How Much Does B2B Contact Data Cost? 2026 Pricing Guide

B2B contact data is one of the largest line items in a modern sales tech stack, yet most teams have no idea what they're actually paying per contact. A Gartner study found that poor data quality costs organizations an average of $12.9 million per year. Meanwhile, B2B contact databases decay at roughly 2.1% per month, or about 22.5% annually, according to Marketing Sherpa research. That means nearly a quarter of the contacts you're paying for right now will be outdated before your next contract renewal.

TL;DR: B2B contact data costs range from $0.10 per contact on budget platforms to $1.50+ on enterprise providers like ZoomInfo. Credit-based pricing obscures true costs, and hidden fees (overages, add-ons, auto-renewals) can inflate your bill by 30-50%. The right approach depends on your team's needs: a dedicated contact database for high-volume prospecting, an account intelligence platform that includes verified contacts for targeted outreach, or a combination of both.

How B2B Contact Data Pricing Works

B2B data providers use three primary pricing models, and understanding the differences is the first step to avoiding overpayment.

Per-Credit Pricing

Most mid-market providers sell credits. One credit typically reveals one email address or phone number. The catch: not all credits are equal. Apollo.io gives you a 10,000 emails/month sending limit on its Professional plan at $99/user, making each email cost roughly $0.01. But Lusha charges $59/month for 160 credits, pushing the per-contact cost to $0.37. That is a 37x difference for what looks like the same thing on a feature comparison page.

Credit systems also create behavioral waste. Sales reps hoard credits early in the month, then burn through them at month-end to hit quotas. RevOps teams spend hours managing credit allocation across seats instead of optimizing pipeline.

Per-Seat (Unlimited Access) Pricing

ZoomInfo pioneered the unlimited-access model at $15,000+ per year. You pay per seat, not per contact export. The appeal is obvious: no credit anxiety, no per-lookup math. The reality is more nuanced. "Unlimited" often means unlimited views, not unlimited exports. Bulk export limits, API call caps, and restricted list sizes still apply.

Cognism uses a hybrid approach. You get unlimited company and people data views, but phone-verified mobile numbers cost credits. If direct dials are central to your outreach strategy, the effective per-contact cost rises significantly.

Intelligence-First Platform Pricing

A newer category of platform leads with account intelligence rather than contact volume. These tools solve a different problem: not "how many contacts can I export?" but "which accounts should I prioritize, and what should I say when I reach out?"

Salesmotion, for example, starts at $85/month and scales by accounts monitored — not headcount — with unlimited users on team plans. Rather than replacing a dedicated contact database like ZoomInfo or Apollo, Salesmotion provides account intelligence, buying signal monitoring, and AI-generated outreach. For the accounts you're actively tracking, it also delivers verified contact data — phone numbers and emails — through a proprietary waterfall enrichment process that is GDPR-compliant and highly accurate. But it is not a standalone contact database and would not replace one for high-volume prospecting.

This model works best as a complement to your existing data stack. When data enrichment alone is not driving pipeline, adding an intelligence layer tells reps when to reach out and why — which is often the missing piece.

Salesmotion surfaces key insights, executive perspectives, people moves, and talking points for tracked accounts — so reps know exactly when and why to reach out.

Provider-by-Provider Pricing Comparison

Here is what each major provider actually costs in 2026, based on published pricing and verified user reports.

A few patterns stand out. ZoomInfo is the most expensive entry point but eliminates per-contact math for large teams. Apollo offers the best value on raw email volume. Cognism is the strongest choice for European and GDPR-compliant data. For teams that already have a contact database but struggle with knowing which contacts to prioritize and when to reach out, complementing your data stack with an account intelligence platform can fill that gap without replacing your existing tools.

“The Business Development team gets 80 to 90 percent of what they need in 15 minutes. That is a complete shift in how our reps work.”

Andrew Giordano

VP of Global Commercial Operations, Analytic Partners

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What Does a Single B2B Contact Actually Cost?

The sticker price on a provider's website rarely reflects the true per-contact cost. Here is the math most buyers never do.

Calculating Effective Per-Contact Cost

Take your total annual spend (subscription + overages + add-ons), divide by the number of unique contacts your team actually used in outreach. Not exported. Not viewed. Used.

