Apollo Pricing in 2026: Plans, Credits, and the Cost of a Usable Lead
Apollo pricing is $0 on Free, $49 per seat a month on Basic, $79 on Professional and $119 on Organization when billed annually, as of October 2026. Each paid seat comes with a pool of credits: 1 credit buys an email, 8 buy a phone number. After you remove addresses that fail verification, a usable email costs about 3 cents on Basic, and a lead with email and phone costs about 18 to 24 cents.
How much does Apollo cost in 2026?
Apollo has four self-serve plans plus a Custom tier, priced per seat, with up to 24% off for annual billing. Here is what the pricing page shows today.
| Plan | Annual billing (per seat per month) | Monthly billing (per seat per month) | Credits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | 900 per seat per year (75 a month) |
| Basic | $49 | $65 | 30,000 per seat per year, or 2,500 a month |
| Professional | $79 | $99 | 48,000 per seat per year, or 4,000 a month |
| Organization | $119 (minimum 3 seats) | $149, labelled "Annual Only" | 72,000 per seat per year, or 6,000 a month |
| Custom | Talk to sales | Talk to sales | Custom volumes, SSO, advanced security |
Organization has no true monthly price. When you switch the pricing page to monthly billing, it shows $149 per seat with the label "Annual Only".
Prices exclude tax. All seats on one account must be on the same plan, so you cannot put one power user on Professional and the rest on Basic. You buy for your heaviest user.
Two add-ons sit outside the plans. Inbound costs $119 (Essentials) or $639 (Max) per team per month, billed annually. The Advanced Dialer costs $119 per team per month, billed annually, and adds international, parallel and power dialing.
How do Apollo credits work?
Apollo now uses one credit pool per account, shared across the team and granted up front at the start of each billing cycle. Older reviews describe separate email, mobile and export credits. The current pricing page lists a single credit balance with a price per action:
| What you use | Credit cost |
|---|---|
| 1 credit | |
| Phone number | 8 credits |
| Enrich data | 1 to 8 credits |
| AI research | 1 credit per run |
| US dialer | 1 credit per 30 seconds |
| International dialer | Varies by region |
The pricing FAQ also says paid plans include "unlimited email addresses for your contacts", subject to a fair use policy. That sits awkwardly next to the 1-credit email line. Apollo's credit usage guide settles it: emails revealed from People Search or the Chrome extension use credits. The maths below assumes 1 credit per email.
Annual plans grant the full year of credits up front. A Basic seat on annual billing gets 30,000 credits on day one. Monthly plans grant 2,500 a month.
Unused credits expire at the end of each billing cycle. This applies to plan credits and to add-on credits you bought. Admins can set per-user credit caps, which is worth doing on day one so one rep's phone-reveal habit does not drain the shared pool.
What limits come with each Apollo plan?
Beyond credits, Apollo limits how many records you can select at once, how many emails you can send and how much automation you can run.
| Limit | Free | Basic | Professional | Organization |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record selection limit | 25 | 1,000 | 2,500 | 10,000 |
| Daily email sends | 250 | 250 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Sequences | 2 per team | Unlimited | Unlimited, with A/Z testing | Unlimited, with A/Z testing |
| Mailboxes per user | 1 | 1 | Unlimited Google/Microsoft + 5 SMTP | Unlimited Google/Microsoft + 15 SMTP |
| Automated workflows | 2 per team | 5 per team | 50 per team | 500 per team |
| AI writing | 5,000 words/mo | 250,000 words/mo | 800,000 words/mo | 1,000,000 words/mo |
| Intent topics | 1 | 6 | 6 | 12 |
| Call recording | 150 mins | 150 mins | 4,000 mins | 8,000 mins |
The record selection limit is the one people miss. On Basic you can select 1,000 records per action, so building a 10,000-lead list means ten batches. Apollo notes that saved records can still be bulk-exported at once.
Exports may cost credits too. Apollo's credit usage guide says export credits "may only apply to certain plans or legacy configurations". Check Settings, then Credit usage, after a small test export before you pull a large list.
The 250 daily sends on Basic is the other hard ceiling. A full-time outbound rep running several sequences will hit it, which is the practical reason most teams land on Professional.
Is Apollo cheaper on annual or monthly billing?
Annual billing is cheaper by 20% to 24%, but it locks you in for 12 months with no mid-cycle downgrade.
| Plan | Annual cost per seat | Monthly cost per seat over 12 months | Saving |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $588 | $780 | 24.6% |
| Professional | $948 | $1,188 | 20.2% |
Annual credits work out cheaper too. Basic annual is $588 for 30,000 credits, or $0.0196 a credit. Basic monthly is $65 for 2,500, or $0.026. Professional lands at $0.0198 annual and $0.0248 monthly.
The terms matter more than the discount. You can switch monthly to annual at any time. Going from annual back to monthly means cancelling and waiting for the term to end. Downgrades take effect immediately but are not refunded for the current cycle.
Pick monthly for your first two or three months, until you know your real credit burn. Then switch to annual.
What does a usable lead cost on Apollo?
A verified email costs about $0.027 on Basic annual, and a lead with email and phone costs about $0.18 before data quality and about $0.24 after. Here is the working.
Email-only leads
On Basic annual a credit costs $0.0196, so 1,000 email reveals cost $19.60.
