Clay vs Apollo vs ZoomInfo: Real Cost per 1,000 Sales Leads in 2026
The short answer
Apollo is the cheapest source of a verified email at every volume modeled ($26–$82 per 1,000 usable emails on the plan that fits), but a phone number costs 8 credits, so email-plus-phone leads cost $595–$1,530 per 1,000. Clay charges Data Credits and Actions only when an enrichment returns a result, and prices out at $80–$264 per 1,000 usable emails and $402–$494 per 1,000 usable records with a phone lookup at the volumes its plans cover. ZoomInfo is quote-only; depending on how its credit allowance is read, cost per 1,000 usable leads at 20,000 target records ranges from $250 to $569. The differences between sources are shown, not resolved.
Platform pricing
| Apollo | Clay | ZoomInfo | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Status | Published | Published | Quote-only; figures reported |
| Plans (annual billing) | Basic $49, Professional $79, Organization $119 (3-seat minimum) per user/month | Launch $185/month (monthly billing; about 10% less annual), Growth $495 | Professional about $14,995/year (3 seats), Advanced $24,995–$29,995, Elite $35,995–$39,995+ |
| Credits | Paid plans: 30,000 credits per seat per year (Basic), 48,000 (Professional), 72,000 (Organization, 3-seat minimum), all granted upfront (Apollo's pricing page); email 1 credit, phone 8 (reported) | Launch: 2,500 Data Credits and 15,000 Actions/month; Growth: 6,000 and 40,000 | Reported 5,000 credits (Professional) and 10,000 (Advanced); read as monthly by one source and annual by another |
| Failed lookups | Not stated | No Data Credits or Actions charged when an enrichment returns no result (Clay's pricing page) | Not stated |
| Overage / top-up | About $0.20 per credit (reported) | Data Credits topped up at a 30% premium; Actions cannot be topped up mid-cycle | $0.25–$0.50 per credit (reported) |
| Rollover | Annual paid credits are granted upfront; free-plan credits are granted monthly and are not modeled | Data Credits roll over up to 2× the monthly amount per the FAQ; another page section describes one month | No rollover (reported) |
| Seats | Per user | Unlimited | $1,500–$2,500 per additional seat per year (reported) |
ZoomInfo said on its Q1 2026 earnings call that it plans a hybrid model with a lower annual platform fee and pre-purchased data credits later in Q3 2026 (reported by Factors.ai, 17 Aug 2026); no such model is confirmed in the pricing data reviewed.
Definition and assumptions
A usable lead is a target record with a verified email (and, in the second recipe, a phone number). Match rates are illustrative: Apollo 60%, Clay 70%, ZoomInfo 75%. Clay recipes: email only (1 Data Credit + 3 Actions per successful record, from Clay's calculator as reported by Rhycon, 23 Sep 2026); email + phone (5 credits + 6 Actions, illustrative, assuming 4 credits for the phone). Apollo recipes: 1 credit or 9 credits (email + phone) per usable record. Costs use monthly equivalents.
Cost per 1,000 usable leads
Each row uses the vendor's own assumed match rate and its own usable-lead count, so the cost per 1,000 is divided by different denominators and is not a shared basis. Costs are monthly equivalents; match rates are illustrative.
