October 27, 2026
Apollo API pricing · no flat rate, credits from 0 to 45 or more
The Apollo API has no flat per-call price. A people lookup costs 0 credits until it finds data, then 1 to 9 credits depending on what comes back. Pick AI Ark for the cheapest bulk rate past 30,000 credits a month. Pick FullEnrich for one flat rate with no tiers.
The short answer
An API, a way for one program to ask another program for data without a person clicking through a website, lets a script pull contacts straight out of Apollo. Apollo’s API has no price list of its own. It runs on the same credits as the rest of the account.
A credit is the unit Apollo charges when an endpoint hands back a real result. An empty search costs nothing. An endpoint is one single address inside an API that does one job, such as finding a person’s email. Endpoints that create, update, list, or manage records inside Apollo cost 0 credits every time. A script can call them over and over for free. Endpoints that pull new data out of Apollo’s own database only cost credits when they find something to charge for.
That is why there is no single answer to “how much does the Apollo API cost”. The honest answer is “it depends on what the call finds”, and a single phone lookup can run anywhere from 0 credits to 45 or more.
What costs credits and what does not
People enrichment fills in a contact’s email or phone number from a name and company. It costs 1 to 9 credits per person, only when it finds something. 1 credit covers the person’s demographics and email. 8 more credits get added only if a mobile phone number comes back. A person search that returns nothing costs 0 credits.
Email waterfall enrichment, when Apollo tries several data vendors one after another until one returns an email, typically runs 1 to 4 credits, but some vendor setups or harder matches can run 20 or more. Phone waterfall enrichment typically runs 8 to 25 credits, and some setups run 45 or more. Bulk people enrichment follows the same per-person math, up to 10 people in one request.
Organization enrichment costs 1 credit per company. Organization search costs 1 credit per page, up to 100 results a page. Organization job postings cost 1 credit per page, up to 10,000 results a page. News article search costs 1 credit per page, up to 25 results a page. Running an AI Assistant task costs a different amount every time. The price depends on what the Assistant actually does.
On March 14, 2026, qcarroll wrote on Hacker News, “We use Apollo.io’s API for contact data. The free people search uses their api_search endpoint (no credits consumed), and email reveals use their people/match endpoint…”
The Free to Basic rate limit jump
A rate limit is the cap on the number of requests a team can send in a stretch of time. Every Apollo rate limit applies to the whole team instead of one person or one API key. Child workspaces share the limits of their parent workspace.
General limits, measured per team: Free allows 50 requests a minute, 200 an hour, and 600 a day. Basic and Professional both allow 200 a minute, 400 an hour, and 2,000 a day. Organization allows 200 a minute, 600 an hour, and 6,000 a day.
Enrichment endpoints, the credit-consuming calls that pull new contact data, run on a separate and more generous set of limits once a plan is paid. Free is capped at 50 requests a minute (20 a minute for bulk calls), 200 an hour (100 an hour for bulk), and 600 a day. Basic, Professional, and Organization all jump straight to 1,000 requests a minute, with no hourly or daily cap at all.
That is a bigger jump than the plan price alone suggests. A Free-plan script hits the 600-a-day ceiling long before it hits the 50-a-minute one. The moment that account upgrades to Basic, the daily and hourly ceilings on enrichment calls disappear completely. Only the 1,000-a-minute ceiling is left standing.
Breaking any limit returns a 429 status, the error code an API sends back when a team has sent more requests than its plan allows for that window. Apollo’s response includes a retry-after header telling a script how long to wait, in seconds, before trying again.
The math
The math: enrich 500 people for email only, and assume every single lookup finds a match. 500 × 1 = 500 credits.
Enrich the same 500 people, but add a mobile number for each one. 1 credit for the email and demographics, plus 8 credits for the mobile number: 1 + 8 = 9 credits. 500 × 9 = 4,500 credits.
Basic grants 30,000 credits a seat a year, billed annually. 30,000 ÷ 12 = 2,500 credits a month. 500 ÷ 2,500 = 0.2, a fifth of that monthly budget. 4,500 ÷ 2,500 = 1.8, almost double a month’s budget in one run.
Cheaper ways to build the same list
Apollo itself runs on per-seat credit plans. Two other tools price contact data by credit too, without Apollo’s tiered rate limits.
AI Ark runs a Free plan at $0 a month billed monthly with 100 credits a month, and a Scale on Demand plan at $49 a month billed monthly with 5,000 credits a month. On all plans above 30,000 credits a month, pricing ranges from $2 to $4 per 1,000 credits.
FullEnrich charges one flat rate on its Pro plan, $0.055 per credit, for example $55 a month billed monthly for 1,000 credits a month. Its Pro plan includes API access and an MCP server, a way for AI agents to call the same data, at no extra tier to climb.
Anyone already building on Apollo’s data should budget by credits instead of by call. A mobile-number add-on costs far more than an email-only one. AI Ark has the cheapest bulk credit rate past 30,000 credits a month. FullEnrich has the one flat rate with no tiers to reason about.
What to do next
Count the lookups a script actually needs a mobile number for, since that single field is what turns a 1-credit call into a 9-credit one. Check a plan’s enrichment rate limit, including its hourly and daily numbers, before assuming an upgrade only buys more credits. Read the Apollo Chrome extension explainer or the Apollo.io review for the rest of Apollo’s pricing picture, or compare every credit-based API on the enrichment APIs list. To skip Apollo’s tiered rate limits, start with AI Ark, or see FullEnrich for one flat rate, then tap Try AI Ark.
Sources · Apollo API pricing docs, October 27, 2026 · Apollo API rate limits docs, October 27, 2026 · AI Ark pricing, October 27, 2026 · FullEnrich pricing, October 27, 2026