B2B Contact Databases in 2027: What They Cost Per Record, and When to Build Instead

TL;DR

• Priced: seven of the twelve vendors publish a price that can be turned into a rate per 1,000 records: Apollo, Landbase, Lead411, RocketReach, Lusha, UpLead and ZoomInfo, which publishes one only on its pay-as-you-go site.
• Not priced: Cognism, Seamless.AI, SalesIntel and Demandbase publish no price, so we quote what buyers report paying from Vendr and SpendHound, and Leadfeeder publishes card prices with no rate per record.
• The meter: a credit buys an email, an export, a contact, a record or a verified result, and that unit moves the bill more than the data does.
• The build route: a list built from a Sales Navigator search wins on scope, and on cost against every rate above $80 per 1,000 in the table below.

On the seven published plans, a thousand records cost between $19.60 and $690.00, a spread of about 35 times. Apollo's annual Basic plan sets the floor at $19.60 per 1,000 emails, and RocketReach's monthly Essentials plan the ceiling at $690.00 per 1,000 exports. These are pro-rata unit costs from each vendor's pricing page. They are not bills, and the unit differs from vendor to vendor.

A price page that says $49 a month tells you little until you know what one credit buys. Some vendors charge when you reveal a record, some when you export it, and some only when a verified result comes back.

This guide goes to each vendor's own pricing page and help centre, quotes the credit rule in the vendor's words, and converts every plan that can be converted. It then prices a third route, building the list from a Sales Navigator search with WizLeads, which scrapes the search and finds the work emails.

What a B2B contact database is

A business contact database is a stored index of people at companies: a work email, sometimes a phone number, and firmographic fields you can filter on. A b2b company database indexes the accounts, and most vendors sell both under one subscription. The same index is called a b2b marketing database when it feeds campaigns and a sales database when it feeds reps.

The shape that matters for the bill is who holds the record. A rented index holds records for you to search and export, and it is as fresh as its last refresh. Apollo, ZoomInfo, RocketReach, UpLead and Lead411 sell that shape. A resolver finds the record when you ask, so it is as fresh as your request.

Landbase shows both in two pages. Its product page claims "300M+ contacts" and "24M+ company records", and its pricing page says "We route through 20+ providers automatically."

What B2B database providers charge per record

We rank by dollars per 1,000 records on the vendor's published plan. We divide each plan's price by its allowance and multiply by 1,000. That lets you compare plans. Most of these plans do not carry 1,000 records in a month, so no figure is a bill, and the unit changes from row to row.

Seven of the twelve b2b data providers publish a plan we can convert. Each figure below comes from the vendor's pricing page, quoted in its section further down, and ZoomInfo's comes from GTM.AI's pricing page.

An UpLead contact carries an email and a mobile direct dial together, so its row buys more per record than a single email at Apollo or Landbase. Read each vendor's meter before you compare two rows.

Meters that charge when you take the record

Contact database software of this kind bills when a record leaves the platform. The unit is a reveal, an export, a lookup or a contact, and each vendor defines its own.

Apollo: an email costs 1 credit

Apollo's pricing page lists a rate card in its credits block: "Email 1 credit", "Phone number 8 credits" and "Enrich data 1-8 credits". On the annual toggle, Basic is $49 per seat per month for 30,000 credits a year, which is $19.60 per 1,000 emails. Billed monthly, Basic is $65 for 2,500 credits a month, or $26.00 per 1,000.

Apollo's help-centre article on email statuses says it "doesn't charge an email credit for a contact without a known, valid email address". It also refunds the credit automatically if a verified email bounces within 30 days of purchase.

Lusha: a reveal costs 1 credit, an export costs another

Lusha's pricing page lists "Reveal verified email address" at 1 credit and "Reveal a phone number" at 5 credits. On the yearly toggle, Starter is $37.45 a month for 4,800 credits a year, Pro is $52.45 for 7,200, and Premium is $299.95 for 40,800, the slider's default position. That is $93.63, $87.42 and $88.22 per 1,000 email reveals.

A CSV export costs a further credit per 25 rows, so 1,000 revealed contacts on Starter come to about $97 per 1,000. The pricing page puts a CRM export at 1 credit per result, while Lusha's credit-counting docs say it "charges per changed row, not per job".

