Cognism vs Emelia at a glance
- Built-in B2B contact databaseYesNo
- Phone number finderYesYes
- Email finderYesYes
- Native CRM integrationYesYes
- APIYesYes
- Cold email from your own mailboxesNoYes
- LinkedIn automationNoYes
Checked on October 19, 2026 on Cognism’s own pages and on Emelia’s pricing page.
What is Cognism? The London company, its founders and its 2026 news
Cognism is a sales intelligence company: it sells access to a database of business contacts and companies, which sales and marketing teams search, filter and export to their CRM. Its home page calls it “Europe’s most trusted B2B data”. Each contact revealed costs 1 credit and stays available to the whole team; Cognism itself sends no email and runs no LinkedIn campaign.
Company and headquarters. Cognism Limited was registered in England and Wales on January 16, 2015 (company number 09392705) and is headquartered in London. Its offices are in London, Boston, Paris, Cologne, Skopje and Zadar, with local companies such as Cognism, Inc. in the United States and Cognism GmbH in Cologne. Cognism counts 400+ employees in 6 countries and 4,000+ customers.
Founders and management. James Isilay (chief executive) and Stjepan Buljat (chief technology officer) founded Cognism in 2015, according to its About page; the Series B press release of July 15, 2019 says 2016. James Isilay handed over to an interim chief executive on February 24, 2025, and Dominic Allon, previously chief executive of Pipedrive, has led the company since September 9, 2025.
Funding. The newsroom announces $10M in Series B led by PeakSpan Capital (July 2019), a $12M extension led by AXA Venture Partners (March 2020), $12.5M in March 2021, then $87.5M in Series C co-led by Viking Global Investors and Blue Cloud Ventures (January 2022). Cognism publishes no total; the $16.5M it reported after its Series B and the later rounds come to $128.5M.
Kaspr and Mailtastic. Cognism bought Mailtastic, an email signature tool based in Mainz, in May 2020, then Kaspr, the Paris LinkedIn extension, on April 27, 2022. Kaspr is still sold on its own, with its own prices and free plan. Cognism describes the two as separate products with independent databases; Kaspr’s own comparison page says they share information between their datasets.
Cognism news in 2026
What changed at Cognism this year, from its newsroom, changelog and pricing page:
- April 16, 2026: new brand, logo and website, under the line “Fluent in Data”.
- April 2026: the two plans on the pricing page become Standard and Pro, sold per seat with credits.
- September 2026: the MCP server, which lets AI assistants query Cognism, opens to every Standard and Pro customer, and a free Workspace Manager role arrives (1 on Standard, 3 on Pro).
- October 2026: new customer terms, and a product update that puts do-not-call filtering at 16 countries, Italy, Norway and Slovakia having joined since October 2025.
Cognism API, MCP server and integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive and Outreach
The Cognism API has three parts: Search and Enrich, which are free and return previews, and Redeem, which reveals a contact for 1 credit (a contact already redeemed by your account costs nothing). Its documentation lives in the Cognism help centre; the fields you can read are set up by Cognism’s team once your account manager agrees.
Limits are published: up to 100 results per search request, 20 contact IDs per Redeem request, and 1,000 contacts redeemed per minute. The MCP server connects Claude, ChatGPT and other assistants to Cognism with read-only access that follows your account settings. The platform, the extension, the API and the MCP server all draw on the same credit pool.
CRM. Cognism lists native integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Microsoft Dynamics and Bullhorn, “included across all packages”, plus Outreach, Salesloft and Zapier. The HubSpot sync is now two-way and real time. Data enrichment inside the CRM, the CRM Enrichment product, covers Salesforce and HubSpot: scheduled jobs that refresh existing records and add new contacts, with the credit cost shown before a job runs. It is a paid option on both plans, also sold on its own, and the only Cognism product with a published starting price: $12,000 a year. Pipedrive, Microsoft Dynamics and Bullhorn are listed for exporting contacts, not for CRM Enrichment.
Sequences happen elsewhere. Cognism sends nothing itself: its help centre shows how to push verified contacts to Outreach and add them to a sequence there, or to Salesloft. Sign-in can go through Okta and Entra ID (single sign-on is on both plans).
