---
title: "B2B data providers: who actually holds the data"
description: "Several tools sold as competitors resell each other. Here is the real supply chain, what each vendor publishes, and the four things none of them publish."
canonical: "https://listar.fr/en/b2b-data-provider-comparison"
updated: "2026-11-11"
published: "2026-11-11"
---

# B2B data providers: who actually holds the data

> The B2B data market is not a set of independent competitors. One of the tools you are comparing belongs to another one's parent group. Another resells its mobile numbers from a vendor further down your shortlist. A third sells access to a catalogue of other people's data and holds none of its own. A comparison table that lines them up as peers is wrong before it starts.

> This page establishes the real supply chain, then what each vendor publishes on its own site, sourced and dated. We sell a competing product, so nothing here is stated that is not on the vendors' own pages, and every gap is marked as a gap rather than filled with a figure from a roundup.

## The supply chain

| Vendor | Does it hold its own mobile data? | What it publishes about that |
|---|---|---|
| ZoomInfo | Yes, proprietary database | 135M+ verified phone numbers, 120M+ direct dials |
| Cognism | Yes, proprietary database | Over 10 million phone-verified contacts globally |
| Apollo | Yes, proprietary database, plus an optional waterfall | 240M+ contacts, waterfall billed at 8 to 45 credits |
| Lusha | Yes, proprietary database | 515M+ verified contacts, with per-country volumes published |
| Kaspr | Own database, and it belongs to the Cognism group | "Kaspr is part of the Cognism group" |
| FullEnrich | No. A waterfall across 20 to 25 unnamed providers | "Real-time lookups, no stored contact database" |
| Clay | No. It resells access to a provider marketplace | "150+" on its pricing page, "200+" on its home page |

Three consequences worth drawing out.

**Kaspr and Cognism are not two independent options.** Kaspr publishes the group relationship itself. Chaining them in a waterfall does not add the coverage you would expect from two genuinely separate sources, because they are not separate sources.

**FullEnrich and Clay are both intermediaries, and they are honest about it.** Neither claims to hold a contact database. What you are buying from them is routing and negotiation, not data, which is a legitimate product and a different one from what ZoomInfo sells.

**Clay publicly tests vendors it resells.** Its data-test pages are, as it happens, the best published measurement methodology in this category, and they evaluate providers that sit in its own marketplace. Worth knowing when you read them, and worth reading anyway.

## Price per mobile: only three of seven let you calculate it

This is the first axis where the market splits cleanly, and it is not the axis most comparisons use.

| Vendor | Published cost of a mobile | Calculable? |
|---|---|---|
| FullEnrich | 10 credits per mobile, credits from $0.058 down to $0.035 | Yes |
| Kaspr | 1 phone credit per prospect, add-on credits from €0.35 down to €0.20 | Yes |
| Clay | 3 to 25 credits depending on which provider you query, credits from $0.05 | Partly |
| Apollo | 8 credits for a mobile per its API docs, credit price not published | No |
| Lusha | 5 credits per phone number, paid-plan credit price not published | No |
| Cognism | One credit per revealed contact, no price published | No |
| ZoomInfo | One credit per export, no price published | No |

Clay is marked partly calculable for a specific reason: a mobile costs between 3 and 25 credits depending on which provider you route to, and Clay does not publish the cross table of provider against price tier. There is no standard cost at Clay, which follows from its model rather than being an omission.

And the scope of a credit differs. At Kaspr one phone credit covers every number attached to a prospect. At Clay you add an Action to the Data Credit. At FullEnrich a landline costs nothing and a miss costs nothing. Three different things under one word.

Two vendors publish a no-charge-on-miss rule plainly, which is rarer than it should be: FullEnrich states that a lookup returning nothing costs nothing and that landlines are free, and Clay states that an enrichment returning no result charges neither Data Credits nor Actions. Lusha publishes the rule per feature and discloses that its API charges one credit minimum even when nothing is returned, which is the kind of detail that only shows up on a bill.

