Clearbit vs ZoomInfo: Which B2B Data Tool Wins?

The Comparison Has Changed - Know This Before You Dive In

If you Googled "Clearbit vs ZoomInfo" expecting a clean side-by-side of two independent data platforms, I have to stop you right there. The comparison isn't what it used to be - and most articles covering this topic are working from outdated information.

HubSpot acquired Clearbit in late 2023 and rebranded it as Breeze Intelligence, their native AI enrichment layer. It's no longer a standalone tool you can plug into any CRM. Today, you're not really choosing between two data providers. You're choosing between a CRM-embedded enrichment feature and a full enterprise data platform. That changes everything about how you evaluate them.

I've helped thousands of agencies and founders build outbound systems from scratch. The data layer is always where people waste the most money - either by overpaying for enterprise contracts they use 20% of, or by stitching together cheap tools that produce garbage data and kill sender reputation. Let me break this down the way I'd explain it to someone on my team.

One more thing before we get into the weeds: I'm going to give you my honest take on both tools, explain exactly who each one is right for, and then give you the third option that most people discover only after they've already signed a contract they regret. Let's go.

What Clearbit (Now Breeze Intelligence) Actually Is

Clearbit launched in 2014 as a standalone B2B data enrichment company, building a reputation for developer-friendly APIs that appended firmographic, technographic, and contact data to email addresses, domains, and IP addresses. Over the following decade it became a staple integration for sales and marketing teams working inside Salesforce, HubSpot, Marketo, and Segment. That era is over.

HubSpot completed its acquisition in December 2023 and rebranded the product as Breeze Intelligence. The standalone clearbit.com product and self-serve signup were retired for new customers. As of now, enrichment, buyer intent, and form-shortening capabilities are sold exclusively as an add-on to a paid HubSpot subscription - not as an independent SaaS product. There is no free tier, no standalone access, and critically, no phone number enrichment anymore. The old Clearbit Prospector feature that let you build net-new lists was discontinued post-acquisition.

What does Breeze Intelligence actually do? It does three things: data enrichment (firmographic, technographic, and demographic fields auto-populated on your CRM records), website visitor identification (formerly Clearbit Reveal - it identifies which companies are visiting your site), and form shortening (it pre-fills known fields so forms feel shorter to the prospect). Every action consumes HubSpot Credits, which reset monthly with no rollover - unused credits at the end of your billing cycle are lost.

Here's the pricing reality that catches people off-guard. Breeze Intelligence is a credit-based add-on bundled with a required paid HubSpot subscription. The true entry point is roughly $75/month total - combining HubSpot Starter at around $30/month and 100 Breeze Intelligence credits at $45/month on annual billing. But 100 credits per month is almost nothing for any real prospecting operation. Mid-market teams on HubSpot Professional typically pay between $1,200 and $4,000+ per month once you combine the HubSpot subscription cost with adequate credit packs. And here's the trap: if you exceed your monthly credit cap, HubSpot auto-upgrades you to the next tier for the remainder of your annual contract. One exceptional month of usage can lock you into higher-tier billing for eleven more months.

For teams on Salesforce, Pipedrive, or anything else, Breeze Intelligence is effectively off the table. You'd be paying for an entire CRM platform just to access one enrichment feature. That's not a data purchase - that's a platform migration.

The data quality on firmographics is genuinely solid. Bounce rates for email from Breeze tend to run 4-7%, which is better than most alternatives. The dataset prioritizes precision over volume - it refreshes its company records in real time and intentionally excludes personal emails and duplicate domains to keep records clean. The tradeoff is coverage. Data coverage is strongest for North American SaaS and venture-backed companies, with notable gaps internationally and for SMBs.

What ZoomInfo Actually Is

ZoomInfo is the 800-pound gorilla of B2B data. Their database contains hundreds of millions of professional profiles across an enormous range of companies - one of the largest proprietary databases in the market. The full ZoomInfo SalesOS suite bundles contact data, direct dials, mobile numbers, org charts, technographics, intent signals, sales engagement tooling, and conversation intelligence (Chorus). This is not a point solution - it's an entire go-to-market platform.

