Apollo vs Hunter.io: pricing, email finder and which is better

The short answer

Apollo and Hunter.io both sell B2B contact data, but they bill on opposite axes and that decides most shortlists. Apollo charges per seat, $49, $79 or $119 per user a month on annual billing, plus consumption credits, and gives you a 210 million-plus contact database with a built-in dialer. Hunter.io charges per plan with unlimited team members, $34, $104 or $209 a month on annual billing, and is narrower: a highly accurate email finder and verifier drawing on one shared credit pool. One seat that needs a big database and phone numbers goes Apollo. A team of any size that just needs accurate addresses pays far less on Hunter. AutoMail is the third option when finding contacts is not the bottleneck and writing the sequence is.

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Flat pricing from $49/mo, no per-seat fees Warm-up and inbox rotation on every plan One-click unsubscribe and suppression built in

Quick verdict

Who each tool is for

Both Apollo and Hunter.io are capable. Here is the shortest honest way to choose, with where AutoMail fits.

Pick Apollo

Database breadth is the bottleneck, you want phone numbers and a built-in dialer, and you are one or two seats. Basic is $49 per seat a month on annual billing with 30,000 credits per seat per year, and the free plan gives 900 credits a year.

Pick Hunter.io

You need accurate addresses on domains you already know, and several people need access. Every plan includes unlimited team members, so Starter at $34 a month on annual billing covers a whole team rather than one person.

Pick AutoMail

You already have a list and the bottleneck is writing personalized sequences that land and get replies. The AI researches each prospect, writes the 1:1 sequence, warms and rotates inboxes, then routes meeting-ready replies to your booking link.

Apollo and Hunter.io end up on the same shortlist because both answer the same starting question: where do the email addresses come from. They answer it very differently. Apollo is a full sales platform built on a huge contact database, with sequencing, a power dialer and deal management stacked on top. Hunter.io is a focused data tool: find an address on a domain, verify it, pull a list from Discover, and send a modest sequence if you want to.

The pricing model is the real fork in the road, and it is worth understanding before you compare feature lists. Apollo prices per seat and meters usage in credits, so the bill grows with headcount. Hunter prices per plan and includes unlimited team members, so the bill grows only when you need more credits. Two teams with identical requirements can land on opposite answers purely because one has five people who need a login and the other has one. The table below is honest about where each genuinely wins, including where they beat us.

Side by side

Apollo vs Hunter.io vs AutoMail

Pricing verified August 2026. Capabilities change, so check each vendor for the latest before you buy.

What matters	Apollo	Hunter.io	AutoMail
What it is built around	A 210M-plus B2B contact database plus sequencing, dialer and deal management	An email finder and verifier, with Discover search and a modest sequence sender	A sending platform: personalization, mailbox rotation and reply handling
Best for	One or two reps who need breadth of data and phone numbers	Teams of any size that need accurate addresses, not a database	Teams with a list who need the copy written and replies booked
Billing axis	Per seat, plus consumption credits	Per plan, unlimited team members included	Flat per workspace, unlimited seats, no credits
Entry price (annual)	$49/seat/mo Basic, 30,000 credits per seat per year	$34/mo Starter, 2,000 credits a month, unlimited seats	$49/mo flat per workspace, unlimited seats
Higher tiers (annual)	Professional $79/seat/mo (48,000 credits/yr), Organization $119/seat/mo, minimum 3 seats (72,000 credits/yr)	Growth $104/mo (10,000 credits/mo), Scale $209/mo (25,000 credits/mo), then Enterprise	$99 Growth, $249 Agency, flat per workspace
Cost for a 5-person team	$245/mo on Basic, $395/mo on Professional	$34/mo on Starter; seats are free on every plan	$49/mo on Starter; seats are free on every plan
Cost per credit	Flat at about $0.0196 to $0.0198 on every paid tier	Falls from $0.0170 on Starter to $0.0084 on Scale, billed yearly	Nothing is metered by credits
What a credit buys	Revealing emails and phone numbers, enrichment and exports	One shared pool for both finding and verifying	Not applicable
Free plan	Yes, 900 credits per seat per year, about 75 a month	Yes, permanent, 50 credits a month and 1 connected mailbox	No free plan
Phone numbers and dialer	Mobile numbers in the database and a built-in power dialer; Advanced Dialer is a $119/team/mo add-on	No phone data and no dialer	Email only by design
Verification	Included in enrichment, spends credits	The Email Verifier is its best-known product; spends from the same pool as finding	Bounce safeguards on send; bring a verified list
Connected sending mailboxes	Sequences included; not built for large rotating mailbox pools	Capped by tier: 1 free, 3 Starter, 10 Growth, 20 Scale, more as a paid add-on	5 on Starter, unlimited on Agency, with rotation
Mailbox warm-up	Not included	Sold separately as Inbox Protection and managed account add-ons	Included, plus a spam-score check before every send
CRM and deals	Yes, pipeline and deal management built in	No, integrates with your CRM	No, syncs to your CRM
API	Yes, on paid plans	Yes, and a separate Data Platform with bulk credit packs	Yes
AI copywriting	Assists and generates variants	AI Writing Assistant on paid plans	Researches each prospect and writes the full 1:1 sequence

