Apollo Review: Per Seat, Per Credit, and a Banner That Overstates
Apollo is a contact database that sequences, priced per seat with a credit allowance inside each one. Its annual banner promises 24% off; that is true of one plan out of three.
Apollo is the odd one out among the tools on this site. The others are sending platforms that acquired some data; Apollo is a B2B contact database that acquired a sequencer. That shows in the pricing, which reads like a sales platform's: per seat, with a pot of lookup credits inside each seat, and a three-seat minimum on the top plan.
It is also the only one of the five that publishes a straight answer to the question every credit-based vendor dodges. An email costs one credit. A phone number costs eight. Both figures are printed on Apollo's own credits page, in those words.
What Apollo costs
The pricing page opens on the annual panel, under a banner reading "SAVE 24%". Read 24 September 2026 in a US-configured browser, both panels are:
| Plan | Annual panel | Monthly panel | Actual saving | Credits per seat |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0.00 | $0.00 | n/a | 900 a year, granted monthly |
| Basic | $49.00 | $65.00 | 24.6% | 30,000 a year, granted upfront |
| Professional | $79.00 | $99.00 | 20.2% | 48,000 a year |
| Organization | $119.00, min 3 seats | $149.00, marked "Annual Only" | 20.1% | 72,000 a year |
The banner is accurate for exactly one plan. Moving Basic from $65.00 to $49.00 saves 24.6%. The same move on Professional saves 20.2% and on Organization 20.1%. Budget Professional at the banner's 24% and you expect $75.24 a seat a month where you pay $79.00 — $45.12 a seat a year, or $225.60 across five seats.
There is also a small oddity worth noting: the monthly panel shows a $149.00 figure for Organization and simultaneously labels that plan "Annual Only". It is a price for something the same panel says cannot be bought that way.
One thing does reconcile cleanly, and it is the credits. The monthly panel's allowances of 2,500, 4,000 and 6,000 per seat per month multiply out to exactly the annual panel's 30,000, 48,000 and 72,000. The free plan's 75 a month becomes 900 a year. Four for four.
This button is tagged sponsored and nofollow. If a reader later pays them, this site is paid a share of it. Where that share sits in the order below is nowhere: the ranking is the pricing page and the rules, and both are printed above.
What one credit buys
Apollo's credits page states it without hedging. "Email = 1 credit… Apollo never charges more than 1 credit per contact." "Phone number = 8 credits. This includes mobile, direct, office extensions, and more — each verified number costs the same." And: "You're only charged credits for email addresses that Apollo can verify."
That last line is a meaningfully better policy than Snov.io's, which charges for an unverified address as well as a verified one. Set against it is Apollo's expiry rule, which is the harshest here: "Your credits expire at the end of each billing cycle. Credits do not roll over into the following billing cycle or upon renewal."
The eight-to-one ratio between phone numbers and emails is what makes a seat's allowance hard to read. Basic's 30,000 credits a year is 30,000 verified email addresses if you only ever take emails, or 3,750 phone numbers if you only ever take numbers — the same money, the same plan, and an eightfold difference in what arrives. At $588.00 per seat per year that is about two cents per address, or about sixteen cents per phone number.
Compare lemlist, where a phone number costs four times an email rather than eight, and where unused credits roll over without limit. The ratios are not portable between vendors, which is the argument of the finder comparison.
One more structural detail belongs with the per-seat framing: Organization carries a three-seat minimum, so its published $119.00 is really $357.00 a month as an entry ticket, or $4,284.00 a year. That is the only seat minimum among the five platforms on this site, and it puts the top plan out of reach of exactly the small teams the rest of the category is built for.
The free plan is real, and small
Apollo's free plan is $0.00 and includes 900 credits per seat per year, granted monthly — so 75 a month. It also includes two sequences, basic filters, a limit of five AI assistant chats, and identification of 20 website-visiting companies a month.
Two sequences is the part that limits it as a sending tool, and it is the reason Apollo rarely ends up being someone's only subscription. Most teams that buy it pair it with something metered for sending, which is the shape the platform comparison is built around.
Seventy-five credits a month is seventy-five email addresses, or about nine phone numbers. That is an evaluation allowance rather than a working one, which is the honest thing to say about most free tiers in this category — the subject of the free tiers page.
What a seat actually gets you
Basic includes unlimited sequences, the deliverability suite with email warm-up, advanced filters, CRM integrations, waterfall enrichment, CSV, CRM and API enrichment, domain and mailbox purchasing, six intent topics, and a US dialler that consumes credits separately. Professional adds unlimited meeting events, unlimited Gmail and Microsoft mailboxes, automated workflows, call recordings with AI insights up to 4,000 minutes, and analytics.
The line that matters most for outbound sits on Professional rather than Basic: unlimited Gmail and Microsoft mailboxes. Every other platform in the comparison gives that away on its cheapest plan, so a team buying Apollo primarily to send is paying $79.00 per seat per month for something included at $35.00 elsewhere. A team buying it primarily for the database is paying for the database and getting a sequencer.
That is the honest way to place Apollo. It is not competing with Woodpecker or Instantly on sending cost and will lose that comparison every time. It is competing with the standalone data providers, and against those its per-address economics are strong — about two cents an address on Basic's annual allowance, provided the allowance is consumed before it expires.
The part that is not about price
Apollo's database is its product, and a database of business contacts is a database of personal data about real people. Apollo's filters will tell you who matches a job title; they will not tell you whether you have a lawful basis to write to any of them, and the answer differs depending on where the recipient sits and what kind of business they are.
That is not an Apollo-specific caveat and it is not a reason to avoid the tool. It is the reason the rules page exists on this site, and the reason the transparency deadline described in the enrichment guide matters more to Apollo's users than to anyone else's.
Questions about Apollo's pricing
How much does Apollo cost per user?
On the annual panel, $49.00 per seat per month for Basic, $79.00 for Professional and $119.00 for Organization with a three-seat minimum. Billed monthly those become $65.00, $99.00 and $149.00. Read 24 September 2026.
Is Apollo's annual billing really 24% cheaper?
On Basic, yes — $65.00 to $49.00 is 24.6%. On Professional it is 20.2% and on Organization 20.1%, both computed from Apollo's own two panels. The banner sits above all three plans.
What does one Apollo credit get you?
One email address, or one eighth of a phone number: its credits page says "Email = 1 credit" and "Phone number = 8 credits". You are only charged for an address Apollo can verify.
Do Apollo credits roll over?
No. Its own page says "Your credits expire at the end of each billing cycle. Credits do not roll over into the following billing cycle or upon renewal." On an annual plan the whole year unlocks at the start and whatever is unused at the end is lost.
Is Apollo's free plan useful?
For evaluating it. 900 credits per seat per year, granted 75 a month, is about 75 email addresses or 9 phone numbers a month, plus two sequences. It is enough to see whether the data covers your market.