The depth is real. Especially if you're doing high-volume outbound into mid-market and enterprise US companies, ZoomInfo's contact coverage is hard to match. The direct dial and mobile number data is where they have a meaningful edge over almost everyone else in the market - critical if your team does cold calling alongside cold email. ZoomInfo also provides intent signals powered by Bombora's data co-op, which identifies accounts that are researching topics related to your product across a network of third-party websites. For enterprise ABM motions, this is a serious capability.

The problem is cost and contract structure. ZoomInfo has zero self-serve pricing - everything is a custom quote, requires an annual contract minimum, and there is no monthly billing option. The entry point typically starts around $14,995 per year for their Professional plan. Most teams end up paying significantly more once you add seats, technographic add-ons, intent data, Copilot AI features, and extra credit pools. Reports from verified buyers put the median contract well above $30,000 per year, with larger teams pushing into the $40,000-$60,000 range.

There's also a credit trap worth understanding. A starter plan typically includes around 2,500 annual credits. For any active prospecting team, that's insufficient within a few months. Additional credit purchases are common and expensive. ZoomInfo builds every quote around factors like team size, data requirements, integration ecosystem, and use case complexity - two teams can receive quotes that differ by $20,000 for what seems like the same core product.

Data accuracy from ZoomInfo is strong for US companies, particularly for direct dial coverage. Email deliverability, however, runs around 85%, which means roughly 15 out of every 100 emails bounce. At enterprise pricing, those bounces aren't just annoying - they're expensive credits wasted and sender reputation damaged. If you're running cold email campaigns at volume, you need to layer in email verification before sending regardless of which data provider you use. Running your list through a dedicated email validation tool before any campaign send is non-negotiable.

One legitimate knock on ZoomInfo: data accuracy thins out for smaller or niche companies where information is harder to verify. The platform expanded its database faster than it could maintain quality in some segments - particularly outside North America. Teams targeting European markets often find Cognism is a better fit for GDPR-compliant data and EMEA coverage, while ZoomInfo remains strongest for US enterprise accounts.

Clearbit vs ZoomInfo: Head-to-Head on What Actually Matters

Let's stop talking around the comparison and get specific. Here's how these two tools stack up on the dimensions that actually move the needle for a sales team.

Data Coverage and Database Size

ZoomInfo wins on raw contact volume and direct dials. Clearbit/Breeze wins on firmographic accuracy and lower bounce rates. ZoomInfo emphasizes contact-level data with hundreds of millions of contacts, direct dials, org charts, and intent signals. Clearbit emphasizes company-level data - firmographics, technographics, industry classification, and employee count - refreshed in real time and deduplicated aggressively. Clearbit is better for enriching leads with company context. ZoomInfo is better for building prospecting lists from scratch and for finding individual direct-dial phone numbers at scale.

If you need phone numbers for cold calling, ZoomInfo is the stronger play. If you need to enrich company records for scoring and routing inside HubSpot, Breeze is cleaner. If you need to build net-new prospect lists outside of HubSpot, neither tool solves that problem cleanly anymore - Clearbit's Prospector was discontinued, and ZoomInfo's credit structure makes exploratory list building expensive.

CRM Compatibility

This is where most teams get tripped up. Clearbit/Breeze only works natively inside HubSpot - full stop. If your team is on Salesforce, Pipedrive, Close, or any other CRM, Clearbit is not an option. You'd have to migrate your entire CRM stack to access one enrichment feature, which is not a rational trade. ZoomInfo integrates with Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Outreach, Salesloft, and most major CRMs. The integration depth varies by CRM, but the flexibility is meaningfully better. If you're not a HubSpot shop, ZoomInfo is the only one of these two tools that can actually work in your environment.

Pricing and Entry Point

Neither tool is cheap, but ZoomInfo's floor is dramatically higher. ZoomInfo typically starts at $14,995+ per year with mandatory annual contracts - you're signing before you've validated whether the data quality fits your accounts. There's no way to try the full product at meaningful volume before committing.