## Why the accuracy percentages are not comparable

This is the most important section on this page, and it invalidates most comparison articles you will read.

The vendors are not measuring the same quantity, and almost none of them says which.

| Vendor | What it publishes | What quantity that is |
|---|---|---|
| Cognism | A study of 1,000 mobiles called by an independent organisation: 45% right person versus 18% | A right-person pickup rate |
| Lusha | 86% global phone accuracy, 85% US | An accuracy rate, method and denominator not published |
| Lusha, elsewhere | 97.5% on 322 US contacts, tested 28 July 2026 | A hit rate, which the vendor does not reconcile with its own 85% |
| FullEnrich | 80%+ find rate | A find rate, no denominator or period |
| Clay | Quality and coverage per provider and per country, with the method published | Measurements of third parties, not of Clay |
| Apollo | 98%, on email only | An email accuracy rate, method not published |
| ZoomInfo | No phone figure on any product page | Nothing |
| Kaspr | No figure. The 95% in circulation is a G2 review quoted on its own page | Nothing |

A find rate tells you how many numbers you receive. An accuracy rate tells you whether the number is correct. A pickup rate tells you whether anyone answers. A right-person rate tells you whether it was the person you meant. Four different questions, and lining up their percentages in one column produces a ranking that means nothing.

One vendor deserves credit here, because it is rare. **Clay publishes a complete methodology**: roughly 5,000 business contacts across 15 European countries including France, verification by consensus between two named third parties, Trestle for line type and Scoreplex for name-to-phone matching, a three-level labelling scheme and a published weighting formula. No data vendor publishes anything like it. A competitor does, and that is worth saying.

**And one headline claim deserves a close read.** Cognism publishes the underlying figures behind its three-times-connect-rate claim, which is more than its competitors do. The published table has four mutually exclusive outcomes whose columns sum to 106% and 110%, so at least one figure in each column is wrong. The move from 18% to 45% is a multiplication by 2.5, not 3. And the independent organisation is not named, nor is the sampling frame stated. The direction of the finding is almost certainly right; the multiplier is overstated. We cover it in more detail on our [Cognism alternative](https://listar.fr/en/cognism-alternative) page.

## The four things none of them publish

- **A right-person rate measured on a stated denominator with a stated method and date.** Cognism comes closest and its own table does not add up.
- **A cost per mobile actually found, in money, all in.** Three vendors publish enough to compute a cost per mobile returned. None publishes a cost per mobile that reaches the right person.
- **Verification that the number is attached to the named person, outside North America.** FullEnrich describes an owner-name check and explicitly limits it to the United States and Canada. Cognism describes a human call without publishing what share of the database it covers. The others describe no attachment check at all.
- **Contract length, for two of them.** Cognism publishes no term. ZoomInfo publishes none either, and its licence terms state the agreement "is not cancellable".

## Where Listar sits

We are smaller than most of the vendors above, and the honest comparison is narrow rather than flattering.

What we publish that is missing elsewhere: a price of €0.50 excluding VAT per mobile, falling to €0.20 at volume, with no credit conversion and no commitment; and a right-person rate of 95% on delivered mobiles, from 10,000 real calls across 100 separate files of 100 numbers each, between May and September 2026. Internal, not audited, with numbers delivered as the denominator. We state those three limits because a percentage without them is what this entire page is about.

Our mobile pipeline is a waterfall across more than 35 sources for coverage, then four verification layers including a WhatsApp attachment check. That attachment check on the French market is our actual difference, because it is the third bullet in the section above.

Where others are ahead of us, plainly: ZoomInfo and Lusha on volume and global coverage; Lusha on publishing per-country volumes with a stated counting rule and an update date, which is more transparent than we are on coverage; Cognism on suppression-list screening and its compliance paper trail; Clay on measurement methodology and on letting you see and choose your providers.

If your use case is enterprise ABM across many data types, we are not the product. A page that pretended otherwise would not be worth your time.

