Best AI sales prospecting tools: 8 tools ranked on what vendors publish (October 2026)

Three tools publish a price for 5 users, from $100 to $2,500 a month

Unify lists $20 a seat and month for Base and $60 for Pro, so 5 seats cost $100 or $300. Apollo's own comparison pages from May 13 and September 17, 2026 list Basic at $49 per user and month on annual billing and Professional at $79, so 5 users cost $245 or $395. Common Room lists Essential at $2,500 a month, billed annually, with 5 seats. Leadfeeder prices by identified companies, in euros, with unlimited users on every plan.

Lusha lists Starter at $49.90 a month, or $37.45 on annual billing, with 400 credits, and Pro at $69.90, or $52.45 on annual billing, with 600 credits. Its page does not say how many users a plan includes and sends teams of more than 5 to sales, so I could not fill the 5 user column. Cognism and ZoomInfo publish no amount, and I found none for Seamless.AI.

Apollo's pricing page showed me plan names and no amounts, so its dollar figures rest on Apollo's insights pages. Credits are not one unit: Unify averages 1 credit per email and 4 per phone number, Lusha counts 1 and 5. Per 1,000 emails that is $25 at Unify and $124.75 at Lusha Starter on monthly billing, my own arithmetic.

What this means for you: with 5 sellers the published range is $100 to $395 a month for per-seat tools and $2,500 for the one flat plan, and three vendors want a call before they name a number.

Sources: [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]

How I ranked the tools

Each tool got 0 to 2 points on five things, so the maximum is 10. Free route: 2 for a free plan, 1 for a trial only. Reach: 2 when emails and phone numbers are both named. Signals: 2 for at least two kinds, such as intent topics, job changes or website visitors. AI: 2 for at least two named features for different jobs. Do-not-call and opt-out: 2 for a named check or flag, 1 for an opt-out route alone.

Transparency is a separate column and does not move the rank: 1 point each for a price at my unit, a certificate on the vendor's pages and a named data source or hosting region. Ties break alphabetically. I scored only what the pages I opened state, read no review sites and ran no campaigns, so no score says whether a tool finds the right person. The whole prospecting category is in our directory, and how I review explains the rest.

Sources: [10]

Which tool fits which situation

The self-check ends on one tool after five yes or no questions at most.

1. Leadfeeder: best if you want to know which companies already visit your site

Leadfeeder reveals the companies that visit your site, even when nobody fills in a form. Lite is free with the last 100 companies a month, and every plan, free one included, has unlimited users. Discover starts at €79 a month on annual billing (€113 monthly), Activate at €369 and Scale at €599, billed annually only, and each paid plan has a 14-day trial.

Verified emails and phones, intent-signal filters and "Build prospect lists with AI" start at Activate. The security page names ISO 27001 and ISO 27701, hosting on AWS in the EU/EEA and a data processing agreement. It does not explain how a visit becomes a company, so ask before you rely on it.

Skip it if your site gets little traffic or you need contact data before you spend €369. What this means for you: price it by the companies you want identified each month, not by seats. The Leadfeeder profile has more.

Sources: [6][11]

2. Unify: best if you want the lowest published seat price and signals in one tool

Unify's Free plan allows up to 3 seats, Base costs $20 a seat and month with 800 credits, and Pro costs $60 with 2,400 credits and a 14-day trial without a card. Email enrichment averages 1 credit per record and phone enrichment 4, up to 10 and 20 in rare cases. Job-change and hiring signals start at Base, and website intent and product signals only at Business.

The page claims 40+ data sources, and the FAQ says you can see the underlying providers in your workflow. It states SOC 2 Type II. It has no GDPR statement, only a link to a data processing agreement in the footer.

Not for you if you need a GDPR statement before a trial. What this means for you: a 5-person team pays $100 a month on Base, but phone-heavy work uses credits 4 times faster than email. The Unify profile lists integrations.

Sources: [1]

3. Apollo: best if you want a free start and sequences in one tool

Apollo lists Free, Basic, Professional and Custom, and says the free plan stays free with no time limit. Basic includes email sequencing, Professional adds higher credit limits, AI features and call recording, and Custom adds SSO and dedicated support. The free plan connects Gmail only, while paid plans take Microsoft and other providers.

Apollo's May 13, 2026 comparison page lists 900, 30,000 and 48,000 credits a year for Free, Basic and Professional, and 6 intent topics on Basic. The credits page says Apollo never charges more than 1 credit per contact, and leaves the phone figure blank.

The privacy policy, updated August 10, 2026, names public websites, professional directories, government sources and vetted providers, and says customers can submit contact data and call recordings that feed its Contributor Database. The trust center lists ISO/IEC 27001 and a SOC 2 Type 2 report.

Not for you if your policy bars a vendor from reusing what customers upload. What this means for you: ask which plan carries your phone credits, since the credits page gives no number. The Apollo profile covers integrations.

