Most comparisons of intent data providers are written by people who have never had to pay for one. This one is not. I run a LinkedIn prospecting agency, I look at buying signals every week, and I checked every price below on the vendor's own pricing page in August 2026.
Here is the short answer. If you have a marketing team and a five figure annual budget, the account level players (Bombora, 6sense, Demandbase, ZoomInfo, G2) tell you which companies are researching your category. If you are a founder doing your own outbound, none of those are for you: you want person level signals from tools that publish a price under $250 a month.
Below: what each provider actually detects, what it costs when the price is public, and who it fits.
What intent data providers actually sell
The category is one word covering three very different products. Sorting them out saves you three demo calls.
Third party topic intent. A vendor watches content consumption across a network of publisher sites, then tells you "these 40 companies had a spike in reading about CRM migration this week". It is anonymous by design, so it lands at the account level, not the person level. Bombora is the reference implementation and resells its data to a long list of other tools.
First party intent. Signals from your own property: who visited your pricing page, who came back three times, who opened the docs. You already own the raw data. The tool's job is to turn an anonymous IP into a company, and sometimes into a named person, then push it somewhere useful.
People and event signals. Job changes, hiring posts, funding rounds, webinar attendance, LinkedIn engagement, community activity. Not "intent" in the Bombora sense, but far more actionable for a small team, because a signal on a person gives you a first line to write. I broke down the ones that work in how to identify buying signals.
Most vendors now mix at least two of the three. Ask which one is theirs and which one is resold.
How to compare intent data providers without sitting through four demos
Six questions settle it faster than any feature grid:
- Where does the signal come from? Own network, publisher co-op, review site, your website, or a public source like job boards.
- Account or person? An account level spike tells you a company is in market. It does not tell you who to message.
- How fresh? Weekly topic surges are a planning input. A pricing page visit this morning is a same day action.
- Who does it cover? Several visitor identification tools resolve individuals in the United States only.
- How does the signal leave the tool? CRM object, Slack alert, webhook, or straight into an outreach sequence. This is where most intent data dies: it arrives in a dashboard nobody opens.
- Is the price public? In this market, a published price is a strong signal that the product is built for teams your size.
Signal and LinkedIn outreach in one tool
1. Sendable
Full disclosure: this is the product I am building with my cofounder, so it goes first, and you should read this entry with that in mind. Sendable watches a narrow set of signals (job posts, webinars, profile visits, first degree network activity), filters the profiles against the ideal customer you describe, and pushes the ones that match into a LinkedIn sequence you built in a visual workflow, with a shared inbox and multiple sender accounts. LinkedIn only, no email. Pricing is published: $49 per sender per month from 1 to 4 senders, $39 from 5 to 25, and $1,000 a month for unlimited senders. It is the right shape if the signal you care about is on LinkedIn and you want the outreach to happen in the same place, and the wrong shape if you need topic intent across the open web. Details on getsendable.io.
Account level intent data providers
These are the names that show up in analyst reports. All of them sell annual contracts and none of them publish a price.
2. Bombora
The topic intent standard. Bombora runs a co-op of B2B publisher sites and turns content consumption into Company Surge scores by topic. Forrester named it a Leader in its Q1 2025 intent data evaluation and called it the gold standard for account level intent feeds, per Bombora's own release. No price on the site, demo request only. Worth knowing that when another tool advertises "intent data", it is often Bombora underneath.
3. 6sense
Predictive account scoring on top of intent, ads, and an orchestration layer. The pricing page shows three editions built around Sales Intelligence, data credits, and the predictive AI model, with no numbers and no free plan. Built for a revenue team with an ABM motion, an admin, and a CRM someone maintains. Overkill below roughly ten people in go to market.
4. Demandbase
The other ABM platform. Its pricing page describes the model without giving a number: a platform fee that covers the software, plus a flat fee per user. That structure matters more than the headline price, because the per user fee is what makes it expensive as the team grows.
5. ZoomInfo
Intent is bundled into the wider sales intelligence product rather than sold alone, which is the point: you buy contact data and get topic intent inside the same account. Pricing is quote based by package, and I could not load their pricing page to confirm the current packaging.
6. G2 Buyer Intent
A different and, for some products, better signal: activity on your G2 category and product pages. G2 reports category page views, competitor comparisons, and pricing page visits by account, which is evaluation stage behavior rather than early research. No price on the page, and it is normally attached to a G2 profile contract. If your category has an active G2 page, this is the highest quality third party signal you can buy.
Sales data platforms with intent bundled in
7. Cognism
A contact database with intent attached. Cognism is explicit that its intent layer is Bombora Company Surge data, and its pricing page lists Standard and Pro tiers on a credit model, with credits allocated per seat and no published amount. Sensible if you need European mobile numbers anyway and want intent in the same tool.
8. Apollo.io
The cheapest way to get a database, sequences, and intent signals in one place. Apollo publishes its plans openly and keeps a free Starter plan described on the pricing page as free forever. The pricing table would not render for me on the day I checked, so confirm the current per seat numbers yourself before you plan a budget. Intent is a bought in layer, not Apollo's own network.
Website visitor identification tools
First party intent, priced for smaller teams. This is where a founder should start.