Clearbit's entry looks lower on paper but balloons once you factor in the required HubSpot subscription. The realistic all-in minimum is around $75/month for minimal usage - but for meaningful enrichment volume, mid-market teams are typically paying well above $1,000/month when combining the HubSpot subscription with adequate credit packs. Both tools hide their real pricing behind sales calls, which is almost always a signal that the number is higher than they want you to see before you're in the room.

One more pricing trap specific to ZoomInfo: the contract auto-renewal is aggressive. If you miss the cancellation window - which is often 30-60 days before renewal - you're locked in for another year. Read the contract carefully before you sign. This is not a theoretical risk. It's a real thing that happens to teams every year.

Intent Data

ZoomInfo has more mature intent signals, pulling from Bombora's data co-op and third-party partnerships. This gives you a signal for accounts researching relevant topics across a broad network of websites - useful for demand generation and wide-net ABM campaigns. Breeze Intelligence has some buyer intent features, but they're fundamentally different in nature. Breeze Reveal identifies companies visiting your own website - which is a demand capture signal, not a demand generation signal. These companies have already found you. That's a smaller set of signals but exponentially higher fidelity.

The honest nuance here: most RevOps leaders I've spoken with report that fewer than 15-20% of "high intent" accounts surfaced by third-party intent data are genuinely in-market at any given time. Intent data adds real value, but you should calibrate your expectations before paying extra for it.

Outbound Cold Email Use Case

For straight-up cold email prospecting, both tools have real limitations. ZoomInfo's bounce rates require extra verification steps before you can safely send at volume. Clearbit/Breeze doesn't give you outbound prospecting in the traditional sense anymore - the Clearbit Prospector feature was discontinued post-acquisition. You're enriching records you already have, not building net-new prospect lists from scratch. Neither tool was purpose-built for lean, high-volume cold email operations, and neither is priced for teams that are still validating their outbound motion.

Ease of Use and Time to Value

Breeze Intelligence, being embedded directly in HubSpot, is genuinely low-friction for HubSpot users. Enrichment plugs directly into CRM records, forms auto-enrich on submission, and the workflow feels native because it is. There's no separate tool to learn. ZoomInfo has a sophisticated interface with advanced search capabilities that can feel overwhelming - it's a platform with many features, and the learning curve reflects that. Some users find the UX dated in places; the product has expanded faster than the interface has been redesigned. For teams without a dedicated RevOps or data person, ZoomInfo can feel like more tool than you need.

European and International Coverage

Both tools are strongest for North American companies, particularly for contact-level data. ZoomInfo has weaker EU coverage than Cognism, which has built its reputation specifically on GDPR-compliant data and EMEA accuracy. Clearbit/Breeze has notable gaps internationally and for SMBs. If your ICP is primarily European, neither of these is your best option - Cognism is worth a serious look for that use case. If your ICP is US enterprise and mid-market, ZoomInfo remains the benchmark.

Feature Comparison at a Glance

Who Should Pick ZoomInfo

ZoomInfo makes sense for a specific type of organization. Get this wrong and you're signing a $30,000/year contract for a product you'll use 20% of. Here's when ZoomInfo actually earns its price tag:

• Enterprise sales teams with 10+ SDRs running high-volume outbound who need direct dials, mobile numbers, and intent data all in one platform. The per-seat cost hurts less when it's spread across a large team that's actively generating pipeline.
• Teams on Salesforce who need deep CRM integration, org chart data, and the ability to see buyer signals inside their existing workflow. ZoomInfo's Salesforce integration is genuinely deep and battle-tested.
• ABM-focused organizations running targeted campaigns where Bombora intent signals and technographic filtering justify the cost. If intent-driven outreach is a core motion, ZoomInfo has the edge.
• Anyone who has already validated ZoomInfo's coverage against their specific ICP before signing. The non-negotiable before any ZoomInfo purchase is running a sample of 500+ of your real target accounts through their database during a trial to confirm match rates. Don't sign without doing this.
• Teams targeting US mid-market and enterprise accounts where ZoomInfo's data is densest. If your ICP is CFOs and VPs at companies with 200+ employees in North America, ZoomInfo's coverage is genuinely hard to match.

