Cognism and Lusha split by criterion and judge; no overall winner emerges. Cognism leads sovereignty (5.5 vs 1.7; 6 judges lean Cognism, 0 Lusha, 0 tie) — its data residency attribute reads EU only, Lusha's US by default — and prospecting compliance (3.7 vs 3.0; 3 lean Cognism, 1 Lusha, 2 ties). Lusha leads CRM sync and export (4.8 vs 4.0; 5 lean Lusha, 1 Cognism) and pricing transparency (4.0 vs 2.0; 5 lean Lusha, 1 Cognism): Lusha publishes prices, Cognism's plans route to a quote. The splits: data coverage ties at 2.8 vs 2.8 (2 lean Cognism, 3 Lusha, 1 tie); data provenance, 1 Cognism, 2 Lusha, 3 ties (4.0 vs 3.7); visitor identification drew 5 ties (2.0 vs 1.7). Weighted totals: Lusha ahead for the SDR lead (4 vs 3.2), RevOps (4.1 vs 3.8), ABM marketer (3.6 vs 3) and skeptic (4 vs 3.5); Cognism for the data protection officer (4 vs 0).
Choose Cognism if
Your compliance mandate requires personal data stored in the EU — Cognism's data residency attribute reads EU only against Lusha's US by default, and sovereignty leans 6 judges to Cognism, 0 to Lusha, 0 ties.
Your procurement policy avoids US legal entities — Cognism's legal entity jurisdiction is GB, Lusha's is US.
A data protection officer signs off on the purchase — that judge's weighted total is 4 for Cognism against 0 for Lusha.
Your outbound calling puts prospecting compliance first — 3 judges lean Cognism on that criterion against 1 for Lusha, 2 ties.
You want a privacy notice that names its source categories with a self-service opt-out — cited in Cognism's provenance verdict, where its mean is 4.0 vs 3.7 though judges split 1 Cognism, 2 Lusha, 3 ties.
Choose Lusha if
Your team runs Salesforce, HubSpot, Monday or Zoho — CRM sync and export leans 5 judges to Lusha against 1 for Cognism, mean 4.8 vs 4.0.
You need published prices before a sales conversation — Lusha publishes prices, Cognism's plans route to an individual quote, and pricing transparency leans 5 judges to Lusha against 1, mean 4.0 vs 2.0.
Your buyer sits in the SDR lead, RevOps, ABM marketer or skeptic seat — Lusha's weighted totals lead each: 4 vs 3.2, 4.1 vs 3.8, 3.6 vs 3, 4 vs 3.5.
You need published volume figures — Lusha's data coverage verdict credits 290M+ contacts, 165M+ emails, 117M+ direct dials and 29M+ companies, with 3 judges leaning Lusha on coverage against 2 for Cognism, 1 tie.
You must keep exported data after ending the contract — Lusha's CRM sync and export verdict notes terms letting customers keep exported data after termination.
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The RevOps Manager
Owns the CRM and cleans up after every tool sales buys. Wants sync with field mapping and deduplication, re-enrichment that updates rather than duplicates, objections that propagate into synced records, and exit terms that say what the company may keep.
Cognism
Lusha
This judge's pick
Criterion by criterion
Coverage, accuracy & freshness
Cognism
European focus is the pitch — "aktuelle und rechtskonforme Daten" for Europe, phone-verified mobiles, verified-mobile filters and on-demand mobile verification — but the captured pages give no record counts, no per-country or DACH breakdown, and no re-verification cadence beyond on-demand mobile checks. I found no public information on bounce guarantees or last-verified dates visible to the user.
Lusha
Headline counts are published — 290M+ contacts, 165M+ emails, 117M+ direct dials, 29M+ companies, 78 fields per record, with 26 buying signals refreshed weekly — but I found no public information on DACH or any per-country coverage, on how contact records are verified, or on a re-verification cadence for anything other than the signals. The terms deliver the platform "AS IS" with no credit-back for inaccurate data, so decay is the buyer's cost, and the vendor's own study puts that decay at 12.6% a year.
Data sources & lawful basis
Cognism
Sources are named by category — third-party data vendors, customers under data-sharing agreements, direct correspondence — with a self-service Privacy Centre opt-out and a disclosed practice of generating approximate business emails from employer patterns. I found no public information stating the lawful basis for EU records, no balancing test, and no Art. 14 notification practice; the GDPR FAQ on the captured page shows only the question.
Lusha
Sources are named more concretely than most — data brokers, publicly available APIs, an Auto-Complete algorithm scanning public sources, and a Community Program whose members share CRM data, email headers and calendar meeting data about their contacts — with a suppression list honored across the database and a published 2024 request log (1,119 deletions/opt-outs, none denied). But I found no public statement of the legal basis for EU records — legitimate interest is never named — and no Art. 14 notification practice or balancing test anywhere on the pages, while the community sourcing pulls contact data from members' address books without any evidence those contacts were informed.