On Emelia’s side, contacts exported from Cognism as a CSV file can go straight into a campaign. Emelia syncs with 1 CRM on Start and Grow and several on Scale, and its API takes 100 to 1,000 requests per minute depending on the plan. For phone numbers, Emelia queries several providers in cascade and keeps the 50 credits only when a number is found.
The Cognism Chrome extension, and the second listing on the Web Store
The extension Cognism documents is “Cognism - Sales Intelligence Extension”. It opens on LinkedIn profiles, Sales Navigator, LinkedIn Recruiter and company websites, and on top of Salesforce, HubSpot and Outreach; it also installs in Microsoft Edge. It shows the person’s emails, mobile numbers, job title and company data, and revealing them costs 1 credit.
From the panel you can export the contact to your CRM and, on Pro, ask for a mobile number to be verified. On a Sales Navigator lead list, Cognism’s own guide says the extension loads the contacts visible on your screen, so a long list is revealed page by page, one credit per new contact. On the Chrome Web Store it shows 5,000 users and 4.0 out of 5 from 12 ratings (version 2.0.238, updated October 6, 2026); one recent review says the new version hides everything until a credit is spent.
The same publisher has a second listing, “Cognism - Premium Sales Intelligence”, with 30,000 users and 4.8 out of 5 from 193 ratings (version 4.0.34, September 4, 2026). Cognism does not explain how the two relate; its help centre only covers the first. Neither one sends LinkedIn invitations or messages.
Emelia’s Chrome extension works on the same LinkedIn pages. On a profile, it finds the person’s email and phone number, paid in credits only when they are found, and adds the person to an Emelia campaign. In a Sales Navigator search, the “Export with Emelia” button sends the search to Emelia, which extracts the leads, with no cap on the number of exports; you then export them, find their emails or start a campaign. It also connects your LinkedIn account to Emelia’s campaigns (Emelia’s Chrome extension, Sales Navigator export guide).
What Cognism looks like
Cognism data: database size, coverage, accuracy and direct dials
Cognism gives two answers on the size of its database: “400M+ verified business contacts” on its MCP and API page, and, in its FAQ, “hundreds of millions” of profiles with a note that it does not usually make general coverage claims. Elsewhere it cites 100M mobile numbers and 10M+ phone-verified contacts. It publishes no number of companies.
Emelia has no database of its own: it finds the email (and, on request, the phone number) of people you bring, from a file or a LinkedIn or Sales Navigator search, at 1 credit per email found and verified, and 50 credits per number found, refunded when none is.
Coverage
Cognism covers EMEA, North America and APAC. It says 90% of director-level roles and above are covered in Europe and the United States, revenue and headcount for 90% of companies with more than 50 employees, and 95% of director-level contacts refreshed every 30 days. It tracks 20,000+ technologies, excludes personal email addresses, and since October 2026 attaches official company numbers to about 95% of French companies and 85% of German ones.
Accuracy and phone-verified direct dials
Its signature feature is Diamond Data: mobile numbers that Cognism checks by calling them, marked with a diamond in the app, which it says give up to 3 times more connections. It claims 98% accuracy on phone-verified European mobiles on one page and 87% on others. On Pro, you can ask for a number to be checked on demand, with an answer in less than 48 hours; the help centre puts the success rate at 10 to 15% in the United Kingdom and 15 to 20% in the United States. One click shows up to 2 extra mobiles for a contact.
Numbers on do-not-call registers
Cognism matches its phone numbers against national do-not-call registers in 16 countries, France’s Bloctel and the UK’s TPS among them (some of its pages still say 15). Those numbers are hidden from search and export by default; an admin can show them country by country, flagged “DNC”, except numbers on the TPS or CTPS, which are never displayed. On security, Cognism holds ISO 27001, ISO 27701 and SOC 2 Type II.
Cognism reviews: 4.5 on G2, 4.7 on Capterra, 2.9 on Trustpilot
Customers rate Cognism highly on software review sites. Trustpilot gives a lower score: its negative reviews come mostly from people who found their own number in the database rather than from customers. G2 and Capterra figures are those shown in search results and on Cognism’s own pages, which show 4.5 or 4.6 for G2 depending on the page.
What customers praise
- Ease of use, its best score on Capterra (4.8 out of 5), also praised in recent five-star Trustpilot reviews, which make up 53% of the total.
