Per licence or per volume: how each one bills a team
Apollo bills one licence per person who logs in, and every licence in an account sits on the same plan: Basic $65, Professional $99 a month per licence ($49 and $79 billed yearly). Organization is sold yearly only, at $119 a month per licence, from 3 licences. Removing licences is where Apollo’s pages part ways: its FAQ applies the cut at once, with no refund, while its terms do not let the count go down before the term ends.
Instantly does not count people: its plans count emails and contacts, and a team needs Hypergrowth (or a CRM subscription) to invite members. What it counts instead is workspaces: each one needs its own subscriptions.
Finding 1,000 to 10,000 verified emails a month: the subscription each one needs
The gap starts with the unit: an Apollo credit always buys one verified email, an Instantly credit one or half of one, depending on whether the address comes from Instantly’s data or a partner’s. Each line prices the cheapest subscription that delivers that many emails a month: Instantly’s credits plan on its own, an Apollo licence with its monthly credits and any extra credits, Emelia Start with a monthly credit pack. Apollo lists a per-credit price for each volume tier without saying how the tiers combine, hence a range in its column: at the low end the whole volume is charged at the tier it reaches, at the high end each slice at its own tier. Prices are compared in dollars: Instantly and Apollo use no other currency, Emelia’s plans cost the same figure in euros, and a tick marks the cheapest for whoever pays in dollars, at face value.
Billed monthly
1,000 verified emails a month
2,500 verified emails a month
6,000 verified emails a month
10,000 verified emails a month
What else each subscription gives: Instantly’s credits plan includes no sending plan (without one, only 250 leads can go into campaigns); an Apollo licence includes sequences and 1 mailbox on Basic; Emelia Start includes 3 mailboxes and 1 LinkedIn account. Apollo and Instantly search their own databases; Emelia finds the email of a lead you bring. Excluding tax.
Apollo API vs Instantly API: plans, rate limits, credits and MCP
Apollo opens its API on every plan, Free included, according to its pricing table and help centre; its pricing FAQ, though, mentions API access only for "Custom plans". Instantly’s help centre opens it from Growth, the first paid sending plan, and leaves it out of the trial, while the comparison table on its pricing page ticks the API row for Hypergrowth alone. Instantly also keeps webhooks for Hypergrowth and above.
The ceilings are not counted the same way. Apollo caps each endpoint by the minute, the hour and the day: 50, 200 and 600 calls on Free; 200, 400 and 2,000 on Basic and Professional; 200, 600 and 6,000 on Organization. Instantly gives the whole workspace one budget, 100 requests a second and 6,000 a minute, and publishes no hourly or daily cap.
Both APIs reach the data you pay for. Apollo’s enrichment and search endpoints draw on the team’s pooled credits; Instantly’s SuperSearch enrichment draws on its separate credits plan. Both also host an MCP server for AI assistants: Apollo’s ("LLM integrations") on every plan, Instantly’s behind the same API keys, with 31 tools according to its help centre and one per v2 route according to its developer documentation. Emelia includes its API and webhooks on each plan, with 100 to 1,000 requests a minute depending on the plan.
Where your leads come from: Apollo’s database or Instantly SuperSearch
Apollo starts from the data. Its site announces 240M contacts and 30M companies (the description Apollo wrote on Trustpilot says 210 million and 35 million). Every paid licence comes with credits each month, 2,500 on Basic, 4,000 on Professional, pooled across the team and not carried over. A verified email costs 1 credit, charged only when one is found; the credit comes back at the next cycle if the email bounces within 30 days when sent from Apollo. A phone number costs 8.
Instantly starts from the sending. Its database, SuperSearch, counts "450M+" contacts on its pricing page and "610M+" in its help centre, and draws on a waterfall of 5+ providers. It comes with a separate credits plan, from $9 a month: 1 credit per email found in Instantly’s own data, 2 when a partner finds it, nothing when no email is found; for phone numbers, it publishes no credit price at all.
Emelia has no database of its own: its credits find and verify the email of a lead you already have, at 1 credit, and a phone number at 50.
Apollo CRM or Instantly CRM: deals on every licence, or a subscription of its own
Apollo puts deal tracking inside each licence. Records, stages, tasks and deals come with every plan, the free one included, next to a meeting scheduler. A team that already runs a CRM keeps it: Apollo syncs both ways with Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Zoho CRM and Microsoft Dynamics, one of them at a time.
Instantly sells its CRM next to the sending plan, as a second subscription: Growth CRM at $47 and Hyper CRM at $97 a month according to the overview of plans in its help centre, while the article on the CRM quotes a flat $97. That buys unlimited seats, opportunities, tasks, reporting, and calls and texts from US numbers (on Hyper CRM, per the llms.txt file). To keep your own CRM instead, Instantly connects natively to HubSpot, Pipedrive and HighLevel, with Salesforce through the OutboundSync partner; the same llms.txt file says those native connections mostly push outreach activity one way, and points to OutboundSync, Zapier or Make for a sync in both directions.
Emelia has no CRM inside: it syncs with the one you already run, through one connection on Start or Grow and several on Scale.
LinkedIn: manual tasks in Apollo, nothing in Instantly
Apollo lets you add LinkedIn steps to a sequence, but they are tasks a rep completes by hand; its Chrome extension saves a LinkedIn profile and reveals its email and phone number for credits. Its terms forbid using the API with LinkedIn automation.