Comparison reflects publicly available pricing and positioning as of July 2026. Company and product names are trademarks of their respective owners.

The third option

Where AutoMail fits between them

The AI writes the sequence

Both tools above leave the copy to you. AutoMail researches each prospect and writes a genuine 1:1 opener and follow-ups, so relevance, not just volume, drives the reply rate.

Deliverability built in

Inbox rotation, gradual warm-up and a spam-score check on every send keep personalized copy in the primary inbox, built for the 2026 Gmail and Yahoo sender rules.

Replies become meetings

When a prospect answers, the sequence pauses, intent is classified, and meeting-ready replies route to your booking link and CRM. Flat per workspace, unlimited seats, no credits.

One honest caveat: AutoMail has no built-in lead database, so bring or sync your own verified list. If prospecting data is what you need most, keep a data tool for that and run the outreach here.

Good questions

Apollo vs Hunter.io, answered

Apollo is a full sales platform built on a 210 million-plus contact database, with sequencing, a power dialer and deal management included, sold per seat. Hunter.io is a focused data tool: an email finder and verifier with a smaller Discover database and a modest sequence sender, sold per plan with unlimited team members. Apollo is what you buy when you need breadth and phone numbers. Hunter is what you buy when you need accuracy on domains you already have.

Hunter.io, as soon as more than one person needs access. Hunter Starter is $34 a month on annual billing and includes unlimited team members, while Apollo charges $49 to $119 for every seat. A five-person team pays $34 a month on Hunter Starter against $245 on Apollo Basic. Apollo is the better value at exactly one seat that burns a lot of credits, because Basic includes 30,000 credits a year against Hunter Starter 24,000.

It depends on your tier. Apollo credits cost almost exactly the same on every paid plan, about two cents each, so upgrading buys features and seats rather than cheaper data. Hunter credits get steadily cheaper as you climb: $0.0170 each on Starter billed yearly, down to $0.0084 on Scale, roughly half the price. At high volume Hunter is the cheaper credit; at low volume with one seat, Apollo bundles more of them into the entry plan.

Hunter.io has the stronger reputation for finder and verifier accuracy, particularly when you already know the company domain and want the right person on it. Apollo returns far more contacts per search because the database is much larger, but a larger database means more stale records, and heavy users routinely re-verify Apollo exports before sending. Neither is accurate enough to skip verification entirely.

Yes, both include sequence sending, but neither is built for high-volume outbound across a rotating mailbox pool. Hunter caps connected mailboxes at 1, 3, 10 or 20 by plan, so scaling means buying account slots. Apollo includes sequences but no mailbox warm-up. If your plan is to send serious volume from many inboxes, budget for a dedicated sending platform alongside whichever data tool you pick.

Apollo, on credits alone. Apollo Free gives 900 credits per seat per year, which works out to about 75 a month, against Hunter Free at 50 credits a month. Both are permanent rather than trials. Hunter Free is the easier one to evaluate the product with, because the finder and verifier you are testing are the whole product, while Apollo Free limits exports in ways that matter once you try to actually use a list.

Both ship an AI assistant that drafts or rewrites a message, but you still design the sequence, write the angle and decide the follow-ups. That is the gap AutoMail fills: it researches each prospect, writes the full personalized opener and follow-ups, warms and rotates the sending inboxes, then pauses on reply and routes meeting-ready answers to your booking link.

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See how AutoMail compares to each tool

Skip the copywriting, keep the deliverability

AutoMail personalizes every email, rotates and warms your inboxes, follows up, pauses on reply and books meetings into your calendar and CRM. Flat monthly fee, not per-seat, permission-based by design.

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Flat pricing from $49/mo, no per-seat fees · 1-click unsubscribe in every email · CAN-SPAM and GDPR