Cognism vs Lusha: pricing, features and which to choose

Cognism is a B2B sales intelligence company founded in London in 2015. It built its service for revenue teams selling across EMEA, expanded into Europe and the United States in 2019, acquired Kaspr, and raised Series C funding in 2022. The company does not publish current employee, revenue, or funding totals. Its platform combines company and people records with firmographics, technology data, hiring, funding, mergers and acquisitions, and intent signals. Cognism said in March 2025 that its database contained more than 440 million contacts and 100 million mobile numbers. The company’s 2026 brand update presents Cognism as a global data business focused on professional information, compliance controls, and usable records for sales and marketing teams.

A typical Cognism workflow begins with a company or people search, then narrows results through filters for location, industry, headcount, revenue, technology, funding, hiring, job title, seniority, department, skills, and buying intent. Users can count matching records before retrieving them, resolve accepted filter values through dictionaries, and collect results through paginated searches. Contact details appear only when requested, which controls credit use. Teams can reveal records, export them, enrich CSV files, and connect data to CRM systems. CRM Enrichment can operate as an add-on or standalone service, maintaining records as details change. A previously revealed contact can be viewed without another credit, while a job change can require another credit for updated information.

Cognism’s main weakness is procurement friction. Buyers cannot see current prices, credit allocations, search-token allowances, or API limits before receiving a package proposal, and API access applies only to eligible subscriptions. The EULA limits use to internal business purposes and restricts reproducing, selling, distributing, or commercially exploiting Cognism Data unless an agreement permits it. Lusha offers published self-serve plans and a free tier, making it easier for smaller teams to start. Apollo.io combines contact data with email sequences and sales engagement, while Cognism concentrates on data, signals, enrichment, and delivery. ZoomInfo offers a broader enterprise sales suite. Pick Cognism if your revenue team needs managed enrichment and compliance-focused international data, especially across EMEA.

Lusha is a B2B data and sales intelligence company founded in 2016 by Assaf Eisenstein and Yoni Tserruya. The company says its database covers more than 515 million business contacts and 29 million company profiles across North America, EMEA, APAC, and LATAM. It reports 280,000 or more revenue teams, 300 employees, and 7 million new signals processed each week. Lusha says email verification ranges from 95% to 98% by region, while direct dial accuracy exceeds 86%. The privately held company says it raised $245 million across a $40 million Series A and a $205 million Series B in 2021. Its customers include sales, marketing, recruiting, and RevOps teams, with access through Workspace, a browser extension, CRM connections, API, and MCP.

A typical Lusha workflow begins with a person, company, domain, or filter-based search. Users preview records, reveal verified emails or phone numbers, save prospects, enrich existing records, and monitor account activity. The browser extension displays contact information while users browse professional-network pages and business websites. Workspace organizes prospecting tables, while CRM integrations move records into connected systems. Developers can use the REST API for search, enrichment, prospecting, lookalikes, decision makers, website visitors, signals, and webhooks. The API supports real-time and bulk operations. Lusha MCP adds a conversational route through compatible AI clients, including Claude, ChatGPT, n8n, and Cursor. It can search, enrich, find lookalikes, pull signals, score lists, and manage Workspace tables, but it does not send messages or add contacts to sequences.

Lusha’s credit model is its main constraint: phone reveals consume five credits, and API charges vary by field and signal activity. The agreement limits data to internal B2B sales, marketing, recruiting, intelligence, and fraud-prevention purposes, and prohibits resale or embedding without written consent. Apollo.io adds email sequences and engagement tools, making it better suited to teams that want prospecting and outbound execution together. ZoomInfo targets larger enterprise deployments with broad intelligence and sales workflows. Cognism offers another enterprise-focused contact data option with compliance positioning. Lusha publishes a free tier and self-serve prices, while its API and MCP materials emphasize search, enrichment, signals, and AI access. Pick Lusha if your team needs credit-based B2B prospecting across web, CRM, API, and MCP workflows.