Instantly vs Apollo.io (2026): Sending Cost, Data Cost and When You Need Both

Apollo for contact data plus Instantly for sending is a common pairing, but at September 2026 list prices it’s the cheapest choice in only one kind of setup. The tables below price one tool against both, from one mailbox to ten, for one person and for two.

What does each tool bill you for?

Instantly bills sending and data as two subscriptions (or a bundle of both); Apollo bills seats whose credits cover data, with sending included but mailboxes capped per user. Here are the units and the first limits you’re likely to reach.

From Instantly’s pricing page and help center and Apollo’s help center, checked October 2, 2026, and Apollo’s pricing page, checked September 29, 2026. Instantly’s help center and text pricing page also give Hypergrowth 125,000 emails, and so did the billing page in our trial account on September 30, 2026; its Scale bundle on the pricing page says 100,000. Every setup below sends 6,600 at most, within either figure. Apollo’s help center says paid plans “typically” include warmup for one mailbox per seat. Vendors change plans often.

One correction to a claim that still ranks: Instantly’s Growth plan isn’t “unlimited leads”; its help center caps uploaded contacts at 1,000.

Do you need both? Monthly cost from 1 to 10 mailboxes

Usually not: one person pays least with one tool at one, three or ten mailboxes, and the pair only comes out cheapest when two people each need their own login and Instantly’s lead credits pass 1,500 a month, from about five mailboxes on our inputs. Each line gives the monthly price, with the yearly price per month in parentheses; the cheapest monthly option in each setup is in bold.

List prices in US dollars as shown on each pricing page, Instantly’s checked October 2, 2026 and Apollo’s September 29, 2026. Inputs: 30 emails per mailbox a day (Instantly’s recommendation), 22 sending days and three-step sequences, so 220 new contacts per mailbox a month; lead credits at 1.5 per email on Instantly (its own average) and 1 on Apollo. Instantly’s yearly Growth Credits: $508 a year ($42.33 a month) in the billing page of our trial account on September 30, 2026, which matches its help center’s 10% discount; its pricing page’s yearly view shows $37.60. Mailboxes and domains excluded; see our five-layer monthly totals, which count the same 22 days.

What sets each row:

• A. Apollo Basic uses 220 of its 2,500 monthly credits and warms its one mailbox free. Instantly needs Growth plus Growth Credits, since about 330 lead credits is more than Nano’s 150.
• B. Basic links one mailbox per user, so a second mailbox already means Apollo Professional. Instantly is $5 less a month on monthly billing (on yearly billing Apollo is 93 cents less), but at 660 new contacts a month its 1,000-contact total on Growth, which doesn’t reset monthly, runs out during the second month, and Growth can’t answer replies from Unibox.
• C. 6,600 emails pass Growth’s 5,000, so Instantly needs Hypergrowth plus Supersonic credits (about 3,300). One Apollo Professional seat covers it, but with no credits to spare while the extra mailboxes warm up (next section).
• D to F. The second login means Hypergrowth ($97) on Instantly and a second seat on Apollo. At four mailboxes Instantly alone is cheapest, because its 1,320 lead credits fit Growth Credits’ 1,500 a month; at five they come to about 1,650, and the next tier ($77 for 2,000, with no yearly price on its pricing page) puts it above the pair. The pair is an Apollo Basic seat for whoever builds lists plus Hypergrowth for both.

If the second person only answers replies inside the mailboxes and doesn’t need a login, price it as one person: at ten mailboxes, one Apollo Professional seat ($99, setup C) is still cheapest.

Already have a list? Then you don’t need lead credits, and one mailbox can cost nothing: Apollo’s Free plan ($0) imports CSVs, includes sending (“email campaigns are included on every Apollo account,” its pricing page says) and allows one mailbox, 250 emails a day and 2 sequences. The catches: warmup on Free takes 200 credits every 30 days, more than its 75 a month, so the mailbox must already be warmed up, and Gmail is the safe choice (Outlook is covered in the FAQ). Once you need warmup, a second mailbox or a third sequence, Apollo means a paid plan, and Instantly without credits costs less than Apollo’s paid plans in every setup above: Growth at $47 ($37.60 yearly), or Hypergrowth at $97 ($77.60) for a second user or more than 5,000 emails a month. Instantly’s plan pages list no campaign cap.