Not all of them are sendable. BounceZero, an email verification vendor, checked 100,000 Apollo contacts exported between January and June 2026. It found 73.2% valid, 18.4% catch-all, 5.8% invalid and 2.6% other. If you send only to addresses that verify as valid:
- Cost per valid email: $0.0196 / 0.732 = $0.027.
- Per 1,000 reveals: 732 valid, 184 catch-all to test carefully, 58 to drop.
BounceZero sells verification, so treat its numbers as one data point. Prospeo, a competing data vendor, reports that "Inaccurate Data" is the most common complaint theme in Apollo's G2 reviews. BounceZero's own estimate is a 15% to 20% effective bounce rate if you send to everything, catch-alls included. Either way, budget for a verifier on top of Apollo. Our email enrichment benchmark compares the options.
Email and phone leads
A lead with both costs 9 credits (1 + 8). Take a five-seat Professional team on annual billing:
- Cost: 5 seats x $79 x 12 = $4,740 a year.
- Credits: 5 x 48,000 = 240,000 a year.
- Leads at 9 credits each: 26,666 a year.
- Raw cost per lead: $4,740 / 26,666 = $0.178.
- Adjusted for the 73.2% valid email rate: $0.178 / 0.732 = $0.243.
Job titles are a separate problem. In Drevon's 100-account test, 26 of 100 Apollo contacts had outdated job titles, a 74% role accuracy rate. That test measured something different from BounceZero, so do not multiply the two. Read it as a warning: about one lead in four may reach the wrong person even when the email delivers. Data decays continuously, as we cover in why B2B data decays by over 30% a year.
The general model for these sums is in calculating the true cost of a lead on a credit-based platform.
What are the hidden costs in Apollo pricing?
The per-seat price is the floor. Four things push spend above it.
- Add-on credits renew automatically. Credits you add through the slider are charged immediately and recur every billing cycle until you drag the slider back to zero. Apollo's pricing page does not list the add-on credit price, so check the slider before you commit.
- Credits expire. Nothing rolls over, so a quiet month wastes credits and a busy month forces an add-on.
- Phone numbers are 8x an email. A team that reveals phones by default burns credits eight times faster than one that reveals emails.
- The dialer runs on credits. US calling costs 1 credit per 30 seconds, so a 5-minute call uses 10 credits.
Salesgear, which sells a competing tool, estimates real-world Apollo spend at $150 to $400 per user per month once add-ons are included. That is a third-party estimate, not Apollo's figure, but it matches the shape of the maths: the plan price covers emails, and phones plus dialing cost extra.
Add the verification tool and the time your reps spend checking titles before they send.
Is Apollo worth it, and for whom?
Apollo is the best value contact database for small and mid-sized outbound teams that send email at volume. It is weaker for phone-first teams and for anyone who needs to trust every title.
Apollo is a good fit if:
- You want published prices, monthly billing and no sales call.
- Your motion is email-first, so most credits go to 1-credit reveals.
- You want sequencing, dialer and data in one seat.
Look elsewhere if:
- You call more than you email. ZoomInfo returned 71 direct dials on 100 accounts in our test; compare in Apollo vs ZoomInfo and ZoomInfo's pricing.
- You need to combine several data providers per lead. Clay's waterfall model is built for that; see Clay pricing.
- You need proof of why an account should hear from you now. A database tells you who works where, not what they said last week.
That last gap is where Drevon fits. It reads LinkedIn, Reddit, job boards and company sites in your own browser and returns accounts with a source link for every signal. Teams use it to pick which accounts deserve Apollo credits. Apollo is moving toward signals too, as covered in Apollo's acquisition of Pocus.
For a side-by-side test of Apollo against four other tools, see sales intelligence tools tested on 100 leads.
Frequently asked questions
Does Apollo have a free plan?
Yes. Free includes 75 credits a month per seat, 2 sequences, 250 daily email sends and Gmail-only mailbox connections. It has no time limit.
How many credits does a phone number cost on Apollo?
8 credits. An email costs 1 credit, data enrichment 1 to 8 credits, and AI research 1 credit per run.
Do Apollo credits roll over?
No. Plan credits and purchased add-on credits expire at the end of each billing cycle.
Can I cancel Apollo anytime?
On monthly billing, yes; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current term. Annual plans run for the full 12 months.
Are Apollo credits per user or shared?
Shared. Credits are pooled across the whole team, and admins can set per-user caps.
How accurate is Apollo's email data?
Apollo's own claims are higher than independent tests. BounceZero found 73.2% of 100,000 exported Apollo contacts valid, with 18.4% catch-all.
Want to know which accounts deserve your Apollo credits before you spend them? Download Drevon and run a sourced research job on the AI subscription you already pay for, or book a demo.
Sources
- Apollo.io, "Pricing" (annual and monthly views, plan comparison, credit table, FAQ), accessed 2026-10-10; monthly view rechecked 2026-10-13.
- BounceZero Research, "Apollo.io Email Accuracy Study 2026", accessed 2026-10-10.
- Prospeo, "Apollo.io Accuracy: Real Data vs. Claims (2026)", accessed 2026-10-10.
- Salesgear, "Apollo.io Pricing (2026): Real Costs, Plans, and the Credit Traps", accessed 2026-10-10.
- Drevon, "Best Sales Intelligence Tools in 2026, Tested on 100 Leads", accessed 2026-10-10.
- Apollo.io Knowledge Base, "Review Credit Usage in Apollo", accessed 2026-10-13.