Apollo.io vs Ocean.io
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Editorial assessmentOcean.io compared with Apollo.io
Volume against precision. Apollo is a large contact database with a sequencer attached, priced for filling pipelines with people. Ocean.io is a segmentation engine that finds companies resembling your best accounts and sizes that market. If you need many contacts cheaply, Apollo. If you need to know which companies are worth contacting at all, Ocean.io, and many teams use it to define the segment that Apollo then populates.
Choose Apollo.io if
Startups and SMB sales teams that want the largest self-serve contact database and outreach execution in one affordable product.
Choose Ocean.io if
B2B teams that need to define and size an addressable market from their own best customers rather than from industry codes, and that want a ranked, filterable account segment they can enrich and push into a CRM without buying an enterprise data contract.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Apollo.io | Ocean.io |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Data | Segmentation |
| Starting price | Free plan; paid from $49/user/mo (free plan available) | About $79 per month billed annually |
| Pricing model | Freemium with per-user monthly tiers; credits meter email reveals (generous) and phone/export credits (tighter). Self-serve through Organization tier; custom above. | Credit-based subscription with a slider, where volume and billing term set the per-credit rate. Different actions consume different credit amounts, and overages are billed per credit beyond the plan allowance. |
| Free plan | Free forever: limited credits, 2 sequences, basic filters. | No |
| Free trial | 14 days (of paid features) | No |
| Best for | Startups and SMB sales teams that want the largest self-serve contact database and outreach execution in one affordable product. | B2B teams that need to define and size an addressable market from their own best customers rather than from industry codes, and that want a ranked, filterable account segment they can enrich and push into a CRM without buying an enterprise data contract. |
| Setup time | Minutes to first list on free tier; a week to wire CRM enrichment rules and team sequences properly. | A lookalike search runs in minutes from a URL or a customer list, so the first segment exists the same day. CRM syncing and a repeatable process around it take longer, typically a week of configuration and agreement on definitions. |
| Learning curve | Low for prospecting; moderate for admin surface (credit policies, enrichment rules, plays). | Low to use, moderate to use well. Running a search is simple; the skill is choosing a seed list that represents genuinely good customers rather than merely large ones, and managing credit spend so that enrichment goes to the accounts worth pursuing rather than the whole segment. |
| Platforms | Web app, Chrome extension, iOS app, REST API | Web app, CRM integrations, Export to outbound tooling |
| Compliance | SOC 2 Type II, GDPR program, CCPA | Supplies B2B company and contact data, so lawful basis for processing contact records remains the customer's responsibility, European headquarters, which is relevant to GDPR posture for teams prospecting into the EU, Email verification is offered as a paid action, which supports list hygiene obligations before sending |
| Founded | 2015 | 2017 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, US | Copenhagen, Denmark, with an office in Minneapolis, United States |
| Ownership | Venture-backed (private) | Privately held, venture backed |
Strengths and limitations
Apollo.io
Strengths
- Unmatched self-serve coverage-per-dollar; the price floor of the entire category.
- Data + engagement in one product removes the export/import loop entirely.
- Free tier and transparent pricing make evaluation frictionless.
- Enrichment/dedupe layer quietly excellent for CRM hygiene.
Limitations
- Direct-dial accuracy trails phone specialists (Lusha, Cognism) in many segments.
- Engagement layer lacks enterprise governance, CI depth, and forecasting.
- Credit mechanics (phone/export) complicate the headline pricing.
- EU data compliance posture is workable but not the selling point Cognism makes it.
Ocean.io
Strengths
- Similarity computed from what companies actually do rather than from industry classification codes, which is the whole reason it finds segments conventional filters miss.
- Seeding from your own customer list turns an ideal customer profile into examples rather than a set of guessed rules.
- Segment sizing answers the market question, not only the list question, which supports planning decisions before budget is committed.
- A large company database, around 35 million profiles, as the population segments are drawn from.
Limitations
- Credit pricing is hard to forecast, and independent reviews report most customers exceeding their plan allowance.
- Phone number enrichment consumes credits at a much higher rate than other actions, which surprises buyers repeatedly.
- Contact data volume is expensive compared with dedicated B2B data providers, so it is the wrong tool for bulk list building.
- CRM integrations require the professional tier, so the effective entry price for operational use is closer to $299 than $79.
Pricing compared
Apollo.io
Freemium with per-user monthly tiers; credits meter email reveals (generous) and phone/export credits (tighter). Self-serve through Organization tier; custom above.
- Free$0
- Basic$49
- Professional$79
- Organization$119
Nothing matches Apollo's coverage-per-dollar; it reset the category's price floor and forced legacy vendors into defensive bundling. The honest caveats: dial accuracy trails specialists, and heavy exporters discover credits are the true price. As a first data stack or a waterfall's volume layer, it remains the obvious call.
Ocean.io
Credit-based subscription with a slider, where volume and billing term set the per-credit rate. Different actions consume different credit amounts, and overages are billed per credit beyond the plan allowance.
- StarterAbout $79
- ProfessionalAbout $299
- Pay as you goAbout $0.08
For its actual job, defining and sizing a market segment from examples, Ocean.io is well priced: $79 to $299 a month is a fraction of the enterprise account intelligence platforms like Keyplay and MadKudu that start in five figures a year. For the job people often mistake it for, bulk contact acquisition, it is poor value, because credits deplete fast and dedicated data providers deliver more records per dollar. Buy it to answer who the market is and how big; do not buy it to fill a sequencer with fifty thousand contacts.
Editorial verdict on each
Apollo.io
Category LeaderApollo is the gravitational center of self-serve B2B data: coverage that reset the market's price floor, fused to an engagement layer that genuinely eliminates the export loop for SMBs. Its honest weaknesses, dial accuracy, credit fine print, mid-depth engagement, haven't slowed the flywheel because nothing else offers this much stack per dollar. Start here; add specialists only where measurement says Apollo falls short.
Read the full Apollo.io profileOcean.io
Ocean.io is the B2B answer to the question this category asks, and it earns its place by attacking the weakest part of most targeting work: the assumption that industry codes describe what a company does. Seeding a search with your own best customers and getting back a ranked, sized segment is a fundamentally better method than filtering a database by a classification somebody assigned years ago, and at $79 to $299 a month it is self-serve priced against enterprise platforms that start in five figures. Two things to get right before buying. The seed list determines everything, so choose it for customer quality rather than customer size. And treat the credit model with respect, particularly phone enrichment, which is where budgets disappear. Use it to decide who the market is; use something cheaper to fill the list once you know.
Read the full Ocean.io profileApollo.io profile last reviewed 2026-09-02; Ocean.io last reviewed 2026-09-02. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.