Prospeo vs Apollo (2026): Which Is Better for B2B Prospecting?

Prospeo and Apollo both sell B2B contact data. They're built for different jobs.

Prospeo is a B2B contact-data tool: you search its database, reveal emails and mobile numbers, then send from another tool. Apollo (Apollo.io) is a sales platform that bundles a contact database, email sequences, a dialer and AI agents in one login.

So Prospeo vs Apollo (or Apollo vs Prospeo, depending on which one you already use) comes down to two questions. Whose data bounces less? And do you want one platform, or a data source that plugs into the stack you already have?

This guide covers price, integrations, data accuracy, compliance and which tool fits which team. Most of it is about data, because that's where the claims get messy.

Disclosure: I'm the co-founder of FullEnrich, which competes with both. It shows up once, near the end, as an alternative.

Key Takeaways

• Prospeo sells contact data and nothing else. Apollo sells the whole outbound workflow: data, sequences, dialer and AI agents.
• Prospeo is cheaper per user: $37 vs $49 a month billed yearly (October 2026). Apollo's price includes outreach tools Prospeo users buy elsewhere.
• Both claim 98% email accuracy. Published tests lean toward Prospeo on bounce rate, but each was run by someone with a stake, and none used one shared list.
• Catch-all emails are the weak spot for both. Re-verify before you send, whichever you pick.
• Apollo says it's ISO 27001 and SOC 2 certified. Prospeo's trust center lists GDPR but no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification.
• Coverage depends on your segment. Test 100 of your own contacts in both tools before you commit.

Prospeo vs Apollo at a glance

Prospeo is the better pick if you only need contact data and already send from another tool. Apollo is the better pick if you want search, sequences and calls in one place.

What's the main difference between Prospeo and Apollo?

Prospeo sells the data. Apollo sells the outbound workflow around the data.

Prospeo has no sequences and no dialer. You build a list, reveal emails and mobiles, then push them to your CRM or to a sender like lemlist or Outreach. It does one job.

If you remember Prospeo as a LinkedIn email finder, that's the old version. Since its V2 relaunch in early 2026, it's a searchable database of leads and companies. Prospeo says the data is refreshed weekly.

Apollo does a lot more. It has multichannel sequences across email, phone and social. It has a built-in dialer, while power and parallel dialing come with a paid Advanced Dialer add-on. Calls on the US dialer use credits, 1 per 30 seconds. Apollo also pitches AI agents that "will research, build lists, write outreach, follow up, and book meetings." For the full tour, here's what Apollo is and how it works.

Apollo's homepage now pitches it as "one connected GTM system," with agents that work inside Claude and ChatGPT.

Prospeo's homepage leads with "Find leads that respond" and its 280M verified leads and companies.

With Prospeo, you pay less and assemble your own stack. With Apollo, you pay for a platform and work inside it.

How much do Prospeo and Apollo cost?

Prospeo is cheaper per user: $37 vs $49 a month on the entry plans billed yearly, as of October 2026. Apollo's plans include sequences and a basic dialer, while power and parallel dialing cost extra. Prospeo users pay for sending in a separate tool.

The entry gap is $12 per seat a month. Per credit, the gap is smaller at entry level and wider at the top. On yearly plans, Prospeo runs from about 1.8 cents a credit on Starter down to 1.25 cents on Pro. Apollo stays near 2 cents on every paid plan.

Credit rules, in short:

• Emails: 1 credit on both. Prospeo charges only "when a valid result is returned." Apollo charges only for emails it can verify.
• Mobile numbers: 10 credits on Prospeo, 8 on Apollo.
• Apollo's waterfall: each third-party source that returns data charges credits, and a connected validator charges separately.
• Rollover: Apollo credits don't roll over. Prospeo's pricing page has shown two versions (one says unused credits roll over, one says they don't), while its help center says they expire at the end of each billing cycle. Get the answer in writing before you pay for a year.

