Do you make money from the tools you review?

We may earn an affiliate commission when you buy through some links, and we run display ads on guide pages. Neither affects a score, rank or verdict: scores are computed from the rubric below before any commercial relationship is considered, and we sell none of the tools we rank.

Where does the data-accuracy score come from?

From the hardest evidence available, in priority order: independent same-list benchmark tests where they exist (the gold standard), the vendor's own caveated accuracy guarantee, and the verified-buyer review signal from G2, Capterra, TrustRadius and Gartner Peer Insights. We don't use Trustpilot for accuracy, and we're building our own same-list benchmark; the schema already carries the fields for it.

Do you use Trustpilot scores?

We don't publish them. For B2B data vendors, Trustpilot reviewers are mostly data subjects who object to being in the database, or one-off billing disputes, almost never the sales reps who use the product daily, so the score answers a different question and is easy to game. We won't put a number we don't trust next to a company's name. We do weigh documented complaint patterns (BBB filings, court records, recurring review themes) as a conduct signal for the compliance score, never product quality.

Why is your score sometimes lower than the G2 rating?

G2 measures product satisfaction among paying users. Our score also weighs pricing transparency and compliance (including regulator fines and litigation) so a tool can be loved by its users and still lose points for opaque pricing or a data-protection penalty.

Methodology · Last reviewed June 2026

How we test and score

This site exists to be more trustworthy than the vendors who rank their own tools. So here's exactly how we score every provider: the same rubric, the same weights, every number traceable to a source.

In short

We score each provider out of 10 on five weighted criteria: data accuracy (30%), coverage (20%), ease of use (20%), pricing & transparency (15%), and compliance (15%). The overall score is the weighted average of those five. Each sub-score is built from verifiable evidence (published pricing, documented features, the public regulatory record, independent benchmark tests where they exist, and the weight of verified-buyer reviews), then weighted and combined by us. We sell none of the tools we rank.

The five criteria and their weights

Every provider is measured on the same five axes. Data accuracy carries the most weight because it's the thing you actually pay for: a cheap tool full of dead numbers is not cheap.

Data accuracy & freshness

30%

How often an email or phone number is correct, current and deliverable: the thing you actually pay for.

Anchored to: In priority order: independent same-list match-rate / bounce benchmarks where they exist (the gold standard, e.g. Cleanlist-style tests on one shared sample); the vendor's own accuracy guarantee, discounted for its stated scope; and the verified-buyer review signal from G2, Capterra, TrustRadius and Gartner Peer Insights (with review counts). We do NOT use Trustpilot for accuracy; for these vendors its reviewers are mostly data subjects and billing disputes, not buyers.

Coverage & data depth

20%

How much of the market a provider can actually reach: database size, regional depth for the region you're buying for, and the breadth of data types (email, mobile, intent, visitor-ID, technographic).

Anchored to: Vendor-stated contact/company counts (labelled as claims), the data types documented on the vendor's own product pages, and the regional-strength evidence from reviews and comparisons.

Ease of use

20%

How quickly a rep can go from sign-up to a usable list: UI, Chrome extension, CRM integration, learning curve.

Anchored to: Anchored to what verified buyers report: the published 'Ease of Use' ratings on G2 and Capterra, normalised to our 10-point scale and rounded to one decimal, read alongside the dominant theme in their written reviews. Where G2's criterion isn't published, we anchor to the Capterra rating plus the dominant review theme and score conservatively.

Pricing & transparency

15%

Whether you can find out what it costs without a sales call, and whether the price is fair for what you get.

Anchored to: Pricing transparency (publishes self-serve pricing scores higher; demo-gated scores lower), the value-for-money signal in reviews, entry price relative to the category, and documented contract friction (minimum seats, annual lock-in, auto-renewal complaints).

Compliance & data ethics

15%

How defensible the data is to use under GDPR/PECR (UK/EU) or CAN-SPAM/CCPA (US): sourcing transparency, opt-out, and regulatory record.

Anchored to: Objective facts first: documented legal basis and data-sourcing method, certifications (ISO 27001/27701, SOC 2), DNC/notified-jurisdiction screening, opt-out availability, data-broker registration, and any regulator fine or right-of-publicity litigation on record (penalised). This is the one place we weigh documented complaint patterns (BBB filings, court records, recurring review themes), read as a signal of how a vendor treats people and handles billing, never as a product-quality score. We don't publish a Trustpilot rating.

