If you’re in the market for a data enrichment sales tool that’s going to take your sales game to the next level, you’ve probably come across Cognism. But there are hundreds of contact scraper tools, so is Cognism really the best choice? Or are there some Cognism alternatives that are worth taking a look at?

Long story short, there are. And to save you the time Googling them all, we’ve gathered them all right here for an easy comparative list.

But before we dive into the Cognism alternatives, let’s take a look at Cognism itself. 

Table of Contents

What Is Cognism?

Cognism is a fantastic scraping tool.

Cognism talks a good talk. According to their website, they are a data enrichment tool that ensures you have the mobile phone number and B2B email addresses of all the people you want to do business with. It also has an accuracy rate of 98% when it comes to mobile phone numbers!

It has a razor-sharp focus on being GDPR compliant, which means they’ve always got your back and are thinking one step ahead of the crowd. They notify you which phone numbers are on international DNC (Do Not Call) lists around the world. This way you don’t have to worry about getting in hot water.

Cognism, like any contact scraper worth its salt, has a broad set of integrations too. You can integrate with all your favorite work apps and productivity tools, including a whole bunch of CRM platforms. This allows you to keep all your customer data in one convenient location that works for you.

Cognism Pros 

  • Data accuracy: Phone number accuracy is quoted as being 98%!
  • GDPR Compliant: They advise you if the phone number is on a DNC list.
  • International: They have a strong presence in Europe and work internationally.
  • Data quantity: They have 70 million phone numbers internationally – more than 2x that of any other database.

Cognism Cons

  • No free plan: Cognism doesn’t offer you a free plan to try out the features.
  • Lengthy set-up: It can take a while to get started with Cognism.

Cognism Pricing

Cognism is a bit of a pain when it comes to pricing their platform. They make you reach out to them directly before they tell you the price. Not only does this make it a bit of a fiddle to start up, it’s also often an indicator that it’s above the market average. Often, they just want to cater to your specific needs and build a plan that utilizes the features you will actually use. But even if that’s the case, it makes getting set up a time-consuming process. 

One of the other problems with Cognism’s pricing is that there is also no free trial. This means that you can’t test out the platform before calling them up – placing another barrier of entry in your face before you’ve even started. It’s possible that you could arrange a free trial during the sales call with their reps, but it’s certainly not a guarantee and definitely more stressful than some of the Cognism alternatives that let you test it with a few clicks.

Is Cognism Worth It?

That’s why we’re all here. Let’s take a look at some of the Cognism competitors that are commonly pointed to as being top alternatives. We’ll analyze their pros, their cons, how much they cost, and how they square up to Cognism.

In the end, it all boils down to your business needs. Do you need a comprehensive sales tool that also scrapes for contact information? Or do you want something that’s simple and straightforward that you can just get on with? Narrow down your focus and your Cognism alternative will stand out for you.

5 Cognism Alternatives For Better Data

1. LeadIQ

LeadIQ is a great data enrichment tool.

LeadIQ helps you build a pipeline with confidence. From finding contact information to tracking sales triggers, LeadIQ is a fantastic sales tool designed to enrich your CRM data. You can even use it to generate emails with AI to speed up and personalize your emails en masse.

It bills itself as a smart B2B database focused on quality and accuracy of data. One of its biggest praises is that it feels purpose-built for the sales rep – and this is backed by its ROI. According to G2 reviewers, it delivers value faster than other Cognism alternatives. Sometimes twice as fast!

LeadIQ Pros 

  • Sales Trigger Tracking: This helps you plan timely outreach to get the best response rate.
  • Personalized Sales Messages: Personalizing sales messages increases rapport and boosts sales.
  • Easy-to-Use Extension: LeadIQ’s extension is super intuitive – you’ll pick it up easily.
  • Great Integrations: LeadIQ integrates well with a number of sales tools, including CRM platforms and productivity tools.

LeadIQ Cons 

  • Data Inaccuracy: The phone numbers on LeadIQ are said to be wrong more often than not.
  • Duplicate Bug: It’s been known to occasionally create duplicates in Salesforce and other CRMs, causing a bit of a headache for teams that use Salesforce as the pure data source.

LeadIQ Pricing 

LeadIQ has several plans, including a “freemium” plan that you can get started with in less than 5 minutes. This will get you:

  • 20 verified work emails per week
  • 10 mobile phone numbers per month
  • 40 email generations per month
  • 10 accounts tracked

The Essential Plan is for small sales teams just starting out and looking for prospecting data. It boosts the numbers of each of the four core features for $39 per month.

Get more than double the Essential Plan in the Pro Plan for $79 per month.

Finally, there’s an Enterprise Plan for established sales teams looking to take their prospecting game to the next level. For this plan, you’ll need to reach out and contact a sales rep directly.

