Apollo vs Hunter: Free Plans, Per-Seat Billing and Opt-Out Terms (2026)

Use boundary: this comparison reports what two vendors publish about their products, for B2B contact that complies with GDPR, CAN-SPAM, CCPA and local rules, and that honors every opt-out and do-not-call request. In this article, an email finder means a commercial lookup product that returns the work address tied to one specific professional. It is not a tool for locating a private address. A credit is the usage unit each vendor sets for itself, so credit counts are compared only within one vendor’s own pages.

Verdict

Hunter suits one person or a small group that wants a recurring monthly free allowance and plain wording about where its data comes from. Apollo.io suits a sales team that buys seats and needs every scored field verified. On our 2026 method, Hunter scores 88.2 and Apollo.io scores 78.0. The gap is provisional, because Hunter has five of seven dimensions verified and Apollo.io has seven of seven.

Scorecard

Field	Hunter	Apollo.io	Where to check
Free allowance	50 credits per month	900 credits per seat per year, granted monthly	Hunter pricing, Apollo pricing
Entry paid plan	$49 per month list; $34 per month billed annually	$49 per seat per month, billed annually	same pages
Mid paid plan	Growth $149 per month ($104 billed annually)	Professional $79 per seat per month, billed annually	same pages
Unused credits	Reset monthly, do not roll over	Expire at the end of each billing cycle	pricing FAQ text
Data-source statement	Public web sources; data with no public source is removed	Not publicly disclosed on the pages read	Hunter data page
Opt-out route	Claim your email address to remove your details	Opt-out request through the privacy centre	Apollo privacy centre
Do-not-call screening	Not publicly disclosed on the pages read	Suppression list mentioned; DNC screening not stated	official pages
Coverage wording	Describes daily visits to web pages, no count	Slogan “240M contacts & 30M companies” (vendor claim, not scored)	official pages
Dimensions verified	5 of 7	7 of 7	method 2026.10
Score	88.2 (provisional)	78.0	method 2026.10

Where Hunter leads

Hunter’s free allowance recurs at 50 credits a month, and its entry plan is listed at $49 monthly, or $34 a month when billed annually. A single user who will not spend the whole allowance each month can plan around a reset that happens on a known date. Its data page also explains that data with no public source is removed, which is a concrete statement a buyer can check.

Where Apollo.io leads

Of the pair, Apollo.io is the one with every scored dimension verified. Its free allowance of 900 credits per seat per year is granted monthly, which works out to 75 credits a month per seat. Its privacy centre describes a request route for opt-out, and its paid plans are priced per seat, so a team can see the cost of each user before it commits.

What the score does and does not show

The score is a weighted mean over the dimensions that could be verified, scaled to 100. It is not a rating of product quality. Hunter’s total rests on five dimensions. If its integration and seat terms were verified and scored low, its total would fall, and if they scored high, it would rise. Apollo.io’s total rests on all seven, so its figure reflects a complete read of the fields this method uses. The honest reading is that the gap of 10.2 points is not yet a settled difference. Confirm Hunter’s team and integration terms, and confirm Apollo.io’s monthly-billed price, before you treat the gap as meaningful.

A buying sequence

1. Open both free plans and check that the monthly allowance matches the pricing page.
2. Read the credit rule on each pricing page and write down the reset or expiry date you will rely on.
3. Find the opt-out route on each privacy page and confirm that it loads.
4. Ask each vendor, in writing, about do-not-call screening and the markets it covers.
5. Only then compare paid tiers, using the billing basis shown on each page.

How the fields were captured

Each value was read from the vendor’s own pricing and privacy pages on 2026-10-16. Vendor statements are labelled as vendor statements. Limits: the monthly-billed Apollo.io price was not verified in this run, Hunter’s integration and seat terms were not verified, and so Hunter’s score covers five dimensions. We did not test either product, and we did not check either data set for accuracy. Every weight and sub-score is listed on the methodology page.