Who Should Pick Clearbit (Breeze Intelligence)

Breeze Intelligence is a solid feature for a narrow set of teams. Outside that set, it's the wrong purchase entirely:

• Teams already on HubSpot who want real-time form enrichment and CRM record enrichment without leaving the platform. If HubSpot is your system of record and you're generating meaningful inbound volume, Breeze is a natural extension.
• Inbound-focused marketing and sales teams who need to score and route leads based on firmographic data as they come in. When someone fills out a form and Breeze auto-populates their company size, industry, and tech stack, your routing logic can fire immediately without manual research.
• Marketing ops teams who live in HubSpot and want continuous enrichment of their existing database. The automation around keeping records up to date inside a HubSpot workflow is genuinely useful.
• Not teams on any other CRM - the lock-in is real and the workarounds are either nonexistent or involve migrating your entire CRM stack.
• Not teams whose primary goal is outbound list building from scratch - Breeze doesn't do that anymore.

The Real Problem With Single-Source B2B Data

Here's something that doesn't get enough attention in these comparisons: even the best single-source databases have fundamental limitations that no amount of money solves.

When you rely on one provider - whether it's ZoomInfo, Clearbit, or anyone else - you're trusting that their database happens to have accurate, current data for your specific ICP. But B2B contact data decays fast. People change jobs, get promoted, switch companies. Any static database, regardless of how frequently it claims to update, is working against entropy.

Real-world testing puts this in sharp relief. One benchmark test of a 500-contact list found Clearbit returning emails for 68% of contacts, while ZoomInfo returned emails for 92% of contacts. Neither hit 90% verified deliverability on its own. Independent tests with waterfall enrichment approaches - querying multiple data sources in sequence so that if Source A misses a contact, Source B picks it up - consistently outperform any single provider on both match rate and accuracy.

This is why the professionals building the best outbound systems don't rely on a single data vendor. They use multiple targeted sources, verify everything before it goes into a sequence, and build redundancy into the data layer. It costs less than a ZoomInfo contract and produces cleaner data.

What Most People Actually Need Instead

I want to be honest with you: the majority of agencies, consultants, and B2B sales teams I work with don't need either of these tools at their price points - especially not when they're just getting outbound off the ground or working with a defined, manageable ICP.

ZoomInfo at $15,000-$60,000 per year is an enterprise sales team purchase. You need a large enough team and deal size to make the economics work. Breeze Intelligence, while appealing on paper, is only rational if you're already a HubSpot shop with real inbound volume - and even then you need to model the true all-in cost of your HubSpot tier plus credit consumption before you sign.

There are smarter ways to build a prospect list. Tools like Findymail or RocketReach give you solid email-finding capabilities at a fraction of the cost. For building targeted prospect lists at scale without enterprise contracts, ScraperCity's B2B lead database lets you filter by title, seniority, industry, location, and company size - getting you 80% of what ZoomInfo delivers on list-building without the five-figure commitment or the annual contract trap.

Apollo.io is also worth a look if you want a self-serve database with a built-in sequencing tool. It's substantially cheaper than ZoomInfo, has a usable free tier, and integrates with major CRMs. The data quality is slightly below ZoomInfo for US enterprise accounts, but for most SMB and mid-market prospecting it's more than adequate. The tradeoff is that Apollo's data is a step behind ZoomInfo on phone numbers and direct dials.

For EMEA-focused teams, Cognism has built a strong reputation for GDPR-compliant data and mobile-verified phone numbers. One benchmark comparison found Cognism's match rate running 98% versus 72% by ZoomInfo for a specific contact set, with call connect rates meaningfully higher on Cognism-sourced numbers. That's an outlier result, not a guaranteed outcome, but it reflects the pattern: for European prospecting, Cognism is worth serious evaluation.

