The best Apollo alternatives fall into two groups: tools that also give you contact data, and tools for working a list you already have. Here are six, from databases with sequences built in to an email finder with a free plan and an AI agent that answers the replies and books the meeting, with who each one suits and how each one charges.
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Apollo is a sales platform built around data. Its database lists more than 240 million contacts and 30 million companies, and around that data it puts sequences across email, calls and LinkedIn tasks, a dialer with power and parallel dialling, automated meeting scheduling, deliverability tools and AI for writing emails and summarising calls, connected to CRMs such as Salesforce and HubSpot. It is aimed at sales leaders, account executives, SDRs, RevOps teams, marketers and founders, and for a team that has to find people before it can do anything else, that combination is the point.
The pricing follows the data. Apollo publishes a free plan and paid plans priced per user, with credits that its own pages say are used for things such as exporting contacts and placing dialer calls, and add-on credits when you need more. That works well when every seat is searching the database every day. It becomes a closer question when some of the seats only send, when the list already exists, or when the part of the plan that gets used is a small share of the part that is paid for.
So the people searching for Apollo alternatives tend to want one of three things. A different mix of data and channels: another database, with LinkedIn, WhatsApp or an AI SDR in the sequence. A lighter data tool: an email finder and verifier with a free plan, for teams that mostly look up addresses. Or no data at all: a tool that works a list they already hold, sends at volume, and answers the replies and books the meetings that the sequence produces, without a rep in the middle.
This page ranks six options across those three groups. Each is described from its own website, checked on 11 September 2026, including how it charges and when it is the better choice. Apollo's own pricing is described here by its model rather than its figures, so check its pricing page for the current numbers, and do the same for every tool below before you commit: plans in this category change often.
None of them is about what Apollo does. They are about whether a data platform, priced per user, is the right shape for the job in front of the buyer.
A team that mainly looks up the address of a person whose name it already knows, or verifies a list before sending, is using a small part of a large platform. Some of those buyers want a tool built around exactly that job, finding and verifying addresses on credits, with a free plan to start and simple sequences on the side, rather than a full sales platform organised around search.
Contacts from a CRM, a trade show, a client's customer records or years of the founder's own networking do not need to be found again. Apollo's plans are organised around its database and its credits, which its pricing FAQ says are used when you export contacts. A business with its own list often wants the effort, and the budget, to go on the sending and the replies instead.
Apollo prices its paid plans per user. For a sales floor that divides work by rep, that is natural. For an owner and an assistant, or an agency that wants each client to see their own results, it means deciding who gets a login and paying again as that list grows. Pricing by contacts and sends, or by account, changes the sum for those buyers.
Apollo gives a sales team sequences, a dialer, a scheduler and AI help with the writing. A business without reps needs something to do the talking: an agent that answers the reply at the hour it arrives, from the business's own material, books the slot into the calendar, and answers the website chat and the DMs that arrive whether or not a sequence is running.
Three questions narrow the field quickly, and the answers are usually obvious once you look at how your team actually spends its week.
If your team builds new lists every week, you need data in the tool or beside it, and the question is how it is metered: credits per lookup, per export or per verification. If you look up a handful of addresses a month, a finder with a free plan may be enough. If your contacts come from your CRM or your own research, you may need no data at all, and every credit is money you can keep.
List the steps that actually produce replies for you. Email only points to a sender built around unlimited mailboxes and warm-up. LinkedIn, calls, texts or WhatsApp point to a multichannel platform, and it is worth checking whether each channel is in the plan or an add-on. If reps make calls, you want a dialer; if nobody does, you want the call placed for you, or no call step at all.
Decide whether replies go to a person in a shared inbox, to an AI reply agent you add to a plan, or to an agent that answers from your own material and books the meeting. Then compare the unit each tool charges in, users, credits, contacts and sends, or the whole account, and where the AI cost sits, inside the plan or on your own key.
