Apollo.io vs Lusha

Apollo.io

The homepage claims 240M+ contacts and 30M+ accounts — a headline count for the whole database — and I found no public information breaking coverage out for Germany, Austria or Switzerland, no verification method beyond the marketing word "verified", and only "Data refresh that improves over time" on upkeep. The terms expressly disclaim accuracy and make all payments nonrefundable, so the cost of bad data sits with the buyer, not the vendor.

Lusha

The headline counts are everywhere — 290 million contacts, 165 million emails, 117 million direct dials, 78 fields per record — but I found no public information on coverage for Germany, Austria or Switzerland, or on any per-country breakdown at all, and for a Mittelstand pipeline that silence is the whole question. The only cadence stated is buying signals refreshed weekly; I found no re-verification cadence for the contact records themselves, no accuracy methodology and no bounce guarantee or credit-back terms. The firmographic depth is real, which keeps this just above pure headline counting.

Apollo.io

The Contributor Database is disclosed as grown from customers' own submitted data and resold onward, with a dedicated Article 14 Processing Notice for the people in it, a self-service removal page and a suppression list to prevent re-adding — more transparency about contributory collection than most US vendors show. But we found no public information on the legal basis or a balancing test for EU records, and the data is described only as compiled from various third-party sources with registers unnamed.

Lusha

Sources are named in general terms — data brokers and publicly available APIs — and the contributory side is disclosed candidly: community members share CRM data, email headers and calendar meeting details, which for my purposes is contacts harvested from other people's inboxes and will be my first question in any DPA review. The opt-out apparatus is genuinely working (suppression list, toll-free line, over a thousand delete/opt-out requests handled with none denied), but I found no public information on a legitimate-interest assessment or on any Art. 14 practice telling people they were added to the database.

Apollo.io

Website visitor identification and buying signals such as intent, job changes and website visits appear on the homepage, and the Inbound add-on prices identification at up to 50,000 companies per month — company-level, so at least not person-level. We found no public information on how the identification works, on a cookieless option, or on consent under the German TDDDG, which is the first thing a DPO will ask.

Lusha

The capability is named — Website Visitor Identification in the footer, buying-intent topics tiered from five up to unlimited — but I found no public information on how identification works, whether it stays at company level for EU traffic, whether a cookieless or consent-mode option exists, or any position under the German TDDDG on consent for the script. A feature name with no mechanics and no consent story is worth less to me than a described reverse-IP offering, because I cannot take an unevidenced tracker to a client's DPO.

Apollo.io

The homepage promises "all the tools you need to comply with GDPR, CAN-SPAM, DNC and regional regulations" and the terms prohibit marketing-law violations — two of the three named regimes are American, and the legal risk stays contractually with me. A Parallel Dialer that multiplies outbound volume is exactly the tool a German rep must not aim at contacts without consent under UWG §7, and we found no public information on do-not-call register checks, country-aware flags or a shared suppression list.

Lusha

Filters, bulk reveal and sequence automation are present, and the terms are explicit that recording consent and data-subject removal obligations sit with the customer — the legal risk is contractually mine, not theirs. A 'Do not call list' badge and an unexplained 'advanced compliance' line on the top tier are the only nods, and I found no public information on country-aware flagging of German contacts, on guidance for cold outreach under UWG §7, or on a do-not-contact list living in the buyer's own workflow. For a tool sold into DACH, silence on German outreach law is the headline fact.

Apollo.io

CRM integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot and Pipedrive are named, waterfall enrichment is included from Basic upward, an API with documentation exists, and the terms grant a perpetual licence to Business Contact Information incorporated into my own systems — so what I may keep after cancellation is stated plainly. We found no public information on field mapping, deduplication, bidirectional sync, or whether a data subject's objection propagates back into synced CRM records.

Lusha

Four CRMs named with direct export, CRM and CSV enrichment, an API with webhooks and even MCP into Claude and ChatGPT — the plumbing is modern, and the terms state plainly that exported data may be kept after termination. I found no public information on field mapping, deduplication, or propagation of objections and deletions into synced records, and the API's 'strict rate limits' appear without numbers or credit costs. Good bones, an unproven middle.

Apollo.io

The contracting entity is ZenLeads Inc. of Covina, California, processing personal information "in the United States and other countries", with Lionheart Squared as representative in the EEA and HelloDPO as UK/EEA data protection officer — a US vendor with an Article 27 representative, not an EU setup. Transfers rest on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and standard contractual clauses; we found no EU hosting option, and the privacy policy points to a subprocessor list that the captured pages do not show.

Lusha

Everything that matters sits outside the EU: a Delaware-incorporated vendor with an Israeli affiliate as joint controller, data stored on Amazon Web Services in the United States, and terms authorising storage in any country where Lusha or its subprocessors maintain facilities. Standard Contractual Clauses for the transfers and a published subprocessor list are the honest minimum and keep this off the floor, but I found no public information on an EU contracting entity, an EU hosting option or an Art. 27 representative. For a database of people who never chose Lusha, this is not a profile I can defend to a German buyer's Datenschutzbeauftragter.

Apollo.io

Every tier is public with credit allowances — $0 with 900 credits per seat per year, $49 Per seat per month billed annually with 30,000, $79 with 48,000, $119 with 72,000 and a three-seat minimum — alongside add-ons at $119 per team per month, no credit rollover, per-seat pricing and "Prices exclude any applicable taxes". What a credit buys per data type sits on a separate credits page, and we found no public information on overage rates or any refund for inaccurate data, with the terms making subscriptions nonrefundable.

Lusha

Four of five tiers carry public monthly prices with credit allowances and a stated 25 percent yearly discount, and the terms are blunt that unused credits expire at the end of the term — though the pricing page separately describes monthly credits rolling over up to a cap on some plans, so the captured pages give different figures for rollover. I found no public information on what a credit buys per data type, the extra-seat rate beyond 'prevailing rate', the price of ad hoc credits, VAT treatment or API costs, and the Scale tier is unpriced entirely. The invoice is computable for a small team; anything Scale-shaped is a sales call.