The Third Option Most People Miss: Building a Modular Data Stack

The cold truth is that for most small and mid-size teams, there's a better path than committing to either tool. Build your own prospecting system using a combination of targeted scraping, a solid email finder, and verification before you send. This isn't as complicated as it sounds, and the cost difference is substantial.

Here's how a modular stack works in practice:

Step 1 - Targeted List Building: Instead of buying access to a 260-million contact database and hoping your ICP is in there, start with a targeted source. If you're prospecting SaaS companies, you can use a BuiltWith scraper to identify companies running specific tech stacks. That's technographic prospecting at a fraction of ZoomInfo's price. If you're targeting local businesses, a Google Maps scraper pulls business data with targeting precision you can't get from a general-purpose database. If you're going after e-commerce brands, a store leads scraper builds a list of actual online storefronts with real revenue signals.

Step 2 - Contact Lookup: Once you have your target accounts, find the specific decision-makers. An email finding tool gets you individual addresses without buying a massive enterprise contract you'll use 20% of. For cold calling alongside cold email, a mobile finder surfaces direct phone numbers for the contacts you've already identified - targeted and efficient rather than paying for a database of phone numbers you'll never use.

Step 3 - Validation Before Send: Before a single email goes out, run the list through an email validation tool to catch bad addresses. This step is non-negotiable regardless of which data source you used. Even the cleanest databases have stale records. Skipping validation is how you destroy your sender reputation and end up in spam folders.

Step 4 - Enrichment as Needed: For the contacts you actually want to reach out to, layer in enrichment to fill in firmographic gaps. You don't need to enrich 260 million records - you need to enrich the 500 companies on your current hit list. Targeted enrichment costs a fraction of a ZoomInfo contract.

This modular approach - targeted list building plus contact finding plus validation - is what I teach and what actually works for lean teams. You get more control, less lock-in, and you're not paying for a database of contacts you'll never touch. For a deeper look at specific workflows I use on my own outbound campaigns, check out my daily ideas.

How to Evaluate Any B2B Data Tool Before You Buy

Before signing any contract with any data vendor, run this checklist. It applies to ZoomInfo, Breeze, Apollo, Cognism, or anyone else pitching you a data subscription:

1. Test against your actual ICP, not a generic sample. Every data vendor will show you impressive match rates on a benchmark set designed to make them look good. What matters is match rate on a list of 500 real companies from your target market. Pull 500 of your actual target accounts and run them through the tool during the trial. If the match rate is below 70%, the product isn't right for your specific prospecting motion.

2. Verify deliverability independently. Take 100 emails from the trial, run them through an email validator, and check deliverability before you count them as usable contacts. If you're seeing more than 10% bounce or unverified rate, factor that into your cost-per-usable-contact calculation. A tool with 85% deliverability that costs $15,000/year is more expensive per clean contact than you think.

3. Model the true annual cost. For ZoomInfo, that means adding seats, credit overage projections, any add-ons your team will actually want (technographics, intent data), and a realistic number for what happens when your team exceeds credit caps. For Breeze, that means adding your full HubSpot subscription cost - not just the enrichment add-on price - and the cost of any separate phone-finding tool you'll need because Breeze doesn't provide phone data.

4. Read the cancellation and auto-renewal terms before you sign. This is where deals get ugly. Know your notice period for cancellation. Know whether the contract auto-renews and when that window is. Know what happens to your data exports if you leave. Do this before you're in a sales call where momentum is pushing you toward a signature.

5. Ask specifically about the data your ICP requires. If your targets are mid-size European companies, ask the vendor to show you coverage on a sample list from that segment. If your targets are executives at financial services firms, ask for accuracy metrics for that vertical. Generic claims about database size don't tell you whether the tool covers your accounts.

The Waterfall Enrichment Approach: What the Best Teams Are Doing Now

The most sophisticated outbound operations I see aren't using a single data vendor. They're using waterfall enrichment - a sequential approach where you query multiple data sources per contact, so if the first source misses, the next one picks it up. If that one returns an unverified email, the next source provides a verified one.

