Reachkit vs Apollo

My short version: use Apollo to find people and Reachkit to email them at volume. Apollo.io began as a B2B contact database and grew sequences, a dialer and AI agents around it. Reachkit starts at the sending end, with inboxes set up for you, conservative volume and verified leads included. All facts below were checked in October 2026.

Pick Apollo if:

• You need mobile numbers, a dialer and a big searchable database with intent filters.
• Your sales team already prospects, calls and tracks deals in Apollo.
• You send a modest number of emails from your main work inbox.

Pick Reachkit if:

• Cold email is your main channel and you want it sent from separate domains, with inboxes warmed and ramped for you.
• You’d rather pay one flat price per workspace, with warmup included, than seats plus credits for every extra mailbox you warm.
• You need verified emails, not phone numbers, included in the plan.

Apollo is built around its database, and that’s where it’s strongest. It reports more than 240 million contacts and 30 million companies, drawn from over 2 million data contributors, web crawling and outside providers. Paid plans add filters for technologies, job postings, funding and revenue, plus lookalike and Google Maps search and more intent topics.

It also goes past email: mobile numbers from 8 credits, waterfall enrichment across several data sources, and CSV and CRM enrichment for records you already have. For a team that phones as much as it emails, that’s hard to replace.

Reachkit’s Lead Finder covers what cold email needs: 500M+ people and 70M+ companies, filtered by title, industry, size, technologies and more, with each email verified before the lead joins a campaign. Typically 70 to 95% of a well-targeted search verifies, and you pay 1 credit per lead that does.

Vendors count records differently, so I wouldn’t choose on headline size. I think of cold email as 80% list, so ask which data you need: phones, intent and enrichment point to Apollo; verified emails for cold campaigns come built into Reachkit.

Apollo’s default is bring your own mailbox: in its help center’s words, “Apollo doesn’t send emails on your behalf.” You connect mailboxes, set limits and a signature, start warmup, then build the list and sequence.

Since September 2025, Apollo also sells domains (1,500 credits a year) and mailboxes (800 credits a month for Google Workspace, 1,500 for Microsoft 365, 300 for its own SMTP). It suggests lookalike domains and handles the authentication, but you still enter registrant details, a DMARC report address and a redirect URL.

Reachkit reverses the order: campaign first, inboxes second. A one-sentence brief gets you a draft sequence and the size of the matching audience, then you order Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 inboxes for $5 per inbox monthly and $15 per domain yearly. Reachkit registers the lookalike domains, configures SPF, DKIM and DMARC, builds each mailbox under your sender name and photo, and starts warming it.

Neither sends on day one. Apollo advises at least six weeks of warmup for mailboxes bought there; Reachkit asks for at least three and recommends four to six.

Apollo and Reachkit agree on the basic rule: to send more, add inboxes rather than push one harder. Apollo suggests 20 to 50 emails a day per mailbox to start (its help center says 50, raised once replies reach 5%), offers an optional ramp for new mailboxes, and caps mailboxes bought from it at 200 a day. Reachkit defaults to 20 a day per inbox, ramping up from 3.

The difference is what each extra inbox costs. Apollo’s warmup runs through Warmbox, a third party, with system-generated test messages; one mailbox per seat is included, each extra costs 200 credits a month, and warmup pauses when credits run out. Reachkit’s AI-written warmup covers every inbox at no extra cost.

Apollo’s guardrails are good. Bounce guard flags a sequence at 4% bounces and pauses it at 6% by default, risky catch-all addresses are blocked, and paid plans get weekly blocklist checks; Apollo also runs inbox placement tests, which Reachkit doesn’t offer, though some were temporarily unavailable in October 2026. Reachkit’s own defaults:

• Done-for-you inboxes always go on new lookalike domains, so cold volume stays off your main domain.
• CSV imports are checked by default before anything sends, and a campaign pauses itself above 5% bounces.
• Open tracking is off by default and click tracking isn’t offered, because pixel data is unreliable.

Apollo and Reachkit both pull replies into one inbox, group them automatically and let you answer in the thread or schedule the answer. On every Apollo plan, a reply ends the contact’s sequence by default and an out-of-office reply pauses it. Reachkit’s Unibox sorts replies under 12 AI labels and checks inboxes on a live campaign about once a minute.

Around that inbox, Apollo adds a dialer, meeting scheduler, call recorder, deal pipeline and workflow builder: great if your team lives in it, a lot to learn if you only send email.

Agencies should read two lines. Apollo’s terms say you may not “access the Platform on behalf of any person or entity other than you”, and its pricing FAQ says using Apollo data to “…share with customers, or resell is not permitted under standard terms…” without a separate agreement. Its partner program does give qualifying agencies a no-cost seat inside each client’s own account.

Reachkit has no seat fees: invite every teammate or client and set what each can open, with a separate workspace and plan per client. There’s no white label or agency dashboard.

Apollo is further along with AI agents: since September 2026, Professional and Organization plans include agents that find prospects, build sequences and fix weak ones on a schedule, with you approving each move. Reachkit’s AI does less on its own: it drafts the campaign, sizes the audience, writes warmup emails and sorts replies, but it won’t answer a lead or book a meeting.

Both run an official MCP server (a shared standard that lets AI assistants such as Claude or ChatGPT operate other software) on every plan. Apollo’s searches and enriches its database (prospecting needs a paid plan), builds sequences and enrolls contacts once you confirm, with connectors for ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Cursor and Replit. Reachkit’s previews every email exactly as it will send and is designed to ask for your approval before a campaign launches.