## How to decide

The only ranking that predicts meetings is cost per usable contact, and it is computed on your list, not ours.

Take 300 to 500 contacts from your real target list, send the identical file to every candidate on the same day, call with one scoring grid, then divide total spend by right people reached. A vendor three times more expensive per number can come out cheaper per conversation.

[Download the test kit (.xlsx)](https://listar.fr/downloads/listar-data-provider-test-kit.xlsx)

No form, no email required. It computes the four metrics automatically and it applies to us exactly as it applies to the seven above.

## FAQ

**Which B2B data provider is best?**
It depends which part you are buying. For global volume across many data types, ZoomInfo and Lusha. For routing across many providers under one contract, Clay or FullEnrich. For verified mobiles attached to the right person in Europe without a commitment, that is our proposition, and the way to settle it is the test above rather than a roundup.

**Why do the published accuracy rates differ so much between vendors?**
Because they measure different things. Find rate, accuracy, pickup rate and right-person rate are four distinct quantities, and most vendors publish neither the method nor the denominator, which makes the figures incomparable even when they carry the same name.

**Are Kaspr and Cognism independent options?**
No. Kaspr publishes that it is part of the Cognism group. Chaining them does not give you the additional coverage you would expect from two separate sources.

**Does FullEnrich hold its own data?**
No, and it says so clearly: real-time lookups across 20 to 25 providers, with no stored contact database. It does not name the providers, so you cannot tell whether its waterfall overlaps with a vendor you already pay.

**Is a waterfall always better than a single provider?**
On coverage, yes, by construction, and the public benchmarks show the curve. On whether the number reaches the right person, no. Coverage and attachment are separate problems, and most waterfalls optimise the first one only.

**What does it cost to get a verified mobile number?**
Three of the seven vendors above publish enough to calculate it, and the answer ranges from roughly €0.20 to over €1. The other four do not, which is itself useful information when you sit down to negotiate.

## Sources

Every page cited is the vendor's own, consulted 11 November 2026. No third-party comparison was used.

- [ZoomInfo pricing](https://www.zoominfo.com/pricing) and [licence terms](https://www.zoominfo.com/legal/ltc), version 1 May 2025
- [Cognism pricing](https://www.cognism.com/pricing), [Diamond Data](https://www.cognism.com/diamond-data) and [FAQ](https://www.cognism.com/faq)
- [Apollo API pricing docs](https://docs.apollo.io/docs/api-pricing) and [credits page](https://www.apollo.io/pricing/about-credits)
- [Lusha data](https://www.lusha.com/data/), [FAQ](https://www.lusha.com/faq/) and [credit documentation](https://docs.lusha.com/user-guide/usage-analytics/how-credits-are-counted)
- [Kaspr pricing](https://www.kaspr.io/fr/tarifs) and [our data](https://www.kaspr.io/our-data)
- [FullEnrich pricing](https://fullenrich.com/pricing) and [waterfall enrichment](https://fullenrich.com/waterfall-enrichment)
- [Clay pricing](https://www.clay.com/pricing) and [mobile phone verification methodology](https://www.clay.com/blog/mobile-phone-verification-methodology)

## Read next

- [Connect rate: the only metric that matters in B2B cold calling](https://listar.fr/en/connect-rate)
- [Cost per usable contact: what B2B mobile data really costs](https://listar.fr/en/cost-per-usable-contact)
- [How to test a B2B data provider before you sign](https://listar.fr/en/data-provider-test-protocol)
- [ZoomInfo alternative: what you can verify before you switch](https://listar.fr/en/zoominfo-alternative)
- [Cognism alternative: what the published figures actually say](https://listar.fr/en/cognism-alternative)
- [Apollo alternative for phone data: what the credits actually cost](https://listar.fr/en/apollo-alternative)
- [Lusha alternative: the most transparent vendor, and its one gap](https://listar.fr/en/lusha-alternative)
- [Clay alternative: when you only need the phone numbers](https://listar.fr/en/clay-alternative)