This approach consistently outperforms single-source databases on both match rate and deliverability. The math is simple: no single database covers every contact at high accuracy. Querying three to five targeted sources in sequence compounds the coverage and cross-validates accuracy. The result is cleaner data than ZoomInfo produces alone, at meaningfully lower cost.

Tools like Clay make it relatively straightforward to build a waterfall enrichment workflow without engineering resources. You define your source priority, set your verification criteria, and run your list through sequentially. For teams with a few thousand target accounts, this approach is both practical and far more cost-effective than any enterprise database contract.

The practical implication: if your current outbound motion relies on a single data vendor producing your full contact list, you have a single point of failure. The moment that vendor's data goes stale on your ICP segment, or their prices jump at renewal, you're stuck. Diversify your data sources early.

A Word on Data Decay - The Problem Everyone Ignores

B2B contact data decays at roughly 25-30% per year. That means about one in four contacts on a list you build today will have inaccurate information within twelve months - wrong email, wrong title, wrong company. This is a universal problem that no data vendor fully solves, regardless of what their marketing claims.

The implications for your buying decision: a ZoomInfo or Clearbit contract doesn't protect you from data decay. It gives you access to a database that's trying to keep up with the decay, with varying success. The only real defense is a combination of verification before you send, re-enrichment on a regular cadence, and treating your contact list as a living asset rather than a one-time download.

For your outbound system, this means building email verification into every campaign workflow before emails go out, not just when you first build the list. A list that was 95% deliverable six months ago could be 80% deliverable today depending on how much churn your target market sees. Running a quick list verification pass before each new send is cheap insurance against damaged sender reputation and wasted outreach.

Who Should Pick ZoomInfo - The Expanded Version

I gave you the quick version earlier. Let me go deeper on the actual scenarios where ZoomInfo earns its price tag, because the decision is rarely obvious.

ZoomInfo makes sense when your outbound team is large enough that the cost-per-seat math works. At $15,000/year for three seats on the entry plan, you're paying roughly $5,000/seat/year. For a single SDR who books even two additional meetings per month from better data, and those meetings convert to pipeline at your normal rate, the ROI math often works. For a solo founder or a two-person team where you're the one making the calls and writing the emails, the math almost never works.

ZoomInfo makes sense when direct dial phone numbers are core to your outreach motion. Cold calling still works. It works especially well when combined with cold email as a multi-touch sequence. ZoomInfo's depth on direct dials - particularly for US mid-market and enterprise contacts - is a genuine capability advantage that cheaper alternatives don't match. If your SDRs spend meaningful time on the phone and connect rates from direct dials matter to your pipeline, this is worth paying for.

ZoomInfo makes sense when intent data is a real part of your workflow - not just something you check once a month. If your team has the bandwidth to act on intent signals quickly, ZoomInfo's integration of intent data into a prospecting workflow adds real value. If you're going to pay for intent signals and then not use them consistently, you're wasting money.

ZoomInfo does not make sense when you haven't validated your ICP's coverage in their database before signing. This is the most common mistake I see. Teams sign the contract, start prospecting, and discover that their specific ICP - maybe it's founders at bootstrapped SaaS companies, or VPs of Supply Chain at mid-market manufacturers - is either underrepresented in the database or has stale data. The time to discover that is during the trial, not six months into a contract.

Building Your Apollo Scraper Stack (For Teams Already Using Apollo)

A significant portion of the teams comparing Clearbit and ZoomInfo are also Apollo users - they're trying to figure out whether to upgrade, switch, or supplement. If that's you, here's a workflow worth knowing about.

Apollo has a large B2B database with a usable free tier and self-serve paid plans. The quality is a step below ZoomInfo for enterprise US accounts, but more than sufficient for most mid-market prospecting. The limitation most Apollo users hit is data export friction - there are caps on how much data you can export on any given plan, and those caps can bottleneck your list-building workflow.

If you're hitting those limits, you can use an Apollo scraper to export the data you've already found inside Apollo's interface more efficiently - without manually downloading record by record. This is a practical workflow for teams that have already invested in Apollo access and want to move faster without jumping to a ZoomInfo-tier contract.

