THE COGNISM ALTERNATIVE

Cognism Is Built For The Dial. Datamagnet Is Built For The API.

Cognism licenses phone-verified contacts to sales teams, per seat, on a quote. Datamagnet returns current people, company and post data to your code, per request, on a published price list. Different jobs, and often not the same buyer.

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Datamagnet
Cognism
What it is
Live data API
Contact database
Data freshness
Fetched at request
Refreshed records
Phone-verified mobiles
Priced by seat
Credits only
5 seats included
Prices published
Prospecting quoted
Cognism publishes no price for its prospecting plans
Quote onlyCognism publishes no price for its prospecting plans
Included in each Cognism prospecting tier; Datamagnet has none
5 seatsIncluded in each Cognism prospecting tier; Datamagnet has none
Per live Datamagnet profile, no seat required
1 creditPer live Datamagnet profile, no seat required

Datamagnet vs Cognism: the short answer

Cognism is a sales intelligence platform built for calling: phone-verified mobile numbers, strong European coverage, do-not-call screening and GDPR-first sourcing, sold as per-seat subscriptions with five seats included in each published tier and the price quoted by its sales team. Datamagnet is a live data API — you POST a public profile, company or post URL and get structured JSON fetched at that moment, at 1 credit per profile, with no seats. Choose Cognism if your reps need verified mobiles to dial, especially across EMEA. Choose Datamagnet if code needs current profiles, post engagement and job-change signals.

Our verdict

Cognism is the better product for anyone whose next step is a phone call. Phone-verified mobiles, do-not-call screening across the territories it sells into, and European decision-maker coverage its own site puts above 90% are things Datamagnet does not attempt and will not attempt. The difference is shape and access: Cognism is bought through a demo, priced per seat with five included, and its own pricing page states that API access requires a Prospecting seat. Datamagnet is a credit-metered API you can start on a $10 pack, returning the live profile as it stands at the moment you ask. If dialling is the job, buy Cognism. If the consumer of the data is software, buy Datamagnet.

Which one should you pick?

Straight guidance, including the cases where we're the wrong answer.

Choose Datamagnet if

  • The thing calling the API is your product, a data pipeline or an agent, and it should not need a human seat licence
  • You need the profile as it stands right now — title, employer, headline, recent activity — rather than a record refreshed on a cycle
  • You want post content, commenters, reactors and reposters as structured data
  • You want ICP search, live people search, or the ability to POST a Sales Navigator search URL
  • You want job-change and engagement signals delivered to an HMAC-signed webhook
  • You want to start today on a $10 credit pack instead of a demo, a quote and a seat count

Choose Cognism if

  • Your team dials. Datamagnet returns no phone numbers of any kind, and phone-verified mobile data is the whole of Cognism
  • You need work email addresses. Datamagnet does not find or verify email, so it cannot be your contact provider
  • You sell into Europe and need GDPR-first sourcing, notification handling and suppression against 15 do-not-call registries
  • You want third-party buying intent on accounts — Cognism carries Bombora Company Surge, Datamagnet carries none
  • Your reps prospect from a Chrome extension over LinkedIn and company websites, then push contacts into Salesforce, HubSpot, Dynamics, Salesloft or Outreach without engineering work
  • You want the database delivered in bulk to Snowflake, S3, Google Cloud, Databricks or SFTP under a data licence

Datamagnet vs Cognism, feature by feature

What each tool actually returns, how fresh it is, and what it costs to run.

Data & API coverage

Data & API coverage: Datamagnet compared with Cognism, feature by feature
FeatureDatamagnetCognism
Data collected at the moment of request YesStored database, refreshed on a cycle
Enrichment keyed on a public LinkedIn URL YesDatabase match
Phone-verified mobile numbers No10m+ phone-verified contacts
Work email addresses No Yes
DNC/TPS suppression and GDPR-first sourcing No15 DNC lists
Third-party buying intent NoBombora · 12 topics from 11,000+
Technographic attributes No20,000+ technologies
Chrome extension for LinkedIn No Yes
Native CRM sync (Salesforce, HubSpot, Dynamics) No Yes
Post content & stats Yes No
Post engagement (commenters, reactors, reposters) Yes No
Sales Navigator search via API YesChrome extension, not API
Job-change signals via API6 signal types · HMAC webhooksJob-move detection in CRM Enrichment
Usable without buying seats YesAPI access requires a Prospecting seat
Prices published on the websitePer-credit and per-planCRM Enrichment from $12,000/yr only

Cognism capabilities are summarized from their public documentation and pricing pages, last checked July 2026. Products change — verify against their current offering before you buy.

