Apollo.io: Chrome extension, 240M contacts, email finder, CRM and API

Apollo Chrome extension: LinkedIn, Gmail, CRMs and company websites

Installing it costs nothing, and it works on every plan, Free included. Apollo lists it on the Chrome Web Store as “Apollo.io: Free B2B Phone Number & Email Finder” and publishes a version for Microsoft Edge; Safari and Firefox are not supported. Once you sign in with your Apollo account, it matches the page in front of you with Apollo’s data: the person on a LinkedIn profile, the people you write to in Gmail, the guests of a Google Calendar meeting, or a company on its own website, with its headcount, its revenue and the employees Apollo has on file. It also shows up inside Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive and Salesloft. Outlook gets a separate add-in instead, installed from Outlook itself, with no email tracking and no templates.

Revealing an email or a phone number from the extension spends the team’s credits at the app’s rates: 1 for an email, 8 for a phone number. A saved contact can then go into a list, an Apollo sequence or an Outreach or Salesloft one, get an email or a call, or be pushed to your CRM, and the panel suggests colleagues and similar people. In Gmail, the extension adds open and click tracking, templates and snippets, meeting links, follow-up nudges, a deliverability check of the mailbox, and logging to HubSpot or Salesforce.

Sales Navigator and Apollo’s own store listing are where it falls short. On a Sales Navigator search, the extension only suggests leads: Apollo’s help centre says you can neither select them nor run a bulk action from the results page, and some Sales Navigator profiles show no Apollo data until you switch to the standard LinkedIn profile. The listing Apollo wrote for the Chrome Web Store promises end-to-end automation of LinkedIn prospecting, while its help centre says LinkedIn tasks are done by hand; the same listing still advertises unlimited email credits on the free plan, which the pricing page sets at 75 credits a month.

The store page counted 1,000,000 users and a rating of 4.7/5 from 2,172 ratings on October 12, 2026. Emelia’s Chrome extension works on LinkedIn too. On a profile, a floating Emelia button finds the person’s email and phone number, paid in credits only when found, and adds the person to an Emelia campaign, email, LinkedIn or multichannel. On a Sales Navigator search, its Export with Emelia button sends the search to Emelia, which extracts the leads for a CSV export, an email search or a campaign; the same extension connects your LinkedIn account to Emelia (Emelia’s Chrome extension, Sales Navigator export guide).

Searching Apollo’s database: filters, buying intent and lookalikes

Apollo.io is a database first. Its website counts 240M contacts and 30M companies. Basic filters (job title, industry, headcount, location, email status) work on every plan, Free included; from Basic, Apollo adds advanced filters and signals (technologies, job postings, revenue, funding), a Google Maps business search and lookalike people and companies.

Buying intent comes from Bombora: 1 topic on Free, 6 on Basic and Professional, 12 on Organization. The plan also caps how many records you can select in one action: 25, 1,000, 2,500 and 10,000, from Free to Organization. On December 8, 2025, Basic and Professional still selected 10,000 records at a time.

Searching is free; revealing an email or a phone number spends credits from a pot shared by the team (next section). Apollo’s own description on Trustpilot gives other figures (210M contacts, 35M companies): we use the ones on its website.

Apollo email finder: one credit per verified email, refunded when it bounces

Apollo charges 1 credit when it finds a verified email, nothing when it does not, and never more than one credit per contact, even when it holds several addresses. If an email sent from Apollo bounces within 30 days, the credit comes back at the next billing cycle. Apollo claims 98% email accuracy; reviews are less unanimous.

A mobile or direct phone number costs 8 credits and is never refunded; the office number comes with the email. From Basic, a waterfall asks third-party providers when Apollo’s own data comes up empty: Apollo’s calculator counts about 2 credits per email found this way, and providers that return an unverified result still charge.

Emelia’s finder also charges 1 credit for an email found and verified, on the lists you bring (it has no database), but its packs cost at most half of Apollo’s price at every volume: 1,000 emails a month cost $65 on Apollo’s cheapest plan (Basic, with 2,500 credits included) against $19 for Emelia’s 1,000-credit pack, and 100,000 emails cost $1,625 to $1,660 against $499. Emelia’s credits also stay valid 12 months, even after cancelling, where Apollo’s reset at the end of every cycle.

Is Apollo a CRM? Deals, sequences, dialer and meetings on one licence

Apollo is not sold as a CRM, but its licence covers much of what a small sales team would use one for, and it syncs both ways with Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Zoho CRM and Microsoft Dynamics when you already have one (one CRM at a time).

