The list of company research tools vying for attention is extensive. Many focus mainly on the North American region and a few European countries, like the UK and Germany.
Some offer stale data without in-depth insights, so users must conduct extra research to fill in the gaps or waste time speaking to the wrong people.
We’ve sifted through all that—we talked to our customers and checked the research tools websites and product review sites, like G2, Capterra, or Trust Radius.
The result?
A list of the best company research tools with the best data and international coverage:
Cognism is the best company research tool because of its international coverage (EMEA, NAM, APAC). Our Sales Prospector lets you run a company search in our database and then find qualified contacts in target your accounts.
It offers intent data, sales events triggers and technographics to identify in-market companies and more targeted research.
Prospector has seamless integrations with Salesforce, Outreach, and other sales tools to minimise admin work and save time with bulk-exporting contacts at speed.
*Subject to a generous fair use policy.
What do customers say?
The proof is in the pudding, so let’s hear from companies that used Cognism.👇
Cognism’s browser extension works with LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, and company websites. It helps research company employees, view their co-workers, and identify relevant decision-makers in other departments. It helps close multi-threading deals and increase a foothold in new markets.
Crunchbase lets businesses obtain high-quality information about private companies, salespeople, and investors. It provides sales reps with the necessary context for building prospecting lists, such as business objectives, industry, and firmographics.
Some users say its database is US-centric.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is among the best-known tools for researching companies. It leverages LinkedIn’s massive professional database to enable sales teams to identify and connect with leads.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator users often pair it with prospecting tools, such as the Cognism Chrome Extension, to enrich contact data with emails and phone numbers.
Key features:
ZoomInfo is a GTM platform that provides B2B data for sales, marketing, and recruitment teams. It helps mid-market and enterprise clients research the market and generate leads.
Some of our customers targeting Europe found that ZoomInfo’s mobile phone data wasn’t enough after using the tool for a while. Check out UK-based data providers.
💡 Find out more about how Cognism and ZoomInfo stack up.
SalesIntel is a company research tool that human-verifies contacts. Its focus is on the US market, with 22 million companies in its database.
Users report mixed results in some geographies, especially regarding direct dial accuracy.
💡 Find out more about the differences between Cognism and SalesIntel.
Apollo.io’s an all-in-one sales intelligence platform with a database where you can research 30 million companies.
A data breach in 2018 impacted customer confidence in Apollo.ai’s data security practices. Also, according to Apollo’s T&Cs, Apollo uses customer-submitted data to improve its own data.
💡 Find out more about how Cognism and Apollo.io compare.
UpLead is on the cheaper end of the company research tools spectrum, making it suitable for individual salespeople and small teams. Its database contains various filtering options.
Seamless.AI is a budget company research tool for teams that want to get prospecting cheaply. Seamless.AI pitches its platform as a “real-time search engine” rather than a database, the claimed benefit of which is fresher data.
Some users mention weak search filters, however.
LeadIQ is an AI-driven company research platform that integrates with your usual suspects like Salesforce, Outreach, HubSpot, and LinkedIn. This company research tool doesn't provide intent data.
💡 Check out Cognism vs LeadIQ comparison page.
B2B sales and marketing teams use company research tools to get contact information and all the company data they need to segment audiences and facilitate sales.
Sales intelligence platforms, like Cognism, allow businesses to run a company search and filter their databases according to various criteria, such as the company, location, revenue, headcount, industry, company event triggers or keywords.
When comparing different company research tools, data accuracy and coverage are factors that have the biggest influence on pricing. Cheaper options may suffer from poor data quality and coverage, fewer integrations, tight usage limits, unsatisfactory customer service, poor UI, missing features, and poor compliance protocols.
Most tools base their pricing on credit usage. If you’re looking for unrestricted prospecting, all Cognism packages include unrestricted views and exporting of individual and company data.
Cognism is the best company research tool because it lets you build targeted lead and account lists using advanced filters like company size, revenue, business structure, location, industry, event triggers (funding, hiring, etc.). It also provides the most accurate contact data in the US and Europe that adheres to strict international data privacy laws (GDPR and CCPA).
Yes, some market research tools have free versions or a free trial with basic functionality or limited searches. You can use them to learn the basics of the platform.
Other market research tools require you to speak to the sales teams that can advise on the best solution for you.
Before talking to a sales rep, or even when researching online, have in mind answers to these questions:
Take the best company research tool on the market for a spin. Book some time with our sales team 👇