Apollo vs Lusha vs Ziwa: Simpler, Cheaper, Less Noise

You Don't Need a $500/Month Platform to Get a Phone Number

Apollo and Lusha are good tools. They have CRMs, email sequences, intent data, Chrome extensions, team dashboards. If you run a 50-person outbound sales org, they earn their price tag.

But what if you're a recruiter who needs 30 numbers a month? A PI running a case? A startup founder who just wants to call a prospect?

You don't need a platform. You need a phone number. That's a different problem with a different price point.

What Each Tool Is Actually Best At

Apollo: The Full Sales Machine

• 265M+ contact database
• Built-in CRM and email sequencing
• Buyer intent data
• LinkedIn Chrome extension
• AI-powered workflows

Pricing: Free (limited), $49/mo Basic, $79/mo Professional, $119/mo Organization — per user.

Use it when: You have a dedicated sales team and need the whole outbound stack.

Lusha: The LinkedIn Sidebar

• Chrome extension that reveals contacts on LinkedIn
• Direct phone and email reveals
• CRM integrations (Salesforce, HubSpot)
• API on higher tiers

Pricing: Free (5 credits/mo), $49/mo Pro, $79/mo Premium — per user.

Use it when: You live in LinkedIn and want contact data without leaving the page.

Ziwa: Just the Contact Data

• Contact extraction from LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter
• Batch extraction — up to 200 profiles per job
• Username search across 3,000+ sites
• Reverse phone lookup
• Excel/CSV export

Pricing: Pay per result. Credits from $0.10. No monthly fee.

Use it when: You need contact data on demand, across multiple platforms, without subscribing to anything.

Let's Talk Real Numbers

Freelancer: 30 Lookups/Month

Small Team (3 Users): 500 Lookups/Month

High Volume: 2,000 Lookups/Month

What Ziwa Intentionally Doesn't Do

Honesty time. Here's what you won't get:

• No CRM. Export to your own. Ziwa isn't trying to own your pipeline.
• No email sequences. Use Mailshake, Lemlist, or your CRM's built-in tools.
• No intent data. Ziwa finds contact info, not buying signals.
• No Chrome extension. It's a standalone web app. Copy-paste the URL.

These aren't missing features — they're intentional scope decisions. Ziwa does one thing: turns social profiles into phone numbers and emails, at the lowest cost per result.

Can You Use Ziwa With Apollo or Lusha?

Yes, and many teams do exactly this:

• Apollo for CRM + sequences, Ziwa for supplementary lookups when Apollo misses
• Lusha for LinkedIn contacts, Ziwa for Facebook and Twitter contacts (Lusha doesn't cover those)
• Ziwa for batch jobs when your Apollo credits run dry mid-month

They're not mutually exclusive. Use the right tool for the right job.

The Bottom Line

Big team, enterprise needs? Apollo or Lusha. LinkedIn-heavy workflow? Lusha. Everyone else — freelancers, small teams, investigators, recruiters who just need the phone number — Ziwa gets you there at a fraction of the cost. Check the pricing and decide for yourself.