Apollo vs Reply.io (2026): Per-Seat Data-First vs AI SDR Per-Product

Apollo.io vs Reply.io: Feature-by-Feature

Feature	Apollo.io	Reply.io
Infrastructure
Dedicated IPs	No No dedicated IP option	No No dedicated IP option
Isolated Infrastructure	No Shared infrastructure	No Shared infrastructure
Pricing
Pricing Model	Per-user + credits $49-$79+ per user per month	Tiered / AI agent $49-$166/mo email; $259/mo AI SDR
Starting Price	Free / $49/user/mo Free plan, Basic at $49/user/mo	$49/mo Email Volume starting tier
Features
AI SDR Agent	No No autonomous AI agent	Jason AI ($259/mo) Autonomous AI SDR
Lead Database	275M+ contacts Core product with intent data	1B+ contacts Built-in database
Intent Data	Yes Buyer intent signals and alerts	No No buyer intent data
CRM	Built-in Full CRM with deal tracking	Built-in CRM pipeline management
Channels
LinkedIn Automation	Task-based LinkedIn steps as manual tasks	Yes LinkedIn automation in sequences
Built-in Dialer	Yes Dialer on Professional and above	Yes Cloud calling available
Other
Free Plan	900 credits/month Free plan with limited features	No No free plan
Scale
White-label	No No white-label	No No white-label

Apollo's Three Axes vs Reply.io's Two Product Lines

These two platforms expose pricing along completely different surfaces. Apollo charges on three independent axes simultaneously: seats ($49 Basic, $79 Professional, $119 Organization), credits (30K to 120K per seat per month for data lookups), and add-on dialer minutes priced separately. A team can grow the bill by adding people, by burning credits faster, or by ramping calling volume.

Each axis moves independently, which makes budget forecasting tricky if you do not track all three. Reply.io splits the workflow into two distinct product lines instead. Email Volume ($49 Starter to $166 Unlimited by active-contact tier) is the traditional sequencer with workspace pricing and no per-seat charges.

AI SDR Jason ($259 Starter to $499 Pro by AI-generated email volume) is a separate product, billed independently. You pick which line you want; you usually do not buy both. The Reply.io bill has one moving axis at a time depending on which product the team subscribes to.

The practical effect: Apollo gets expensive in surprising ways as any of the three axes scales. Reply.io gets predictable within whichever product line you commit to. Teams that have stable workflow shapes prefer Reply.io's single-axis predictability.

Teams whose work spans data, sending, and calling fluidly prefer Apollo's three-axis flexibility despite the budgeting complexity.

Apollo's 3-User Minimum vs Reply.io's Workspace Tiers

Apollo Organization at $119/seat enforces a hard 3-user minimum on the published pricing page. A solo operator wanting Organization's intent data, advanced filters, and 120K credit allowance pays $357/mo as the floor, even though they only need data depth for themselves. This is structurally annoying for solo operators and small teams who want the intelligence depth but cannot justify three seats.

Reply.io has no equivalent floor on either product line. Email Volume Starter ($49) and the AI SDR Jason Starter ($259) both serve single-operator workflows without a multi-seat minimum. A solo founder who wants either the workspace sequencer or the autonomous agent can buy exactly that, at the published entry price.

The lack of a seat floor is one of the underrated structural advantages Reply.io has against Apollo at the small-team scale. The flip side: Apollo Organization's 3-user floor is also a soft form of annual commitment via discount structure. Apollo offers ~20 percent discounts on annual billing, and the multi-seat floor combined with annual pricing produces meaningful savings at team scale.

Solo operators lose; 3+ teams sometimes gain.

Apollo Data Depth vs Reply.io Output Volume

Apollo's 275M-contact database is paired with the deepest data intelligence layer in the category: buyer intent signals derived from website visits across the partner network, job change alerts surfacing as automated triggers, technology stack filters identifying companies using specific software, and company-level news alerts. The numerical database size is smaller than Reply.io's, but the per-contact data depth and signal layer is significantly richer. Reply.io advertises a 1B+ contact database, the largest reported number among cold email tools.

The database is broad: more records, more contact methods, more raw enrichment. What it lacks is the intelligence overlay. No equivalent intent signal, no job-change-as-trigger automation, no tech stack filters at Apollo's depth.

Reply.io database optimizes for volume; Apollo database optimizes for actionable signal. The choice is workflow-driven. Teams whose outbound priority is "find companies actively researching solutions in our category right now" need Apollo.

Teams whose priority is "find as many in-ICP contacts as possible" do better on Reply.io volume. Many teams use Apollo for initial signal-based discovery and Reply.io database for volume-prospecting the same accounts at scale.

Jason's Per-Email Cost vs Apollo Credit Economics

Reply.io Jason Starter at $259/mo outputs roughly 1,000 AI-generated emails per month, putting the cost at $0.26 per email. This is the most expensive per-email cost in the category and only makes economic sense framed as junior-SDR headcount replacement ($5,400-$7,100/mo loaded cost). The autonomous output is the value, not the per-email economics.

Apollo's equivalent is credit-metered data lookups feeding into operator-driven sequences. Basic at $49/seat with 30K credits supports roughly 30K email reveals per month, or fewer if you mix in phone number reveals (8-10 credits each). The per-credit cost is roughly $0.0016 each on Basic, scaling down on Professional ($79/seat for 48K credits = $0.0016) and Organization ($119/seat for 120K credits = $0.001).

Apollo charges for data depth, not for sending; the actual sends are uncapped by credit consumption. The practical comparison breaks down because the units are not comparable. Jason's $0.26 per email includes prospect discovery + sequence drafting + send + reply triage.

Apollo's $0.0016 per credit covers a single data lookup that the operator then uses to draft and send manually. Teams that value operator time at $50/hour or more often find Jason cheaper than the human-labor equivalent of Apollo's manual workflow; teams that have cheap or surplus operator hours find Apollo cheaper.