Bold Agent Kit is first. The other five are ordered by how much of Apollo each one covers for a typical Apollo customer, who uses it for data and sequences together: lemlist and Reply.io first, the two platforms that pair their own large databases with multichannel sequences, then Instantly, which pairs a lead database with cold email at volume, then Smartlead for sending with verified emails in the plan, and Hunter for finding and verifying addresses.
We make Bold Agent Kit, which is why it is first on this list. Every other entry is described from its own website, including when it is the better choice.
Bold Agent Kit starts where Apollo hands over the list: with the people you already know you want to reach. You load them from a CSV, from a segment of a connected CRM such as HubSpot, GoHighLevel, Housecall Pro, ServiceTitan or Jobber, or from the Chrome side panel, which extracts email addresses, phone numbers and social profile links from the page you have open, deep-scans a domain for the pages most likely to carry contact details, and works through a CSV of sites one at a time. There is no contact database, and nothing is charged per lookup.
Then one AI agent works the list. It sends cold email from as many mailboxes as you connect, each warmed on a ramp and given a health score out of 100 with the reasons listed, rotated inside hourly and daily caps, and rested automatically if its bounces or spam placement cross a threshold. Each step can wait for opened, not opened, clicked or not clicked, and the people who stay silent get a text on your own number and then a call the agent places itself, speaking in real time from your script. When somebody replies, the agent answers from your material, from the address the reply arrived at, and books the meeting into your calendar. The same agent answers website chat, inbound calls and DMs on eleven platforms.
Choose it if your list already exists and nobody on the team has the hours to work the replies. It is $25 a month or $200 a year for the whole account, with unlimited agents, mailboxes and contacts, and no seats or credits; the AI runs on your own key with any of sixteen providers at cost, and your carrier bills texts and calls. It has no dialer queue for reps, no LinkedIn step and no Salesforce integration, so if you need those, or the database itself, keep Apollo or pick one of the tools below.
lemlist is the alternative closest to Apollo in where it starts: with data. Its own site describes a lead database of more than 650 million contacts with an email and phone number finder, enrichment, and AI that writes personalised steps, followed by campaigns that run across email, LinkedIn, calls, WhatsApp and SMS from one workflow, adjusting to what each lead does. Its warm-up tool, lemwarm, is included with every seat alongside a deliverability hub, and every conversation, whatever the sender or channel, comes back into a unified inbox.
Its pricing has two shapes. The Email plan lists unlimited users and email senders at a flat monthly price, which at the time of writing starts at $69 a month, or $55 a month billed annually. The Multichannel plan, where LinkedIn automation, SMS, the call dialer and the WhatsApp add-on sit, is priced per user with five senders each. Finding and verifying contact details draws on lemlist credits. It has native integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot and Attio.
Choose lemlist if you want Apollo's combination of data and outreach, but with LinkedIn profile visits, connection requests and messages automated inside the sequence, and WhatsApp and SMS alongside. Its Email plan is one price for the whole team, which can suit a team that sends email from many addresses; a team that needs the multichannel steps will be on the per-user plan, much as it would be with Apollo.
Reply.io puts a database and an outreach platform together, as Apollo does, and adds an AI SDR. It gives access to live data from more than a billion B2B contacts, with intent signals such as hiring activity, LinkedIn engagement, tech stack changes and company growth, and it can pull contacts straight from LinkedIn or Sales Navigator, enrich and score them, and identify the companies visiting your website so they can be routed into outreach while the interest is fresh.
Its sequences mix email, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, SMS and calls, adapting to replies and actions, and Jason, its AI SDR, researches each prospect against what you tell it to look for, writes specific emails and can run the whole motion on autopilot, with a Calendly integration for meetings. Email Volume plans are priced per user per month, tiered by active contacts, and include unlimited mailboxes under a fair-usage policy, warm-up with every mailbox and 50 live data credits a month; at the time of writing they start at $49 a month per user billed annually. The Multichannel plan is per user with the other channels in it, and Jason is its own plan, starting at $500 a month.