UpLead: one credit is one contact

UpLead's pricing page defines the unit in one line: a credit lets you download or export a contact and "gives you access to their email and mobile direct dial. One credit = one contact." Essentials is $99 a month for 170 credits, which is $582.35 per 1,000 contacts, and Plus is $199 for 400, or $497.50.

On the annual view, Essentials is $74 a month billed annually for 2,040 credits a year ($435.29) and Plus is $149 for 4,800 ($372.50). Top-ups cost $0.60 and $0.50 a credit. UpLead's homepage claims 95% data accuracy, and section 6.1 of its Terms of Service adds "We do not warrant the accuracy".

Lead411: an export that is never defined

Lead411's pricing page sells exports and never defines one; the nearest it comes is its FAQ, which calls the trial's 50 exports "50 verified lead credits". Each plan lists "Verified Email Addresses" and "Direct Phone Numbers Included", and the allowance is a count of exports. Spark is $49 a month for 1,000 exports, or $490 a year for 12,000, which is $49.00 and $40.83 per 1,000 exports.

Ignite starts at $150 a month, and Blaze is quote-only with "Unlimited Exports". The FAQ promises "unlimited search/export options" with "no data caps or daily limits", beside Spark's caps of 1,000 and 12,000. Both sit on the same page.

RocketReach: exports are capped, and annual lookups are unlimited

RocketReach's pricing page caps exports, not lookups, on its annual plans: each annual card lists "Unlimited" verified emails, and the unlimited-lookups FAQ those cards link to says annual plans get unlimited lookups under a fair use policy. On the annual view, Essentials is $399 for 1,200 exports a year, Pro is $899 for 3,600, and Ultimate is $1,699 for 20,000. That is $332.50, $249.72 and $84.95 per 1,000 exports.

Billed monthly, lookups are capped too, at 100, 250 and 1,000 a month with the same number of exports. The pricing page's FAQ rule applies: "A lookup is used if we find and verify email or phone, otherwise it is refunded." That ladder is $690.00, $476.00 and $209.00 per 1,000 exports. Custom team plans "start at $6K annually". Prices follow the visitor's country, and the free plan offers 5 lookups on a US render and 3 on an India render.

ZoomInfo: an export costs 1 credit, and the platform shows no price

ZoomInfo's pricing page defines its credit as an export: "Each export costs one credit". The page says "Credit usage occurs only when a user exports a contact or company profile from the platform to a CSV file or an application". It adds that a package includes "a predetermined number of monthly credits". Its FAQ lists "Features and functionality, Number of licenses, Credit usage" as what sets the price, and no plan on the page shows a dollar figure.

ZoomInfo's pay-as-you-go site does publish one. GTM.AI's pricing page shows "$0.38 per credit" at the $1,000 spend tier, one of several on its slider, where a credit is "one company, contact, or intent record". That is $380 per 1,000 records, and a record there is not an email.

Cognism: a credit is a revealed contact, and the page shows no price

Cognism's pricing page says "Credits are used to reveal, enrich, or export a contact", at "1 credit = 1 revealed contact", with "No charge for viewing previously revealed contacts". A credit is used again only if the contact changes jobs. The plan cards carry Talk to sales or Talk to an expert buttons and the line "Cognism pricing is tailored based on the product you need, your team setup and how you plan to use the platform".

Cognism's API help says "Search and Enrich APIs do not consume credits", with credits used only when you call the Redeem API. That is a different meter from the one the pricing page describes. The page does not say what a contact it cannot find costs.

Meters that charge on a result or an attempt

Two vendors tie the charge to the outcome of a lookup, in different ways.

Landbase: a verified email costs 1 credit, a miss costs nothing

Landbase's pricing page promises you "only pay when we deliver a verified result", and its rate card reads "Email Enrichment 1 credit $0.033 / verified email" and "Miss (unverified result) 0 credits $0, never charged", with search free. The bundles are $499 a month for 15,000 credits, $1,999 for 75,000 and $4,999 for 200,000. That is $33.27, $26.65 and $25.00 per 1,000 verified emails.

