.
Lusha explicitly claims 98% email deliverability and 85% phone accuracy for its 280M+ contacts. Apollo.io users frequently report that many 'verified' emails bounce or are unreliable in the system.
Lusha’s primary feature is delivering daily streams of real-time leads and intent signals to users. While Apollo.io is data-rich, it does not prioritize intent signals like Lusha does for outreach timing.
Yes, external user reviews for both Apollo.io and Lusha cite serious concerns regarding data scraping and privacy practices. Users should proceed cautiously and review their company compliance needs.
Apollo.io explicitly caters Custom plans to Fortune 500 companies with complex needs. These plans include tailored security, sophisticated governance features, and API access. Lusha offers customizable Scale plans for enterprise.