One bills per seat and bundles the data. The other bills by volume and assumes you bring your own leads.
| Apollo | Instantly | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary job | B2B database plus all-in-one outreach | Dedicated cold email sending platform |
| Entry paid price | $49 per seat per month, billed annually | $47 per month (Growth) |
| Pricing model | Per seat, data credits included | Flat tiers priced by sending volume |
| Contact data | Built in: 30,000 to 72,000 credits per seat per year on paid plans | Sold separately as lead finder credit plans from $47 per month |
| Connected inboxes | 1 mailbox per user on Basic; unlimited Google and Microsoft mailboxes from Professional | Unlimited email accounts on every plan |
| Sending limits | 250 emails per day on Free and Basic; unlimited from Professional | 5,000 to 500,000 emails per month depending on tier |
| Email warmup | Included from Basic | Unlimited warmup on all plans |
| Free plan | Yes: 900 credits per seat per year | None listed; paid plans only |
| CRM and deals | Lead, deal, and meeting management included | Campaign and inbox focused |
| Annual discount | About 24 percent | 10 percent |
These numbers come from each vendor's own pricing page and were checked in August 2026.
Apollo: the Free plan is $0 with 900 credits per seat per year. Basic is $49 per seat per month billed annually with 30,000 credits per seat per year. Professional is $79 with 48,000 credits, and it removes the daily send cap and the one mailbox limit. Organization is $119 with 72,000 credits and a three seat minimum. Monthly billing costs more; Apollo says annual saves about 24 percent. Watch the credit math: a verified email is 1 credit, a phone number is 8, and enriching a record can use up to 9, so phone-heavy prospecting drains allowances much faster than email-only work.
Instantly: Growth is $47 per month, or $37.60 on annual billing, with 5,000 emails and 1,000 uploaded contacts per month. Hypergrowth is $97 ($77.60 annual) with 125,000 emails and 25,000 contacts. Lightspeed is $358 ($286.30 annual) with 500,000 emails and 100,000 contacts. Every plan includes unlimited email accounts and unlimited warmup. Lead data costs extra: credit plans run $47 for 1,500 credits, $97 for 5,000, and from $197 for 10,000 or more, and there are bundles at $94, $194, and $555 that combine sending and credits.
Pick Apollo when you want one subscription that covers the whole loop from finding a contact to booking a meeting. A solo founder or a two person team can source leads, sequence them, call them through the built-in dialer, and track deals for $49 to $79 a seat. Nothing else in this comparison does all of that in one place at that price.
It also wins when data is your bottleneck rather than volume. If you do not already have a list, Apollo's included credits are usually cheaper than buying data separately, and the free plan is a genuine way to test whether outbound works for your offer before you pay anything.
The Professional tier matters more than it looks. It removes the 250 email daily cap and adds unlimited Google and Microsoft mailboxes plus a deliverability suite, which quietly fixes the two constraints that used to push people toward dedicated sending tools.
Pick Instantly when sending is the job. Cold email at real volume means rotating across many domains and inboxes to protect deliverability, and unlimited accounts on every plan are built for exactly that. Apollo caps SMTP mailboxes at 5 per user on Professional and 15 on Organization, so a rotation of 30 or more inboxes fits Instantly's model far better. I have run inbox rotations at that scale, and per-seat tools fight you the whole way.
It is also the better fit when you already own your lead data. If your lists come from another provider, your CRM, or your own research, Apollo's bundled credits are dead weight, and Instantly's flat volume pricing stays predictable as your contact count grows.
Agencies land here almost by default. The Agency bundle at $555 per month covers 500,000 emails and 100,000 contacts across client campaigns, a shape of usage that per-seat pricing handles poorly.
The sticker prices are not comparable, because the bills grow on different axes. Apollo gets expensive by seats, Instantly gets expensive by data. A solo sender on Instantly Growth at $47 usually becomes $94 or more once lead credits are added, while an Apollo team of five on Professional is $395 a month before anyone sends an email. Model your own seat count and data needs before trusting either headline number.
The other thing reviews tend to skip: Apollo's Professional tier now includes unlimited Google and Microsoft mailboxes, warmup, and a deliverability suite, which removed a large part of Instantly's old advantage for small senders. What it did not remove is the SMTP mailbox cap and the per-seat model, which is why the two tools still separate cleanly once you operate at volume. And deliverability itself depends far more on your domains, ramp discipline, and list quality than on which of these two platforms presses send.
For most small teams starting outbound, I would begin with Apollo and keep the stack simple; the data, the sequencer, and the dialer in one tool beats duct tape. Once cold email becomes a volume operation with dedicated domains and a large inbox rotation, move sending to Instantly and keep a data source behind it. Plenty of teams end up running both, and that is not a failure of either product; they are priced for different halves of the same workflow. Just run the seat and credit math for your actual team before committing to annual billing.