A seat licence for software

Cognism's pricing page answers the integration question directly: API access requires a Prospecting seat. Both prospecting tiers include five seats, credits are allocated per seat, and the price is quoted rather than published. That is a coherent model for a floor of reps and an awkward one for a service that never opens a browser. Datamagnet has no seat concept at all — you buy requests, and the only thing that consumes them is a successful API call.

  • Cognism — Standard and Pro, five seats included in each, price on request; one credit reveals one contact, and credits are allocated per seat
  • Cognism — the single price published on its own site is CRM Enrichment, from $12,000 a year
  • Datamagnet — $10 for 200 pay-as-you-go credits valid 12 months, or Starter at $39 a month for 1,000 credits; no seats, no quote
0 seats
Datamagnet has no per-seat pricing. A pipeline calling the API is not a licence.

Pricing, side by side

What you pay Cognism versus what you pay us, for the same work.

Cognism

Sales-led and mostly unpublished. The prospecting tiers are quoted by Cognism's team, each includes five seats, and credits are allocated per seat — one credit reveals one contact, with no charge to view a contact you already revealed.

Standard5 seats included · list building, filters, AI search, CSV export
Quote only
Pro5 seats included · adds premium mobile data, on-demand verification, intent
Quote only
CRM EnrichmentCredits reused only when key details change, such as a job move
From $12,000/yr
Data-as-a-ServicePriced by data type, volume and delivery method
Quote only

Datamagnet

Credits, not seats. Charged only on successful requests, and 10 free credits to test before you pay anything.

FreeOn signup, no card
10 credits
Starter1,000 credits/mo
$39/mo
Pro10,000 credits/mo
$99/mo
Scale25,000 credits/mo · webhooks + bulk export
$199/mo
Pay-as-you-go200 credits $10 → 100,000 credits $2,000
from $0.02/credit

Cognism publishes no seat or platform price for Standard or Pro; both are quoted after a demo. Third-party estimates of Cognism's annual cost circulate widely and we do not repeat figures we cannot verify on Cognism's own site. Its pricing page also states that API access requires a Prospecting seat. Competitor pricing is taken from their public pricing page and was last checked July 2026; list prices change and negotiated rates differ. See Datamagnet pricing for our current plans.

Where each tool genuinely wins

No tool wins everywhere. Here's the honest split.

Where Cognism wins

  • Phone-verified mobile numbers — over 10 million globally, which Cognism says triples connect rates. Datamagnet returns no phone numbers at all, and for a calling team that settles the comparison
  • European depth: Cognism claims over 90% coverage of European decision-makers and employs a research team that verifies mobile numbers by hand, which no public-profile API replicates
  • Compliance built for regulated outbound — GDPR- and CCPA-aligned sourcing, a notified database, screening against 15 do-not-call and TPS registries, ISO 27001 and ISO 27701 certification, and a completed SOC 2 Type II audit for 2026
  • Verified work email addresses alongside the mobiles, so one record gives a rep both channels; Datamagnet supplies neither
  • Bombora Company Surge buying intent, with up to 12 topics selected from a library of more than 11,000 — Datamagnet has no third-party intent data
  • A Chrome extension that works over LinkedIn and company websites, plus native sync into Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Microsoft Dynamics, Salesloft and Outreach
  • Bulk Data-as-a-Service delivery into Snowflake, S3, Google Cloud, Databricks or SFTP for teams that want the database inside their own warehouse
  • A finished product for non-technical users: search, AI research, list building and CRM push with no engineering work at any point

Where Datamagnet wins

  • Every profile fetched live at request time rather than served from a stored record refreshed on a cycle
  • Published, per-endpoint credit prices you can read without booking a demo
  • No seats anywhere in the pricing — a service calling the API does not need a licence
  • Post content, commenters, reactors and reposters as structured data, which Cognism does not expose
  • ICP search, live people search and Sales Navigator URL search, all through the API
  • Six job-change and engagement signal types delivered by HMAC-signed webhook or email digest
  • Charged only on successful requests, with 10 free credits and no card to test first
  • Pay-as-you-go from $10 for 200 credits, valid 12 months, with no seat minimum and no annual commitment

Datamagnet vs Cognism: FAQ

It depends what you need from the record. Cognism is a sales intelligence database built around phone-verified mobile numbers, verified emails and European coverage, sold per seat through a sales conversation. Datamagnet is a live professional-profile data API: you POST a public profile, company or post URL and get structured JSON fetched at that moment, at 1 credit per profile with no seats. It replaces Cognism for enrichment and monitoring, never for dialling.

