Apollo publishes Free, Basic, Professional and Organization tiers, reported in 2026 at $49, $79 and $119 per user per month on annual billing, with Organization carrying a three-seat minimum that puts its real entry point over $4,000 a year. The free plan is genuinely usable at small scale but capped at roughly 900 credits per user per year. The number that decides your bill is not the tier, it is the credit model: a verified email costs one credit and a mobile number costs far more.
Apollo is usually the first tool a founder finds, because it has the largest free tier in the category and the most content pointing at it. It is a good product. It is also priced for a sales team, and the ways that shows up are not on the pricing page.
This compares the realistic options for someone buying one seat. Everything below is published pricing or third-party reporting as of September 2026 and is labelled as which. The category re-prices often; check before you commit.
What Apollo actually costs
Four tiers, reported in 2026 as Free, Basic at $49, Professional at $79 and Organization at $119 per user per month on annual billing. Monthly billing is reported roughly $10 to $30 higher per tier. Organization reportedly carries a three-seat minimum, which puts its real entry point above $4,000 a year.
The free plan gives around 900 credits per user per year, granted monthly, with two active sequences and basic filters. That is genuinely usable for a first test and explicitly not enough for continuous outbound.
The credit system is the actual price
This is the part worth internalising. The tier buys access; credits meter what you do with it. Reported rates: one credit per verified email, and roughly twenty per verified mobile number. Credits expire monthly with no rollover.
So two people on the same plan can have wildly different bills, and the one pulling phone numbers is the one in for a surprise. When people say Apollo got expensive, this is almost always what happened.
The alternatives, and what each is actually for
| Tool | Reported pricing (Sept 2026) | What it is | Where it stops |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apollo | Free; $49 / $79 / $119 per user per month annual; 3-seat minimum on top tier | Database plus sequencing | Credit burn, and the top tier's seat floor |
| Clay | Usage-priced credits, higher per-record cost | Enrichment and orchestration | Powerful and genuinely a learning curve; it is a build-your-own tool |
| Instantly / Smartlead | Tens of dollars a month at small scale | Sending, domains, warm-up | No data. You bring the list |
| Lemlist | Per user per month | Sequencing with a data add-on | Per-seat pricing, so a company of one is the worst-value customer |
| Operater | $9 beta access, then $39/mo (2,000 credits) or $99/mo (8,000) | An agent that runs the loop | Sales agent only today; no self-serve database to browse |
Read the third column before the second. A database and a sending platform are different purchases, and most people running real outbound end up paying for both. A comparison that puts an all-in price next to a data-only price without saying so is not comparing anything.
Why per-seat pricing treats you badly
Worth understanding rather than just resenting, because it predicts the whole category.
A per-seat product's revenue scales with the customer's headcount, and a company of one is the smallest possible account. The cost to serve you is not proportionally smaller: the onboarding, the support ticket and the account review cost roughly what they cost a fifty-seat customer. Serving you at a fair per-seat price loses money.
So the mechanisms appear. Seat minimums, annual floors, feature gates that put the thing you need one tier above the thing you can afford. None of it is malice; it is the pricing model working as designed, and you are outside the design.
Usage-based pricing is the only model where a small customer is genuinely a small cost. That is why the affordable end of this category is almost entirely usage-priced, and it is the single most useful filter when you are choosing.
How to compare honestly
Price the workflow, not the tier. Work out how many people you need to reach a month, how many of those need a phone number, and what that costs in credits on each option. The answer frequently reorders the table.
Count the tools you will actually need. If the database does not send and the sender has no data, you are buying two things. Add them up before comparing.
Check the seat floor before the price. It is the constraint that eliminates options fastest for a company of one, and it is never in the headline.
Ask what happens when it is wrong. Can you see every action it took, and stop it in one click, without losing work in progress? Nobody asks this until after they need the answer.
Where we sit, and where we do not
Operater is priced per action, published, no call required. Beta access is $9 and converts to a full Starter month of 2,000 credits; after launch that plan is $39 a month.
The limits, because this audience checks. One agent is live and it is Sales. If your bottleneck is support or finance, we do not solve it today. There is no database to browse. The agent works out who to contact from your product; if what you want is to run your own searches and export lists, Apollo is the better tool and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise. We are in closed beta, so accounts open in dated cohorts rather than instantly.
And the limit that applies to everything in this table: no tool makes outbound free of consequence. Volume has a reputational cost, lists decay, and a product nobody wants is not rescued by more people hearing about it.
Key takeaways
- Apollo's free tier is real and small: around 900 credits a year per user, granted monthly, with two active sequences.
- Credits are the meter that matters. One credit per verified email, many more per mobile number, and they expire monthly without rollover.
- Seat minimums are the thing that excludes a company of one before price does. Apollo's Organization tier reportedly requires three seats.
- Database tools and sending tools are different purchases. Paying for both is the normal outcome and the honest way to compare total cost.
- Every figure here is published or third-party reported as of September 2026 and this category re-prices constantly. Verify before committing.