Sources: [4][12][3][13][14]

4. Lusha: best if you need a do-not-call flag on every phone record

Lusha's free plan gives 40 credits a month, Starter 400, Pro 600 and Premium 3,400, and Premium costs $399.90 a month. An email costs 1 credit and a phone number 5.

The FAQ says every phone record carries a Do Not Call flag, removal requests go to a suppression list, and customers who already received the record are notified. Contact data comes from members who share email headers and signatures, public business information and licensed partners, and Lusha says it does not scrape professional networks. It is registered as a data broker in California, holds GDPR certification from ePrivacyseal and CCPA validation from TrustArc, and lists SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001.

It is not the tool for intent signals or sequencing, which I did not find on the pages I read. What this means for you: ask how many seats the plan you want includes. The Lusha profile has the certificate list.

Sources: [7][15]

5. Cognism: best if you phone mobile numbers in Europe and can buy through sales

Cognism publishes no amount. Standard and Pro each include 5 seats, 1 credit is 1 revealed contact, a contact you already revealed is free to view again, and the page does not say how many credits a seat holds. Its feature table lists AI company research, an AI persona builder and AI search.

The compliance page describes phone-verified mobile numbers checked by hand and says its phone data is screened against do-not-call registers in 12 countries, among them the UK, the US, Germany and France. It names legitimate interest as the GDPR basis, says it notifies contacts of their inclusion and lists ISO 27001, ISO 27701 and SOC 2 Type II. Not for you if you want a price or a free plan online. What this means for you: ask which registers cover your target countries.

Sources: [8][16]

6. Seamless.AI: best if you want to start on 50 free credits and accept a quote later

Seamless.AI's license documentation gives a Free license 50 credits that do not refresh, Basic 250 a month and Pro 10,000 a month. Contact search and enrichment cost 1 credit per contact, and AI assistant messages 0.2. The pricing page gave me no plan table, and the documentation lists no amounts. The homepage calls the product a real-time search engine, not a database.

The privacy policy, updated October 23, 2026, says data may be stored in the United States or any other country, names legitimate interests and consent as bases and sends rights requests to a Privacy Request Center. The homepage says SOC 2 Type II. Not for you if you need EU storage. What this means for you: ask for the credit price per seat in writing.

Sources: [17][18][19]

7. Common Room: best if buyers show up in community and product signals and you can spend $30,000 a year

Common Room Essential costs $2,500 a month, billed annually, which is $30,000 a year for 5 seats, up to 100,000 contacts, 1,000 website identifications a month and 6 Bombora Company Surge topics. The page mentions no free plan or trial. The FAQ says SOC 2 certified and GDPR compliant, and I found no named source for contact data. It is the wrong fit for a team of 1 or 2. What this means for you: the flat price only pays off when all 5 seats are used.

Sources: [5]

8. ZoomInfo: best if you need a bulk-export database across sales and marketing

ZoomInfo shows no amount. The FAQ says price depends on features, licenses and credit usage, and that each export costs 1 credit. Marketing Demand lists 75K credits and ABM Enterprise 150K. Professional, Copilot Advanced and Copilot Enterprise have a trial button, and the marketing plans ask for a demo.

The privacy policy, effective October 20, 2025, lists web search, licensed third parties, a research team, customer contributions and ZoomInfo Lite as sources, and names legitimate interests in the EU and UK. You remove a Professional Profile through the Trust Center, and Business Profiles are not removed. A safety FAQ names a SOC 2 attestation without a type, so I did not repeat the ISO claims in our directory. Not for you if you want a price online. What this means for you: expect to negotiate, and ask for the Trust Center opt-out list your team must honor.

Sources: [9][20][21]

Where contact data comes from, and which rules still apply to you

Lusha, Apollo and ZoomInfo all name customer contributions in their own policies, and Unify says it buys from specialist providers you can see in your workflow. A tool does not move the duty to you: the FTC says CAN-SPAM makes no exception for business email, requires opt-outs to be honored within 10 business days and sets up to $53,088 for each violating email.

For calls, the FTC says its registry covers personal numbers and not business numbers or fax lines. In the UK the ICO says live B2B calls need screening against both CTPS and TPS and your own list, and that the PECR email rule does not apply to corporate subscribers but does reach sole traders. For the GDPR duties of a bought list, read our analysis of AI lead generation tools.

This is my reading of the pages, not legal advice. What this means for you: a vendor's do-not-call flag helps, but the registers you must screen against depend on who you call.

Sources: [22][23][24]

Tools I checked and left out

Warmly sells website visitor identification from $10,000 a year and chat plans from $20,000, and Leadfeeder already covers visitor identification in this list. Demandbase's pricing page describes a platform fee plus a flat fee per user and shows no amount, and it is an account-based platform rather than a contact database. 6sense's pricing address returned a 404 on October 25, 2026, so I made no claim about it.

I did not open Surfe's pages on this run, so I make no claim about it. Amplemarket, Instantly and lemlist send sequences and sit in the sales engagement round-up.

Sources: [25][26]