How we compare
What prospect data actually costs.
Most teams pay for this three ways: a platform subscription, an in-house researcher's time, or a full-service retainer. Here is what each costs a year, next to a Qualified Deals engagement.
Annual cost
Eight ways to buy the same input.
| Provider | Type | Annual cost | Human verification | Key limitation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZoomInfo | Enterprise platform | ₹12.5L – 42L | No | Non-US data is weak. Add-ons can triple the contract price. |
| Apollo.io | SMB to mid-market platform | ₹50K – 1.5L per user | No | Roughly 73% email accuracy, so about a 27% bounce rate. |
| Lusha | Individual platform | ₹29K – 1L per user | No | Credit-based. 40 credits a month on the Pro plan. |
| Clay | Enrichment platform | ₹7.2L+ | No | Requires a technical RevOps person to set up and maintain. |
| In-house SDR plus tools | DIY model | ₹8L – 15L | Varies | BD time goes on research rather than closing. |
| Global agencies | Full-service retainer | $5K – $12K per month | Yes | Outreach is bundled in, so you pay for what you may not need. |
| Qualified Deals — Pilot | One-time research project | ₹35,000 one-time | Yes | One-time scope. No retainer, no lock-in. |
| Qualified Deals — Scale | Monthly subscription | ₹7.2L (₹60K × 12) | Yes | Cancel any time after the three-month minimum. |
Cost figures come from publicly published pricing pages and industry benchmarks. Your actual cost depends on user count, contract length and negotiated add-ons — usually above the floor of the published range.
A ZoomInfo Advanced contract costs ₹12.5L a year before add-ons. That is roughly 36 Pilots, or 17 months of a Scale subscription. The spend is on the platform, not on verified data.
What buyers ask first
Three trade-offs we do not make.
We need volume.
Verified, not voluminous
A list of 5,000 with a quarter of them wrong costs more than 750 that are right — in domain reputation, in rep hours, and in the meetings that never happen. We size the list to what can be verified, and we say the number before you buy.
What does it cost per month?
Fixed price, no retainer
Nothing per month. Each project is quoted whole, before it starts, and that is what you pay. No seat licences, no credits to forecast, no minimum spend, and nothing that renews unless you ask it to.
Five to seven days is slow.
The turnaround is the feature
A list you can buy in ninety seconds is a list nobody checked. The days are people reading company sites and profiles, and dating what they confirmed. That is the part you are buying.
FAQ
What buyers ask when they are comparing.
What is the best ZoomInfo alternative for a small B2B team?
It depends what is actually failing. If ZoomInfo’s cost is the problem, a per-project research firm removes the seat licence entirely — a Pilot is ₹35,000 against a platform contract in the ₹12.5L–42L range. If the data quality is the problem, no platform switch fixes it, because the alternatives run the same automated verification. The distinction worth drawing is between renting a database and commissioning research.
Why is a platform cheaper per record but more expensive per campaign?
Because you pay for the whole database and use a fraction of it, then pay again in bounced sends and researcher time correcting rows. A platform priced per seat per year does not scale down to one project. We price the project.
Is human verification actually worth the difference?
It depends on your send volume. Apollo publishes roughly 73% email accuracy, which implies about a 27% bounce rate; we work to a 92%+ deliverability target. On a 750-contact send that is the difference between roughly 200 bounces and under 60 — and sender reputation damage is the part that outlasts the campaign.
What does building the list in-house cost?
Rarely less, once you count it properly: an SDR’s time at market salary, the platform subscriptions they still need, and the opportunity cost of research hours not spent selling. The comparison table on this page prices it out with the assumptions stated.
Are these competitor prices accurate?
They are floors, taken from publicly published pricing pages and industry benchmarks. A real contract with add-ons usually lands above them — ZoomInfo add-ons in particular can triple a contract. We publish the caveat rather than the flattering number.
What are you worse at than a platform?
Speed on demand and self-service. A platform gives you a list in minutes at 2am; we take 5–7 days from a confirmed brief and a person has to be involved. If you need instant access to a large database and can absorb the bounce rate, a platform is the right tool.
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