Direct link to Apollo.io. We don’t earn anything from it.

Direct link to Instantly. We don’t earn anything from it.

Why do extra mailboxes cost more on Apollo?

Because Apollo Basic links one mailbox per user, and on paid plans Apollo typically warms one mailbox per seat for free and charges 200 credits every 30 days for each extra one, out of the same credits you use for data. Instantly connects and warms unlimited mailboxes on every plan.

Some comparisons say Apollo has no warmup. Its help center documents warmup on paid plans, run through Warmbox.ai, a third-party provider. Others say Apollo sends from shared servers; its help center says Apollo doesn’t send emails on your behalf and that emails go out through your connected mailbox.

How Apollo charges for warmup matters for the math:

• It takes the credits when warmup starts and again at the start of each 30-day period. If your team runs short, Apollo pauses warmup for that mailbox until you add credits and restart it.
• Apollo says to let warmup finish before you send from that mailbox. It recommends at least two weeks, and at least six weeks for a mailbox bought through Apollo. So the charge is mostly a start-up cost, unless you keep warmup running after you start sending.

Our arithmetic from Apollo’s pricing page (checked September 29, 2026) and help center (checked October 2, 2026). Apollo’s pages disagree on the mailbox ceiling: the pricing page and one help article list unlimited Google and Microsoft mailboxes on Professional, while its sending-limits article says you can add up to 15 mailboxes per user, depending on your plan. Instantly’s plan comparison caps SMTP accounts in its standard warmup pool at 100 on Growth and 500 on Hypergrowth.

Setup C has no headroom. One Professional seat covers ten mailboxes, but in any 30-day period when nine extra mailboxes are warming, warmup and 2,200 new contacts use all 4,000 of its credits. Nothing is left that month for a phone number (8 credits) or one more new contact; either means add-on credits or a second seat. Once warmup ends, a month uses 2,200. Instantly warms the same ten mailboxes at no extra cost on any plan.

Sending volume is set differently too. Apollo suggests starting at 50 emails per mailbox a day and recommends 50 to 100 a day, 10 to 20 an hour; Free and Basic cap sends at 250 a day. Instantly recommends 30 campaign emails per account a day (20 at most on its own AirMail mailboxes), and warmup emails don’t count toward its limits. For why lower numbers are safer, see how many cold emails to send per mailbox and how warmup works.

What does a verified email or phone number cost on each?

About 2.6 cents per verified email on Apollo Basic billed monthly, and a little less on its other paid plans, against roughly 3 to 5 cents on Instantly’s two main credit plans, because Instantly charges 1 or 2 credits (sometimes more) per email found and Apollo charges 1.

Each figure divides a plan’s monthly list price (Instantly’s checked October 2, 2026, Apollo’s September 29, 2026) by its credits, so it holds only if you use them all. The rows aren’t like for like: Apollo’s $65 also covers sending from one mailbox, while Instantly bills credits separately from sending. Apollo’s yearly and Professional prices per contact are in our Apollo cost-per-contact table.

On Apollo, a phone number is 8 credits. Waterfall enrichment, which draws on outside data vendors, is on Basic and above and costs more: Apollo’s developer docs say an email typically uses 1 to 4 credits (sometimes 20 or more) and a phone number 8 to 25 (sometimes 45 or more), and that some vendors charge per lookup even when they find nothing. For how Apollo’s credits work in detail, see our Apollo pricing guide.