Cognism does not publish prices for its prospecting plans. Its pricing page lists two tiers, Standard and Pro, each with five seats included, and directs buyers to speak to the team for a quote. Credits are allocated per seat, and Cognism defines one credit as one revealed contact. The only figure published on its own site is CRM Enrichment, which starts from $12,000 a year. Data-as-a-Service is priced by data type, volume and delivery method.

No. Datamagnet does not supply phone numbers, does not find or verify email addresses, and has no dialler or sequencer. It returns structured public data — person and company profiles, posts, engagement, search results and signals — and nothing else. Cognism's phone-verified mobiles are its central asset, so a team whose next action is a call should buy Cognism. Many teams run Datamagnet for enrichment and monitoring alongside a contact provider.

Yes. Cognism publishes developer documentation covering search and enrichment endpoints, and offers Data-as-a-Service delivery into Snowflake, S3, Google Cloud, Databricks or SFTP. The constraint is commercial rather than technical: its pricing page states that API access requires a Prospecting seat, though it lists bulk delivery as a standalone product. Datamagnet sells API credits directly, with no seat and no minimum — a $10 pay-as-you-go pack runs in production.

Cognism, clearly. Its own site claims over 90% coverage of European decision-makers, more than 10 million phone-verified contacts globally, a research team that verifies mobiles by hand, and screening against 15 do-not-call lists. Datamagnet licenses no European contact database and returns no phone numbers. What Datamagnet adds in Europe is current professional context — live titles, employers, posts and job-change signals — layered on top of contact data you already license.

Cognism launched Sales Companion in March 2025, an AI prospecting interface it said reaches 440 million contacts and 100 million mobile numbers. Its published packages have since settled into Standard and Pro for prospecting, plus CRM Enrichment and Data-as-a-Service, and the platform still meters usage in credits. Cognism has also appointed Dominic Allon as chief executive, completed its SOC 2 Type II audit for 2026, and shipped a native two-way HubSpot sync.

Sources

Every competitor claim on this page traces back to one of these.

  1. 1.Cognism — Pricing (Standard and Pro, 5 seats included, credits per seat, "API access requires a Prospecting seat", Bombora intent topics) — checked July 2026
  2. 2.Cognism — CRM Enrichment ("CRM Enrichment from $12,000 /year", job-move detection) — checked July 2026
  3. 3.Cognism — Diamond Data (10m+ phone-verified contacts, 3x connect rate, 15 DNC lists, 95% of director-level contacts refreshed every 30 days) — checked July 2026
  4. 4.Cognism — B2B data (over 90% coverage of European decision-makers, human mobile verification) — checked July 2026
  5. 5.Cognism — Data-as-a-Service (API or batch delivery into Snowflake, S3, Google Cloud, Databricks, SFTP) — checked July 2026
  6. 6.Cognism — Sales Intelligence (Chrome extension over LinkedIn and websites, AI search, buying signals) — checked July 2026
  7. 7.Cognism — Our data (database of over 20,000 technologies, 11,000+ intent topics, 15 DNC lists) — checked July 2026
  8. 8.Cognism — Compliance (GDPR and CCPA guidelines, notified database, DNC/TPS screening, ISO 27001 & ISO 27701, SOC 2 Type II) — checked July 2026
  9. 9.Cognism newsroom — Sales Companion launch, 18 March 2025 (440M contacts, 100M mobile numbers) — checked July 2026
  10. 10.Cognism newsroom — Dominic Allon appointed CEO, SOC 2 Type II audit for 2026, native two-way HubSpot sync — checked July 2026
  11. 11.Cognism — FAQ (EMEA, US and APAC coverage; hundreds of millions of company and contact profiles) — checked July 2026
  12. 12.Cognism — Integrations (Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Microsoft Dynamics, Salesloft, Outreach, Zapier) — checked July 2026
  13. 13.Cognism — API developer documentation — checked July 2026

Try Datamagnet against Cognism on your own data

10 free credits, no credit card. Run the same lookups through both and compare the JSON yourself.

  • Live data at request time
  • Charged only on success
  • No seats, no annual contract
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