My Actual Recommendation

Don't start with ZoomInfo. The contract size and the commitment required before you've validated data quality for your specific ICP is a mistake I've seen too many teams make. If you're doing under $5M in revenue and running a lean outbound team, you have no business spending $15,000-$40,000 on a data subscription before you've built the rest of the outbound system - the sequences, the copy, the offer, the follow-up cadence. The data tool is the last thing to optimize, not the first.

If you're a HubSpot shop with real inbound volume and you need enrichment to flow through automatically, Breeze Intelligence is actually a solid feature - just understand what you're buying. It's not a standalone data tool. It's a HubSpot add-on, and you should evaluate it that way. Model the full cost including your HubSpot subscription tier, account for the credit expiry, and confirm that the firmographic coverage matches your ICP before you commit.

For everyone else: build smart, start lean, and scale your data spend as your outbound volume justifies it. The modular approach - targeted list building plus email finding plus validation - gets you 80% of the results at 10-20% of the cost. Once you're running at volume, have validated your ICP's coverage with any given provider, and have the deal size to justify an enterprise contract, then revisit ZoomInfo.

I go deep on building outbound systems that don't require $40,000/year data contracts inside Galadon Gold if you want live help building the right stack for your specific situation. And if you want to start building your prospect list today without a five-figure commitment, check out the newsletter where I break down specific data workflows on a regular basis.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Clearbit still available as a standalone product?

No. Clearbit was acquired by HubSpot in late 2023 and rebranded as Breeze Intelligence. The standalone product was fully retired for new customers. All free Clearbit tools were discontinued, and the enrichment APIs were deprecated for new accounts. To use Clearbit's data capabilities today, you need a paid HubSpot subscription. If you're not on HubSpot, Clearbit is no longer an option for you.

How much does ZoomInfo actually cost?

ZoomInfo doesn't publish pricing publicly. Everything is a custom quote based on team size, credit requirements, integration needs, and contract length. Based on verified buyer data, the Professional plan entry point is typically around $14,995/year for three seats. Most teams end up paying more once you add seats, credit top-ups, and add-ons like intent data or Copilot. The median ZoomInfo contract across a large set of verified purchases runs above $30,000 per year.

What's the difference between ZoomInfo's intent data and Clearbit's buyer intent?

They measure fundamentally different things. ZoomInfo's intent data, powered by Bombora, identifies companies researching relevant topics across a network of third-party websites - a demand generation signal that surfaces accounts you haven't interacted with yet. Clearbit/Breeze's buyer intent feature identifies companies visiting your own website - a demand capture signal for accounts that have already found you. Both are useful; they serve different parts of the funnel.

What's the best ZoomInfo alternative for small teams?

For small teams building outbound without enterprise budget, the best approach is a modular data stack rather than a single platform. Apollo.io gives you a self-serve database with a free tier and transparent paid plans. Findymail and RocketReach are strong for individual email finding. For building targeted lists at scale, a B2B lead database with title, seniority, industry, location, and company size filters gets you what you need without an annual contract. Run everything through email verification before you send, and you'll have cleaner data than most teams paying ZoomInfo rates.

Do I need to verify emails from ZoomInfo or Clearbit before sending?

Yes. Regardless of which data provider you use. ZoomInfo's email deliverability runs around 85%, which means a meaningful percentage of any list you pull will bounce. Clearbit/Breeze runs lower bounce rates at 4-7%, but you're still not at zero. Always validate your list before any campaign send. Unverified bounces damage your sender domain reputation, which hurts deliverability for everyone on that domain - not just the campaign that triggered it.

Can I use Clearbit with Salesforce?

No. Since being rebranded as Breeze Intelligence under HubSpot, Clearbit is only available as a native feature inside HubSpot. If your team uses Salesforce as your primary CRM, Clearbit is not an option. You'd need to migrate to HubSpot to access it, which is not a rational trade for most teams. Look at ZoomInfo, Cognism, or a modular data stack that integrates with Salesforce natively.