On Instantly, you pay nothing when no verified email is found. Its waterfall partners cost 2 credits each, except ContactOut at 4. Instantly’s lead-search help lists work emails and profile fields for each lead, not phone numbers; for phones you connect a provider such as FullEnrich (“Find Work Email & Phone”) or RocketReach with your own API key, pay that provider at its rates, and pay Instantly 1 credit per lookup as a platform fee.

In a first look at the billing screens of our own Instantly trial account on September 30, 2026 (clicks made by an AI browser assistant; no mailbox connected, nothing sent or bought), the Data Credits tab priced Growth Credits at $47 a month or $508 a year and listed a “Database of 450M+ B2B Leads.” The Outbound tab showed the trial’s limits as 250 contacts and 1,250 emails a month, where its help center says 1,000 emails (setup and full notes on our Instantly pricing page).

How do Apollo contacts get into Instantly?

Usually as a CSV: export from Apollo, upload into an Instantly campaign, and remember that Instantly counts each upload toward its contact cap, duplicates included.

1. Reveal emails in Apollo before you export. Apollo’s help center says exporting existing records doesn’t automatically enrich emails and mobile numbers, so reveal them first (1 credit per email).
2. Export to a CSV. In Search > People, select contacts and click Export. Whether that costs anything depends on your plan. Apollo’s help center says a CSV export “may require export credits, depending on your Apollo plan,” that contacts already exported, imported (CRM, CSV, manual entry, API) or without a verified email don’t use them, and that export credits may only apply to certain plans or legacy configurations. Apollo’s pricing page gave no rate for exports when we checked on September 29, 2026. Before a large export, check Settings > Credits and activity > Credit usage in the app.
3. Remove duplicates before you upload. Instantly counts the same person once per campaign, so someone in two campaigns takes two slots, and a slot comes back only when you delete that lead or its campaign.
4. Or connect the two with automations. Instantly’s Automation Builder is included on every Email Outreach plan at no extra cost. Its help center lists Apollo triggers (contact created or updated, account created, email replied or bounced, contact unsubscribed), Apollo actions (create lead, add contacts to sequence, update contact and others) and Instantly actions such as adding a lead to a campaign. It doesn’t say what Apollo access or plan the connection needs.

It works the other way too: Instantly’s lead search can export leads to Apollo, HubSpot or lemlist.

When is Instantly, Apollo or the pair the wrong buy?

When a limit the monthly price doesn’t show gets in your way. Beyond the costs above:

• Instantly alone is the wrong buy if you re-run the same people in new campaigns, since each run counts again toward the contact cap, or if you want to keep using it past 14 days without paying: its pricing page lists a 14-day trial, not a free plan.
• Apollo alone is the wrong buy if your volume swings from month to month on monthly billing, since unused credits expire at the end of each billing cycle (yearly plans grant the year’s credits upfront, so a slow month doesn’t forfeit them). It’s also wrong if you want LinkedIn steps to run by themselves: some summaries list LinkedIn automation among Apollo’s features, but its help center says it doesn’t complete LinkedIn tasks for you. In a short check of Apollo’s Free plan in our own account on September 27, 2026, all four LinkedIn step types offered in a new sequence were manual tasks (setup and full notes on our Apollo pricing page).
• The pair is the wrong buy if only one person will use both tools, or if neither tool’s limits bind yet: start with one and add the other when a limit above forces it.

If none of the three fits: for LinkedIn steps in the same sequence as email, compare lemlist (our Instantly vs lemlist comparison covers its LinkedIn steps). If you already have names and only need emails and phone numbers, an enrichment-only tool may cost less than an Apollo seat; see Apollo vs FullEnrich. For mailboxes, domains and a CRM on top of these two bills, see example monthly stacks.

Where the numbers on this page come from

FAQ

Which has the bigger contact database?

By their own counts, Instantly: its pricing page says 450M+ B2B contacts, the figure the billing page in our trial account also showed on September 30, 2026, and its lead-search help article says 610M+. Apollo’s site says 240M contacts and 30M companies. These are vendor figures we can’t check, a bigger database doesn’t guarantee more valid emails in your niche, and we haven’t compared the two for accuracy.

