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Apollo.io vs Grata

Side by Side

Apollo.io and Grata, attribute by attribute
AttributeApollo.ioGrata
What It IsA contact and company database with sequences, warmup and a dialer in one seat, sold per seat with a credit meter where an email costs one credit and a phone number eight. A searcher uses the filters, including a Google Maps business search, to build a list of owners in a niche and writes to them from the same tool, and the free seat is enough to learn whether a niche's owners are reachable before paying.Searchable database of 21M-plus private companies with revenue/employee estimates, website-keyword search, and verified executive contacts, used to build off-market target lists, assemble comparable sets and market maps, and run outreach with CRM integrations. Owned by Datasite since June 2025, which is merging competitor Sourcescrub's data into the platform.
CategoryOff-Market Data & OutreachOff-Market Data & Outreach
Pricing ModelFreemiumCustom Pricing
What It CostsPublished on its own pricing page, billed annually per seat: Free at $0 with 900 credits a year granted monthly, Basic at $49 with 30,000 credits a year, Professional at $79 with 48,000, Organization at $119 with a three-seat minimum and 72,000. Monthly billing: Free with 75 credits a month, Basic $65, Professional $99. Add-ons at $119 a month per team. A 14-day trial carries 100 credits. The unit is defined on the page: an email costs 1 credit, a phone number 8, enrichment 1 to 8, AI research 1 per run, the US dialer 2 per minute. Two conflicts on the page itself: its structured data lists Basic at $49 monthly while the card says $65, and its FAQ still describes an Unlimited plan no card sells.Pricing not published. grata.com/pricing shows three demo-gated tiers with no dollar figures: Growth (aimed at family offices and independent sponsors), Scale (buy/sell-side advisors, mid-market PE, corp dev), and Alpha (investment banks and mega funds), plus API and data-warehouse add-ons; all sales-quoted subscription contracts via "Book a demo" / "Talk to a specialist", contract term length is not stated on the site. The only numbers on Grata's own site are on its referral page, whose worked examples use $20,000 and $30,000 contract values, a signal of typical deal size. No free trial or self-serve option.
Best ForA searcher building an owner list in a niche and writing to it from one tool, who wants a free seat to test whether the niche is reachable before paying for dataFunded searchers, or self-funded searchers whose investors/sponsor cover a five-figure data budget, running proprietary outreach in a definable niche toward the upper end of the SMB range; lean self-funded buyers of sub-$2M Main Street businesses will find a DIY stack (Clay/Apollo/scraping) more proportionate.
Where It FitsDefine & Test Your Thesis, Source & Screen DealsDefine & Test Your Thesis, Source & Screen Deals
Our VerdictThe one seat that holds a database and a sender, with a free tier honest enough to test a niche on. Read its own page's two contradictions before budgeting, and expect its database to thin out exactly where Main Street lives.The best off-market company data for thesis-driven sourcing if someone else is paying its ~$20k+ sales-quoted contracts. Most self-funded searchers under $5M get better ROI from a cheap DIY stack; Grata's estimates and contacts are weakest at exactly Main Street size.
Pros
  • Both halves in one seat: a searchable company and contact database and the sequences with warmup that send to it
  • Price, seat and credit unit published together, so the cost of a campaign of a given size is knowable before signing up
  • A free seat with 900 credits a year and no card, enough to test a niche
  • Website-keyword and similar-company search finds niche off-market businesses (e.g., 'ISO 9001 precision machining') that NAICS-code tools miss: the core reason searchers pay for it
  • Contacts and list-building live in one tool: 10M+ verified executive emails, Chrome extension, and HubSpot/Salesforce/DealCloud integrations feed outreach directly
  • Strong review record: G2 4.8/5 across ~79 reviews, with search functionality and customer support the most-praised aspects
Cons
  • A B2B professionals database, thin on owner-operators with no LinkedIn footprint, and a searcher reports it lacks comprehensive lists by NAICS code
  • Credits are the real meter and a phone number costs eight, so the free seat's 75 a month buys about nine numbers
  • The page disagrees with itself on Basic's monthly price and still describes a plan it no longer sells
  • Quote-only annual contracts with zero published pricing; the vendor's own referral examples imply $20k–$30k deals, often a third or more of a self-funded searcher's entire search budget
  • Data accuracy is the top user complaint (18 mentions on G2; echoed on Searchfunder): revenue estimates and contact info need verification, so you still end up cross-checking in a spreadsheet
  • Coverage skews to US mid-market and digitally visible companies; the low-web-presence $500k–$5M Main Street businesses SBA buyers target are exactly where estimates and contacts are thinnest

Both rows were read at source: Apollo.io ↗ and Grata ↗.

Our take

Choose Apollo when you are paying for the data yourself: a free seat with 900 credits a year to test whether a niche's owners are reachable, then $49 a seat a month billed annually with the sender, warmup and dialer in the same seat, on a credit meter where an email costs one and a phone number eight. Two things to weigh. It is a B2B professionals database, thin on owner-operators with no LinkedIn footprint, and its own pricing page disagrees with itself on the monthly Basic price.

Choose Grata when someone else is paying and the thesis is a definable niche: 21M-plus private companies with revenue estimates, website-keyword search and verified executive contacts, on quote-only annual contracts whose own referral examples use $20,000 and $30,000. Its critics on Searchfunder name Apollo as the cheaper stack that delivers most of the value, which is the comparison this page exists to make.

Looking wider than these two: alternatives to Grata, each with a line on when it is the better pick.