LeadIQ vs Cognism: The Verdict

LeadIQ is a powerful Cognism alternative, but is it the best competitor for you? That depends. Where LeadIQ struggles with phone number accuracy, Cognism excels. It has the most phone numbers of any data enrichment tool, with 47 million in the US alone. 

Cognism is also great if you’re prospecting in the USA and Europe. It’s compliant in both continents and actively notifies you about which numbers are on DNC lists. LeadIQ only does this in the UK and Ireland. 

However, it’s worth noting that you can get started with LeadIQ within the next five minutes to give it a whirl, whereas with Cognism, you’ll have to arrange a meeting with a sales rep before you can even get the ball moving. It offers no free plan and you can’t test it – you just have to take other people’s word for it.

Complimentary Sales Tool Alert: It’s tl;dv Time

While not specifically a data scraper or enrichment tool, tl;dv is a complementary sales tool that turbocharges your data, regardless of which Cognism alternative you’re using.

tl;dv records and transcribes your online meetings and lets you cut them into clips and highlights. Add timestamps to make it easy to skip through, tag your colleagues at specific moments, and even make use of the powerful AI summaries and notes that can be ported directly into your CRM of choice.

If data scrapers like Cognism allow you to access the contact info of anyone you need, tl;dv helps you enhance it through qualitative data. Once you’ve got them on a call, tl;dv ensures you remember their goals, weaknesses, pain points, desires, and allows you to store it in your CRM alongside all their contact info. What could be a better complementary tool than that?

While this is ideal for sales, it’s also huge for HR in the interview process for new candidates. There’s also user researchers who can record their user interviews and make use of data insights (in the form of highlight reels) to enhance your product. You can even record internal meetings to improve communication!

How Much Does tl;dv Cost?

With tl;dv’s free plan, you’ll unlock unlimited recordings and transcripts immediately! You can get started within minutes. None of this waiting around or jumping through hoops to create an account – it’s as simple and straightforward as it should be. tl;dv’s free plan also offers AI-generated notes, summaries, and action points.

For the Pro Plan, you’re only looking at $20 per month and this unlocks all the top CRM integrations so you can funnel your insights from sales calls directly to your customer relationship management software. With this plan, you can make highlight reels, download calls and transcripts, and integrate with more than 5,000 other productivity tools.

tl;dv Pros

  • Free AI Integration: tl;dv uses top-tier AI to provide summaries, notes, and automatic speaker detection.
  • Free and Instant Translations: Live transcriptions in 25+ languages for Zoom, Google Meet, and MS Teams.
  • Fantastic Free Plan: Unlimited free recordings of Zoom, Google Meet and MS Teams calls.
  • Easy to Use: tl;dv has an intuitive design that makes it super simple to use.
  • Timestamps and Tagging Features: Timestamp your meeting highlights to quickly jump back to specific moments in the call. It also features the ability to tag colleagues at specific meeting moments so they get an email with a link straight to their inbox.
  • Integrates With All Your Favorite Work Apps: Push timestamps and meeting clips directly to Notion, Slack, HubSpot, Salesforce, and more via third-party integrations.
  • Create Clips and Highlights: Scan your library and make clips and highlight reels to condense insights.
  • Intuitive Library: Search your meetings library for keywords in transcripts to quickly find what you’re looking for.
  • Compatibility: tl;dv works for Google Meet, Zoom, and MS Teams.

tl;dv Cons

  • Only for Remote Calls: If you’re stuck in the 20th century and haven’t shifted to remote calls, tl;dv will be of little help.

To conclude; it doesn’t really matter which of the Cognism alternatives you choose to use for your business. What does matter is that you compliment them with a sales tool that’s guaranteed to get you data insights you can’t get from a contact scraper.

Let’s take a look at the other four Cognism competitors worth thinking about.

2. Apollo

Apollo is a comprehensive sales management and scraper tool that's worth the hype.

If you like comprehensive tools, you’ll be pleased to hear that “comprehensive” is Apollo’s middle name. Apollo is specifically designed to assist organizations with their sales and marketing efforts. It has tons of features that are hardly even comparable to other Cognism alternatives. But Apollo isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. 

On one hand, it’s an all-in-one tool that you can use to improve several areas of your business simultaneously. On the other hand, the tool can be overly complex and it may be too much, depending on your needs. 

Like other Cognism competitors, it can scrape LinkedIn for contacts and set up an emailing campaign for you. However, it can do much more than that. From A/B testing to AI-assisted email writing, it even offers video call recording and transcriptions (but only in the higher paid plans, unlike tl;dv which includes both recording and transcribing for free).

Apollo arguably has the best free plan for data enrichment tools in general, and it has a whole host of generous reviews: 5,659 5-star reviews on G2 to be exact. It’s definitely not a Cognism alternative to ignore.

