Apollo.io vs Woodpecker in 2026: All-in-one sales intelligence vs deliverability-first cold email
Apollo hands you 275M+ contacts, sequences, and a dialer for the price of a coffee subscription per seat. Woodpecker skips the database entirely and bets everything on keeping your cold email out of spam.
Apollo.io
Woodpecker- Apollo.io includes a 275M+ contact database and a built-in dialer; Woodpecker has neither, it expects you to supply your own prospect list.
- Woodpecker includes free email warm-up and inbox rotation on every plan starting at $35/month; Apollo gates email warmup behind its $49/seat/month Basic tier.
- Apollo.io has a genuinely usable free tier with 900 credits per year; Woodpecker has no free tier, only a 7-day trial.
- Woodpecker prices by prospect volume ($35/mo for 500 prospects up to $329/mo for 20,000), while Apollo prices per seat with a shared annual credits pool.
- Woodpecker offers white-label access on its higher tiers for agencies reselling the platform; Apollo has no white-label option in its pricing structure.
- Apollo's AI Assistant supports natural-language list building and lead scoring; Woodpecker has no AI research or scoring layer, its Lead Finder is a basic credits-based prospecting add-on.
Apollo.io and Woodpecker approach cold outreach from opposite starting points. Apollo assumes you need to find prospects first, so it leads with a 275M+ contact database, AI lead scoring, and a built-in dialer, with sequencing as one piece of a larger platform. Woodpecker assumes you already have your list and instead obsesses over what happens after you hit send: free warm-up, inbox rotation, and adaptive sending are baked into every plan regardless of tier. Apollo is the wider platform at a lower entry cost; Woodpecker is the narrower specialist that does deliverability better than almost anyone in this comparison.
The tools at a glance
Apollo.io
Sales intelligence and outreach platform with 275M+ verified contacts, email sequences, dialer, and AI-powered prospecting.
Apollo's pitch is consolidation. Instead of paying separately for a data provider, a sequencing tool, and a dialer, one Apollo subscription covers all three, and the free tier is real enough that a founder can validate an entire outbound motion before spending a dollar. The 275M+ contact database with 65+ search filters is the anchor feature that Woodpecker simply does not have.
Sequencing on Apollo is unlimited from the Basic tier and supports email, phone tasks, and LinkedIn steps in one flow, with A/Z testing on Professional letting teams test up to 26 message variants. Email warmup exists here too, but it is bundled into paid tiers rather than treated as a headline feature the way it is on Woodpecker, and Apollo's own materials position deliverability as one part of a bigger platform rather than the whole product.
The credit system is the tradeoff for all that breadth. Every export, enrichment, and dial pulls from a shared annual pool, and heavy users report burning through a 30,000-credit Basic allotment faster than the sticker price suggests. For a team that wants data, outreach, and calling under one roof without stacking three vendors, Apollo's $49-a-month entry point is difficult to argue with.
| Feature | Free $0/mo | Basic $49/seat/mo | Professional $79/seat/mo | Organization $119/seat/mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Contact database | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Email sequences | 2 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Email warmup | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Built-in dialer | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| AI lead scoring | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| White-label option | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
Woodpecker
Cold email and LinkedIn outreach platform with built-in warm-up, inbox rotation, and GDPR-safe sending.
Woodpecker has been running since 2015 and has stayed narrowly focused on one problem: getting cold email into the inbox rather than the spam folder. Free warm-up, inbox rotation across connected senders, and adaptive sending limits come included at every price tier, not gated behind an upsell the way some competitors handle deliverability.
Condition-based campaigns let sequences branch based on whether a prospect opened, clicked, or replied, which gives more control than a strictly linear sequence. LinkedIn automation and a Lead Finder tool were added as the market moved toward multi-channel prospecting, though LinkedIn requires a separate add-on and Lead Finder runs on its own credits system layered on top of the base subscription.
