AgentData vs Apollo: the free data layer with tech stacks, no credits, built for agents
Apollo for sending and dialling from one seat-priced suite; AgentData for the company data your agent needs, with tech stacks, free.
Apollo is the most complete outbound suite on the market: 240M+ contacts, sequences, a dialer, waterfall enrichment and now an MCP server. It's priced per seat with credits on top: Free is 75 credits a seat a month, Basic $49 a seat on annual billing or $65 monthly for 2,500 credits, Professional $79/$99, Organization $119/$149 with a three-seat minimum. Every enriched company costs a credit and its public company directory is gone. AgentData is the data layer only: company profile, 3,625-technology tech stack, verified emails, people and switch signals, $0, no credits, 1,000 lookups a day, REST API and MCP included. Verified 17 September 2026.
Apollo is the tool most of our early users came from, and I understand why they picked it: it does everything, and the free plan is good enough to get started. What I never liked was the meter. Every useful action costs a credit, the credit count resets, and the price you see on the pricing page is the price for a seat that barely uses it. We built AgentData as the opposite shape: no sequences, no dialer, no seats, just the data your agent or your list needs, with the tech stack Apollo never had, for nothing. If you want one tool that sends and dials, stay on Apollo and use us for the parts it doesn't have.
The verdict
Choose AgentData if you…- want company data for an agent or a list without per-seat pricing or a credit meter
- need to know what a company runs (tech stack, switch signals) before you decide who to contact
- want an API and MCP server that don't count against a monthly credit pool
- work outside the US and want profiles built from the company's own website
- want public company and technology pages your team can read without logging in
- want sequences, a parallel dialer and CRM sync in the same tool as the data
- need contact volume: 240M+ contacts, mobile numbers, waterfall enrichment from 20+ partners
- want buying signals like website visits, job changes and funding rounds in one place
- are happy paying per seat because your team lives in Apollo all day
Looking at more options? Read the full Apollo write-up: everything Apollo gates behind paid tiers, for $0.
One company, two responses
Apollo's Organization Enrichment endpoint returns a rich company object for one credit; people search is free but returns obfuscated names, and enrichment costs 1–9 credits per person. AgentData's lookup returns the company, its technologies, verified emails and people for one lookup with no credits. Both structures are from the vendors' own documentation, read 17 September 2026.
{
"organization": {
"id": "5e66b6381e05b4008c8331b8",
"name": "Apollo.io",
"website_url": "http://www.apollo.io",
"linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/company/apolloio",
"primary_phone": {},
"alexa_ranking": 3514,
"founded_year": 2015,
"primary_domain": "apollo.io",
"industry": "information technology & services",
"keywords": ["sales engagement", "lead generation", "predictive analytics"],
"owned_by_organization": null,
"suborganizations": []
}
}1 credit per organization (docs.apollo.io/docs/api-pricing). People search (/mixed_people/api_search) is 0 credits but returns last names obfuscated (“Hu***n”) and no emails; person enrichment is 1–9 credits, charged when data is found. Requires a work-email account.
{
"domain": "stripe.com",
"company": {
"name": "Stripe", "sector": "Financial Services & Fintech",
"vertical": "Payments", "b2b_b2c": "b2b", "size": "large",
"headquarters_country": "US", "email_pattern": "first.last",
"signals": { "has_pricing_page": true, "has_api_docs": true, "has_careers_page": true }
},
"technologies": [
{ "name": "React", "category": "Framework", "confidence": "high" },
{ "name": "Segment", "category": "Analytics", "confidence": "high" }
],
"emails": { "total": 42, "verified": 38,
"data": [{ "email": "jane.smith@stripe.com", "title": "VP Engineering",
"confidence": 95, "verification_status": "valid", "verified_at": "2026-09-01T10:30:00Z" }] },
"people": { "total": 156, "data": [{ "name": "…", "title": "CTO", "seniority": "c_level" }] },
"lookup": { "consumed": true, "remaining": 999 }
}One lookup: profile, technologies with confidence, verified emails, people, web signals. 1,000 a day, free. Apollo's response has no technologies field.
AgentData vs Apollo at a glance
AgentDataVerified 17 September 2026 against docs.apollo.io, apollo.io/product/mcp and the apollo.io/pricing FAQ. Plan prices are from Hacking Demand's teardown (10 Jul 2026) because Apollo's pricing table is client-rendered; confirm on apollo.io/pricing.
Why agent builders and growth teams pick AgentData over Apollo
The price of Apollo is the credit meter, not the seat. AgentData has neither.
1,000 lookups a day, every field included, no seatscurl -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" \
"https://agentdata.run/api/v1/lookup?domain=stripe.com"Apollo can tell you who works at a company. It can't tell you the company runs Intercom and dropped Zendesk in August.
3,625 technologies per company; /signals lists tool changesBoth have MCP. Ours doesn't debit an account when the agent enriches.
Hosted MCP + npm, seven tools, freeclaude mcp add agentdata --transport http https://mcp.agentdata.run/mcp \
--header "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"
# then: "Find UK SaaS companies running HubSpot with 50–200 staff; give me the head of sales at each with a verified email."lookup_companysearch_companiesfind_peopleget_technologiesget_signalscheck_usageApollo removed its company directory in 2026. Ours is the product.
/company/[domain], /tech/[slug], /companies/[sector], indexableOur profile comes from crawling the site, so a UK or German company is as complete as a US one.
128M domains indexed, daily refresh, globalPricing: AgentData vs Apollo
Apollo is priced per seat with a credit allowance. The calculator shows the plan a single seat needs for a monthly credit volume, and what a year costs.