Choose Reply.io if you want a database and multichannel sequences in one place, as with Apollo, and like the idea of an AI SDR doing the research and the writing. Like Apollo, it is priced for sales teams, per user and by contacts, so size the active-contact tier against the number of new people you actually start sequences with each month.
Instantly pairs a B2B lead database of more than 450 million contacts, with filters, keyword search and lookalikes, with outreach built around unlimited sending accounts. Every Outreach plan includes unlimited email accounts and unlimited warm-up, sequences can mix email, LinkedIn and webhook steps, and replies from every account land in its Unibox. It can set up done-for-you Google accounts, test inbox placement against blacklists and SPF, DKIM and DMARC, and identify B2B visitors to your website with a pixel, using credits only for resolved profiles.
Its CRM adds a master inbox for email, calls, SMS and tasks, with calling and texting from the browser and unlimited seats, and its AI Reply Agent answers interested prospects, handles objections and shares your Calendly link. The pricing separates sending from data. Outreach plans are tiered by emails a month and uploaded contacts, and at the time of writing its published plans start at $47 a month; the database runs on separate credits plans, and bundles combine the two. Its credits plans list the option to use your own LLM API key.
Choose Instantly if you want Apollo's mix of data and outreach but weighted towards sending at volume, with mailboxes never on the bill and data bought only when you need it. A team whose day depends on reps working a dialer should look at how its browser calling fits the way they work before switching.
Smartlead is cold email software built for outbound at scale, with unlimited email accounts on every plan at no extra cost and sending rotated automatically across the mailboxes in a campaign. Warm-up begins the moment a mailbox is connected, in a private pool, and a master inbox gathers every reply, tagged by intent, with assignment, notes, bulk actions and keyword-triggered workflows that can route a lead into another sequence or a booking calendar.
For an Apollo customer, the interesting part is what sits in the plan. Each tier includes a monthly allowance of verified emails alongside its contacts and sends, SmartProspect gives access to verified business profiles with the monthly limit set by the plan, and SmartDialer adds a power dialer with a managed call queue, scripts, recording and local US numbers, on credit plans. At the time of writing its published plans start at $39 a month, with 17% off yearly and a free trial with no credit card. It has an API and webhooks, and integrates with HubSpot, Salesforce and Pipedrive.
Choose Smartlead if you want a data source and a dialer close to the sending without buying a per-user sales platform, or if you are an agency that needs client workspaces and white-labelled dashboards. Mailboxes, servers, placement testing and calling are each priced on their own, so price the add-ons you need alongside the plan.
Hunter covers the part of Apollo many people use most: finding the email address of a person at a company. Its Email Finder takes a name and returns a verified email address, Domain Search finds the addresses for a company's website, and Email Verifier checks a list before you send, to avoid bounces. Discover finds leads that match your ideal customer profile from its B2B database, and browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox and Edge, an API, and connections to Google Sheets and your CRM put the data where you work.
It also runs cold email. Sequences send from connected email accounts with scheduling, tracking and email account rotation, and each plan sets how many accounts you can connect: one on the free plan, three on Starter, ten on Growth and twenty on Scale, with more available as an extra. Credits are used for finding and verifying: one credit finds one email, and a verification uses half a credit. The free plan includes 50 credits a month and 500 recipients per sequence; at the time of writing, paid plans start at $49 a month, or $34 a month billed yearly.
Choose Hunter if you used Apollo mainly to look up and verify addresses, and want a lighter tool with a free plan to start. Its site describes an email outreach platform, so a team that relies on reps calling from a dialer, or on LinkedIn steps in the sequence, should keep those elsewhere and use Hunter for the finding and the email.
