Side-by-side comparison
| Dimension | ZoomInfo & Apollo | Forge |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Per-seat annual contract ($5K–$50K+/year) | Per-record subscription ($0–$499/mo) |
| Minimums | Annual commitment, often per-seat min | $0 free tier; no annual minimums |
| Time to first lookup | Sales call + procurement + onboarding (2–6 weeks) | Sign up, get key, query (minutes) |
| Database size | Hundreds of millions of contacts | 319,552 Florida insurance producers and 3,099,787 carrier appointments (measured 2026-09-23) |
| Data returned | Contact and company data | Licensing data only: NPN, license status, lines of authority, carrier appointments. No producer email, phone or address. |
| API access | Available, often per-call billed on top of seat | Included; no per-call fees on subscribed records |
| Bulk endpoint | Yes, often gated by tier | Yes; same pricing as single-record |
| Webhooks | Limited | First-class; CRM sync via webhook |
| Intent signals | Yes (mature) | Yes (focused, recent) |
| Browsing UI | Sophisticated; built for SDR teams to explore | Minimal; designed as API-first |
| Agentic workflow fit | Awkward — built for human browsing | Native — stable schemas, deterministic per-call cost, predictable latency |
| Cancel anytime | End of annual term | Cancel anytime, prorated |
| Free trial | Yes, demo-only | Yes, 100 enrichments/mo forever (no card) |
Where ZoomInfo and Apollo is the right call
Sales team that browses to find prospects
If your SDRs spend their day inside a tool clicking through filters and saved searches, ZoomInfo's UI is meaningfully better than ours. We're not optimizing for that workflow.
Need 50+ seats at the same company
At enterprise scale, the per-seat model with bulk discounts can be cheaper than per-record. Run the math.
Mature integrations with every CRM
ZoomInfo has spent 10+ years on Salesforce, HubSpot, Outreach, SalesLoft, Gong integrations. We have webhooks; that's enough for most teams but not all.
Where Forge is the right call
Programmatic / agentic workflows
Per-call billing kills the unit economics of LLM-driven sales agents. Our flat subscription + stable API + predictable per-record cost makes the agent pattern work.
Variable usage volume
If you only need 1,000 lookups one month and 10,000 the next, our subscription tiers fit that reality. Per-seat models charge the same either way.
Teams under 10 SDRs
The per-seat math doesn't favor small teams. We do.
Procurement-averse buyers
Sign up with a credit card, drop the API key in your environment, ship. No procurement cycle. No annual contract.
Insurance-vertical needs
Forge returns NPN, license status, lines of authority and carrier appointments — fields a horizontal contact database does not model. Licensing data only; no producer contact data.
How to decide
The honest answer: it depends on your usage shape. Above we've laid out the trade-offs by dimension. The fastest way to know which is right for you is to try us — sign up takes minutes, the free tier handles real evaluation, and you keep your existing tooling running in parallel.
Most successful customers don't fully replace their existing tool — they layer us in for the workflow we're better at and keep the incumbent for what it's better at. Hybrid is fine.
Frequently asked questions
- How does Forge pricing actually compare to ZoomInfo?
- Depends on usage. ZoomInfo's typical mid-market contract is $15K–$25K/year for 3–5 seats with usage caps. Forge Growth tier is $149/mo ($1,788/year) for 5,000 enrichments/month. If you're using <5,000 enrichments per month total team-wide, we're 8–14× cheaper. Above that, the math gets closer.
- Is your data quality comparable?
- They measure different things. Forge returns licensing data only (NPN, license status, lines of authority, carrier appointments), with no producer email, phone or address. 99.99% of producers in the corpus carry an NPN (measured 2026-09-23), and every record carries a 7-day freshness window. ZoomInfo's database is older and has more historical depth.
- Can I use both?
- Yes. Some customers use ZoomInfo for the SDR-browsing workflow and Forge for the programmatic enrichment pipeline. Different jobs.
- Do you have CRM integrations?
- Webhooks first, native connectors as we ship them. Webhooks cover Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, and any system with a webhook receiver — which is essentially all of them. Native connectors are on the roadmap by request priority.
- Is GDPR compliant?
- Yes. We process EU personal data under legitimate-interest basis with documented opt-out handling. EU residents can request deletion through a GDPR API endpoint.
- Can I get a custom enterprise tier?
- Yes — 25K+ enrichments/month custom Scale tier with SLA, dedicated webhook channel, and priority support. Email [email protected].
Try Forge
Free tier available — sign up here. Questions? Email [email protected] or book a 15-minute call.