Apollo.io vs Warmly in 2026: Broad prospecting database vs person-level website de-anonymization
One tool gives you 275M+ contacts and a dialer for a few dollars a seat, the other identifies the actual person browsing your site right now and starts talking to them for you, at ten thousand dollars a year to get in the door.
Apollo.io
Warmly- Apollo.io starts free with 900 credits per year and a real Chrome extension; Warmly has no free tier or self-serve signup at any price.
- Warmly resolves website visitors to the individual person, not just the company, using its Context Graph; Apollo has no visitor de-anonymization built into its core plans.
- Apollo's database covers 275M+ contacts and 73M+ companies with 65+ search filters; Warmly does not compete on prospecting database size at all.
- Warmly's entry price is $10,000 per year for AI Web-Deanonymization alone; Apollo's Basic tier is $49 per seat per month, roughly $588 per year for one user.
- Apollo includes a built-in US dialer, call recordings, and AI call insights on Professional and Organization tiers; Warmly has no calling product at all.
- Warmly's AI Inbound Autopilot plan runs autonomous chat agents that qualify and generate mini-demo slides in real time; Apollo's AI Assistant is limited to research prompts and lead scoring, not autonomous visitor engagement.
- Both connect to Salesforce and HubSpot, but Apollo's Inbound add-on for visitor identification costs $119 per team per month, a fraction of Warmly's $10,000 per year floor for the same category of feature.
Apollo.io and Warmly solve two different halves of the same outbound problem. Apollo is a database-first platform: search 275M+ verified contacts, build sequences, dial prospects, and enrich CRM records, all from $49 per seat per month after a genuinely usable free tier. Warmly starts from the other direction, identifying the individual person already on your website and deploying AI agents to engage them across chat, email, and ads before a rep ever picks up the phone. Apollo wins on volume and price accessibility; Warmly wins on immediacy and buyer intent, but only if you already have meaningful traffic and a five-figure annual budget to spend finding out who is on it.
The tools at a glance
Apollo.io
Sales intelligence and outreach platform with 275M+ verified contacts, email sequences, dialer, and AI-powered prospecting.
Apollo built its reputation by consolidating a job that used to require three vendors: a contact database, a sequencing tool, and a dialer. It still does that better than almost anyone else at this price. The database covers 275M+ contacts and 73M+ companies, searchable across 65+ filters that include buyer intent signals, and the free tier actually lets you use the product rather than just look at a paywall.
Where Apollo differs from a visitor-identification platform like Warmly is direction of travel. Apollo starts from a name you already have or a filter you just built, and works outward: enrich it, sequence it, dial it. It added an Inbound add-on for anonymous website visitor identification at $119 per team per month, but this sits alongside the outbound-first core product rather than replacing it. The AI layer, research prompts and lead scoring, is there to prioritize an existing list, not to autonomously chat with a stranger on your pricing page.
The credit system is the thing to plan around. Every export, enrichment, and dial pulls from the same annual pool, and a Basic seat at $49 a month with 30,000 credits sounds generous until a team running daily prospecting maps out roughly 80 to 100 exports a day. For teams that want a full outbound motion, database, sequences, and calling under one bill, Apollo remains hard to beat on price relative to what it replaces.
| Feature | Free $0/mo | Basic $49/seat/mo | Professional $79/seat/mo | Organization $119/seat/mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Credits per seat per year | 900 | 30,000 | 48,000 | 72,000 |
| Contact database access | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Email sequences | 2 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Built-in dialer | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| AI lead scoring | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Inbound visitor ID (add-on) | Not available | $119/team/mo | $119/team/mo | $119/team/mo |
Warmly
AI agents de-anonymize website visitors at the person level and autonomously run inbound and outbound GTM across chat, email, and ads.
Warmly starts from the opposite premise: you already have traffic, the problem is that you cannot see who is on it. The de-anonymization layer resolves anonymous visitors to named individuals, not just companies, then routes that identity through a Context Graph that has already ingested site visits, CRM records, email history, and chat logs before the AI agent says a word.
The autonomous part is the real differentiator against a database tool like Apollo. Once a visitor is identified, Warmly's Inbound Agent can trigger chat, follow up by email, and retarget on LinkedIn or Meta without a rep touching the account, and the TAM Agent can do the same for outbound by segmenting a target market and coordinating outreach the moment an intent signal fires. This is closer to autonomous SDR coverage than a prioritized task list.
