ZoomInfo vs Apollo vs Clearbit: Data Provider Comparison 2026

ZoomInfo, Apollo, and Clearbit are the three names that dominate every "best B2B data tool" search. They've earned their reputation. But reputation isn't the same as results.

Here's the uncomfortable truth: all three tools share the same fundamental architecture — a single proprietary database. That means the same structural weaknesses. The same coverage gaps. The same data decay problem that costs your team bounced emails, wasted dials, and damaged sender reputation.

This comparison breaks down where each tool wins, where each falls short, and why the smartest teams in 2026 are moving to a fundamentally different approach.

Quick Comparison

One pattern stands out: three single-source databases — and one multi-source approach. That difference defines everything.

ZoomInfo: The Expensive Incumbent

ZoomInfo has been the default enterprise B2B data provider since its 2020 IPO. It built the largest proprietary contact database and wrapped it in engagement tools, intent data, and website visitor identification.

Where ZoomInfo wins

Database scale: 300M+ professional contacts and 100M+ company profiles. For US-based B2B prospecting, raw coverage is hard to beat.

Intent data: ZoomInfo's native intent signals identify companies actively researching your category. If timing matters more than accuracy, this is unique value.

Feature breadth: Sales engagement (Engage), conversation intelligence (Chorus), website visitor identification, and workflow automation. It's an entire GTM platform.

Enterprise readiness: SSO, role-based access, dedicated support, SLAs, compliance certifications. Procurement teams know ZoomInfo.

Where ZoomInfo falls short

Price tag: $15,000/year is the entry point. Most teams pay $25-40K+ with add-ons and seats. That prices out 80% of B2B companies — and even enterprise teams question the ROI when 15% of emails bounce.

Lock-in: Annual or multi-year contracts with auto-renewal. Exiting mid-contract requires legal intervention.

Accuracy ceiling: In testing, email deliverability averaged 85%. That means 15 out of every 100 emails bounce. At ZoomInfo's price point, each bounced email costs roughly $0.90 in wasted credits alone — before counting sender reputation damage.

Single-source limitation: One database, no matter how large, can't track every job change, every company acquisition, every disconnected number. B2B data decays at 30%+ per year. ZoomInfo refreshes continuously, but decay is structural — not a refresh problem.

ZoomInfo is best for

• Enterprise companies with $25K+/year GTM data budgets
• Teams where intent signals justify the premium
• Organizations that need one vendor for everything and can absorb the accuracy tradeoff

Apollo: The Budget All-in-One

Apollo packaged data and outreach into one affordable platform and grew fast by being "good enough" for startups that couldn't afford ZoomInfo.

Where Apollo wins

Price: $59-149/user/month with a free tier. Most accessible pricing in the category.

All-in-one: Contact data, email sequences, dialer, Chrome extension — one login. Eliminates tool sprawl for small teams.

Speed to value: Sign up, install the extension, start prospecting in 15 minutes. No sales calls or procurement cycles.

Where Apollo falls short

Accuracy problem: Email accuracy averaged ~80% in testing. One in five emails bounced. That's below the threshold for sustained cold outreach without deliverability risk. And once your domain reputation drops, every subsequent campaign suffers.

Phone gaps: Direct dial coverage is notably weaker than dedicated phone providers. If cold calling is core to your workflow, Apollo is a bottleneck.

Data is an afterthought: Apollo's roadmap prioritizes engagement features over data quality. The platform optimizes for sending volume, not data accuracy. That's a dangerous incentive misalignment — more sends on bad data means more bounces.

Hidden scaling costs: Per-seat pricing looks cheap until your team grows. A 10-person team pays $12-18K/year — approaching ZoomInfo territory without ZoomInfo's data depth or intent signals.

Apollo is best for

• Solo SDRs or 1-3 person teams
• Startups that need prospecting + outreach in one tool and accept ~80% accuracy
• Teams where speed matters more than precision

Clearbit (Breeze Intelligence): The HubSpot Dependency

Clearbit pioneered API-first enrichment. Then HubSpot acquired it in 2023, rebranded it as Breeze Intelligence, and absorbed it into the HubSpot ecosystem. The standalone product is fading.

