# Sales intelligence and contact data: what AI models recommend, September 2026

GTM AI Recommendation Index, September 2026 Edition. Asked as "B2B contact data and sales intelligence platform" and as "B2B prospecting database", six framings each, to twelve models with search on, on behalf of a mid-market B2B company. Page: https://gtm-ai-index.com/sales/sales-intelligence-and-contact-data/

**Standing:** Apollo.io leads with 76% of first choices; verdict clear leader. 42 first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts.

## First-choice share

| # | Product | Share | Negative rate | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Apollo.io | 76% | 16% | 67 |
| 2 | ZoomInfo | 17% | 44% | 61 |
| 3 | UpLead | 5% | 3% | 33 |
| 4 | Cognism | 2% | 12% | 48 |
| 5 | Lusha | 0% | 21% | 48 |
| 6 | Clay | 0% | 0% | 14 |
| 7 | LinkedIn Sales Navigator | 0% | 0% | 14 |
| 8 | Salesmotion | 0% | 0% | 13 |
| 9 | Hunter | 0% | 0% | 12 |
| 10 | 6sense | 0% | 25% | 20 |
| 11 | HubSpot Breeze Intelligence | 0% | 0% | 10 |
| 12 | Demandbase | 0% | 18% | 11 |

## Each model's first choice on the direct prompt

- Claude Haiku 4.5: Apollo.io; alternatives Amplemarket, Lead411, ZoomInfo
- GPT-5.4 mini: Apollo.io, ZoomInfo; alternatives Cognism
- Gemini 3.5 Flash: Apollo.io; alternatives Clay, Cognism, UpLead
- Perplexity Sonar: Apollo.io; alternatives Cognism, UpLead
- Grok 4.1 Fast: Apollo.io; alternatives Cognism, Lead411, UpLead
- Mistral Small: Apollo.io; alternatives Cognism, Lusha, Salesmotion, UpLead
- DeepSeek V4 Flash: Apollo.io; alternatives Cognism, Lusha, ZoomInfo
- Llama 4 Maverick: ZoomInfo; alternatives Cognism, Salesloft, UpLead
- Qwen 3.7 Flash: Apollo.io; alternatives HubSpot Breeze Intelligence, Lusha, ZoomInfo
- Kimi K2: Apollo.io; alternatives Cognism, UpLead
- GLM 4.7 FlashX: Apollo.io; alternatives Lusha, UpLead
- MiniMax M2.5: Apollo.io; alternatives 6sense, Cognism, Lead411, LinkedIn Sales Navigator

## Sources the answers cite

20 of 72 answers came back with a source list, from 4 of 12 models. Sites named in the most answers:

- pipeline.zoominfo.com: 8 answers, 15 citations
- salesmotion.io: 7 answers, 9 citations
- amplemarket.com: 6 answers, 6 citations
- autobound.ai: 5 answers, 6 citations
- monday.com: 5 answers, 6 citations
- salesgenie.com: 5 answers, 5 citations
- cognism.com: 4 answers, 7 citations
- saleshandy.com: 4 answers, 6 citations

Pages named in the most answers:

- https://monday.com/blog/crm-and-sales/sales-intelligence-tools (5 answers)
- https://amplemarket.com/blog/best-sales-intelligence-platforms-2026 (4 answers)
- https://salesgenie.com/blog/top-b2b-contact-database-providers (4 answers)
- https://salesmotion.io/blog/best-b2b-contact-data-providers (4 answers)
- https://alpharun.com/blog/sales-intelligence-tools (3 answers)
- https://autobound.ai/blog/best-b2b-contact-database-providers (3 answers)
- https://avoma.com/blog/sales-intelligence-tools (3 answers)
- https://demandbase.com/blog/b2b-data-vendors (3 answers)
- https://nimitai.com/blog/best-sales-intelligence-tools (3 answers)
- https://pipeline.zoominfo.com/sales/sales-market-intelligence-platforms (3 answers)

## Warned against

- ZoomInfo: 27 of 61 labels negative. "What to avoid on a tight budget - ZoomInfo, Cognism, 6sense, Demandbase — enterprise tools with opaque pricing" (DeepSeek V4 Flash, budget prompt)
- Apollo.io: 11 of 67 labels negative. "Apollo’s "single-source" database approach often leads to high bounce rates... shares the same "scraping controversy" as Seamless.ai" (Qwen 3.7 Flash, negative prompt)
- Lusha: 10 of 48 labels negative. "Has the lowest rating on Trustpilot of 1.3/5. Users report accuracy has declined, particularly for phone numbers" (Claude Haiku 4.5, negative prompt)
- Seamless.AI: 10 of 19 labels negative. "Despite claiming 98% accuracy, independent community analysis and G2 reviews consistently place their actual email accuracy closer to 60–75%" (Qwen 3.7 Flash, negative prompt)

## Record

- Method: https://gtm-ai-index.com/methodology/
- Raw judge labels and full responses: https://gtm-ai-index.com/data/
- License: CC BY 4.0. Cite as GTM AI Recommendation Index, September 2026 Edition, gtm-ai-index.com.