We read the current pricing pages, credit rules, and official docs for the five enrichment platforms small B2B teams actually shortlist, and scored each on how well it turns a raw list into contacts your reps can reach.
How We Tested
Every score below reflects current official pricing pages, product documentation, and each vendor's stated capability set as of early September 2026. Where we cite a number, it comes from that vendor's own page and appears in the Sources list. We weighted small-team affordability, credit efficiency, and data breadth most heavily, because those are what actually govern whether a five-person sales team can run this tool without a monthly finance conversation.
Small-Team Affordability
We read each vendor's official pricing page and priced the realistic entry cost for a two-to-five-person sales team enriching roughly 1,000 contacts a month with a work email and a mobile number, factoring in published seat rules, credit allocations, contract requirements, and any required host platform (for example, Breeze Intelligence requiring a paid HubSpot subscription).
Credit & Pricing Transparency
We compared what each vendor publishes on its own pricing page against what a buyer actually has to do to get to a number: whether tier prices, credit allocations, roll-over rules, overage rates, and enterprise thresholds are stated in the open or require a demo, and we penalized quote-only models where a small team cannot see a price without a sales conversation.
Data Breadth
We compared each vendor's documented data coverage: number of contacts in the database, number of connected data providers, whether phone or mobile enrichment is included at the entry tier, and whether the tool supports firmographic and technographic fields beyond email, using only the counts each vendor publishes on its own site.
Small-Team Workflow Fit
We evaluated whether each tool ships with the pieces a small team actually needs alongside enrichment (search, sequencing, CRM sync, a Chrome extension, a usable free plan) versus the pieces the customer must bolt on themselves, based on each vendor's own feature and plan documentation.
Speed to First Value
We read each vendor's onboarding docs and pricing page to judge how quickly a small team could go from signup to a first enriched record without a demo, an annual contract, or a mandatory host-platform subscription. The closer to self-serve, the higher the score.
Contract Flexibility
We compared each vendor's published contract terms: whether monthly billing is offered, whether annual commitment is required, what happens at renewal, and whether seats or credits can be reduced mid-term, penalizing forced annual lock-ins and rewarding cancel-anytime self-serve billing.
What we were actually measuring
The point of an enrichment tool isn’t a bigger database. It’s fewer bounces, more dials that connect, and a shorter path from a spreadsheet of company names to a sequence that reaches a real buyer. That’s the job we scored against, and it’s why the rankings don’t track raw contact counts.
Two things shape the standings this year. First, Clay’s current self-serve pricing collapses its lineup into two published tiers (Launch and Growth) with a new credit system that scales Data Credit costs down as usage grows, moving Clay’s real per-record cost sharply down and making it a serious candidate for small teams. Second, all free Clearbit tools were shut down on April 30, 2024, and, as of 2026, the underlying data engine only ships as an add-on to a paid HubSpot subscription. That’s the reason Breeze Intelligence sits at the bottom of this list even though the underlying data is still strong: for a team that isn’t on HubSpot, the platform tax is enormous.
Why Apollo takes the top spot
Apollo wins the small-team default for one boring, decisive reason: everything a five-person sales team needs is on a self-serve, per-seat plan that publishes its own prices. Apollo offers four plans: Free ($0), Basic ($49/user/month annual), Professional ($79/user/month annual), and Organization ($119/user/month annual, minimum three users). Monthly billing adds roughly 20% to every paid tier, pushing prices to $59, $99, and $149 per user, and phone numbers cost 8 credits each while verified emails cost 1 credit each. There’s no demo required, no annual lock-in on the Basic and Professional tiers, and the free plan is genuinely usable for evaluating data quality.
The catch is credit consumption. Apollo’s hybrid model (fixed seat fee plus usage-based credits) sounds flexible, but in practice it often leads to budget volatility. Credits get burned every time your team reveals a contact, accesses a mobile number, or exports data. Credits don’t roll over. If you don’t use them, they disappear, and overages are charged automatically. For teams doing heavy phone outbound, that math can push the effective per-seat cost meaningfully above the sticker. It’s still the safest starting point, but budget carefully.
If you want to see what happens after the enrichment step, our companion guide to the best AI cold outreach platforms for small B2B teams in 2026 is where you send the enriched list next.
When Clay is worth the learning curve
Clay isn’t a replacement for Apollo. It’s a completely different tool that many small teams end up running alongside one. Instead of shipping a database, Clay ships a spreadsheet-native workspace and lets you plug more than a hundred data providers into a waterfall inside a single table. Launch, starting at $185/mo, is the best way to start building in Clay, aimed at individuals and small teams automating their first prospecting workflows. It includes everything in Free, plus phone number enrichment, job change and signal tracking, email campaign integrations, and up to 50,000 rows per table, and comes with 2,500 Data Credits and 15,000 Actions per month.