| Target records | Vendor, recipe and plan | Assumed match rate | Usable leads | Monthly cost | Cost per 1,000 usable leads |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | Apollo, email, Basic | 60% | 600 | $49 | $82 |
| 1,000 | Apollo, email + phone, Organization (3 seats) | 60% | 600 | $357 | $595 |
| 1,000 | Clay, email, Launch | 70% | 700 | $185 | $264 |
| 1,000 | Clay, email + phone, Launch + 1,000-credit top-up | 70% | 700 | $281 | $402 |
| 1,000 | ZoomInfo Professional, 5,000 credits read as monthly | 75% | 750 | $1,250 | $1,666 |
| 1,000 | ZoomInfo Professional, 5,000 credits read as annual | 75% | 750 | $1,333–$1,416 | $1,777–$1,888 |
| 5,000 | Apollo, email, Professional | 60% | 3,000 | $79 | $26 |
| 5,000 | Apollo, email + phone, Organization (3 seats) | 60% | 3,000 | $2,157 | $719 |
| 5,000 | Clay, email, Launch + top-up | 70% | 3,500 | $281 | $80 |
| 5,000 | Clay, email + phone, Growth | 70% | 3,500 | $1,728 | $494 |
| 5,000 | ZoomInfo Professional, monthly reading | 75% | 3,750 | $1,250 | $333 |
| 5,000 | ZoomInfo Professional, annual reading | 75% | 3,750 | $2,083–$2,916 | $556–$778 |
| 20,000 | Apollo, email, Organization (3 seats, 72,000 credits per seat) | 60% | 12,000 | $357 | $30 |
| 20,000 | Apollo, email + phone, Organization (3 seats) | 60% | 12,000 | $18,357 | $1,530 |
| 20,000 | Clay, both recipes | 70% | 14,000 | Exceeds Growth's 40,000 Actions; larger Actions allotment not priced publicly | Not stated |
| 20,000 | ZoomInfo Professional, monthly reading | 75% | 15,000 | $3,750–$6,250 | $250–$417 |
| 20,000 | ZoomInfo Professional, annual reading | 75% | 15,000 | $4,895–$8,541 | $326–$569 |
Formulas: Clay top-up rate = plan price ÷ included credits × 1.3 ($0.0962 per credit on Launch, $0.1073 on Growth); 5,000 email records = 3,500 credits, Launch $185 + 1,000 × $0.0962 = $281.20. ZoomInfo monthly equivalent = $14,995 ÷ 12 = $1,249.58; 20,000 records at 75% = 15,000 usable; monthly reading overage = (15,000 − 5,000) × $0.25–$0.50; annual reading allowance = 5,000 ÷ 12 = 417 credits a month. Apollo annual credits needed = 12 × monthly usable leads × credits per lead (1 for email, 9 for email + phone), compared with 30,000, 48,000 or 72,000 credits per seat per year granted upfront; overage at the reported $0.20 per credit; monthly cost is the annual cost ÷ 12. Clay at 20,000 records needs 42,000 email-recipe Actions against Growth's 40,000. Five seats on ZoomInfo Advanced cost $24,995 + 5 × $1,500–$2,500 = $32,495–$37,495 a year.
Apollo credit model
Apollo's paid plans grant each seat's annual credits upfront, so demand is measured against the year's total per seat and the table above holds for steady or uneven monthly demand alike. Organization has a three-seat minimum, so its allowance is 216,000 credits a year ($4,284 a year for the three seats). The email-plus-phone rows at 5,000 and 20,000 records exceed that allowance and carry the reported $0.20 overage. Each additional Organization seat costs $119 a month ($1,428 a year) and carries 72,000 credits, about $0.0198 per credit against the reported $0.20 overage; whether seats can be added purely for their credits is not established, so no such configuration is modeled and the phone rows may overstate cost if it is allowed.
What the advertised price misses
Apollo's phone reveals cost 8 credits each ($1.60 at the reported overage). Clay top-ups carry a 30% premium and Actions run on a separate meter. ZoomInfo seats, credit overage, auto-renewal (reported 30–90 day notice) and module add-ons sit outside the platform price, and a contact is not a qualified lead.
Break-even
At their own assumed match rates (Clay 70%, Apollo 60%), Clay costs $80–$264 per 1,000 usable emails against Apollo's $26–$82, so it is justified only when match rate or custom logic yields extra leads worth more than the gap divided by the contact-to-qualified rate. ZoomInfo Professional falls below $400 per 1,000 usable leads once monthly usable leads exceed about 3,100 ($1,250 ÷ $0.40), assuming the monthly credit reading.
Sources
Apollo: pricing for plans and annual credits per seat; email and phone credit consumption and the $0.20 overage as reported by Hacking Demand (verified 10 Jul 2026) and Zeliq (26 Jul 2026). Clay: clay.com/pricing, docs. ZoomInfo (quote-only): Vendr median $31,875 on 1,313 purchases; $33,500 on 1,572; tiers and overage as reported by Pin (3 Jun 2026) and Valley.