Many comparison pages and AI answers still quote Prospeo's 2025 grid ($39 Starter, 75 free credits). Those prices were replaced by the per-user plans above. For plan-by-plan detail, see Prospeo's pricing breakdown and Apollo's pricing breakdown.

How do Prospeo and Apollo integrate with your CRM and tools?

Prospeo connects natively to HubSpot and Salesforce only from its Growth plan. Apollo says it integrates with 200+ tools.

On Prospeo, every paid plan connects to Clay, Zapier, Outreach, lemlist and CSV export. HubSpot and Salesforce sync, CRM enrichment and job change tracking start at Growth. API rate limits rise with the plan: Free has no Enrich API access, and Pro gets the highest limits. There's also an MCP server for AI agents. Prospeo says its Chrome extension exports leads to CRMs like HubSpot, Pipedrive or Salesforce and pushes contacts to outreach tools and sequences.

On Apollo, API rate limits apply to the whole team, so every user draws from one shared limit. There's an Apollo MCP server and a Chrome extension that Apollo says gets "verified emails and phone numbers."

What you'll still need with each:

• With Prospeo: a sender. Prospeo finds the contact; something else sends the email.
• With Apollo: an independent email verifier before big sends, which G2 reviewers recommend. The data section below explains why.

Prospeo vs Apollo: which has better data?

Published tests usually give Prospeo lower bounce rates: in the closest head-to-head, an affiliate review measured 96.8% deliverability for Prospeo vs 89.4% for Apollo. But both vendors claim 98% accuracy, and none of the public tests used one shared list.

What does each vendor claim?

Both say 98% email accuracy. Neither publishes the list or method behind the number.

Prospeo says it runs a 5-step validation that includes catch-all handling, spam-trap removal and honeypot filtering. It says it holds 143M verified email addresses and refreshes data weekly.

Apollo says it runs seven-step email verification with a 98% accuracy rate. On Apollo's B2B data page, it says a 2M+ contributor network keeps the data fresh "every day through inbox connections, CRM syncs, and real-world engagement signals." Records update when someone changes jobs or gets a new email. Apollo doesn't publish a refresh cadence.

Prospeo's comparison page puts Apollo's refresh at about 4-6 weeks. It's Prospeo's estimate of a competitor.

What do the tests actually show?

The public tests lean Prospeo. Each one also comes from someone with a stake in the result.

The closest thing to a head-to-head is the smartreviewinfo.com test. The author pulled 2,500 contacts from Sales Navigator using Prospeo, built a matching 2,500-contact sample in Apollo's database finder, then ran live campaigns. Prospeo hit 96.8% deliverability with a hard bounce rate under 1.8%. Apollo hit 89.4%, with hard bounces around 6.5%. The post contains affiliate links and doesn't name the verifier used.

Evaboot's comparison from August 2026 gives "typical" bounce rates: 8-12% for Apollo, 5-8% for Prospeo. It doesn't publish the list behind them. Evaboot sells a Sales Navigator exporter.

In a January 2026 YouTube comparison of Prospeo and Apollo, Romain Osman sourced 10,000 leads with Prospeo. After Debounce and a catch-all check, he had more than 8,800 verified emails. For Apollo, he says he "typically" gets about half, roughly 4,500. That's his usual experience, not the same list. His video description carries affiliate links, Prospeo's among them.

Prospeo's own comparison page puts Apollo's bounce rate at 32-38%. It cites an unnamed user test of 500-1,000 leads and doesn't describe a test of its own.

Grouped by who published them, Apollo's reported bounce rate runs from 6.5% to 38%.

Apollo has its defenders. One G2 reviewer writes that Apollo's "US data is generally pretty solid", then adds that "you really do need to double-check details to keep bounce rates down." In a September 2026 r/salestechniques thread, one reply is blunt: "Apollo has been extremely accurate for us."