The six picks side by side, with who each one suits, the channels it covers and the unit its plans are counted in, from each tool's own website on the review date.
| Tool | Best for | Channels | How it charges |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bold Agent Kit | working a list you already have, replies and all | Email, text and call steps; website chat, inbound calls and DMs on eleven platforms | $25 a month or $200 a year for the whole account, with a 7-day free trial. No seats, no credits; AI and carrier at cost. |
| lemlist | a lead database with email and LinkedIn in one workflow | Email, LinkedIn, calls, WhatsApp and SMS | At the time of writing, its Email plan starts at $69 a month, or $55 billed annually; Multichannel is priced per user; credits for finding and verifying. |
| Reply.io | a billion-contact database with an AI SDR on top | Email, LinkedIn, calls, SMS and semi-automated WhatsApp | Per user per month, in tiers of active contacts; at the time of writing, from $49 a month per user billed annually. Jason AI SDR from $500 a month. |
| Instantly | cold email at volume with a lead database on credits | Email, with LinkedIn and webhook steps; calls and SMS from its CRM | Outreach plans by emails a month and uploaded contacts, from $47 a month at the time of writing; the lead database on separate credits plans, or bundled. |
| Smartlead | sending at volume with verified emails in the plan | Email, with a power dialer as an add-on | Tiered by contacts, email sends and verified emails, from $39 a month at the time of writing, 17% off yearly; add-ons for mailboxes, servers, placement tests and calling. |
| Hunter | finding and verifying email addresses, free to start | Email sequences from connected email accounts | A free plan with 50 credits a month. At the time of writing, paid plans start at $49 a month, or $34 a month billed yearly; credits for finding and verifying. |
Data is the first dividing line. lemlist, Reply.io and Instantly each include their own B2B database, Smartlead puts verified emails and SmartProspect in its plans, Hunter is built around finding and verifying addresses, and Bold Agent Kit has no database at all. The second is the unit of price: users and active contacts, contacts and sends, credits, or one price for the account. Apollo itself publishes a free plan and per-user plans with credits.
We checked each tool’s public website on 11 September 2026 for this page. Plans and features change, so check each vendor’s own site for the current detail. Product names are trademarks of their owners, and Bold Agent Kit is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them.
If you need data and multichannel sequences together, as Apollo gives you, look first at lemlist and Reply.io. lemlist suits a team that wants LinkedIn, calls, WhatsApp and SMS in one workflow with a database of more than 650 million contacts and a flat Email plan as an option; Reply.io suits a team that wants a billion-contact database, website visitor identification and an AI SDR, priced per user and by active contacts.
If the sending is the heavier half of your week, Instantly and Smartlead keep data close without a per-user sales platform: Instantly with its database on credits and an AI Reply Agent, Smartlead with verified emails in every tier and client workspaces for agencies. If all you really used Apollo for was looking up and checking addresses, Hunter does that with a free plan, and sends simple sequences on the side.
And if the list already exists, what you need is not more data but more follow-through. Bold Agent Kit works the list you have: one agent that sends from your warmed mailboxes, answers the replies from your own material, books the meeting, follows the silent ones with a text and a call, and covers the website chat, inbound calls and DMs, for $25 a month for the account on your own AI key.
Each agent uses a model on your own API key, in the same way it sends from your own mailbox and your own phone number. Sixteen providers are supported: OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, xAI and Mistral; DeepSeek, GLM, Kimi, Qwen and MiniMax; Groq, Together, Fireworks and OpenRouter; and Ollama or any other OpenAI-compatible endpoint you host yourself.
Bring your own credentials and you own the whole stack: your model provider, your mailboxes, your carrier, your CRM. We charge for the software and nothing else — no token markup, no metering, no credit packs — so your provider bills you direct at their rates, usually a few dollars a month per agent.