Clay’s current credit system is meaningfully cheaper per record than a lot of standalone providers. Data Credits start at $0.05 each and get more cost-effective as you scale. Clay prices data as competitively as it can by negotiating volume discounts directly with 150+ partners and passing those savings on, so the most-used enrichments cost 50% fewer credits on average. Clay’s own docs confirm one important detail for budgeting: if an enrichment returns no result, you’re not charged Data Credits or Actions. And unused Data Credits on Launch and Growth roll over up to 2x your monthly allocation, which softens the impact of a slow month.
Clay does have a real learning curve, and the platform is built around technical operators who can compose multi-step tables and waterfalls. If your team doesn’t have someone comfortable in that shape of tool, Apollo will get you to first meeting booked faster.
The cheap picks: Hunter and LeadMagic
If you already know which domains you want to reach and just need verified work emails on a real budget, Hunter and LeadMagic are both several times cheaper than either of the above.
Hunter is the most transparent tool in the category. Paid plans start at $34/mo on annual billing: Starter $49/mo ($34 annual), Growth $149 ($104), Scale $299 ($209), checked July 2026 on hunter.io/pricing. All are credit-based with connected-account caps of 3/10/20, and domain searches, email lookups, and verifications all draw from one monthly pool. Team access uses a shared credit pool across connected team members with no per-user fee, and that matters: a five-person team on the Growth plan pays $149/month total, compared to $245-395/month for the same team on Apollo. The reason Hunter isn’t higher on the list is scope. It finds and verifies emails, and that’s it. No phone numbers, no database you can mine by persona.
LeadMagic is the option we’d hand to a technical founder who wants to own the enrichment layer as an API rather than a UI. Every plan includes the full API, lm-tui, MCP server, and all 15+ enrichment endpoints with one shared credit pool. People, Company & Jobs Search is included from Essential up. Searching spends no credits, and $499+ plans add an unmetered search API. Pricing is straightforward: LeadMagic uses a credit-based model where 1 credit equals 1 enrichment, and you only pay for valid results. Paid plans run from $49.99/month for 2,000 credits (Basic) up to $99/month for 5,000 credits (Essential), $249/month for 20,000 (Growth), $499/month for 50,000 (Professional), and $849/month for 100,000 credits (Ultimate). Unused credits roll over on Essential and above (up to 2x monthly allocation), and no plan requires an annual contract. That combination (pay-for-success, roll-over credits, MCP support) is why it earns a rank ahead of Breeze on our scorecard, even though it lacks a polished UI.
For the step before enrichment, actually finding the accounts worth enriching in the first place, our sibling guide to the best AI lead generation tools for small B2B businesses of 2026 covers the tools that sit upstream of everything on this list.
Why Breeze Intelligence lands last
Clearbit was a category-defining product, and the underlying data engine still is. But the acquisition changed the buyer math completely. As of 2026, Clearbit (now sold as HubSpot Breeze Intelligence) starts at around $45/month for 100 enrichment credits, but that credit fee sits on top of a required paid HubSpot subscription (from $20/month), so the realistic all-in minimum is roughly $65/month. That entry number is misleading in the other direction, too. Teams needing additional HubSpot Credits for AI agent features and expanded buyer intent can buy them at $10 per 1,000 credits, and once you climb to HubSpot Professional the platform fee alone dwarfs anything else on this list.
There’s one important 2025 change that matters for HubSpot customers. On paid HubSpot plans, data enrichment and monthly continuous enrichment updates don’t consume HubSpot Credits. So if you’re already a paying HubSpot customer, basic enrichment is effectively free and Breeze becomes an easy yes. If you’re not a HubSpot customer, everything else on this list is a better buy.
One more small-team constraint to know: old Clearbit Prospector offered phones; Breeze dropped phone reveals entirely. If your team dials, Breeze is the wrong shape regardless of the HubSpot question.
The short version
Buy Apollo if you want one tool that a five-person team can run end to end. Buy Clay if you have a technical operator and want to combine data providers into custom waterfalls. Buy Hunter if you only need verified emails and want a shared credit pool with no per-seat math. Buy LeadMagic if you’d rather build the workflow yourself against a clean API. And buy Breeze only if you’re already deep inside HubSpot, in which case you’re mostly getting it for free anyway.