Prospeo gets complaints too. A 1.5-star G2 reviewer says "some email results are outdated or inaccurate in large exports."

None of these is a neutral test on one list. The direction leans Prospeo, mostly on bounce rate. Treat it as a signal, then test your own list.

Why do catch-all emails decide your bounce rate?

Catch-all emails are where both tools are weakest. A catch-all domain accepts mail for any address, so a verifier can't confirm the inbox exists.

Prospeo's 5-step process includes catch-all detection, and its email verification guide says good verifiers flag these domains as "catch-all" or "risky" rather than marking them valid. That's honest labelling. You still have to decide whether to send.

On Apollo, one Reddit poster reports catch-alls showing up as "likely valid." The original poster in that r/salestechniques thread called it "basically useless."

In a 2025 r/LeadGeneration thread about pairing Prospeo with Clay, one reply summed it up: "Neither verifies catchalls."

To check on your own data:

1. Pick 100 contacts from your real ICP.
2. Run them through both free tiers. Prospeo's free plan gives 100 credits a month. Apollo's gives 900 credits a year, released as 75 a month, so spread the test over two months on Apollo.
3. Push every returned email through one independent verifier.
4. Compare found, valid and catch-all counts side by side.

Which finds more mobile numbers?

No public mobile test uses one shared list either, so this one stays open. Prospeo says it has 125M verified mobile numbers and a 30% pick-up rate on mobiles. Those are vendor claims with no published method.

Cost differs too. A mobile number costs 10 credits on Prospeo and 8 on Apollo.

One Reddit user who switched from Apollo to Prospeo says they "Called 50 prospects last week and 15 picked up." Treat it as one user's anecdote.

On Apollo's side, an incentivized G2 reviewer flags "inconsistent data quality", especially "for direct dials and international contacts." The same reviewer dislikes a credit system "that gets used up quickly and doesn't roll over."

If calls drive your pipeline, test mobiles on your own list too. Connect rate is the number that matters, not the count of numbers returned.

How big are the Apollo.io and Prospeo databases, and which covers your market?

Apollo.io says its database holds 240M+ contacts and 30M+ companies. Prospeo's homepage says 280M leads and companies. Prospeo's number mixes people and companies, so the two don't compare directly.

Filters differ more than size. Apollo has 65+ filters, including job changes, funding rounds and third-party intent data from Bombora. Prospeo offers up to 41 filters on its Pro plan, including 12 intent topics.

Total size tells you little anyway. What matters is how many of your buyers are in each database. QuickEnrich, a competing data vendor, counted US contacts with verified emails by job title in both.

Apollo came out ahead for founders (257K vs 208K, 24% more), presidents (1M vs 907K) and VPs (745K vs 675K). Prospeo came out ahead for marketing roles (517K vs 361K, 43% more), managers (4M vs 3.4M) and directors (2M vs 1.8M). These are database counts from a competitor, not deliverability results.

Neither database leads across every title.

If you sell to founders, Apollo may cover more of your list. If you sell to marketing teams, Prospeo may. Check your own titles before you trust either headline number.

Are Prospeo and Apollo GDPR compliant?

Both say they're GDPR compliant. Apollo also says it's ISO 27001 and SOC 2 certified, while Prospeo's trust center lists GDPR but no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification (October 2026).

Apollo's security page says it's "ISO 27001 and SOC 2 certified" and GDPR compliant "as both a Data Processor and Data Controller." It offers its SOC 2 report through its sales team.

Prospeo's GDPR page says it processes only professional B2B data and applies lawful bases for processing. It supports access, rectification, erasure and objection requests, and signs DPAs with customers when required. Anyone can request removal through its opt-out page. Prospeo says its database is compiled "from public web sources, licensed partners, and first-party contributions." Its DPA says that where it holds attestations such as SOC 2 Type II or ISO 27001, it may share reports under NDA.