For a team of 10 reps on Apollo Professional ($99/user/month), the annual spend is $11,880. If each rep uses 500 contacts per month, you are touching 60,000 contacts per year. Effective cost: $0.20 per contact.

For the same team on ZoomInfo at $25,000/year for 10 seats, touching the same 60,000 contacts, the effective cost is $0.42 per contact. But ZoomInfo also provides org charts, intent signals, and technographics that Apollo does not include at that tier.

The cheapest per-contact cost is not always the best value. A $0.05 email that bounces wastes more than a $0.50 verified direct dial that connects.

Data Quality vs. Data Volume

According to Landbase research, high-quality B2B data providers delivering 97%+ accuracy achieve 66% higher conversion rates compared to budget alternatives averaging 50% accuracy. That accuracy gap means half the cheap contacts you buy may never reach a real inbox.

Cognism's data decay research shows that email addresses decay at 23-30% annually, and phone numbers change at 18% per year. If you bought 10,000 contacts in January, roughly 2,300 of those emails are invalid by December. Your effective per-contact cost just jumped by 30%.

Hidden Costs That Inflate Your Data Spend

The sticker price is where the conversation starts. These are the costs that show up later.

Auto-Renewal and Price Escalation

ZoomInfo contracts typically include 10-20% automatic price increases at renewal. A $25,000/year contract becomes $30,000 by year three without any additional seats or features. Several ZoomInfo alternatives now offer month-to-month or quarterly billing specifically to counter this lock-in.

Credit Overages

On credit-based platforms, running out mid-quarter forces a choice: stop prospecting or buy overage packs at premium rates. Lusha's overage credits cost significantly more than the bundled rate. Apollo caps exports at the plan level, and upgrading mid-cycle means paying the full difference for the remaining term.

Feature Gating

Intent data, technographics, org charts, and advanced filters are often sold as add-ons rather than included features. On ZoomInfo, the Streaming Intent add-on can cost $10,000+ per year on top of the base license. On Apollo, intent data is only available on the Organization plan at $119/user/month.

This is where the total cost of ownership diverges sharply from the list price. A team paying $15,000/year for base ZoomInfo might actually spend $30,000-40,000 once intent data, advanced analytics, and additional seats are added.

Integration and Onboarding

Most providers quote implementation as "included," but CRM sync configuration, field mapping, duplicate management, and training consume 20-40 hours of RevOps time. At an average RevOps salary, that is $2,000-4,000 in soft costs per implementation. Platforms with native CRM integration and pre-built Salesforce or HubSpot sync reduce this overhead to hours instead of weeks.

“The moment we turned on Salesmotion, it became essential. No more hours on LinkedIn or Google to figure out who we're talking to. It's just there, served up to you, so it's always 'go time.'”

Adam Wainwright

Head of Revenue, Cacheflow

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When Contact Data Alone Isn't Enough

Raw contact data solves one problem: "Who should I call?" It does not answer the questions that actually close deals: "Why should I call them now?" and "What should I say?"

According to SMARTe research, companies using outdated contact data experienced a 45% decrease in conversion rates. The issue is not just data freshness — it is data context. A contact record tells you someone's title and email. Account intelligence tells you their company just posted a VP of Revenue Operations role, mentioned a "sales transformation initiative" on their last earnings call, and hired three new SDRs in the past month.

That context changes everything about how a rep approaches the conversation. Instead of a cold intro, the first call becomes consultative. Deal velocity increases because discovery is half-done before the meeting starts.

This is why many teams complement their contact database with an intelligence layer rather than simply buying more records. Analytic Partners grew qualified pipeline 40% year-over-year after adding intelligence-driven prospecting on top of their existing data stack, cutting account research from three hours to 15 minutes per account.

The takeaway: if your team has plenty of contacts but struggles with prioritization, timing, and personalization, the bottleneck is not data volume — it is data intelligence. Platforms like Salesmotion will not replace your ZoomInfo or Apollo subscription, but they can dramatically improve what your reps do with those contacts. And for the accounts you are actively tracking, Salesmotion's own verified contact data — waterfall-enriched and GDPR-compliant — can reduce your reliance on bulk databases for those high-priority targets.

How to Evaluate True ROI on Contact Data

Before signing any contract, run this calculation.