OpenAI
Anthropic
Gemini
xAI
Mistral
DeepSeek
GLM
Kimi
Qwen
MiniMax
Groq
Together
Fireworks
OpenRouter
Ollama
Any OpenAI APINo seat tiers, no credit packs, no per-agent or per-channel pricing, and nothing held back behind an enterprise call.
| Agents | |
|---|---|
| How many | Unlimited — one per business, brand or job |
| Shared brain | The same identity, instructions and knowledge on every channel |
| Knowledge base | Documents, Q&A pairs, data points and pages of your own site |
| Isolation | One agent's content is never used to reply for another |
| Client seats | Invite a client into one agent, with their own login |
| Channels | |
| As many mailboxes per agent as you connect, rotated by campaigns | |
| Text messages | Nine providers — Twilio, Telnyx, SimpleTexting, Plivo, Vonage, Sinch, Bandwidth, MessageBird, ClickSend |
| Phone calls | Answering and dialling, with recordings and transcripts |
| Transcription | Google, or Deepgram nova-3 on your own key |
| Voices | Google, Amazon Polly and ElevenLabs, or your own ElevenLabs / Fish Audio account |
| Voice cloning | Record a voice in the browser and clone it on your ElevenLabs or Fish Audio key |
| Website chat | A widget on your site with your colour, image and greeting |
| Social DMs | Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram, LINE, Viber, Slack, Discord, Bluesky, Reddit, X |
| Inbox | |
| One list | Every channel's conversations together, newest first, tagged by channel |
| Filters | By channel, by mailbox or number, or by agent |
| Takeover | Reply yourself and the agent stands down on that thread |
| Hand back | Return the thread to the agent when you are done |
| Campaigns | |
| Multichannel sequences | Email, text and call steps in one campaign, each with its own timing |
| Send conditions | Send a step only if they opened, did not open, clicked or did not click |
| Schedule | The days, hours and time zone anything may be sent |
| Stop rules | A reply, a booking or an opt-out on any channel ends the sequence |
| Pacing | Per-mailbox and per-number hourly limits, pausable and resumable |
| Review before start | The full plan is shown; a campaign sends nothing until you start it |
| Templates | Email, text and call scripts, saved once and reused |
| Analytics | |
| Funnel | Reached, replied, visited, converted, plus value won and time to convert |
| By channel | Where each person started, and the channel they converted on |
| Pages | Which pages known people read, and how many of them converted |
| Journeys | One row per person: every message, visit, call and booking in order |
| Goals | A page rule or a manual "won", each with a dollar value |
| Triggers | A known person returns to a page — notify you, or send a follow-up |
| Open and click tracking | Recorded per campaign and added to that person's history |
| Integrations | |
| Calendars | Google, Microsoft 365, Calendly, Cal.com, Acuity, Zoho, Square, HubSpot Meetings |
| CRMs and commerce | HubSpot, GoHighLevel, Housecall Pro, ServiceTitan, Jobber, Stripe, Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix, Squarespace |
| Booking | Real open slots offered, and only an offered slot can be booked |
| CRM import | Import a segment of customers into a contact list |
| Deliverability and compliance | |
| Mailbox warm-up | Ramped sending across the network, with spam rescue and replies |
| Health score | SPF, DKIM, DMARC, bounce rate and inbox placement, with reasons |
| Auto-rest | A failing address is removed from rotation automatically |
| Unsubscribes | One click, honoured automatically, including on queued mail |
| Reply limits | One reply per thread, per-sender daily and per-channel hourly caps |
| Filtering | Bounces, out-of-office and no-reply addresses ignored |
| List building | |
| Contact extraction | Emails, phone numbers and social profiles, on any site. Unlimited. |
| Deep scan | Follows the pages of a domain most likely to carry contact details |
| Domain queue | Load a CSV of sites and work through them one at a time |
| Contacts and lists | Unlimited, by email or phone, with CSV import and export |
| AI | |
| Your own key | Sixteen providers, including any OpenAI-compatible endpoint you host |
| What we charge for AI | Nothing — no markup, no metering, no credit packs |
| On calls | Uses your provider's fastest model automatically |
| Account | |
| Platforms | Chrome side panel and web dashboard on one login |
| Members' forum | Six boards, visible only once you are signed in |
| Referral program | $50 a year per referral ($5 a month), recurring for the life of the account |
| Support | support@boldagents.co |
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It depends on which part of Apollo you rely on. For a database with multichannel sequences, lemlist and Reply.io are the closest matches: lemlist with LinkedIn, WhatsApp and SMS in one workflow, Reply.io with a billion-contact database and an AI SDR. For sending at volume with data close by, Instantly and Smartlead both include unlimited email accounts. For looking up and verifying addresses, Hunter has a free plan. For a business that already has its list and no reps to work the replies, Bold Agent Kit answers them, books the meetings and follows up by text and call, for $25 a month.