What this means in practice:

• Security review: if your IT team sends a vendor questionnaire, Apollo has certifications to point to. With Prospeo, ask for the DPA early and ask what security documents it can share.
• EU outreach: vendor compliance doesn't make your outreach compliant. You still need your own lawful basis, a working opt-out and a way to handle erasure requests.

Prospeo vs Apollo: which should you choose?

Choose Prospeo if you need data and nothing else. Choose Apollo if you want one tool for search, sequences and calls.

Choose Prospeo if:

• You already send from lemlist, Outreach or another sequencer.
• Bounce rate is your biggest worry, and you'll still check catch-alls.
• Your buyers skew toward marketing, manager or director titles.
• You want the lowest price per user and per credit.

Choose Apollo if:

• You don't have a sending tool yet and want one login.
• Your security review asks for SOC 2 or ISO 27001.
• Your buyers skew toward founders, presidents or VPs.
• You want 65+ filters and Bombora intent data.

Each falls short somewhere. Prospeo has no outreach, CRM sync starts at Growth, and its rollover answer depends on which page you read. Apollo's credits don't roll over and calls cost credits, and one Reddit poster says it marks catch-alls "likely valid."

If I were picking for a 3-person SDR team that already sends from lemlist, I'd start with Prospeo and keep a verifier in the loop. If the same team had no tooling at all, I'd start with Apollo and accept the higher price for one login.

If neither feels right, look at these Prospeo alternatives or these Apollo alternatives.

Is there an alternative to Prospeo and Apollo?

Yes. If neither database covers your market well, a waterfall tool queries several databases instead of one. It asks one source, and if that source misses, it asks the next.

FullEnrich is one of these tools, and it's ours. It runs waterfall enrichment across 25+ sources. It charges only when data is found, so a lookup that returns nothing costs nothing. Users are unlimited with no per-seat fee. Unused credits roll over for 3 months on monthly plans and 12 months on yearly plans.

Here's where it loses:

• No sequences or dialer. Same as Prospeo, you still need a sender.
• Price per credit. For a single user, Prospeo is cheaper per credit: about 1.8 cents on Starter billed yearly, against 5.2 cents on FullEnrich's entry plan billed yearly.

A waterfall pays off when one database keeps missing your segment. It doesn't pay off when you just need the cheapest credit.

Apollo also runs its own waterfall on paid plans, with 20+ data partners. Its help center says "each source that returns data charges credits", and a connected validator charges separately. On hard-to-find contacts, that can stack up.

To compare all three, take the same 100 contacts you'd test in Prospeo and Apollo. Run 50 of them through a FullEnrich free trial, which comes with 50 credits and no card. Then compare what each tool found.

Frequently asked questions

Is Prospeo more accurate than Apollo?

Published tests lean Prospeo on bounce rate. But every test was run by someone with a stake, like an affiliate, a competitor or Prospeo itself. Both vendors claim 98%. Test both on your own contacts before you decide.

Is Apollo's data good enough for cold email?

Often, yes, if you verify first. One G2 reviewer calls Apollo's US data generally solid but says you need to double-check before sending. Catch-alls are a risk: one Reddit poster reports them showing as "likely valid."

How big is Apollo's database compared to Prospeo's?

Apollo says it has 240M+ contacts and 30M+ companies. Prospeo says 280M leads and companies, a number that mixes people and companies. By job title, neither leads everywhere.

Does Prospeo work with LinkedIn Sales Navigator?

Prospeo's extension page doesn't advertise a Sales Navigator bulk export. A customer testimonial on that page says the extension "works everywhere, professional networks, websites, CRMs." Evaboot says neither Prospeo nor Apollo integrates natively with Sales Navigator. Try the extension on your own searches before you rely on it.

Do Apollo or Prospeo credits roll over?

Apollo's credits don't roll over; they expire at the end of each billing cycle. Prospeo's pricing page has shown both answers in October 2026 (rollover and no rollover), and its help center says unused credits expire. Get the answer in writing before you pay for a year.