Step 1: Quantify your current cost per meeting booked. Total data spend (all tools) divided by meetings booked from outbound prospecting. If you spend $30,000/year across ZoomInfo, a data enrichment tool, and an intent provider, and your team books 600 outbound meetings, your cost per meeting is $50.

Step 2: Factor in rep time. Sales reps lose an estimated 500 hours annually validating and correcting contact information, according to PGM Solutions research. That is 62 working days, or nearly 25% of selling capacity wasted on data hygiene. At an average AE salary of $120,000, that is $30,000 per rep in lost productivity.

Step 3: Calculate the all-in cost. Add subscription fees, overage costs, rep time spent on data validation, RevOps time managing credits and integrations, and the revenue cost of missed opportunities from stale data. The true cost of your contact data stack is almost always 2-3x the subscription price.

Step 4: Compare against consolidated alternatives. If a single platform eliminates three separate subscriptions and saves each rep 6+ hours per week on research, the math often favors consolidation even at a higher sticker price. Guild Education's sales team saves 6+ hours per rep per week by replacing manual research across multiple tools with a single sales intelligence platform.

Key Takeaways

• B2B contact data costs range from $0.01 to $1.50+ per contact depending on the provider, plan tier, and data type (email vs. verified direct dial), so always calculate your effective per-contact cost based on actual usage rather than list price.
• Credit-based pricing creates hidden inflation through overages, unused credits, and behavioral waste. Track your team's credit utilization rate monthly.
• Data decays at 22-30% annually. A $0.20 contact that bounces costs more than a $0.50 verified contact that connects. Prioritize accuracy over volume.
• Hidden costs (auto-renewal escalation, feature gating, integration overhead) inflate the true cost of ownership by 30-50% beyond the sticker price for most enterprise providers.
• Complementing your contact database with account intelligence — signals, research, and AI outreach — can reduce reliance on multiple point solutions and refocus rep time on selling rather than data validation. Intelligence platforms like Salesmotion include verified, waterfall-enriched contacts for tracked accounts but are not standalone contact database replacements.
• Before renewing any data contract, calculate your all-in cost per meeting booked, including rep time spent on data hygiene, to understand the real ROI.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does B2B contact data cost per contact?

The effective cost per contact ranges from $0.01 on high-volume platforms like Apollo.io to over $1.50 on enterprise providers like ZoomInfo when you factor in add-ons and limited export allowances. Budget platforms offer cheaper per-record costs, but data accuracy research from Landbase shows that providers with 97%+ accuracy achieve 66% higher conversion rates, making premium data more cost-effective over time.

What is the cheapest B2B contact data provider?

Apollo.io offers the most generous free tier (10,000 emails/month on the Professional plan at $99/user), and Hunter.io provides 25 free searches per month. For verified phone numbers, Lusha's free plan gives 5 credits per month. However, "cheapest" and "best value" are different metrics. Consider the total cost of your sales intelligence stack including data enrichment, intent signals, and research tools before optimizing on contact price alone.

How fast does B2B contact data decay?

B2B contact data decays at approximately 2.1% per month, or 22-30% annually, according to Marketing Sherpa and Cognism research. Email addresses degrade faster (23-30% per year) than phone numbers (18% per year). In high-growth sectors like technology and healthcare, decay rates reach 30-40% annually. This means roughly one in four contacts you purchased this year will be invalid within 12 months.

Is ZoomInfo worth the price for small teams?

For teams under 10 reps, ZoomInfo's $15,000+ annual starting cost creates a high per-seat burden. Apollo.io or Lusha offer better value for small teams needing basic contact data. However, if your team needs intent data, org charts, and technographics alongside contacts, compare ZoomInfo's bundled price against buying those capabilities separately. Some teams complement a lighter contact database with an account intelligence platform that provides verified contacts for tracked accounts plus the research and signal context that raw data providers lack.

What hidden fees should I watch for in data provider contracts?

The most common hidden costs are auto-renewal price escalation (10-20% annual increases), credit overages charged at premium rates, feature gating that puts intent data and advanced filters behind expensive add-on paywalls, and integration costs for CRM sync and field mapping. Always ask for a total cost of ownership breakdown including all add-ons before signing, and negotiate a price lock for multi-year terms.