B2B Data Providers 2026: 11 Compared by Type and Price

The top B2B data providers in 2026 are ZoomInfo and Apollo.io for contact data at scale, Cognism for phone-verified European data, Clearbit (now HubSpot Breeze Intelligence) for company data inside HubSpot, 6sense and Bombora for intent data, and People Data Labs for data by API. Cleanlist (our product) and Clay sit on top of many providers through waterfall enrichment. Published entry prices run from Apollo's $49 per user a month and Cleanlist's $79 a month to no published price at all for ZoomInfo, Cognism, 6sense and Bombora. Vendr puts ZoomInfo's median contract at $33,500 a year. Prices checked October 1, 2026.

This guide groups the 11 providers by the kind of data they sell, because a contact database, an intent feed and an enrichment API answer different questions. Pick the type first, then the vendor.

What is a B2B data provider?

A B2B data provider is a company that collects, verifies and sells information about businesses and the people who work at them, so sales and marketing teams can find and reach buyers. B2B data providers sell four kinds of data. Contact data is work emails, direct dials and mobile numbers for named people. Firmographic data describes the company: industry, headcount, revenue band, location and funding. Intent data flags accounts researching a topic right now. Data-as-a-service APIs return raw person and company records for engineering teams to build on. Some providers sell one type, and the largest, like ZoomInfo, sell all four under one contract. For the wider definition, see the B2B data providers glossary entry.

Who are the top B2B data providers in 2026?

The table lists each provider's type, entry price and the one job it does best. Prices are read from each vendor's own pricing page on October 1, 2026 unless the row names another date or source.

Three things stand out. Five of the eleven publish no price, so a sales call is the only way to learn what they cost. Per-user pricing (Apollo) grows with headcount even when usage is flat, while workspace pricing (Cleanlist, Clay) and record pricing (People Data Labs) does not. And the cheapest entry price rarely means the cheapest usable record, which is the next question.

How much does B2B data cost?

B2B data costs from a few cents to a few dollars per usable record, depending on how the provider meters. On published prices checked October 1, 2026: Cleanlist Pro is $229 a month for 5,000 credits, about 4.6 cents per verified work email at 1 credit each and about 46 cents per direct dial at 10 credits, and a miss costs nothing. Apollo Basic grants 30,000 credits a year per user for $588, about 2 cents an email credit, and a phone number costs 8 credits. UpLead Essentials works out to about 58 cents per contact on monthly billing. People Data Labs Self-Serve is 28 cents per person record at its entry allowance (September 1, 2026). At the top end, Vendr records a $33,500 median ZoomInfo contract across 1,574 purchases. The number to compare is cost per record that verifies, at your real volume and headcount.

Contact data providers for outbound

These providers sell named people with work emails and phone numbers from their own database. They are what most teams mean by "B2B data provider".

1. Apollo.io: best for startups that want data and sending together

Type: contact database with built-in sequencing and a dialer on higher plans. Price: free plan with 900 credits a year. Basic $49, Professional $79 and Organization $119 per user a month on annual billing, Organization with a three-user minimum (apollo.io, October 1, 2026). Monthly billing is offered on Basic and Professional.

Apollo.io is the default first purchase for startups because one seat covers search, enrichment and email sequences, and the free plan is usable. The trade-off is per-user pricing and single-database coverage. In Cleanlist's 1,000-lead March 2026 test of two tools, Apollo matched 78% of emails against ZoomInfo's 84%. The head-to-head is in Apollo vs ZoomInfo.

2. ZoomInfo: best for enterprise teams that use the whole platform

Type: contact and company database with intent signals, org charts, a dialer and conversation intelligence. Price: no published price. ZoomInfo's pricing page returned HTTP 403 on October 1, 2026. Vendr reports a median of $33,500 a year across 1,574 recorded purchases, ranging from $7,220 to $155,730 (Vendr ZoomInfo buyer guide, updated February 2026). Contracts are annual.

ZoomInfo is the broadest single platform in the category and the strongest fit for an enterprise team that will use contact data, intent and org charts together. It is hard to justify when the team mostly uses the search box. If you are pricing a renewal, the ZoomInfo competitors by segment page maps who competes with each part of the platform, and the ZoomInfo pricing guide covers the seat math.

3. Cognism: best for EMEA outbound under GDPR

Type: contact database built around phone-verified mobile numbers (Diamond Data). Price: no published price. Standard and Pro each include 5 seats, and there is no free tier (cognism.com, October 1, 2026).

Cognism is the usual pick for teams selling into the UK and Europe, where its human-verified mobiles, GDPR-focused sourcing and do-not-call screening matter more than raw database size. It also offers Bombora intent data. North American teams have more self-serve options at published prices. See Cognism alternatives if you are weighing it against US-first tools.