Apollo Pros

  • Personalized and automated: Apollo offers email tracking, cadence automation, and personalized outreach.
  • Data accuracy: It offers accurate and up-to-date information about companies and contacts.
  • Comprehensive: Campaign management is possible from within the platform.
  • Integrations: Apollo integrates with just about any CRM or sales tool you could think of.
  • Free plan: It has a fantastic free plan so you can give it a whirl without committing to anything long-term.

Apollo Cons

  • Complex: The amount of features and the complexity of each can be overwhelming for a small business that just wants to focus on data enrichment.
  • Expensive: The higher end plans for Apollo might be considered expensive compared to other Cognism alternatives.

Apollo Pricing

Apollo’s free plan offers 10,000 free email credits. You can download the LinkedIn extension, send 250 emails per day, and even integrate with Zapier all without spending a single cent. You can find all the in-depth details about the free plan here.

Apollo’s Basic Plan is $49 per user per month, billed annually, It offers a sharp increase in the number of credits, as well as plenty more integrations. It allows you to move data in bulk (up to 10,000 records at a time). There’s also a 14-day free trial for Apollo’s Basic and Business plans.

The Business Plan will set you back $79 per user per month. This unlocks A/B testing, AI-assisted email writing, and call recordings! Their Conversations feature is also unlocked here: an AI-powered conversation intelligence that provides you with insights straight from your video calls. Apollo recognizes how essential it is to extract data insights from video calls, and that’s great. But it’s not as well-equipped to do the job as a dedicated online meeting recorder like tl;dv.

Finally, Apollo’s Organization Plan is $99 per user per month. This dramatically increases the limits of all features and adds call transcriptions among other things.

Apollo vs Cognism: The Verdict

Apollo is a bulky tool. It’s more comprehensive, more complex, and a little more complicated than Cognism. It has dozens of features that aren’t found in any other Cognism competitor, but there are so many that it can be slightly overwhelming. If you’re looking for an all-in-one super tool, then Apollo is definitely a worthy consideration – especially as their free plan is so tempting. But if you’re looking for low maintenance, simple, and straightforward, Cognism may be more your thing.

3. Clearbit

Clearbit is a great data enrichment tool.

Clearbit is another data scraper tool that is often used by sales teams to get them in front of the decision makers in your niche. It’s a powerful platform that has a standout feature: IP tracking. Got lots of website traffic? Clearbit allows you to turn every visitor into a lead. This killer feature lets Clearbit stand head and shoulders above the rest of the Cognism competitors if your company website has a heavy footfall.

Clearbit comes with a broad database that is regularly updated. Its machine learning algorithms allow you to stay in sync with the business contacts of your dreams. 

Clearbit Pros 

  • User-friendly: It has a simple and intuitive layout that enables you to seamlessly navigate.
  • Integrations: Clearbit has hundreds of integrations to streamline your workflow.
  • Emails: Clearbit makes emailing en masse simple.
  • Converts traffic into leads: Clearbit turns website visitors into leads with full company profiles. No more cold calling!

Clearbit Cons 

  • Expensive for small businesses: Small businesses may not get as much value out of the tool as larger ones.
  • Inaccurate phone numbers: The phone numbers it provides can often be inaccurate.

Clearbit Pricing

Clearbit’s free plan allows you to make use of the core features of the platform. This includes de-anonymizing your site traffic which is a great entry point into the world of Clearbit. 

Unfortunately, Clearbit’s paid plans have no price tags on the website. You have to reach out to the Clearbit sales team directly to request a quote. This can be a bit of a pain, but it is what it is. 

Their flexible plan structure means you should be able to work out a deal that’s mutually beneficial, regardless of the size of your business.

Clearbit vs Cognism: The Verdict

Clearbit is a strong Cognism alternative to consider. It doesn’t have the same accuracy level when it comes to phone numbers that Cognism is renowned for, but Clearbit’s ability to convert your website traffic into leads is a feature that really sets it apart from the crowd. The people visiting your website are already warm – they know your brand and have found their way to you on their own. They are low-hanging fruit – potentially lots of them.

In the end, it depends on your business needs as to which one is the best choice for you. Cognism is probably the better data scraper, but Clearbit’s IP tracking is a monster feature that can’t be avoided.

4. Lusha

Lusha is a great scraping tool, but is it the best?

Lusha is a great data-enrichment tool for B2B organizations that’s simple to use and easy to get started with. It opens on LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, Recruiter, Salesforce, or any company site to allow you instant access to your prospect’s contact details and B2B company info in seconds. This includes phone numbers, email addresses, and potential leads and contacts with other businesses. 