A verified mobile number costs 10 credits, or $0.33. The same page offers two free starts: "1,000 credits free to start" and "$49 free credits", which is about 1,485 credits at $0.033.

Seamless.AI: a credit per contact researched

Seamless.AI's pricing page is now a demo form with no plan cards, so its credit rules sit in a help-centre article on credit and license types. "Researching a contact uses 1 credit per contact", and the Find button "uses 1 credit per contact to generate all information in the contact profile". The article does not say whether a contact with no result is charged.

The homepage promises "If an email is invalid, we automatically refund your credit", and the credit-back article limits that refund to email data. The credit and license article gives 50 credits on the free license that do not replenish, 250 a month on Basic and 10,000 a month on Pro.

Platforms with no per-record price

These three sell a platform, a subscription or a visitor-identification service. A per-record rate cannot be computed from what their pages show.

SalesIntel: unlimited credits per user, no price

SalesIntel's pricing page is a Request Pricing button with no dollar figure, under the line "Contact us and our team will help you craft the right solution at the right price." Its feature table lists "Export Credit Unlimited credits/user/month" and "Enrichment Credits Unlimited credits/user/month", beside "Research on Demand 10 credits/user/month". The page does not say how users are billed. The homepage speaks of "Human-verified data to power your pipeline" and claims "95% Data Accuracy" in a stat tile. It gives "54M+ verified mobile numbers, direct dials, and AI+Human-verified emails" in one line while another tile labels the same 54M+ "Verified Mobile Numbers", so the number of emails alone is unstated.

Demandbase: a platform fee plus a fee per user

Demandbase's pricing page is a form: "Fill out the form, and we'll customize a pricing plan that works perfectly for you." It describes "a clear platform fee that covers all the essential software and services" plus "a flat fee per user". The contact-data page claims "200M+ AI-curated contacts from 195 countries", with a tile for 122M+ validated emails and another for 58M mobiles. It promises "we verify email addresses every 30 days", and it adds that "B2B contact data will never be 100% accurate." Buyer-reported figures for the whole platform sit in the table below.

Leadfeeder: it identifies visiting companies

Leadfeeder's homepage calls it website visitor identification software that "reveals the B2B companies visiting your site". Its pricing page counts "A unique company identified from your website traffic within the month". On the US render, Lite is $0 ("14-day full access. Free forever"), Discover starts at $79 a month, Activate at $369 and Scale at $599, billed annually.

Credits are "usage units consumed when data enrichment or activation actions are performed". Lite carries 20 a month, and the page's tier table sells Activate with 200 to 1,500 credits a month and Scale with 1,000 to 5,500. The page never says how many credits a verified email costs, so no rate per record can be computed. It does offer a company database search with contact filters and email reveals paid in credits, but the product is built around the companies that visit your site.

What buyers report paying for quote-only platforms

Two marketplaces publish what their buyers paid. They are buyer-reported aggregates and never list prices.

SpendHound's Cognism page rests its figures on 23 customers, 19 of them SMB, and gives no customer count for the $125,160 enterprise figure. SpendHound's Seamless.AI page averages $6,923 a year for its 48 SMB customers, which it defines as 50 to 1,000 employees. It puts enterprise at 1,000 or more and averages $14,296 on 6 customers, so neither figure describes a team under 50.

Vendr's Demandbase page reports a figure that covers the whole platform, including advertising and intent data, and not contact data alone. Vendr's SalesIntel page puts the median at $17,599 a year and shows no purchase count, so we cannot say how many deals sit behind it.

Neither marketplace shows the seats, credits or modules behind a figure, so use these as a range to test a quote against.

Record counts are claims

These counts are the vendors' own claims, and several vendors give a second figure that disagrees with the first.

Apollo's B2B data page claims "240M+ global contacts" and a "98% email accuracy rate". The help-centre article on how Apollo verifies emails says "Apollo verified emails have an accuracy rate of 91%" and cites "Apollo's 9% bounce rate". Apollo does not reconcile the two. Cognism's data page states no count.

Coverage is also shaped by segment. In an r/b2bmarketing thread on contact data for India, one buyer put Apollo's email accuracy there at 60 to 70 percent and checked each contact by hand before reaching out. Another buyer, who uses ZoomInfo there, says coverage gaps start in Tier 2 cities for most providers, ZoomInfo included, and asks for a sample cut before buying. A single rating hides that.