Visitor identification & intent signals
Cognism
Intent is sold as a filter and prioritisation signal ("Kaufabsichten", "Intent-Daten"), but I found no public information on identifying companies behind website visits, on how intent data is captured or sourced, or on any consent position for a tracking script. With no identification mechanism evidenced, this sits at the bottom of the scale.
Lusha
"Website Visitor Identification" is named as a capability and buying-intent topics are priced into the tiers (five topics at Starter, twenty-five at Scale, signals refreshed weekly), but I found no public information on how the identification works, whether it stays at company level for EU traffic, or any consent position under TDDDG for whatever script does the tracking.
Prospecting workflow & outreach rules
Cognism
Filters run deep — firmographics, technographics, signals, verified-mobile filters — and compliance is the marketing headline, but I found no public information on a suppression or do-not-contact list, per-country flagging of German contacts, or guidance on consent rules for cold calls and emails in the main EU markets. The published terms govern website use, not what a buyer may lawfully do with exported contacts.
Lusha
Basic and advanced filters, buying signals as triggers and a vendor-side suppression list honored across the whole database exist, the terms bind use to a defined B2B Purpose with B2C solicitation prohibited, and a do-not-call list appears among the pricing page's compliance items without stated terms. But outreach risk lands squarely on the customer — call-recording consent is "Customer's sole responsibility" — and I found no public information on cold-outreach guidance for German or other EU markets, on phone numbers being checked against national do-not-call registers, or on opt-outs syncing back from outreach into exports.
CRM sync, enrichment & export
Cognism
Export to Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive and more, an automatic CRM-enrichment add-on that "halten Sie sie aktuell", and API access via the Data-as-a-Service add-on — that clears the enrichment bar I care about. But I found no public information on field mapping, deduplication, scheduled re-enrichment, or what a customer may keep — records and credits — when the subscription ends.
Lusha
Native integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, Monday and Zoho, enrichment of existing records ("fill in missing emails, phone numbers, and company details in your CRM"), CSV enrichment, webhooks and an API meant to "keep them current without anyone re-running an export" — and, rare in this category, the terms state plainly that the customer may continue to use the data after termination. What I cannot find is field mapping, deduplication, bidirectional sync, published credit costs per API call, or any automatic propagation of objections and corrections into synced records; when someone objects, the terms make removal the customer's manual job, "without undue delay".
European sovereignty
Cognism
Hosting is AWS in Ireland with EU storage stated, recipients are named (including a Macedonia affiliate and UK and French entities), SCCs are described for third-country transfers, and both a DPA and a joint-controller arrangement exist. Rights requests route to the UK entity with the ICO as its lead supervisor, and I found no public information on a certification or on a DPA covering the database records a customer exports.
Lusha
The control setup is non-EU end to end: Lusha Systems Inc. (Boston) and Lusha Systems Ltd. (Tel Aviv) are joint controllers, data is "stored on Amazon Web Services in the United States of America", the terms authorize storage "in the United States or any other country", and data is shared with recipients in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Israel. Standard Contractual Clauses are named as the transfer safeguard and a full sub-processor list is published, which is worth something, but there is no EU contracting entity, no EU hosting, and support hours follow Israeli time.
Pricing transparency
Cognism
The credit mechanics are documented unusually well — "1 Credit = 1 freigeschalteter Kontakt", pooled account-wide, browsing and reuse across products at no extra cost — but both published plans name five licenses without prices and route to "Individuelles Angebot anfordern". Credit expiry, per-seat costs and the DaaS and CRM-enrichment add-on prices sit behind collapsed FAQ answers, so the annual invoice can only be arrived at through an individual quote.
Lusha
Four tiers are priced publicly with credit allowances — Free $0 with 40 credits per month, Starter $37.45 USD / month billed yearly with 4,800 credits per year, Pro $52.45, Premium $299.95 with 40,800 — and the terms state that unused credits expire at term end, while the pricing page also describes a monthly rollover capped at x2 on some plans. But the real invoice is still not computable: credits are not broken out by data type (email versus phone versus mobile), extra seats are billed at an unstated "prevailing rate", ad hoc credits carry an unstated "additional fee", Scale pricing is a sales conversation, and I found no public information on VAT treatment, per-API-call credit costs, or any refund rule for inaccurate data.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
Cognism
Lusha
Legal entity
Incorporated in DE
Incorporated in US
Ownership
Not determined
Not determined
Data residency
Not determined
US by default
Subprocessors
US CLOUD Act reach
US CLOUD Act reach
Facts, side by side
Only facts both products carry under the same definition — anything else would not be a fair row.