AeroLeads vs Apollo.io 2026: Cost Per Email, Credits, and Which Wins for Cold Email Teams

AeroLeads and Apollo.io both find B2B emails, but they solve different problems. AeroLeads is a lean contact finder built around a LinkedIn Chrome extension and bulk email and phone lookups, starting at $49/month for 5,000 emails. Apollo.io is a full sales intelligence platform, its cheapest paid plan is also $49/month, but caps you at roughly 2,500 credits a month with sequencing tools bundled in.

AeroLeads vs Apollo.io: Pricing and Feature Comparison (2026)

Here's how every public plan stacks up, priced directly from each vendor's own pricing page as of August 2026.

Tool	Plan	Price	Volume	Standout Feature
AeroLeads	Take off	$49/mo	5,000 business emails, 1,000 phone numbers	1 credit per email, 5 credits per phone number
AeroLeads	Climb	$149/mo	20,000 business emails, 4,000 phone numbers	5 seats plus a dedicated account manager
AeroLeads	Cruise	$299/mo	50,000 business emails, 10,000 phone numbers	Unlimited seats included
Apollo.io	Free	$0/mo	50 one-time trial credits, no ongoing allotment	Basic database search access
Apollo.io	Basic	$49/mo (billed annually)	30,000 credits/yr (about 2,500/mo)	Built-in email sequencing
Apollo.io	Professional	$79/mo (billed annually)	48,000 credits/yr (about 4,000/mo)	AI-assisted deliverability and writing tools
Apollo.io	Organization	$119/mo (billed annually, 3-seat minimum)	72,000 credits/yr (about 6,000/mo)	Team-wide sequence and call analytics

How much does AeroLeads cost per email compared to Apollo.io?

AeroLeads' Take off plan works out to $0.0098 per email ($49 divided by 5,000 credits), per AeroLeads' pricing page. Apollo's Basic plan computes to roughly $0.0196 per credit ($49 divided by about 2,500 monthly credits), per Apollo's pricing page. At the entry tier, AeroLeads delivers close to double the raw email volume for the same $49 spend.

That gap narrows at higher tiers, but doesn't close. Apollo's Organization plan runs $119/mo for about 6,000 credits/mo, still near $0.0198 per credit once you factor in the 3-seat minimum. AeroLeads' Cruise plan runs $299/mo for 50,000 emails, about $0.006 per email, with unlimited seats. A 3-person team prospecting hard gets more raw volume per dollar from AeroLeads Cruise than from Apollo Organization. A solo operator who wants sequencing bundled in gets more workflow per seat from Apollo.

Does AeroLeads or Apollo.io fit a cold email stack better?

AeroLeads leans into manual, rep-driven prospecting. The Chrome extension captures a lead's email and phone straight off a LinkedIn profile or company site, and every plan exports into HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho, and Mailchimp, per AeroLeads' website. There's no sequencing or sending built in. You're expected to push contacts into a separate sending tool.

Apollo.io folds contact search into a fuller workflow: company and title filters, plus sequencing and a dialer in the same login. That convenience is priced into every credit. If your team already runs sequences through a dedicated sending platform and warms up mailboxes separately, you're paying Apollo for a sequencer you won't touch, and that's dead weight sitting on top of the cost-per-email math above.

Which should you pick, AeroLeads or Apollo.io, in 2026?

Pick AeroLeads if you already have a sending tool and just need the cheapest reliable source of verified business emails and phone numbers, especially past the Take off tier, where volume scales faster than price. Pick Apollo.io if you want database search, filtering, and sequencing under one login and don't mind paying more per credit for that convenience. Neither tool replaces the work of warming up sending domains or verifying a list before launch. That's a separate problem no contact finder solves for you.

FAQ: AeroLeads vs Apollo.io

Is AeroLeads cheaper than Apollo.io in 2026?

At the entry tier, yes. AeroLeads' Take off plan is $49/month for 5,000 business emails, about $0.0098 per email. Apollo's Basic plan is also $49/month but delivers roughly 2,500 credits a month, about $0.0196 per credit, per each platform's pricing page.

Does Apollo.io have a free plan?

Yes. Apollo.io offers a $0/month Free plan, though new accounts start with a limited one-time batch of 50 trial credits rather than an ongoing monthly free allotment, per Apollo's pricing page. AeroLeads has no permanent free plan, only a free trial with a small starting credit balance.

Can AeroLeads send cold emails, or does it only find them?

AeroLeads only finds and verifies contact data. It has no built-in sending or sequencing feature. You still need a separate sending platform, plus warmed-up mailboxes, to actually run a cold email campaign.

Which tool has better phone number data, AeroLeads or Apollo.io?

AeroLeads prices phone numbers at 5 credits each across all three plans, capping out at 10,000 phone numbers a month on the $299/month Cruise plan. Apollo.io pools mobile lookups into the same credit balance as email credits, so heavy phone use burns through your monthly allowance faster on any Apollo tier.

If you'd rather not manage credit math, verification, and sequencing across two or three separate subscriptions, that's the layer Modern Inbound builds for clients: sourced and verified contacts moving straight into warmed sending infrastructure. See how Setup works.

By Rishabh Ambasta, Founder, Modern Inbound.