You keep at least $588/yr with AgentData at this volume.
Apollo plan prices per seat from Hacking Demand's teardown verified 10 Jul 2026 (apollo.io/pricing is client-rendered); credit costs from docs.apollo.io/docs/api-pricing, 17 September 2026: email 1, org enrichment 1, mobile 8, person enrichment 1–9. Organization is annual-only with a 3-seat minimum. AgentData: 1,000 lookups a day.
Pricing history 2021–2026
The $49 Basic seat of 2021 is now $65 unless you commit to a year, and the 2021 Professional plan's “unlimited email credits” has become a 4,000-credit cap. That's a 32.7% rise on the monthly price against 23.2% inflation, plus a tighter allowance. Entry paid plan per seat per month. 2022–2025 captures exist on Arquivo.pt but Apollo's pricing page renders client-side, so the figures can't be read; we show the gap rather than guess.
What changed
- November 2021: Free 50 email credits/mo; Basic $49/user/mo with 200 email credits; Professional $99/user/mo with “unlimited email credits” and 50 mobile numbers/mo; Custom tier annual-only.
- 2026: Basic monthly $49 → $65; the $49 price now requires annual billing. Professional $99 monthly / $79 annual. New top tier Organization $119–149, annual only, minimum 3 seats. “Unlimited” gone: all tiers credit-capped (Free 75/mo, Basic 2,500, Pro 4,000, Org 6,000). Free credits 50 → 75/mo.
- 2026: public company directory removed (410 responses, robots.txt disallow on /directory). MCP server launched at mcp.apollo.io/mcp via OAuth.
- AgentData: $19 / $49 / $99 specced April 2026, never launched; free since May 2026.
AgentData vs Apollo, feature by feature
Where the credits go
Apollo's people search is free; everything you'd act on costs a credit.
- AgentData: One lookup returns profile, technologies, all verified emails and people for a company; 1,000 lookups a day.
- Apollo: Org enrichment 1 credit; email unlock 1; mobile 8; person enrichment 1–9, charged when data is found; export credits on CSV, CRM or API sync.
Source: docs.apollo.io/docs/api-pricing; apollo.io/pricing FAQ, 17 September 2026
Technographics and switch signals
The company-level layer Apollo doesn't have.
- AgentData: 3,625 technologies with confidence per company; tool added/removed events at /signals and via get_signals.
- Apollo: No technologies field in the organization response; buying signals are website visits, job changes, funding rounds.
Source: docs.apollo.io/reference/organization-enrichment; apollo.io/product/data, 17 September 2026
Contact depth and verification: Apollo's strongest card
240M+ contacts with mobiles from a 20+ partner waterfall is a different scale from our crawl.
- AgentData: SMTP-verified emails with confidence and verified_at; people with seniority; no phones.
- Apollo: 240M+ contacts, mobile numbers, waterfall enrichment, built-in email and phone verification, 98% email accuracy (vendor claim).
Source: apollo.io/product/data, 17 September 2026
Agent access
Both MCP via one command; only one debits an account.
- AgentData: mcp.agentdata.run/mcp or npm; seven tools; free; API key at signup.
- Apollo: mcp.apollo.io/mcp via OAuth; Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity; product page says any plan including free, the Claude and ChatGPT launch posts say all paid plans; enrichment consumes credits.
claude mcp add agentdata --transport http https://mcp.agentdata.run/mcp \
--header "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"Source: apollo.io/product/mcp; apollo.io/magazine (Claude and ChatGPT announcements)
Who moves from Apollo to AgentData
Seventy-five credits is one afternoon of list building. AgentData gives you 1,000 lookups a day, and each returns every verified email we hold for the company, not one.
Your agent needs company context (sector, size, stack, recent switches) before it decides whether to enrich a contact. Apollo's MCP starts at the contact and debits credits as it goes; ours starts at the company and doesn't.
Nothing here replaces sequences or the dialer. Use AgentData to build and qualify the list by tech stack, export the domains, and let Apollo do what it's good at.
Switching from Apollo
- Export your Apollo lists (Lists → Export CSV). Keep Company Domain and Email; that's the join key and the comparison column.
- Re-enrich by domain in AgentData via /api/v1/lookup or the MCP lookup_company tool; compare our verified emails and confidence scores against Apollo's on 100 companies you know.
- Keep Apollo for sequences and dialling if you use them; downgrade to Free if you only used it for data. Basic and Pro monthly plans cancel any time; Organization is annual.
Field map: Apollo → AgentData
Where Apollo fits better
- You want data and execution in one tool. Sequences, the parallel dialer, deliverability tooling and CRM sync are why teams live in Apollo all day.
- You need US contact volume and mobiles. 240M+ contacts with waterfall enrichment from 20+ partners will surface more people at a US mid-market account than our crawl.
- You want intent-style buying signals: website visitors, job changes, funding rounds, in the same place as the contacts.
- You already pay for seats and your reps are trained on it. Switching a whole team's workflow costs more than the credits.
We would rather you pick the right tool than ours for the wrong reasons. Many teams keep Apollo for sending and use AgentData to decide who to send to.
Frequently asked questions
Related reading
- Free Apollo Alternative (2026): Everything Apollo Gates Behind Paid Tiers, for $0
- The Free B2B Company Data API for AI Agents (2026)
- Technology directory
Switching from Apollo takes an afternoon.
128M companies. 3,625 technologies. 7.8M email addresses. Free.