Apollo vs Lusha: One Gives You 10x More Credits at Half the Price
Apollo claims 91% email accuracy, Lusha 81%, but real bounce rates hit 15-25%, per Prospeo 2026. Match rate, accuracy, credits, verified, intent decoded.
Apollo vs Lusha Jargon Decoded: What These Terms Actually Mean
Apollo claims 91% email accuracy on its 275M+ database; Lusha claims 81% on its 240M+ database, per each vendor's 2026 product page. Real-world Apollo bounce rates hit 15 to 25%, per Prospeo's 2026 Apollo accuracy review. The gap between marketing pages and your inbox is built on five jargon terms. Here is what each actually means at 1,000 lookups per month.
"Match Rate": What It Means (And Doesn't Mean)
Match rate is the percentage of contact searches that return a result, not the percentage that returns a working email. Apollo's documented 84% email match rate means 84 of every 100 lookups produce an email, per Apollo's 2026 documentation. Whether those emails reach an inbox is a separate metric called bounce rate.
Lusha rarely publishes a match rate number, instead leading with 81% accuracy, per Lusha's 2026 marketing site. The two numbers are not interchangeable. Match rate counts hits; accuracy estimates whether a hit is correct. A tool can hit 90% match rate with 50% accuracy, or 60% match rate with 95% accuracy.
"Accuracy": The Real Definition
Accuracy is the percentage of returned contacts that are still correct at the moment of lookup, factoring in job changes and email decay. Apollo's overall accuracy averages 65%, with 80 to 88% in the US and 60 to 73% outside, per Prospeo's 2026 Apollo accuracy review. Lusha tests at 80 to 90% on email and 70 to 80% on phone, per SyncGTM's 2026 Lusha review.
The catch is data decay. B2B contact data decays at 2.1% per month, compounding to 22.5% per year, per Cleanlist's 2026 B2B Data Decay study. A "verified" contact pulled 90 days ago is 6 to 7% less accurate today than the day it was verified.
"Credits", "Verified", and "Intent": Quick Definitions
Three terms that bury the actual cost of running either tool. Apollo charges 1 credit per email reveal and 8 per mobile number; Lusha charges 1 per email and 10 per phone, per each vendor's 2026 pricing page. A 1,000-contact list with full email plus mobile enrichment burns 9,000 credits on Apollo and 11,000 on Lusha.
- Credits: the unit of billing. Apollo Basic at $49 per user per month includes 5,000 credits; Professional $79 includes 10,000; Organization $119 includes 15,000, per Salesmotion's 2026 Apollo pricing breakdown
- Verified: the contact passed an internal check (SMTP ping for emails, DNC scrub for phones). Verified does not mean current. A 60-day-old verified email is still 4% likely to bounce, per Cleanlist's 2026 decay study
- Intent: web behavior signals (G2 page visits, topic research, ad engagement) bundled into a buyer score. Apollo includes Bombora intent on Professional and above; Lusha does not bundle intent on standard plans
The 3 Terms That Actually Affect Your Results
Match rate and accuracy get the marketing page, but bounce rate, credit-per-meeting cost, and direct dial connect rate determine whether either tool pays back. These are the numbers your sales ops dashboard should track, not the ones on the pricing page.
| Metric | Apollo | Lusha | What It Predicts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bounce rate (real-world) | 15 to 25% | 5 to 12% | Sender domain reputation |
| Mobile direct dial connect | 8 to 14% | 14 to 22% | Cost per meeting |
| Cost per verified contact | $0.04 to $0.08 | $0.06 to $0.12 | Stack TCO at scale |
Apollo's lower per-credit cost is offset by 2 to 3x higher bounce rates on cold lists, per Prospeo's 2026 Apollo review. Lusha's higher per-credit cost is offset by tighter verification, which matters when sender reputation is the bottleneck. Apollo wins on stack consolidation (data plus sequencing for $79); Lusha wins on per-contact email accuracy. Pair either with Modern Leads' 19-source waterfall at $0.30 per verified contact when bounce rate spikes past 5%. See pricing.
See our complete guide to Data Enrichment: B2B Data Enrichment 2026: Single-Source vs Waterfall
Skip the Tool Comparison. Get Results.
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Apollo vs Lusha Jargon Questions
What is the difference between match rate and accuracy?
Match rate is the percentage of lookups that return any result; accuracy is the percentage of those results that are correct. Apollo's 84% match rate means 84 of every 100 contacts searched produce an email, per Apollo's 2026 documentation, but the 91% accuracy claim and 15 to 25% real-world bounce rate gap means 1 in 4 of those emails still fails, per Prospeo's 2026 Apollo review. Lusha leads with 81% accuracy and skips publishing match rate numbers, per Lusha's 2026 product page. For cold email, bounce rate matters more than either metric since deliverability craters past 5% bounces.
How many credits does Apollo or Lusha actually cost per meeting booked?
At a 2.4% cold-to-meeting conversion rate (per Apollo's 2026 GTM report), 1,000 enriched contacts produce 24 meetings. Apollo Professional at $79 per month with 10,000 credits handles 1,000 email plus mobile enrichments (9,000 credits), so cost per meeting is $79 / 24 = $3.30 on tool spend alone. Lusha Pro at $49 monthly with 1,200 phone credits and 4,800 emails covers ~600 enriched contacts, hitting cost per meeting around $3.40 to $4.00. Both numbers exclude SDR salary and sequencing tool spend, which dominate total cost per meeting at $200 to $400.
Does "verified" mean the same thing on Apollo and Lusha?
No. Apollo's verified flag means the email passed an SMTP ping at the time of database refresh, which can be 30 to 60 days old, per Apollo's 2026 documentation. Lusha re-verifies on demand at the moment of reveal, per Lusha's 2026 product docs, which is why per-credit cost runs higher. The practical impact is bounce rate: Apollo cold lists hit 15 to 25% bounces in real-world tests versus Lusha's 5 to 12%, per Prospeo's 2026 review. For cold email senders, lower bounce rate protects sender reputation and inbox placement. For phone-only outreach, the verification gap matters less since dial attempts do not damage reputation.
Which tool wins for a 5-person SDR team in 2026?
Apollo wins on stack consolidation; Lusha wins on per-contact data quality. Apollo Professional at $79 per user per month bundles a 275M+ contact database, 10,000 credits, email sequences, dialer, and basic intent signals, replacing Lusha plus Instantly or Reply.io for one $79 line item, per Salesmotion's 2026 Apollo pricing review. Lusha Pro at $49 per user per month is data-only with 480 credits per year and tighter accuracy on the contacts it returns. For 5 SDRs running cold email plus phone, Apollo at $395 monthly beats Lusha plus Instantly Growth ($245 plus $37 = $282) only if you actually use the dialer and sequencing. Otherwise pair Lusha with Apollo Free.
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