While Lusha’s feature offerings are relatively basic in comparison to something like Apollo’s Conversations or Clearbit’s IP tracking, the platform has a loyal following and is well respected in the data enrichment industry. Lusha aims to provide you with accurate and up-to-date contact information so that your business can save time and increase the effectiveness of your sales and marketing campaigns. 

Lusha Pros 

  • Accurate data: Generally, Lusha has high quality contacts and accurate information.
  • Integrations: Lots of third-party integrations that make it easy for you to streamline your work.
  • Ease of use: Its chrome and LinkedIn plug-ins are easy-to-use.

Lusha Cons

  • Value: Can be a little pricey for what you actually get.
  • Relatively Basic: None of Lusha’s features are particularly unique.

Lusha Pricing

Lusha has several paid plans. You can sign up for free and get 5 credits per month and access to its core features – though 5 credits is rather low in comparison to other Cognism alternatives. 

For $29 per user per month, you’ll get 480 credits per month and a few extra features like list management and list export. The Premium Plan comes in at $51 per user per month for 960 monthly credits. 

Finally, if you want to use Lusha’s Scale Plan, you can contact them directly for prices.

Lusha vs Cognism: The Verdict

Lusha is a great little platform that’s a wonderful addition to any small business’s arsenal. It gets straight to the point and finds you contact information of relevant business contacts. It doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not. 

For some, however, Lusha’s simplicity is a hindrance. If you want to maximize the potential from your data enrichment tool then Lusha is probably not the best choice.

5. Seamless.ai

Seamless is a great tool for up-to-date data scraping.

Trusted by 500,000+ companies, Seamless is a brilliant data enrichment tool. They offer the first and only real-time search engine for B2B sales leads and claim to have almost 2 billion contact and company records. 

If that wasn’t mind-boggling enough, their research shows that companies that use Seamless boost their revenue on average by 5-10x. It was built to help you connect directly with your ideal customers so you can build your pipeline, shorten your sales cycle, and close more deals at scale. In short, it’s a great alternative to Cognism.

Seamless Pros 

  • Ease of use: Seamless is considered very easy to use, including the LinkedIn extension.
  • One-click sync with CRMs: Seamless has tons of integrations and they all work seamlessly.
  • High refresh rate: Seamless identifies changes in people’s contact information and updates them rapidly.
  • Data quantity: With more than 1.9 billion contact and company records, Seamless has a comprehensive network of potential customers.

Seamless Cons

  • Difficult to cancel: Some of the reviews talk about having to jump through hoops to cancel their subscription, still being billed after cancelling, or even being locked in a one-year contract without being properly informed.
  • Poor customer service: Seamless doesn’t seem to excel in making their customers happy.
  • Integration time out: There is a lack of indicator when the integration has timed out which can lead to having to redo work.

Seamless Pricing 

Like Clearbit, Seamless doesn’t reveal its pricing on the website. Instead, you have to contact a sales rep. There is a free plan that doesn’t require any credit card to sign up, and there is also a free trial of the Basic Plan which is basically the same but with extra credits and the option to attend a live training webinar.

The Pro Plan grants you a daily credit refresh as well as Pitch Intelligence, unlimited integrations, job change announcements, and much more. The Enterprise Plan offers everything the Pro Plan does with the addition of quarterly business reviews and phone support.

Seamless vs Cognism: The Verdict

Seamless.ai does have the first and only real-time search engine, which is a brilliant feature for getting more prospects. However, it seems that the customer service is not up to scratch and that the subscriptions can be difficult to cancel or even downright deceptive. For these reasons, we think Cognism is a safer bet. 

However, it’s worth noting that Seamless.ai has a free trial that doesn’t require any sign-up to get started. This means you can test it without committing, unlike Cognism which requires you to call a sales rep before you can even consider getting a free trial.

Which Data Enrichment Tool is Right For You?

Depending on your business, you’ll be able to make that decision for yourself. Cognism is a fantastic tool which excels in mobile phone numbers (an area where most of the Cognism alternatives suffer). Cognism is also fantastic at remaining compliant with international law.

If you intend to do business in Europe and the U.S, Cognism will be a fantastic option. If, however, you are less worried about international prospects or phone numbers, then one of these Cognism competitors will probably be better for you. 

  • Seamless is great for its real-time search engine. 
  • Lusha is a straightforward tool that you can’t really go wrong with.
  • Clearbit allows you to convert website traffic into prospects.
  • Apollo is an all-in-one comprehensive sales tool.
  • LeadIQ allows you to track sales triggers and make moves at the opportune moment!

Whichever Cognism alternative you opt to go for, remember to partner it with tl;dv. You can record your online sales calls and get a ton more data insights straight into your CRM of choice. The free plan includes unlimited call recordings and transcriptions so trying it out is a no-brainer!