Mostly because of fit. Some use only the email lookups and want a lighter tool built around finding and verifying. Some already have their list, from a CRM or their own research, and do not need a database or export credits. Some find per-user pricing awkward when the people who need a login are an owner, an assistant or a client rather than a team of reps. And some need the reply answered and the meeting booked without a rep in the middle, with the website chat and DMs covered by the same tool. Each of those points to a different option on this page.
Apollo starts with finding people: a B2B contact database with sequences, a dialer, scheduling and deliverability tools, priced per user with credits. Bold Agent Kit starts with answering them: one AI agent that works the list you bring, sends cold email from your warmed mailboxes, answers the replies from your own material, books the meeting, follows up by text and a call it places itself, and covers website chat, inbound calls and DMs. It has no database, no LinkedIn step and no Salesforce integration. The full side-by-side is on our Bold Agent Kit vs Apollo comparison page.
Rebuild rather than import. Apollo's own pricing FAQ says exporting contacts outside Apollo uses export credits, so check your plan's allowance before moving a large list, or move it through a CRM both tools read, such as HubSpot. Copy each sequence's email steps into the new tool's templates, reconnect the mailboxes you send from and switch warm-up on before sending. In Bold Agent Kit, a campaign is a draft that shows the whole plan before it sends anything. Take the same contacts out of any live Apollo sequence first, so nobody hears from you twice.
Yes. Hunter publishes a free plan with 50 credits a month for finding and verifying addresses, one connected email account and 500 recipients per sequence, which covers light prospecting and small campaigns. Apollo itself also has a free plan. Several of the other tools offer trials rather than free plans: Smartlead has a free trial with no credit card, Reply.io's Multichannel plan has a 14-day trial, and Bold Agent Kit has a 7-day free trial, after which it is $25 a month or $200 a year for the account. Check each pricing page, as free tiers and trials change.
lemlist describes a lead database of more than 650 million contacts with an email and phone finder, Reply.io gives access to live data on more than a billion B2B contacts with credits each month, and Instantly offers a database of more than 450 million contacts on credits plans. Smartlead includes verified emails in each plan and SmartProspect for verified business profiles, and Hunter is built around finding and verifying addresses. Bold Agent Kit has no database: its Chrome side panel extracts contact details from the pages you browse, and lists also come from a CSV or a CRM segment.
If there is nobody to work the replies, look at what each tool does after the send. Reply.io offers Jason, an AI SDR that researches prospects, writes the emails and can run outreach on autopilot, on its own plan. Instantly's AI Reply Agent answers interested prospects and shares your Calendly link, listed on its Scale bundle. Bold Agent Kit's agent answers every reply from your own material, books the meeting into your calendar, follows the silent ones with a text and a call, and also answers the website chat and DMs, on the one $25 plan with the AI on your own key.
Yes, and some teams do: Apollo to find the people, another tool to work them. The tools on this page do not connect to Apollo directly unless their own sites say so, so the usual route is a CSV export or a CRM both tools read. Bold Agent Kit, for example, can pull a segment from HubSpot, which Apollo also integrates with, into a contact list, and then send, answer and book from there. Remember that Apollo's pricing FAQ says exporting contacts uses export credits, so plan large moves around your allowance.
The best alternatives to the other tools people shortlist for the same jobs.
Load the contacts you have, connect the mailboxes, write the sequence and press Start. The agent sends, follows up by text and call, answers the replies and books the meetings. Seven days free, then $25 a month.
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