4. UpLead: best for small teams on monthly billing

Type: contact database with real-time email verification at export. Price: 7-day trial with 5 credits. Essentials $99 a month for 170 credits ($74 a month on annual billing), Plus $199 for 400 credits ($149 annual), Professional custom and annual only (uplead.com, October 1, 2026).

UpLead is a self-serve database where one credit returns both email and mobile for a contact, and UpLead publishes its own 95% data accuracy guarantee. The low monthly credit count makes it a fit for targeted lists more than bulk enrichment.

5. RocketReach: best for occasional lookups and recruiting

Type: contact lookup tool over a large profile index. Price: Essentials (email only) $329 a year, about $27 a month, with 1,200 exports a year. A free account gets 5 lookups, and team plans start at $6,000 a year (rocketreach.co, September 1, 2026; the page did not serve prices on October 1).

RocketReach suits a recruiter or seller who needs one contact at a time. Essentials covers email only, and the annual export cap limits bulk work.

Multi-provider (waterfall) enrichment

These tools query several providers per record and keep the first verified result. Coverage depends on how many providers sit in the chain and who maintains it.

6. Cleanlist: best for verified emails and direct dials from one waterfall

Cleanlist is a fit when the bottleneck is data quality: one clean list a week with email and direct dial on the same row, written into HubSpot, Salesforce or Pipedrive on Pro and Scale. Cleanlist does not sell intent data or technographics, has no built-in sequencer today, and assembles records from provider partners on demand, with no owned database. Plans are on the pricing page. The benchmark method is in the 500-lead enrichment benchmark.

7. Clay: best for GTM engineers building their own waterfall

Type: spreadsheet-style workflow builder that calls many data providers and AI research steps per row. Price: free plan with 500 actions and 100 data credits a month. Launch $185 a month ($167 on annual billing), Growth $495 ($446 annual), Enterprise custom. Unlimited seats on every plan (clay.com, read September 7 and October 1, 2026).

Clay gives a technical team full control over which providers run, in what order, and what happens to each row afterwards. That control costs setup time and a person to maintain the workflows, and Clay meters actions and data credits separately. For how managed and DIY waterfalls compare, see the best waterfall enrichment tools.

Firmographic and company data providers

Firmographic providers describe companies: industry, headcount, revenue band, location, funding and corporate structure. ZoomInfo sells this alongside its contacts. Dun & Bradstreet (Hoovers) is the long-standing source for company records and corporate family trees, and Crunchbase covers startups, funding rounds and acquisitions. We did not verify a price for either for this update.

8. Clearbit (HubSpot Breeze Intelligence): best for HubSpot teams

Type: company and contact enrichment inside HubSpot. Price: no standalone price. Clearbit is part of HubSpot, and the capability ships as Breeze Intelligence credits inside a HubSpot account. HubSpot publishes a credit overage rate of $0.010 per credit, and no pack price (clearbit.com and HubSpot billing documentation, September 1, 2026).

Breeze Intelligence is the low-effort option for a team already on HubSpot: firmographic fields fill in on CRM records and forms without a separate tool. Teams on another CRM get little from it. The Clearbit alternatives page covers the options outside HubSpot.

Intent data providers

Intent providers tell you which accounts are researching a topic now. They name companies, rarely people, so they pair with a contact data provider.

9. 6sense: best for enterprise account-based marketing

Type: intent and ABM platform with predictive account scoring. Price: no published price. The pricing page lists three Sales Intelligence editions and asks for a demo (6sense.com, October 1, 2026).

6sense identifies accounts in a buying cycle, scores their stage and orchestrates campaigns against them. It fits enterprise marketing and sales teams with RevOps capacity to implement it.

10. Bombora: best for feeding intent topics into an existing stack

Type: topic-level intent data from a data co-op of B2B publishers. Price: no published price (bombora.com/pricing, October 1, 2026).

Bombora's Company Surge data flags accounts reading more than usual about a topic. Several platforms, Cognism among them, license it, so many teams buy Bombora intent through a tool they already own.

Data-as-a-service APIs

API providers return raw person and company records for engineering teams to build into products, scoring models or internal tools.

11. People Data Labs: best for engineering teams building on data

Type: person and company data API with bulk licensing. Price: free Testing tier up to 100 records a month with emails, phones and addresses hidden. Self-Serve $98 a month from 350 person records, or $940 a year. Bulk Data custom and annual only (peopledatalabs.com, September 1, 2026).

People Data Labs bills by the record with no seats, which suits a data pipeline with no user to count. The per-record price falls with volume. Details are in the People Data Labs pricing guide, and API options across vendors are in the best B2B data enrichment APIs.

