A market map of Cognism competitors in 2026, with verified pricing and the calculation that tells you whether the compliance premium is worth paying.
Cognism sells a five-person team roughly $22,500 of contact data a year, rising near $37,500 for the phone-verified tier. Competitors sell similar-sounding data for a tenth of that. The gap is not margin, it is compliance work and human phone verification, and the only sensible question is whether you need what that money buys. If you dial across the UK, DACH, France, Benelux, and the Nordics, you probably do. If your outbound is North American and email-led, you are paying for insurance you cannot claim. ZoomInfo, Apollo, SalesIntel, Lusha, and InboundLabs each take a different position on that trade.
Here is the map, with verified 2026 pricing and a way to price the premium honestly.
A Cognism competitor is any B2B data provider selling verified contact records to outbound teams, particularly those with phone data and a documented compliance posture. They divide into enterprise incumbents strongest in North America, self-serve challengers competing on price, and accuracy specialists competing on verification method.
State the product precisely, because the premium only makes sense against the specifics. Diamond Data is phone-verified mobile data where a human has confirmed the number connects. That is materially different from a scraped or inferred number, and on European calling it shows up directly in connect rates. The compliance work is the other half: do-not-call screening across 15 or more countries, plus a GDPR posture built for teams whose legal function has opinions about outbound.
Pricing is quote only and structured as a platform fee plus per-seat licences. Third-party procurement sources put the platform fee at roughly $15,000 to $25,000 a year with seats at $1,500 to $2,500 each. A five-user team lands near $22,500 on the entry tier and closer to $37,500 with phone-verified data. Intent topics are an add-on at $200 to $400 per topic per year. Fair use policies apply to unlimited access, commonly referenced around 2,000 records per user per month. Contracts are annual with no self-serve option.
Two honest limitations. North American depth does not match ZoomInfo's, so US-focused teams are paying a European premium for coverage they could get cheaper elsewhere. And the opacity is real: no published pricing means your cost depends partly on negotiation, which disadvantages smaller buyers. Cognism also owns Kaspr, its self-serve LinkedIn extension, which starts at $49 per user per month on annual billing. That is worth knowing, because for some teams the answer is the same data at a lower volume ceiling rather than a different vendor.
| Competitor | 2026 pricing | Leads on | Concedes | Contract |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| InboundLabs | Free to start | Verified data, self-serve pricing | Vendor track record | No annual lock-in |
| ZoomInfo | Free Lite, ~$31,875/yr median | North American depth, intent | EMEA coverage, contract terms | Annual, auto-renew |
| Apollo.io | Free, $49 to $119/user/mo | Price and breadth | Raw accuracy, EMEA phones | Monthly or annual |
| SalesIntel | ~$17,599/yr median | Human-verified email accuracy | Phone data, international | Annual only |
| Lusha | Free, $37.45/user/mo annual | Low entry price, simplicity | Depth, phone credit cost | Monthly or annual |
| Kaspr | Free, from $49/user/mo | Same data family, self-serve | Volume ceiling, split credits | Monthly or annual |
ZoomInfo is the direct answer for teams whose geography argument runs the other way. Roughly 260M professional profiles and over 100M company profiles, the deepest US direct dial coverage available, mature intent, org charts, and WebSights visitor identification. Vendr's data puts the median contract at $31,875 across 1,313 deals and the average at $33,500 across 1,012, so it is not cheaper than Cognism in any meaningful sense.
The trade is straightforward. ZoomInfo wins North America decisively. Cognism wins Europe decisively. Teams selling into both usually end up choosing based on which region carries the quota, and occasionally running both, which is expensive enough to require a real business case. Watch the commercial terms: per-seat add-ons of $1,500 to $2,500, overages at $0.25 to $0.50, auto-renewal windows of 60 to 90 days, and renewal increases commonly reported at 10% to 20%.
Apollo is the price argument in its purest form. Free gives 100 email credits a month. Basic is $49 per user per month on annual billing with 30,000 credits granted upfront for the year, Professional is $79 with 48,000 credits, and Organization is $119 with a three-seat minimum. A five-person team on Professional costs a small fraction of a Cognism contract annually. What you give up is exactly what Cognism sells. Apollo advertises accuracy near 91% while raw exports commonly deliver at 65% to 70%, with bounce reports from 15% to 38% on unfiltered pulls, and European mobile coverage is thinner. For an email-led North American motion that trade is often correct. For a European calling motion it is usually not.
InboundLabs sits between the two positions. 280M verified B2B contacts with email data held to 98% deliverability and direct dials verified as direct dials rather than main lines, plus buyer intent alongside firmographic filters. Credits pool into a single balance rather than splitting across data types, and there is no annual contract, which removes the commitment risk that makes quote-only vendors hard to trial. Free to start. The concession is vendor track record relative to a decade-old incumbent.