None of this is cheap or self-serve. Entry is $10,000 per year for de-anonymization alone, and the AI Inbound Autopilot tier with unlimited studio agents runs $30,000 per year before add-ons like GTM Signals or Warm Experiences, each another $10,000. There is no trial and no monthly option, so this only pencils out for teams with enough qualified traffic and enough SDR spend already on the books to make the replacement math work.
| Feature | AI Web-Deanonymization From $10,000/year | Inbound Chat From $20,000/year | AI Inbound Autopilot From $30,000/year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Person-level visitor ID | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Contact database access | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Automated email follow-up | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Built-in dialer | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| AI lead scoring | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Autonomous AI chat agents | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
Head-to-head feature comparison
| Feature | Apollo.io | Warmly |
|---|---|---|
| Contact database size | 275M+ contacts, 73M+ companies | Not a database product |
| Website visitor de-anonymization | Add-on only ($119/team/mo, company-level) | Core product, included from entry tier |
| Person-level identification | No | Yes, resolves to named individuals |
| Email sequencing | Unlimited on paid plans | Not a core feature |
| Built-in dialer | Yes, US dialer plus Advanced Dialer add-on | No |
| AI autonomous chat agents | No, research prompts and lead scoring only | Yes, from Inbound Chat tier up |
| CRM integration | Salesforce and HubSpot | HubSpot and Salesforce |
| API access | Yes | Yes, plus MCP server |
| Free tier or trial | Free tier with 900 credits/year | None, no trial or self-serve |
| Starting price | $0/mo (Free), $49/seat/mo (Basic) | $10,000/year (AI Web-Deanonymization) |
Which should you choose?
Apollo.ioWarmlyApollo.ioWarmlyApollo.ioWarmlyThese two tools rarely compete for the same buyer in practice. Apollo answers "who should we contact and how do we reach them at scale," and it does that job for a fraction of what a data-plus-sequencing-plus-dialer stack would otherwise cost. Warmly answers a narrower but higher-stakes question: "who is already on our site right now, and what do we do about it in the next five minutes." The price gap reflects that difference in scope, not one company simply charging more for a similar product.
Bottom line
If your outbound motion starts from a list you build yourself, Apollo.io is the more defensible purchase at almost any company size, and the free tier means you can prove it out before spending anything. Warmly only makes sense once you have real inbound traffic and a specific SDR or lead-quality problem you can point at, since the $10,000 floor and annual-only billing punish teams that have not already validated the traffic volume math.
Frequently asked questions
Can Apollo.io identify anonymous website visitors like Warmly does?
Apollo's Inbound add-on identifies anonymous visitors at the company and contact level for $119 per team per month, but it is a bolt-on to the core outbound platform rather than a person-level resolution engine. Warmly's core product resolves visitors to named individuals using its Context Graph, which is a meaningfully deeper identification layer built specifically for that job rather than added afterward.
Is Warmly worth it for a small startup with limited traffic?
Probably not at the $10,000 per year entry price, since Warmly's own materials position it toward teams with hundreds or thousands of monthly B2B visitors already in place. A startup validating early GTM motion is better served starting on Apollo's free tier or $49 per seat Basic plan, and revisiting Warmly once traffic volume and SDR spend justify the investment.
Does Apollo.io have a dialer, and does Warmly?
Apollo includes a built-in US dialer with credits on all paid plans and an Advanced Dialer add-on for parallel and power dialing at $119 per team per month. Warmly has no calling product in its lineup at all; its engagement channels are chat, email, and LinkedIn or Meta ad retargeting rather than phone.
How does Apollo.io pricing compare to Warmly at the entry level?
Apollo's Basic tier is $49 per seat per month, roughly $588 per year for a single user, while Warmly starts at $10,000 per year with no monthly option and no self-serve signup. The two are not really priced for the same buyer: Apollo is built to be affordable for individual reps and small teams, while Warmly is a considered annual purchase aimed at teams that can justify the cost against existing SDR spend.
Which tool is better for replacing an SDR agency?
Warmly is the more direct fit for this specific use case, since its own customer data shows teams replacing $20,000 to $40,000 per month in SDR agency spend with autonomous AI agents that only engage visitors showing real intent. Apollo can support an in-house SDR team with data and sequencing, but it does not autonomously run outreach the way Warmly's Inbound and TAM Agents do.
Can I use Apollo.io and Warmly together?
Yes, and it is a reasonable combination for a team with the budget: Apollo handles outbound prospecting from its contact database while Warmly identifies and engages inbound visitors that Apollo's database approach would never surface on its own. The overlap between the two products is small enough that running both is not redundant the way it would be with two similar sequencing tools.