Providers inside the Cleanlist waterfall. Lusha (contact data with a Chrome extension), Hunter (email finding and verification) and Crustdata (company and people data API) are B2B data providers in their own right, and each supplies data to the Cleanlist waterfall. They are credited here and left out of the numbered list, and Cleanlist is not scored against them.

Which B2B data provider fits your team?

• Solo founder or seed-stage startup: Apollo.io. The free plan and the $49 Basic seat cover data and sequencing.
• 5 to 50 rep outbound team that needs verified emails and direct dials, monthly: Cleanlist, paired with the sequencer you already run.
• Selling into the UK and Europe: Cognism, for phone-verified mobiles and GDPR-focused sourcing.
• Enterprise team that will use data, intent and org charts together: ZoomInfo.
• RevOps on HubSpot that wants company fields filled automatically: Clearbit (Breeze Intelligence).
• GTM engineers who want to own the provider chain: Clay.
• Product or data team building on an API: People Data Labs.
• Enterprise ABM: 6sense. If you only need intent topics in your current tools, Bombora.
• Small team that wants a classic database on monthly billing: UpLead.
• Recruiters and occasional lookups: RocketReach.

For the sales-platform view of the same market, including engagement and conversation tools, see the best sales intelligence platforms.

How is B2B contact data sourced and verified?

B2B contact data comes from four sources, and most large providers blend them. Web collection reads public company sites, press and professional profiles. Contributory networks collect contacts from users who share address books or email signatures in exchange for free access. Licensing deals buy records from registries, directories and other providers. Human research teams call numbers to confirm them, which is how Cognism verifies its Diamond Data mobiles. Verification is a separate step: an email is checked against the receiving mail server (SMTP), with catch-all domains flagged because they accept any address, and a phone number is checked for line type and ownership. Ask any provider which of these it runs on every record, and when.

How should you weigh mobile coverage against price?

Weigh mobile coverage by how much of your pipeline starts with a phone call. If reps dial more than they email, a provider with strong direct-dial coverage is worth a higher price, because a missing number costs a conversation. If outbound is email-first, pay for verified email and buy phone numbers only for the accounts that reply or match your ICP best. Compare cost per connected number. A cheap phone credit that returns a switchboard ends up the expensive one. Cleanlist charges 10 credits per direct dial and nothing for a miss. Apollo charges 8 credits per phone number. UpLead bundles email and mobile into one credit.

What should you ask a B2B data provider before you sign?

1. What is your match rate on my list? Ask for a test on 100 to 500 of your own records.
2. How do you verify email and phone? SMTP checks on every export, catch-all handling, and how phones are confirmed.
3. How fresh is the record? Ask when each field was last verified.
4. What does a usable record cost at my volume? Make the vendor compute it with your headcount and monthly volume.
5. What happens at renewal? Price increases, notice windows and whether unused credits roll over.

See pricing

Frequently asked questions

Which B2B data provider has the most accurate data?

No independent test covers every provider, so treat each vendor's accuracy figure as its own claim. In Cleanlist's 1,000-lead March 2026 test of two tools, ZoomInfo matched 84% of emails and Apollo 78%. Cleanlist returned 98% verified work email and 85% direct dial on the Cleanlist 500-Lead Enrichment Benchmark, our own test on a 500-lead sample. UpLead publishes a 95% accuracy guarantee. Run the same 50 to 100 of your own contacts through your top two or three choices and compare bounce rates.

Are B2B data providers GDPR compliant?

Compliance depends on how each provider sources data and what contract it signs with you. Cognism builds its product around GDPR-focused sourcing and do-not-call screening. Most providers, Cleanlist included, publish a data processing agreement; Cleanlist's is at /dpa. Ask every vendor for its DPA, its lawful basis for processing, and how it handles opt-out requests before you buy.

Should I use more than one B2B data provider?

Yes, if coverage matters more than simplicity. Each provider has gaps by region, seniority and industry, and a second source fills some of them. You can stitch providers yourself, build the chain in Clay, or use a managed waterfall like Cleanlist, which runs 25+ providers in sequence and stops at the first verified result.

Can I get B2B data for free?

In small amounts. Apollo.io gives 900 credits a year, Clay 100 data credits a month, and People Data Labs 100 records a month with contact fields hidden. Cleanlist opens every new workspace on a 14-day Scale trial with 250 credits and 3 seats, then keeps a Free plan at 30 credits a month. Free tiers are enough to test accuracy on your own list before you buy.

What to do next

List the five fields you need most, usually email, direct dial, title, headcount and industry. Run the same 100 of your own records through your top three providers. Then price each at your 12-month volume and headcount, with renewal terms included. If Cleanlist is on your list, a new workspace runs 14 days on Scale with 250 credits and three seats, which covers that 100-record test.