Apollo API and MCP server: who gets them, rate limits and credits

The Apollo API covers most of the app: people and company search, enrichment, contacts, accounts and deals, sequences, one-off emails, tasks and analytics. An API key serves your own workspace; OAuth 2.0 is for integrations acting on behalf of other Apollo users, and one that shares or resells Apollo data with people who are not Apollo customers needs a custom contract. Who gets access depends on the Apollo page you read: every plan, Free included, for the help centre and the pricing table; “Custom plans” for the FAQ of that same pricing page. On Free, some search and enrichment endpoints also require an account registered with a work email.

Limits are counted per team and per endpoint, not per key or per user, over a minute, an hour and a day at once. The general ceiling is 50, 200 and 600 requests on Free; 200, 400 and 2,000 on Basic and Professional; 200, 600 and 6,000 on Organization. Paid plans go higher on two families of endpoints: enrichment, at 1,000 requests a minute with no hourly or daily cap, and searches of Apollo’s database, at 6,000 an hour and 50,000 a day.

Credits are charged on top of those limits. Creating, updating or listing records is free; enriching a person costs 1 credit, plus 8 when a mobile number comes back, enriching a company 1, and a company search 1 per page of up to 100 results.

The MCP server, listed as “LLM integrations” in the pricing table, is on every plan as well. It plugs Apollo into ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Replit and Cursor as ready-made connectors, and into any other client that accepts a remote MCP server, within your Apollo permissions, plan limits and credits. On Free, it searches the contacts you have already saved and enriches people one at a time, and the ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity connectors need a team with a company domain; prospecting in Apollo’s database, bulk enrichment and company search start on Basic. It cannot bulk-delete records or run unrestricted bulk updates, and Apollo asks you to switch off model training in your AI tool before connecting it.

What Apollo leaves to you: every LinkedIn step is manual

An Apollo sequence can include LinkedIn steps (connection request, profile visit, post interaction, message), but they are tasks: Apollo reminds the person assigned, who then does them by hand on LinkedIn. Its help centre is explicit: it “doesn’t automatically complete LinkedIn tasks for you”.

On LinkedIn itself, the Apollo Chrome extension saves the profile you are viewing and reveals its email and phone number, for credits. Apollo’s terms also forbid using its API together with LinkedIn automation tools.

Emelia runs LinkedIn steps automatically, in the same sequence as the emails, with unlimited actions: 1 account on Start, 3 on Grow, 10 on Scale, then $29 per extra account per month. There is no price line for LinkedIn below: Apollo does not offer it.

Database first, or LinkedIn and email first: Apollo against Emelia

Each price line answers the same need with both tools, in monthly billing. Finding emails comes first, because it is where the gap is widest: Emelia charges at most half of Apollo’s price at every volume. Apollo prices are per licence, and every person who logs in needs one; one Professional licence connects unlimited Google and Microsoft mailboxes.

Finding emails: the cheapest Apollo plan that covers each volume, licence included

1,000 emails found a month

Apollo.io$65 (Basic licence)

Emelia$19 (1,000-credit pack)

5,000 emails found a month

Apollo.io$115 to $120 (Basic licence + 2,500 extra credits)

Emelia$49 (5,000-credit pack)

10,000 emails found a month

Apollo.io$200 to $215 (Basic licence + 7,500 extra credits)

Emelia$99 (10,000-credit pack)

50,000 emails found a month

Apollo.io$825 to $860 (Basic licence + 47,500 extra credits)

Emelia$299 (50,000-credit pack)

100,000 emails found a month

Apollo.io$1,625 to $1,660 (Basic licence + 97,500 extra credits)

Emelia$499 (100,000-credit pack)

One person, cold email only: just the mailboxes

3 mailboxes, billed monthly

Apollo.ioProfessional, 1 licence: $99

EmeliaStart: $37

50 mailboxes, billed monthly

Apollo.ioProfessional, 1 licence: $99

EmeliaGrow: $97

A team: Apollo bills one licence per person who logs in, Emelia bills the plan

Team of 3 people, 50 mailboxes

Apollo.ioProfessional, 3 licences: $297

EmeliaGrow: $97

Team of 10 people, 100 mailboxes

Apollo.ioProfessional, 10 licences: $990

EmeliaScale: $297

Features

Where the leads come from

Apollo.ioIts own database: 240M contacts, 30M companies

EmeliaYour lists and your LinkedIn and Sales Navigator searches, emails found and verified for 1 credit

