ZoomInfo is built for contact and direct-dial volume. Ocean is built to decide which accounts to work, ranked from your own won and lost deals.
Used by teams at
ZoomInfoContact and direct-dial volume, all in one contract.
ZoomInfo is a B2B contact and company database with third-party intent, engagement tools and AI agents on top. It sells on custom annual contracts, with a free Lite tier for lookups.
Deciding which accounts to work, ranked from your own deals.
Ocean is contextual intelligence for go-to-market. It reads what every company actually does from its own website, learns what good looks like from your closed-won and closed-lost deals, and ranks your whole market against it, with the reason behind each score. The ranked accounts arrive in your CRM, your rep queue or your AI agents.
What buyers weigh, grouped by the job each part does. A green check marks the stronger side.
| Topic | Ocean.io logo Ocean | ZoomInfo |
|---|---|---|
| Finding the right accounts | ||
| Lookalikes from your closed-won deals | Ocean is stronger here. Core of the product. Segments and models learned from your won and lost CRM deals. | Agent Teams plays, launched October 2026. |
| The reason behind each account | Ocean is stronger here. Segment, score, tier and matched signals on every account and every export. | Copilot summaries. |
| How it understands a company | Ocean is stronger here. Reads what each company does from its own website. | Industry classifications and firmographic filters. |
| Buying signals | Up-to-date signals built in-house from each company’s own teams, leaders, hiring and website. | A third-party intent network. |
| Market sizing and segments | Ocean is stronger here. Segments your whole market and shows win rate, deal size and cycle time for each segment. | Database search with filters. |
| Buying committees | Ocean is stronger here. Roles learned from your won and lost deals, plus who fills them at each target account. | Org charts and buying groups. |
| Contacts and data | ||
| Paying for contacts | Ocean is stronger here. Verified emails and direct phones from a waterfall across 16+ data sources. Charged only when a contact is found, and exports are free. | One database, with credits used up as your team exports records. |
| Contact and direct-dial depth | Emails and direct phones found on demand through a waterfall across 16+ data sources. | ZoomInfo is stronger here. Its own contact database with direct dials. Reviewers praise its depth most. |
| Company data | 85M+ companies, built from the open web. | Large company database with industry classifications and company hierarchies. |
| Workflow and pricing | ||
| CRM sync | Two-way with HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive and Attio. Reads your deals to learn, then writes scores, segments and signals back. | Native integrations, including Salesforce, HubSpot and Microsoft Dynamics. |
| Contacts, intent and engagement in one contract | Sends accounts and contacts to the sequencer you already use: Apollo, Instantly or Lemlist. | ZoomInfo is stronger here. Bundled into the same contract. |
| AI agents and MCP | MCP server, public API and a chat agent on the same data and lookalike engine. | MCP integrations with Claude, OpenAI and Cursor, plus Agent Teams in GTM Studio. |
| Pricing | Two ways to buy: a flat-rate plan with credits included, or a custom plan built around your deals and credit volume. | A custom quote on an annual contract, with seats, credits and add-ons priced separately. |
Reviewers rate it highly for the depth of its contact data. Most complaints are about cost and contract terms.
4.5 out of 5
ZoomInfo’s average on G2
The rating is from G2. The themes come from two roundups of G2 reviews, by Cleverly and AiSDR.
ZoomInfo doesn’t publish prices. Every paid plan is a custom quote on an annual contract, so the best guide is what buyers report paying.
Median ZoomInfo contract
$33,500 a year
Half of buyers pay less than this and half pay more, across 1,573 purchases.
ZoomInfo is moving from seat-based packages to a low annual platform fee plus prepaid credits. ZoomInfo said so on its May 2026 earnings call. Rollout began in the third quarter.
A flat-rate plan with credits included, or a custom plan built around your deals.
Contacts are charged only when one is found. Exports are free.
See Ocean pricingThey’re built for different jobs, and many teams run both.
Choose ZoomInfo if Ocean.io logo Use both ifFive steps, working back from your renewal date.
Find the renewal date and the notice deadline in the auto-renewal clause. Everything else works back from those two dates.
Check what the agreement says about your exported data after you cancel, then export what it lets you keep.
Connect HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive or Attio. Ocean reads your closed-won and closed-lost deals to learn what a good account looks like.
Ocean proposes segments and scores, with the reason on each. Correct anything that doesn’t match how you sell.
Scores, segments and matched signals go back to your CRM, or into Apollo, Instantly or Lemlist sequences.
The right alternative depends on what you use ZoomInfo for. Here’s what each is built for and where Ocean starts.
ApolloBuilt for Contacts and sequencing in one tool, with published self-serve plans.
Where Ocean starts Ocean starts from which accounts deserve outreach, then pushes contacts to Apollo, Instantly or Lemlist sequences.
ClayBuilt for GTM engineers who assemble custom enrichment workflows from many data sources.
Where Ocean starts Ocean starts from your closed-won deals and ranks the market, instead of a build.
CognismBuilt for Teams selling into Europe that need phone-verified mobile numbers and GDPR-focused data.
Where Ocean starts Ocean ranks the accounts first, then finds the contacts.
DemandbaseBuilt for Enterprise ABM programs that combine account data, intent and advertising.
Where Ocean starts Ocean ranks accounts from your own wins and sells no intent or advertising.
LushaBuilt for Individual reps who need quick contact lookups from a browser extension.
Where Ocean starts Ocean decides which accounts to work, with a Chrome extension for company data as you browse.
Short answers on ZoomInfo’s cost, how Ocean compares and what switching takes.
No. Every paid plan is a custom quote on an annual contract.
ZoomInfo offers a free trial and a limited free Lite version. Trial terms change, so confirm them on ZoomInfo’s site.
A low annual platform fee plus prepaid credits, replacing seat-based packages. Rollout began in the third quarter of 2026.
Check the notice deadline in your auto-renewal clause first. That date decides whether you can leave at renewal. Then ask what happens to your exported data after you cancel.
Ocean reads what each company does from its own website, learns from your closed-won and closed-lost deals, and returns ranked matches with the reason on each one.
Ocean uses up-to-date signals built in-house from each company’s own teams, leaders, hiring and website, not a third-party intent feed.
ZoomInfo is a larger suite sold on custom annual quotes. Apollo combines contacts and sequencing, with published self-serve plans. Both start from contact data. Ocean starts from your closed-won deals and ranks the market. Many teams use Ocean to decide which accounts are worth a sequence, then push the contacts to Apollo, Instantly or Lemlist.
ZoomInfo sells its own contact and company database. Clay assembles data from many providers into custom workflows, with public usage-based pricing. Ocean ranks accounts from your closed-won deals. It shows the reason behind each score, so you don’t have to build the targeting logic yourself.