Apollo connects to more of a sales stack: two-way Salesforce and HubSpot sync on every plan, Pipedrive, Zoho and Dynamics, plus workflows, Zapier, Make and an official n8n node. On Reachkit, the REST API, webhooks, Zapier, n8n and pushes to HubSpot, Zoho, Odoo or GoHighLevel all need the Scale plan, and Salesforce isn’t supported.

Apollo charges per seat ($65 a month for Basic, $99 for Professional), and seats come with pooled credits that also pay for bought inboxes, domains and extra warmup. Reachkit has no seats: Growth is $39 a month, Scale from $99. Both setups below use each vendor’s public pricing page in October 2026, billed monthly.

Assumptions: Google inboxes, 1 credit per verified email, domain costs spread per month, and Apollo on Professional, since Basic allows one mailbox per user. Extra Apollo credits are a range because Apollo doesn’t say how its volume tiers apply.

A founder starting out: 10 inboxes on 5 domains, about 4,000 emails a month to 1,500 new prospects.

That’s about 11,900 Apollo credits a month, 7,900 of them bought for $143 to $158. With your own inboxes it’s about $52 against $99, plus the same Google or Microsoft fees on both sides. Growth holds 5,000 contacts at once, so by month four you’d prune finished campaigns or step up to Scale.

An agency or growing team: 3 users, 60 inboxes on 20 domains, about 25,000 emails a month to 10,000 new prospects.

That’s about 71,900 Apollo credits a month, 59,900 of them bought for $958 to $993. With your own inboxes it’s about $224 against $466 to $481. Scale’s first tier holds 25,000 contacts, which this pace fills in about 11 weeks; the $239 tier, with 12,500 credits a month, lasts about six months and brings Reachkit to about $564, or $239 with your own inboxes.

Billed yearly, Reachkit comes to about $98 a month for the founder and $525 for the team (second Scale tier), and Apollo’s founder setup to about $206 to $209. Apollo’s team setup needs more extra credits than its largest published tier, so I couldn’t price it from public numbers.

Apollo has a large and mostly happy review base. G2 reviewers rate it 4.7 out of 5 across about 9,800 reviews, and Capterra’s score is 4.5 from about 400, as of October 2026. G2’s AI summary says users like its large database of verified contacts, the outreach automation and the Salesforce integration. Trustpilot is cooler, at 3.1 from about 1,360 reviews.

The complaints that repeat:

• Bounces. One Capterra reviewer writes that “…the reliability of email addresses is the biggest concern…”, while a post in r/UseApolloIo, an Apollo-focused subreddit, says Apollo’s verified emails hard-bounce about 2.5% of the time on average, so measure your own.
• Credits. A Trustpilot reviewer wrote that “Credits get consumed unpredictably…”; Apollo replied publicly and restored the affected credits.
• A crowded interface, which some G2 reviewers find overwhelming.

One Reddit user whose primary sending domain was “…basically cooked” describes their setup as “Apollo for data. Instantly for sending, warmup, and deliverability.”

Two business owners in the UAE, both prospects evaluating Reachkit at the time, brought up Apollo’s lists on calls with me; take these as impressions, not a test. A B2B services founder said: “…potentially you have a much stronger lead list than Apollo.” An outbound agency owner said: “Apollo lists I just don’t trust as much. I’ve seen some finicky stuff going on over there. But if the lead data from Reachkit is good, then no further questions.”

I’d pick Apollo myself in three situations:

• You call as much as you email. Apollo pairs mobile numbers, a dialer and call recording with a large searchable database. Reachkit is email only and doesn’t sell phone numbers.
• Your team already works in Apollo. If your reps prospect, run sequences and manage deals there, with two-way Salesforce or HubSpot sync, moving everyone for the sake of email rarely pays off.
• You send a modest volume from your main inbox. A rep writing a few dozen personal emails a day from a work mailbox doesn’t need separate domains or a warmup network. Apollo’s Basic plan covers that with data built in, and the free plan is enough to try it.

Moving the sending doesn’t mean cancelling Apollo. It takes an afternoon if you own your mailboxes and about three weeks if you bought them from Apollo, and I’d go in this order:

1. Export what you need. Saved contacts export without using credits; net-new people with a verified email cost 1 credit each. Contact exports carry status flags but not email bodies, so copy your sequence steps over by hand.
2. Reconnect mailboxes you own. Sign in to link Google or Microsoft accounts, or add other providers by IMAP and SMTP. A mailbox keeps the sender reputation its warmup built, wherever it’s connected, so switch off Apollo’s warmup on it first.
3. Replace mailboxes bought from Apollo. Access to them depends on an active plan and available credits, purchases are non-refundable, and no transfer-out process is documented. Order new inboxes and warm them about three weeks first.
4. Rebuild the campaign. Import the CSV (verified on the way in, at 1 credit per 10 addresses), paste or redraft the sequence, and blocklist anyone you must not contact.

To keep Apollo for data, export each new list as a CSV, or push leads in through the REST API on Scale. Apollo’s terms grant a perpetual license, for internal use, to contact data already in your own records from your subscription. Annual Apollo plans renew unless you give notice at least 30 days before the term ends.

Apollo is a strong data tool that also sends email, and if your team calls or lives in its CRM sync, I’d keep it. The friction starts when you turn it into a cold email engine: every extra warmup slot, bought mailbox and domain draws on credits that come with seats. Reachkit is built the other way round, sending first with verified leads included, and you can test it next to Apollo for 30 days without a card.

Still choosing? See Reachkit vs Clay and Reachkit vs Hunter for the data side, Reachkit vs Instantly for another sender, or my guide on whether lead scraping pays off.