Cognism vs Lusha

Cognism

Coverage is stated only at the level of 'Europe' — we found no public information on Germany, Austria or Switzerland individually, on record counts, or on how often records are re-verified. Mobile verification is described (filters for verified mobile numbers and verification on demand) and firmographics reach revenue, headcount, headquarters and technologies, which is more than a bare claim but well short of a country-by-country, DACH-accountable dataset.

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.

Cognism

The privacy policy names its source categories — licensed third-party data vendors (the list itself only on request), customers under data-sharing agreements, and direct correspondence — and gives the people in the database a notice plus a self-service opt-out form at the Privacy Centre. We found no public statement of the legal basis for EU records, no balancing summary, and no description of how individuals are informed when they are added; the homepage GDPR topic appears as a question with the answer text not on the captured page.

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.

Cognism

Intent signals are sold as filters and account prioritisation — buying intent, hires, job changes, funding — but we found no public information on website visitor identification, on any tracking script and its consent position under the TDDDG, or on where the third-party intent data is sourced. Signal marketing without method or legal position is not something I could defend to a German data protection officer.

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.

Cognism

The filter set is genuinely deep — firmographics, technographics, hiring, funding and job-change signals — and 'compliant prospecting' is the vendor's own positioning, but we found no public information on a suppression or do-not-contact list, on checks against national do-not-call registers, or on country-aware flags for German contacts where a cold call requires consent under UWG §7. For a Mittelstand buyer the legal risk in the outreach step would sit squarely with us.

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.

Cognism

Export goes directly into Salesforce, HubSpot and Pipedrive, a CRM-enrichment add-on keeps records current, CSV enrichment and SSO are on the plan comparison, and API access arrives via the Data-as-a-Service add-on. We found no public information on field mapping or deduplication, on stated API limits, or on what happens to exported data and access to it after cancellation.

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.

Cognism

The privacy policy puts hosting on Amazon Web Services in Ireland, names a Croatian sister company as joint controller with the Croatian data protection authority for the EU, and discloses affiliate recipients — among them one in North Macedonia — and US engagement platforms, with standard contractual clauses stated for third-country transfers. The contracting entity is still the UK company under English law and the licensed data vendors are a list available only on request, so the chain is half-disclosed rather than sovereign end to end.

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.

Cognism

The pricing page routes every plan to an individual quote — no price is shown for Standard or Pro — though the credit unit is at least defined: one credit buys one unlocked contact, reusable across users and products at no extra cost, with browsing free. We found no public information on credit allowances, expiry, per-seat costs or VAT treatment, so the annual invoice is not computable from public pages.

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.