- Customer service (4.6) and features (4.6) on Capterra, where users rate their likelihood to recommend it 9 out of 10.
What comes up in complaints
- Value for money, its lowest Capterra score (4.5), with prices only on quote.
- On Trustpilot, 35% one-star reviews, mostly people describing unwanted calls or asking to be removed; Cognism replies to 2% of negative reviews.
- Gaps in some countries: a review from September 2026 reports missing data for the Nordic countries.
What Cognism leaves to other tools: sending the emails and working LinkedIn
Once a contact is revealed, Cognism’s job is done: it exports the person to your CRM, to a CSV file, or to Outreach or Salesloft for the sequence. It sends no email, runs no sequence, has no dialer and does not automate LinkedIn invitations or messages. Those are separate subscriptions.
Emelia covers both halves. Finding contact details uses credits, sold on their own from $19 a month for 1,000 credits, with no plan and no seat: 1 credit per email found, 50 per phone number ($0.95 a number with that first pack), nothing when nothing is found, and credits that stay valid for a year, even after you cancel.
Sending is what the plans add: Start at $37 a month connects 3 mailboxes and 1 LinkedIn account, with warm-up, and runs email and LinkedIn steps in the same sequence; Grow raises that to 50 mailboxes and 3 accounts. You can export your Sales Navigator searches with no cap on the number of exports, from $37 a month. A 7-day trial needs no card, and a work email adds 20 free credits at sign-up.
Cognism pricing in short: seats on quote, credits, a yearly renewal
Cognism shows no amount for its prospecting plans: two plans, Standard and Pro, each with “5 seats included”, and a button to talk to sales. Pro adds intent data from Bombora, on-demand mobile verification and adoption dashboards. One credit reveals one contact, emails and mobiles included, once for the whole account; two of Cognism’s comparison pages mention 10,000 credits per seat a year on Standard and 12,000 on Pro, which its other pages do not confirm.
Cognism’s customer terms of October 2026 renew a subscription automatically for its initial length or 1 year, whichever is longer, unless you give 60 days’ notice; fees are non-refundable, and a renewal can cost up to 10% more. The plans, the credits and the history of its offers are on the Cognism pricing page.
Cognism compared with ZoomInfo and Lusha, and the tools that replace it
Two head-to-head pages go further. Cognism vs ZoomInfo sets two databases sold on quote side by side: where their data is strongest, their features and their contracts. Cognism vs Lusha compares Cognism’s seats with a tool you can buy by card for a single user.
If you are leaving Cognism, or never got past the sales call, the Cognism alternatives page sorts the replacements by what you need: contact details by credit, a database with sequences, or the enrichment of a list you already have.
Questions people ask about Cognism
Through the “Login” link at the top of cognism.com, which opens app.cognism.com/auth/sign-in; single sign-on through Okta, Entra ID or another SAML 2.0 provider works if your company set it up, and so does signing in with Google or Microsoft. There is no public sign-up form: access comes with a contract, and each seat is assigned to one named user.
Not on your own: Cognism has no free plan and no self-serve trial. It offers an interactive demo, a free data sample of 25 leads sent within 72 hours, and proofs of concept set up through an order form, after which the data must be deleted. Emelia gives a 7-day trial without a card, plus 20 credits when you sign up with a work email.
No. Its extension reads the LinkedIn or Sales Navigator page you are on and matches it with Cognism’s database, one credit per contact revealed, loading only the contacts visible on screen. It sends no invitations or messages, and Cognism’s terms forbid extracting its data with robots or scripts outside its own integrations. Emelia extracts LinkedIn and Sales Navigator searches, with no cap on the number of exports, and runs LinkedIn campaigns.
Through the “Data opt-out” link at the bottom of every page of cognism.com, which opens a request form in Cognism’s Privacy Centre (cognism.privacy.saymine.io/cognism); requests can also go to privacy@cognism.com. A verification email follows, and only verified requests are handled. Cognism gives its customers the list of people who asked to be removed, which they must check at least every 30 days, and tells those who had been in touch with the person. It publishes no processing time.
To go further: the alternatives to Cognism.
Emelia features: Email finder · Emelia pricing
Emelia is a Cognism competitor. We have tried to stay fair: every figure about Cognism comes from its own website or public review sites.