Instantly’s sequences only hold emails. Its help centre documents one LinkedIn feature, in the separately billed CRM: a "Connect" button that takes you to the contact’s profile. LinkedIn campaigns run in other tools (Aimfox, Expandi, HeyReach, Valley and La Growth Machine).
Emelia automates the LinkedIn steps in the same sequence as the emails: 1 account on Start, 3 on Grow, 10 on Scale.
Try before paying: a free plan at Apollo, a time-limited trial at Instantly
Apollo
A permanent Free plan: 75 credits a month, 1 mailbox, 250 emails a day, 2 sequences, limited to one licence after 100 days of active use. Warm-up is missing from Free in Apollo’s pricing table, and its help centre charges 200 credits per mailbox a month for it, above the 75 credits that plan includes. On top, a 14-day trial of Basic or Professional, once per account. Phone numbers are limited during that trial: 20 at most according to the help centre, and none of them mobile on the Professional trial according to the pricing page’s data.
Instantly
14 days, no card and no free plan afterwards: 2 mailboxes, 250 contacts, 1,000 emails and 100 credits to try it. If you do not subscribe, the trial account is removed, along with any chance of exporting its data.
Emelia
A 7-day trial without a card, LinkedIn included.
3 people sending from 9 mailboxes: the monthly bill
3 people, 9 mailboxes (≈ 5,940 emails)
Dollar prices, excluding tax: neither Instantly nor Apollo bills in another currency, Emelia’s figure is identical in euros, and the winner is marked for a dollar payer without converting anything.
Sending limits: Apollo’s mailboxes per licence, Instantly’s monthly caps
- Apollo Free and Basic: 1 mailbox per licence and 250 emails a day. Free also limits you to 2 sequences.
- Apollo Professional: unlimited Google and Microsoft mailboxes plus 5 SMTP mailboxes per licence. Apollo calls daily sending "unlimited" on Professional and Organization, subject to a Fair Use Policy its terms never mention. Its help centre recommends starting at 50 emails a day per mailbox. Warm-up is "included" on the plan cards, but the help centre covers only 1 mailbox per licence and charges 200 credits a month for each mailbox beyond it.
- Instantly: unlimited mailboxes and warm-up on every plan, with a monthly email cap and a total of contacts loaded. Growth: 5,000 emails and 1,000 contacts. Hypergrowth: 125,000 emails a month (100,000 on the yearly price card and in the comparison table of the same page), and 25,000 contacts. Light Speed: 500,000 emails and 100,000 contacts. Its help centre recommends 30 campaign emails per mailbox per day.
Cold email from 3, 10 or 50 mailboxes: one licence, one volume tier, one plan
One person, cold email only, from Google or Microsoft mailboxes, at 30 emails per mailbox per day over 22 working days. Apollo’s price runs from the licence alone (warm-up included, according to its plan cards) to the licence plus the extra credits its help centre charges for warm-up: 1 mailbox per licence, then 200 credits per mailbox a month, taken first from the licence’s own credits. Apollo and Instantly invoice only in dollars, which is why this table uses them; with Emelia the number is the same in euros, and ticks go to the cheapest for someone paying in dollars, no conversion made.
Billed monthly
3 mailboxes (≈ 1,980 emails)
10 mailboxes (≈ 6,600 emails)
50 mailboxes (≈ 33,000 emails)
Yearly plans, shown per month
3 mailboxes
10 mailboxes
50 mailboxes
A Professional licence warms up 21 mailboxes with its own 4,000 monthly credits; past that, warm-up needs extra credits, and the credits it uses no longer find emails. Yearly rows count the extra credits at their monthly price. Excluding tax.
Database first or mailboxes first: picking between Instantly and Apollo
- You do not have your lists yet and want one tool to find and email contacts: Apollo, with its free plan to start, then $65 per licence.
- You already have your leads (from Clay, a file or another database) and send from many mailboxes: Instantly, whose Hypergrowth plan at $97 covers a team and up to 125,000 emails a month (see the sending limits above).
- You also prospect on LinkedIn: neither automates it; Emelia does, with your mailboxes, from €37 a month.
Apollo and Instantly: data, refunds and client accounts
Yes. Apollo is listed in Instantly’s integration marketplace, and Instantly lets you export SuperSearch leads to Apollo. You then pay for both: Apollo licences for the people who search, an Instantly plan for the sending.
Neither. Instantly refuses refunds on all fees (section 5.3 of its terms) and gives nothing back for a month or year already under way (section 5.1(b)), credits, add-ons, done-for-you mailboxes and VIP service included. The same terms also ask for 30 days’ written notice (section 8.1), while its help centre lets you cancel in the settings. Apollo’s terms describe subscription fees as non-cancelable and non-refundable. Cancelling Apollo depends on the page: in the app, effective at the end of the billing cycle, according to its FAQ; by written notice at least 30 days before renewal, according to its terms.
Instantly offers white label from Hypergrowth and a workspace per client, each with its own subscriptions. Apollo bills one licence per person who logs in, every licence on the same plan.
For sending, Instantly: Hypergrowth costs $97 a month for a team, against $99 per Professional licence, whose warm-up uses 200 credits per extra mailbox according to its help centre and needs extra credits past 21 mailboxes. For finding emails, an Apollo licence includes 2,500 credits a month on Basic, which Instantly sells separately; the table above shows where each one wins.
Emelia is an Instantly competitor. We have tried to stay fair: every figure about Instantly comes from its own website or public review sites.