Accuracy and freshness

An accuracy rate applies only to the addresses that came back. It says nothing about how many of 1,000 rows return an email, and Apollo publishes no such coverage figure.

A refresh claim is a separate promise. Demandbase says "we verify email addresses every 30 days", Lead411 says its emails "are re-verified every 3-6 months", and RocketReach says its data is "Verified on demand and in real time". Each is the vendor's own claim.

Lists age as people change jobs, so freshness at the moment you send matters more than the size of the index. Whichever shape you buy, verify the addresses before a campaign.

Build the list instead: four steps and their cost

If your buyers are on LinkedIn, there is a third route. One reply in that India thread told the poster to skip the databases and build with Sales Navigator plus automation. The build takes four steps.

1. Define the ICP in Sales Navigator. Core is US$119.99 a month, or US$1,079.88 a year, on LinkedIn's compare-plans page, with "50+ advanced search filters". A people search returns up to 2,500 results, and a company search up to 1,000.

2. Pull the people. WizLeads scrapes a search in the cloud at 1 credit per result with your LinkedIn account connected, or 2 credits per result account-less. Smart Link Splitting, on the Agency plan and above, checks the lead count and splits the link into chunks of 2,000 results or less, so no results are lost past the 2,500 cap.

3. Find and verify the work emails. Find Work Email takes a first name and the company website, costs 3 credits per email found, and charges nothing on a miss. WizLeads' API doc words the output "All emails are valid and catch-all verified". Size the job on a 60% find rate. In the enrichment benchmark, WizLeads returned 670 verified-valid emails from 1,000 B2B leads, and the seven finders tested ranged from 25.9% to 67.0% on that measure.

4. Store them. WizLeads has no native HubSpot or Zapier connector. It is API-first and works with Zapier, Make, n8n or Clay through its API.

At a 60% find rate, a thousand verified work emails needs about 1,667 leads scraped. We priced the credits at list prices, as dollars per 1,000 verified work emails, before the Sales Navigator seat.

The seat is the cost that moves the answer. Spread over the emails you take each month, it adds a share to the credit cost. The table prices each volume on one plan that carries it, at that plan's connected-account credit rate.

Against Apollo's $19.60 per 1,000 emails, the build with a seat wins only at high volume. On a Cartel plan it needs about 15,000 emails a month with an annual-billed seat, or about 16,500 with a monthly one. Against the rates above $80 it wins early, since $74.19 sits below every one of them in the first table.

WizLeads holds the email credits when a task starts, so a task needs 4 credits per lead on hand with a connected account, or 5 account-less. That means 10,000 credits start 2,500 connected leads or 2,000 account-less ones. WizLeads makes no charge for rows where no email is found once the task completes, so run bigger lists in batches sized to your balance.

What you get is a b2b email database scoped to a search you wrote, with addresses found on the day you send. The leads with no email stay in the file as a b2b contact list for LinkedIn outreach.

Is there a free B2B contact database?

Every free tier is a sample. Use it to check 50 of your real accounts, because a record count tells you nothing about whether your buyers are in the file.

Each allowance is from the vendor's own pricing page, except Seamless.AI's (its help-centre article), WizLeads' 500 credits (its own figure) and the Sales Navigator trial (LinkedIn's).

When to buy a database instead

A bought database wins in three places. It covers people who are not on LinkedIn, it delivers today with no search to design, and it lets you browse before you know who you are looking for. There is no best b2b database for all three jobs, because the meters differ.

Apollo's annual Basic plan has the lowest rate among the seven databases with a published rate, at $19.60 per 1,000 emails. If your team needs a platform with intent data, expect a quote. ZoomInfo's 10-Q for the quarter to 30 June 2026 says ZoomInfo subscriptions typically run one to three years, are non-cancelable and are billed in advance.

Decide in this order. If your buyers are on LinkedIn and you can write the search, build the list. If they are not, take Apollo for the lowest published rate, or a quote-based platform for what it adds and only if you can accept its term. Test either choice on 50 of your real accounts before you pay.