Where Clearbit wins

HubSpot integration: If your CRM is HubSpot, enrichment happens natively. Forms auto-shorten, leads auto-route, records auto-enrich. Seamless.

Company data: Firmographic and technographic data is strong — employee count, revenue, tech stack, industry. Useful for segmentation and lead scoring.

Real-time API: For product-led growth teams, Clearbit enriches leads at point of capture. Shorter forms, smarter routing, personalized onboarding.

Where Clearbit falls short

HubSpot dependency: Since the acquisition, Clearbit has become increasingly HubSpot-only. Salesforce, Pipedrive, and other CRM teams get diminishing value. If you ever switch CRMs, your enrichment tool becomes a liability.

Acquisition uncertainty: Product direction post-acquisition has been unclear. Features have been sunset or merged. Betting on Clearbit as a standalone enrichment solution carries real platform risk.

Phone coverage: Clearbit was never a phone data provider. Direct dials require a separate tool — which adds cost and complexity.

Contact depth: Clearbit's strength is company data. Individual contact coverage, especially for SMB and mid-market companies, is thinner than competitors.

Same single-source architecture: Despite the API-first positioning, Clearbit still draws from one database. Same coverage gaps, same decay problem. The API is fast, but fast delivery of stale data doesn't solve the core issue.

Clearbit is best for

• All-in HubSpot teams that will never switch CRMs
• PLG companies enriching leads at point of capture
• Marketing teams focused on company-level data for ABM

The Problem All Three Share

Here's what ZoomInfo, Apollo, and Clearbit have in common: they each maintain a single proprietary database.

ZoomInfo's is the biggest. Apollo's is the cheapest to access. Clearbit's is the most HubSpot-friendly. But they all face the same structural problem.

No single database can cover every contact, every company, every change.

B2B data decays at 30%+ per year. People change jobs every 2.7 years on average. Companies get acquired, restructure, and rebrand. Phone numbers disconnect. A single database — regardless of size — has inherent coverage gaps and staleness baked in.

These aren't bugs. They're features of the single-source model. And no amount of database refresh can fix an architectural limitation.

Cleanlist: The Waterfall Approach That Changes Everything

Cleanlist was built on a different premise: why rely on one source when you can query all of them?

How waterfall enrichment works

Instead of maintaining one database, Cleanlist's waterfall enrichment queries 15+ premium data sources in sequence for every single lookup:

1. Source 1 returns an email → verify it in real-time → if valid, return it
2. Source 1 misses or returns invalid → cascade to Source 2 → verify → return if valid
3. Continue through 15+ sources until the best verified result is found

Every email is verified before it hits your CRM. Not periodically. Not in batch. Every single lookup, every single time.

The results speak for themselves

At 80% accuracy on 10,000 emails, you send 2,000 bounces. At 98%, you send 200.

That's not a marginal improvement. It's the difference between a healthy sender reputation and landing in spam. Between reps trusting their data and second-guessing every dial. Between campaigns that convert and campaigns that get your domain blacklisted.

Beyond enrichment: a complete data platform

Cleanlist isn't just a better enrichment engine. It's a complete data operations platform built for the teams that actually work with data every day.

People Search: Build lead lists from scratch across 500M+ professionals. Natural language search, 30+ filters, firmographic targeting. Not just enrichment — net-new prospecting.

Smart Agents: Normalize job titles, format phone numbers, standardize company names, and transform messy data automatically. ZoomInfo, Apollo, and Clearbit give you raw data. Cleanlist gives you clean data.

ICP Scoring: Score every lead against your Ideal Customer Profile automatically. No manual scoring spreadsheets, no gut-feel prioritization. Data-driven lead qualification out of the box.

Email Verification: Standalone or built into enrichment. Catch-all detection, disposable email flagging, syntax validation, and SMTP verification. The same verification engine that powers 98% accuracy.

Credit-based pricing: No per-seat fees. No annual contracts. No auto-renewal traps. Pay for what you use. Scale up or down month to month. A 5-person team and a 50-person team pay the same per-credit rate.

Head-to-Head: The Numbers That Matter

Pricing comparison

Effective cost per valid contact

This is the number that actually matters — not sticker price:

Apollo and Cleanlist have similar per-valid-email costs. But Cleanlist's 98% accuracy means near-zero bounces, protected sender reputation, and reps that trust every contact in their queue.