What Woodpecker does not do is prospecting. There is no built-in database comparable to Apollo's, so teams need to bring their own lists or pair Woodpecker with a separate data source. Pricing scales by active prospect count rather than seats or senders, which rewards teams with defined, smaller lists but gets expensive fast for anyone prospecting at real volume, with 10,000 prospects running $188 a month before any other tool is added.
| Feature | 500 prospects $35/mo | 2,000 prospects $67/mo | 4,000 prospects $99/mo | 10,000 prospects $188/mo | 20,000 prospects $329/mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Contact database | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Email sequences | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Email warmup (free) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Built-in dialer | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| AI lead scoring | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| White-label option | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | Available | Available |
Head-to-head feature comparison
| Feature | Apollo.io | Woodpecker |
|---|---|---|
| Contact database | 275M+ contacts, 73M+ companies | Not included, bring your own list |
| Email warmup | Yes, on Basic and above | Yes, free on every plan |
| Built-in dialer | Yes, US dialer plus Advanced Dialer add-on | No |
| LinkedIn outreach | Yes, as one sequence step type | Yes, via add-on |
| AI lead scoring | Yes, on Basic and above | No |
| White-label option | No | Yes, on 10,000+ prospect plans |
| Pricing model | Per seat, shared annual credits pool | By active prospect count |
| Free tier or trial | Free tier with 900 credits/year | 7-day trial only, no free tier |
| GDPR features | Not a headline feature | EU data storage, opt-out and suppression handling |
| Starting price | $0/mo (Free), $49/seat/mo (Basic) | $35/mo (500 prospects) |
Which should you choose?
Apollo.ioWoodpeckerApollo.ioWoodpeckerApollo.ioWoodpeckerThe two products barely overlap once you look past "cold email" as a category label. Apollo is trying to replace three separate vendors with one subscription, and mostly succeeds at that for teams under enterprise scale. Woodpecker is not trying to replace anything, it is trying to be the best possible version of one piece, deliverability, and it succeeds at that narrower goal by including warm-up and rotation everywhere rather than treating them as an upsell.
Bottom line
Choose Apollo.io if you need to find prospects, not just email the ones you already have, since the free tier and built-in database make it the more complete starting point for most teams. Choose Woodpecker if your list already exists and your actual problem is inbox placement, since free warm-up and inbox rotation at every tier solve that specific problem better than Apollo's bundled deliverability tools do. Running both together is a reasonable setup for a team with the budget, using Apollo to build the list and Woodpecker to protect the send.
Frequently asked questions
Does Apollo.io include email warmup like Woodpecker does?
Apollo includes email warmup starting on its $49 per seat Basic tier, but it is not free on every plan the way it is on Woodpecker. Woodpecker includes warmup at no additional cost on its lowest $35 per month tier, which is a meaningful difference for teams that want deliverability tools without upgrading past the entry price.
Can I find new prospects inside Woodpecker the way I can in Apollo.io?
Not natively at the scale Apollo offers. Woodpecker has a Lead Finder tool that runs on its own credits system for finding and adding verified contacts, but it is a smaller add-on rather than a 275M+ contact database like Apollo's. Teams that need to build large targeted lists from scratch will find Apollo's search filters more capable.
Is Woodpecker cheaper than Apollo.io for a small sales team?
It depends on how many prospects you are emailing versus how many seats you need. Woodpecker at $35 per month covers 500 prospects regardless of team size, while Apollo's $49 per seat Basic plan scales with headcount but includes database access and a dialer that Woodpecker does not have at any price. A two-person team emailing under 500 prospects will likely find Woodpecker cheaper; a team that also needs to source new contacts will spend less overall consolidating on Apollo.
Does Woodpecker support LinkedIn outreach the same way Apollo does?
Both support LinkedIn, but Woodpecker requires a separate add-on to activate it, while Apollo includes LinkedIn as one step type within its existing sequence builder on paid plans. Neither treats LinkedIn as a headline feature; both position it as a supplementary channel alongside email.
Which tool is better for agencies running cold email for multiple clients?
Woodpecker has a clearer answer here, with a white-label option available on its higher-volume plans specifically built for agencies reselling the platform under their own brand. Apollo does not offer white-label access at any tier, so agencies using Apollo would need to manage client relationships without that branding layer.
What happens if I exceed my prospect or credit limit on either platform?
On Woodpecker, exceeding your active prospect count means upgrading to the next tier, since pricing is a direct function of prospects in active campaigns. On Apollo, running out of annual credits means either purchasing additional credits or waiting for the next allotment, since credits are shared across exports, enrichment, and dialing rather than tied to a single action type.