Short answer: they solve different problems. PhantomBuster is an automation tool: you pay for hours of run time ("execution time") and slots for scripts called Phantoms, which collect data from websites and run multi-step workflows. Apollo is a contact database with outreach tools: you pay for credits that reveal and export people it already has. If you want to pull lists from places you already work and chain steps together, PhantomBuster fits. If you want to search for new prospects by title, industry and company size and email them from the same seat, Apollo fits. Start plans cost about the same: $69 a month for PhantomBuster Start, $59 for Apollo Basic.
What a month of each buys
| Plan | Monthly / annual billing | Main allowance | Email credits |
|---|---|---|---|
| PhantomBuster Start | $69 / $56 a month | 20 hours of run time, 5 slots | 500 a month |
| PhantomBuster Grow | $159 / $128 a month | 80 hours, 15 slots | 2,500 a month |
| PhantomBuster Scale | $439 / $352 a month | 300 hours, 50 slots | 10,000 a month |
| Apollo Basic | $59 / $49 a month | 30,000 credits a year | Inside the credit pool |
| Apollo Professional | $99 / $79 a month | 48,000 credits a year | Inside the credit pool |
Sources: PhantomBuster's help centre article on what each plan includes, updated 10 July 2026, which gives prices current as of May 2026; Apollo prices and credits as tracked by Zeliq (27 July 2026) and Costbench (26 July 2026), because apollo.io/pricing did not show prices as text when we checked on 17 October. PhantomBuster also has a free plan with limited run time, and Apollo a free plan with 900 credits a year. More on PhantomBuster pricing and Apollo pricing.
Time-based against record-based pricing
The two meters behave differently as you scale. PhantomBuster charges for how long Phantoms run, so a large extraction that runs for hours costs run time whether or not each row is useful; its email-discovery credits are a separate monthly pool. All of its resources reset each billing cycle and unused ones expire. Apollo charges per record you reveal or export, with emails, phone numbers and exports on separate limits inside its credit system, and its credits do not roll over either.
So the rough rule: if your bottleneck is the number of contacts, look at Apollo's credits. If it is the number of jobs you need to run on a schedule, look at PhantomBuster's hours and slots.
Can you use them together?
Some teams do: a Phantom collects a list, and Apollo enriches it with emails and phones before a sequence. That means two subscriptions, two credit systems and a CSV hand-off between them. Before you pay for both, check two things:
- Whether Apollo's own filters already find the people your Phantom would collect. If they do, the Phantom is redundant.
- Whether PhantomBuster's email credits already cover your volume. At 500 a month on Start, they may be enough for one rep without Apollo.
Also note that any tool acting inside a LinkedIn account is subject to LinkedIn's own limits and rules; read our guide on whether LinkedIn scraping is legal before you automate anything.
A narrower option for one job
If the job is only to turn a LinkedIn or Sales Navigator search into a file with emails and phones, specialized B2B data extraction tools like Scrupp do that without complex run-time meters or multi-step workflows. Scrupp allows sales teams to export entire LinkedIn and Sales Navigator searches into CSV or Excel, bypassing standard display limits while offering built-in email finders, waterfall enrichment, and CRM integrations without automating direct profile actions.