Can an agency use Apollo data for client campaigns?

Apollo’s pricing page says its standard plans are for internal business use only; powering external products, sharing data with customers or reselling Apollo data needs a separate agreement with custom pricing. Ask Apollo how that applies to your client work before you build client lists on a standard plan. On Instantly, the plan comparison lists Agency View and adding a workspace from Hypergrowth up; the workspace guide asks only for an active Email Outreach plan and doesn’t say whether Growth qualifies, so confirm with Instantly before you plan client workspaces on Growth. More on how Instantly bills each client workspace.

Does moving Apollo contacts into Instantly cost credits?

On Apollo, yes for any email you haven’t revealed yet (1 credit each), and the CSV export itself may use export credits depending on your plan (steps above). Instantly’s credit guide lists lead verification (0.25 credits a lead) but not uploads among its credit costs; what an upload uses up is room under your plan’s contact cap, and a person you add to two campaigns uses it twice.

Can I send from Outlook on Apollo’s Free plan?

Maybe not. Apollo’s pricing page contradicts itself here: its plan comparison shows “Gmail & Microsoft” under Free, but the answer in its FAQ says free plans can connect Gmail accounts only. If you send from Microsoft 365, test the connection in the app before you plan around Free; paid plans list all email providers.

Do the prices include tax?

No, on either. Apollo’s pricing page says its prices exclude any applicable taxes, and Instantly’s terms of service put sales, use and other taxes on top of its fees (section 5.5) and bill in US dollars (5.1). Neither explains how VAT (UK, EU) or GST (Canada, Australia) is charged, so check the total at checkout.

Sources

1. Pricing - Plans for Outreach, Leads, and CRM — Instantly, accessed October 2, 2026
2. Instantly Pricing (text version) — Instantly, accessed October 2, 2026
3. Instantly Credit System — Instantly Help Center, accessed October 2, 2026
4. SuperSearch — Instantly Help Center, accessed October 2, 2026
5. Waterfall Enrichment — Instantly Help Center, accessed October 2, 2026
6. BYOK Integrations for Enrichment — Instantly Help Center, accessed October 2, 2026
7. Uploaded Contacts Limits — Instantly Help Center, accessed October 2, 2026
8. Instantly Free Trial — Instantly Help Center, accessed October 2, 2026
9. Account and Campaign Limits — Instantly Help Center, accessed October 2, 2026
10. Automations — Instantly Help Center, accessed October 2, 2026
11. Email Outreach Plans Comparison — Instantly Help Center, accessed October 2, 2026
12. Manage Workspaces and Team Members — Instantly Help Center, accessed October 2, 2026
13. Instantly CRM — Instantly Help Center, accessed October 2, 2026
14. Terms of Service — Instantly, last updated September 22, 2026 (sections 5.1 and 5.5), accessed October 2, 2026
15. Apollo.io Pricing Plans — Apollo.io, accessed October 2, 2026 (plan cards and plan comparison: September 29, 2026)
16. Use Email Warmup to Improve Deliverability — Apollo Knowledge Base, accessed October 2, 2026
17. Configure Email Sending Limits — Apollo Knowledge Base, accessed October 2, 2026
18. Generate a Domain and Mailbox to Reach Prospects — Apollo Knowledge Base, accessed October 2, 2026
19. Export Contacts to a CSV — Apollo Knowledge Base, accessed October 2, 2026
20. Review Credit Usage in Apollo — Apollo Knowledge Base, accessed October 2, 2026
21. Customize and Manage Your Apollo Plan — Apollo Knowledge Base, accessed October 2, 2026
22. Access a Free Trial of Apollo — Apollo Knowledge Base, accessed October 2, 2026
23. Complete LinkedIn Tasks in a Sequence — Apollo Knowledge Base, accessed October 2, 2026
24. API Pricing and Credits — Apollo Developer Docs, accessed October 2, 2026