Unused credits

Apollo.ioReset to zero at the end of each cycle, bought ones included

EmeliaValid 12 months from purchase, even after cancelling

LinkedIn automation

Apollo.ioManual tasks only

Emelia1 to 10 accounts, unlimited actions

A/B tests in sequences

Apollo.ioFrom Professional

EmeliaEvery plan

Apollo’s prices exist only in US dollars, while Emelia’s figure is the same in euros and in dollars, so the advantage shown on each price line holds for a team paying in dollars; nothing is converted. Apollo’s extra credits are only sold with a paid licence, so every Apollo figure above includes the cheapest licence that covers the volume, and the range comes from tiers whose application Apollo does not state. The “one person” lines are the case where Apollo costs least: a single licence for every mailbox. A team pays one licence per person, as Apollo’s terms ask each person who logs in to have their own; the team lines take as many people as Emelia’s plan has LinkedIn accounts.

What an Apollo licence costs, from Free to Organization

Prices per licence per month, in US dollars, excluding taxes; every licence on an account is on the same plan. Credits, extra credits and the cost of warm-up are detailed on the Apollo.io pricing page.

Team add-ons on paid plans: Inbound Essentials from $119 a month billed yearly ($149 monthly), Advanced Dialer $119 ($149). Apollo calls the Inbound prices introductory. On Professional and Organization, the “unlimited” daily sending comes with a Fair Use Policy that Apollo invokes but that its terms do not contain.

Why Apollo’s ratings split between Capterra and Trustpilot

Capterra gives Apollo 4.5/5. Trustpilot gives 3.1/5, with few middle grades: 46% of five-star reviews and 36% of one-star. Apollo shows 4.7/5 on G2 on its own site; G2 blocks automated checks, so we could not verify it.

ZenLeads, Inc.: the company behind Apollo.io

Apollo.io is the trading name of ZenLeads, Inc., based in San Francisco. Apollo dates its founding to 2015, its first product to 2016 and its free plan to 2018. Co-founder Tim Zheng ran the company until February 3, 2026, when Matt Curl, until then its COO, became CEO and Tim Zheng chairman.

Its Series D, of $100 million in 2023, was led by Bain Capital Ventures at a valuation of $1.6 billion. When the new CEO was announced, Apollo said its annual recurring revenue was approaching $200 million, with nearly 100,000 paying customers.

Comparing Apollo with ZoomInfo, Clay and Instantly

ToolEntry price (cold email)Contact databaseEmail finderPhone numbersCold email

for reference

Entry price (cold email)Free plan, then $65/month per licenceBasic plan · 2,500 credits

YesContact database

YesEmail finder

YesPhone numbers

YesCold email

Another large B2B database

Entry price (cold email)–Its own offer (credits only): On quote

YesContact database

YesEmail finder

YesPhone numbers

not checkedCold email

Enrichment from many providers

Entry price (cold email)–Its own offer (credits only): Free plan, then $185/month (Launch plan · 2,500 credits)

YesContact database

YesEmail finder

YesPhone numbers

YesCold email

Sending cold email at volume

Entry price (cold email)$47/monthGrowth plan · 5,000 emails a month · unlimited mailboxes

YesContact database

YesEmail finder

NoPhone numbers

YesCold email

Monthly prices, billed monthly unless stated, excluding VAT, read on each publisher’s site (checked between October 6, 2026 and October 16, 2026). Emelia’s prices follow your currency; tools billed in dollars only stay in dollars, and those billed in euros only stay in euros. –: not offered, or not checked for this need.

1. 1

   

   Best for: Another large B2B database

   Two databases with their own dialer and sequences, billed in very different ways.

   • YesBuilt-in B2B contact database
   • YesEmail finder
   • YesPhone number finder

   Price

   On quote

   Apollo vs ZoomInfoSee our full ZoomInfo analysis
2. 2

   

   Best for: Enrichment from many providers

   A data workflow tool that can use Apollo as one of its sources.

   • YesBuilt-in B2B contact database
   • YesEmail finder
   • YesPhone number finder

   Price

   Free plan, then $185/month (Launch plan · 2,500 credits)

   Apollo vs ClaySee our full Clay analysis
3. 3

   

   Best for: Sending cold email at volume

   A volume sender with its own lead finder, set against Apollo’s database and sequences.

   • NoPhone number finder
   • YesBuilt-in B2B contact database
   • YesEmail finder

   Price

   $47/month (Growth plan · 5,000 emails a month · unlimited mailboxes)

   Instantly vs ApolloSee our full Instantly analysis

To go further: the alternatives to Apollo.io and the Apollo.io reviews.