How the overall score is calculated

The overall is a documented weighted average of the five sub-scores, nothing more. It's reproducible: take our sub-scores, apply the weights above, and you'll get the same number. Here's the live calculation behind our Cognism score.

Criterion	Sub-score	Weight	Contribution
Data accuracy & freshness	8.5	30%	2.55
Coverage & data depth	7.5	20%	1.50
Ease of use	9.4	20%	1.88
Pricing & transparency	5.5	15%	0.82
Compliance & data ethics	9.0	15%	1.35
Cognism overall			8.1

Shown as a numeric seal out of 10, with sub-score bars, never as five stars, and never rounded up to flatter a tool.

How we weigh review sources

Reviews corroborate a score; they don't set it. And not all "reviews" measure the same thing, so we don't treat them the same. This is the part most comparison sites get wrong, averaging a buyer-satisfaction score with an angry-data-subject score as if they answered the same question.

Independent benchmark tests (same list, measured bounce/match rates): the gold standard for accuracy. We cite them wherever they exist and are building our own.
G2, Capterra, TrustRadius, Gartner Peer Insights: verified-buyer reviews from people who actually use the tool, read as one corroborating signal among several. They help calibrate data accuracy, ease of use and value; they don't decide them.
Trustpilot: for B2B data vendors this skews heavily to non-buyers: people who object to being in a database, or one-off billing disputes. The score answers a different question from G2, and it's easy to game, so we don't publish a Trustpilot rating; we won't put a number we don't trust next to a company's name. We do read documented complaint patterns (BBB filings, court records, recurring review themes) as a conduct signal for the compliance score only, never product quality.
Vendr procurement data: real transaction medians, the hardest evidence we have for what sales-led tools actually cost.

What the numbers mean

8.5+ Best in class Category-leading on the things that matter; few real weaknesses.
7.5+ Strong A dependable choice with clear strengths and known, liveable trade-offs.
6.5+ Solid Does the job well for the right buyer; weaker on one or two axes.
5.0+ Mixed Real strengths offset by real problems. Fit depends heavily on your use case.
0.0+ Weak Significant issues we'd want resolved before recommending.

How we source pricing

Two kinds of vendor, two approaches, and we tell you which you're looking at on every page:

Self-serve vendors (Lusha, Kaspr, Apollo) publish their prices. We record them verbatim and de-obfuscate the credit models, translating "credits" into what you'll actually pay for emails and phone numbers.
Sales-led vendors (Cognism, ZoomInfo) hide pricing behind a demo. We publish researched estimates from procurement data (Vendr), reported quotes and reputable reviews, each clearly flagged unconfirmed estimate and shown in italics with an est. tag. We never present an estimate as a confirmed price.

How we stay independent

We sell none of the tools we rank. We may earn an affiliate commission when you buy through some links, and we run display ads on guide pages, but the score is computed from the rubric above before any commercial relationship is considered, and a commission never moves a rank or a verdict. Every affiliate link is marked rel="sponsored" with a visible disclosure. Every page carries a "last reviewed" date; we re-verify figures before they age.

Common questions

Do you make money from the tools you review?: We may earn an affiliate commission when you buy through some links, and we run display ads on guide pages. Neither affects a score, rank or verdict: scores are computed from the rubric below before any commercial relationship is considered, and we sell none of the tools we rank.
Where does the data-accuracy score come from?: From the hardest evidence available, in priority order: independent same-list benchmark tests where they exist (the gold standard), the vendor's own caveated accuracy guarantee, and the verified-buyer review signal from G2, Capterra, TrustRadius and Gartner Peer Insights. We don't use Trustpilot for accuracy, and we're building our own same-list benchmark; the schema already carries the fields for it.
Do you use Trustpilot scores?: We don't publish them. For B2B data vendors, Trustpilot reviewers are mostly data subjects who object to being in the database, or one-off billing disputes, almost never the sales reps who use the product daily, so the score answers a different question and is easy to game. We won't put a number we don't trust next to a company's name. We do weigh documented complaint patterns (BBB filings, court records, recurring review themes) as a conduct signal for the compliance score, never product quality.
Why is your score sometimes lower than the G2 rating?: G2 measures product satisfaction among paying users. Our score also weighs pricing transparency and compliance (including regulator fines and litigation) so a tool can be loved by its users and still lose points for opaque pricing or a data-protection penalty.