Lusha is the low-cost European-adjacent option. Free gives 40 credits a month, Starter is $37.45 per user per month annually ($49.90 monthly) with 4,800 credits a year, Pro runs $52.45 to $174.95, and Premium starts at $299.95 monthly. It carries a compliance posture and covers European contacts, though phone reveals cost several credits each and coverage varies noticeably by segment. Independent 2026 testing found strong accuracy on records returned.
Kaspr deserves mention because it is Cognism's own self-serve product drawing on the same data foundation. Free gives 15 B2B email credits, 5 phone credits, and 5 direct email credits monthly. Starter is $49 per user per month on annual billing, about $65 monthly, with Business at $79 to $99. Email and phone credits sit in separate pools that cannot be transferred, which is the main structural complaint.
SalesIntel competes on verification method rather than geography. Roughly 2,000 human researchers re-verify records on about a 90-day cycle with email accuracy claims near 95%, and Research on Demand sources missing contacts within 24 to 48 hours. Vendr's benchmark puts the median contract at $17,599, ranging from $8,670 to $41,380, so it undercuts Cognism while offering a comparable accuracy story on email. Direct dial quality is weaker, and international coverage is thin, which is precisely where Cognism holds its ground.
The Cognism decision gets argued as a data-quality question and is really a risk-pricing question. This makes the risk explicit. The InboundLabs Compliance Premium is the annual cost gap between a compliance-first vendor and a volume vendor, divided by the markets and exposure that gap actually protects.
You are not buying phone numbers. You are buying the right to dial them. If you dial one country and it is not regulated, that is insurance you cannot claim.
Work the numbers for a five-person team. A volume vendor at $79 per seat per month is roughly $4,700 a year. Cognism's entry tier for the same team is near $22,500. The premium is around $17,800 annually. That is the figure to justify, not the total contract value, and it should be measured against three things:
The framework cuts both ways, which is the point. Teams dialling Germany daily should stop agonising over the price. Teams sending email into North America should stop paying it.
If your read is that you need verified data and verified dials without a five-figure annual commitment, that is the position InboundLabs occupies. 280M verified B2B contacts, 98% deliverability on email data, direct dials verified as direct dials, and buyer intent alongside firmographic filters, on pooled credits with no annual contract. Free to start, so you can run the fill-rate and connect-rate tests before any quote-only vendor gets you on a call. See how InboundLabs finds verified contacts instantly at inboundlabs.app.
Cognism is the strongest European calling data available and it is priced accordingly. The mistake teams make is arguing about the total contract when the only number that needs justifying is the premium over the next best option. Count your regulated markets, measure connect rate lift on your own dials, and get your legal team to price the exposure. If those three numbers support $17,800 a year, buy it without hesitation. If they do not, buy the cheaper data and spend the difference on verification. Split your target list by market and count the regulated contacts first.
ZoomInfo on North American depth, Apollo on price and breadth, SalesIntel on human-verified email accuracy, Lusha on low-cost European coverage, and InboundLabs on verified data at self-serve pricing. Kaspr is Cognism's own self-serve product drawing on the same data foundation.
Pricing is quote only. Third-party sources put the platform fee at roughly $15,000 to $25,000 a year plus per-seat licences at $1,500 to $2,500. A five-person team typically lands near $22,500 on the entry tier and closer to $37,500 with phone-verified Diamond Data. Intent topics add $200 to $400 each annually.
For European markets, yes, on phone accuracy and compliance. For North America, no, ZoomInfo has deeper contact and firmographic coverage. Both sit in a similar price band, with ZoomInfo's median contract at $31,875 against Cognism's typical $22,500 to $37,500 for five users, so geography decides it rather than budget.
Diamond Data is Cognism's phone-verified mobile dataset, where a human has confirmed the number connects rather than relying on scraping or inference. It sits on the higher-priced tier and is the main reason European calling teams choose Cognism over cheaper alternatives with larger raw databases.
Kaspr, which Cognism owns, starts at $49 per user per month on annual billing and draws on the same data family with a lower volume ceiling and split email and phone credit pools. Lusha also covers European contacts at $37.45 per user per month, with coverage that varies by segment.
There is no self-serve free tier. Cognism provides data samples through its sales process, which is the practical way to evaluate it. If free testing matters to your process, Kaspr, Apollo, Lusha, and InboundLabs all offer free plans you can run against the same sample list.
Price the premium rather than the contract. Subtract the cheapest credible alternative's annual cost from the quote, then measure that gap against the regulated markets you actually dial, the connect rate lift on verified mobiles, and the exposure figure your legal team assigns to a DNC or GDPR violation.
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No commitment. No credit card. Just 50 free verified contact lookups.