Feature comparison

Cleanlist doesn't try to be an outreach tool. It does one thing — data — and does it better than anyone.

Verdict by Use Case

"I need intent data and have enterprise budget"

ZoomInfo. Intent signals are its genuine differentiator. But layer Cleanlist on top to verify and enrich before outreach — 15% bounce rates on $40K/year data isn't acceptable ROI.

"I'm a solo SDR and need a free tool today"

Apollo. The free tier gets you started fast. But when bounce rates start killing your deliverability, graduate to Cleanlist.

"My entire stack is HubSpot"

Clearbit. Deepest native integration. But ask yourself: are you willing to accept 85% accuracy and platform lock-in because the integration is convenient?

"I need accurate data I can actually trust"

Cleanlist. 98% verified accuracy from 15+ sources. No other tool on this list verifies every email in real-time. No other tool cascades through multiple providers to fill gaps. This is the category Cleanlist was built for.

"I need to build lead lists from scratch"

Cleanlist. 500M+ professionals, natural language search, 30+ filters. Build, enrich, and verify in one workflow.

"I'm tired of messy CRM data"

Cleanlist. Smart Agents normalize, format, and transform your data automatically. ZoomInfo, Apollo, and Clearbit dump raw data into your CRM. Cleanlist cleans it.

"I'm an agency managing multiple clients"

Cleanlist. Credit-based pricing with no per-seat fees. No user limits. No client restrictions. The pricing model was designed for agencies.

"I want to layer data tools for maximum coverage"

Cleanlist replaces the need to layer. Waterfall enrichment already queries 15+ sources. Instead of stitching together ZoomInfo + Apollo + a verification tool, Cleanlist does it in one lookup.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I use ZoomInfo and Apollo together?

You can, but there's significant overlap — both are single-source contact databases. Stacking two single-source tools still leaves structural gaps. A better approach: use one prospecting tool (Apollo for budget, ZoomInfo for enterprise) and run everything through Cleanlist's waterfall verification before outreach. You'll catch the 15-20% bad data before it hits anyone's inbox.

Is Clearbit still a standalone product?

Barely. Since the HubSpot acquisition, Clearbit has been rebranded as Breeze Intelligence and is increasingly bundled with HubSpot plans. The API still works independently, but product investment is focused on HubSpot integration. If you're not on HubSpot, Clearbit's value proposition is shrinking quarterly.

Which tool has the best phone numbers?

ZoomInfo has the most phones. Cleanlist has the highest connection rate — 90% vs ZoomInfo's 80% — because every number is verified through the waterfall before delivery. More phones that don't connect waste more rep time than fewer phones that do.

What's waterfall enrichment and why does it matter?

Waterfall enrichment queries multiple premium data sources for every lookup instead of relying on one database. It matters because no single source covers every contact. By cascading through 15+ providers and verifying in real-time, waterfall enrichment achieves higher fill rates (95%+) and accuracy (98%) than any single-source tool. It's the architectural difference between hoping your one database has the right data and knowing you've checked every available source.

How do I test these tools before committing?

• ZoomInfo: Request a demo and negotiate a trial (no self-serve)
• Apollo: Free tier with 100 credits/month
• Clearbit: Contact sales or access through HubSpot
• Cleanlist: Free credits to start, no sales call required. Upload a list or search for leads and see verified results in minutes.

Is 98% accuracy real?

Yes. Every email returned by Cleanlist passes through real-time SMTP verification, catch-all detection, and disposable email filtering. The 98% figure is post-verification deliverability — not a marketing claim about database coverage. Test it yourself with free credits.

The Bottom Line

ZoomInfo, Apollo, and Clearbit each carved out their niche. But they all share the same architectural limitation: one database, one source of truth, structural accuracy ceilings that haven't changed in years.

Cleanlist was built to solve the problem these tools work around. Waterfall enrichment from 15+ sources. Real-time verification on every lookup. Data transformation that delivers clean, normalized records — not raw data dumps.

The question isn't "which single-source database is slightly better." It's whether you keep paying for 80-85% accuracy or switch to 98%.

Try Cleanlist free and compare the results yourself.