9. Dealfront (Leadfeeder)
Company level website visitor identification with a European focus. The Leadfeeder pricing page lists a free Lite plan, Discover from 79 euros a month billed annually (113 euros monthly), Activate from 369 euros a month annually, Scale at 599 euros a month billed annually only, and a custom Enterprise tier. Mature product, good CRM connections, company level rather than person level.
10. Koala
Built for product led companies: website visits plus product usage, scored into an account list your reps can work. The pricing page is one of the clearest in the category: a free plan with 2 seats and 100 credits a month, Starter at $200 a month, Growth at $1,000 a month, and a custom Business tier. If you have a self serve signup and want to know which trials deserve a human, start here.
11. RB2B
Person level identification of your United States website traffic, pushed to Slack. The pricing page lists a free plan, Starter at $79 a month, Pro from $149 a month, and Pro+ at $199 a month, with contact level identification and business emails on the paid Pro tiers and company level coverage elsewhere. The cheapest way to turn traffic you already have into named people. Coverage is partial and United States only, so treat the volume estimates as estimates.
12. Warmly
Website deanonymization plus chat and AI follow up in one product. The pricing page does publish numbers, and they are higher than the tools above: AI Web Deanonymization at $10,000 a year (or $4,875 a quarter), Inbound Chat at $20,000 a year, AI Inbound Autopilot at $30,000 a year, each starting at 10,000 credits a month, with a GTM Signals package as a paid add on. Priced for a funded team with real inbound traffic.
People level and social signal tools
13. Common Room
Aggregates signals from many places at once: your product, your website, GitHub, Slack communities, social activity, then resolves them to a person. The pricing page starts at $2,500 a month billed annually for Essential (5 seats, up to 100k contacts), with custom Advanced and Enterprise tiers. The most complete person level signal product on this list, and priced accordingly.
14. Trigify
Social listening turned into a prospect list: it tracks who engages with specific LinkedIn posts, accounts, and topics, then scores and syncs them. The pricing page lists Starter at $40 a month, Max at $199 a month, and a custom Enterprise tier, with credit overage billed per credit. Cheap, narrow, and useful if your buyers are actually active on LinkedIn.
15. UserGems
Job change and champion tracking: when someone who knew your product moves to a new company, that is a warm account. UserGems publishes its plans, and they are enterprise sized: Core at $40,000 a year, Advanced at $75,000, Elite at $150,000, with contact level intent and web deanonymization on the upper tiers. It pays off when you already have thousands of past users and buyers to track.
Side by side: signal, price, and who it fits
Prices checked on each vendor's official page in August 2026. Quote only means the vendor publishes no number.
| Provider | Signal source | Resolution | Published price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sendable | LinkedIn signals plus outreach | Person | $49 or $39 per sender, $1,000 unlimited |
| Bombora | Publisher co-op, topic surge | Account | Quote only |
| 6sense | Intent plus predictive model | Account | Quote only |
| Demandbase | Intent plus ABM orchestration | Account | Platform fee plus per user, quote only |
| ZoomInfo | Bundled with sales intelligence | Account | Quote only |
| G2 Buyer Intent | G2 category and product pages | Account | Quote only |
| Cognism | Bombora intent plus contact data | Account | Credit based, quote only |
| Apollo.io | Bought in intent plus database | Account | Free plan, paid tiers published |
| Dealfront (Leadfeeder) | Your website traffic | Company | Free, then from 79 euros a month |
| Koala | Website plus product usage | Company and person | Free, $200, $1,000 a month |
| RB2B | Your website traffic, US | Person | Free, $79, $149, $199 a month |
| Warmly | Website plus chat plus AI | Person | From $10,000 a year |
| Common Room | Product, social, community, web | Person | From $2,500 a month, annual |
| Trigify | LinkedIn and social engagement | Person | $40 and $199 a month |
| UserGems | Job changes, champion moves | Person | $40,000 to $150,000 a year |
Two things stand out once it is laid out like this. First, the price gap is enormous: the same category holds a $79 a month tool and a $150,000 a year contract. Second, price tracks resolution and delivery, not signal quality. The expensive tools are expensive because they resolve identity at scale and orchestrate across a team, not because their signal is ten times better.
How to choose if you are a founder doing your own outbound
You do not need topic intent. Topic intent answers "which of these 5,000 target accounts should marketing warm up this quarter". If you are sending your own messages, your question is "who do I write to today, and what do I open with".
What I would do, in order:
- Start with signals you already own and pay nothing for. Website visitors, trial signups that went quiet, people who engaged with your posts, your first degree network. RB2B's free tier or Koala's free tier will cover the website part.
- Add one paid person level source that matches where your buyers actually are. LinkedIn engagement if they post, product usage if you are self serve, G2 if your category has traffic there.
- Wire the signal to an action on the same day. A Slack alert nobody acts on is worth zero. The signal has to land in a sequence, a task, or your inbox with the context attached.
- Only then consider third party intent, once you have a team large enough that someone owns account prioritization as a job.
The failure mode I see most often is buying the signal and never changing the message. A pricing page visit is only useful if your first line references it. If the message that follows the signal is the same template you sent everyone else, you have bought an expensive list. There is a longer list of signal to message pairings in my guide to buying signals.
FAQ
What is the best intent data provider for a small B2B team?
For a team under ten people, the best intent data providers are the first party ones. RB2B (free to $199 a month) or Koala (free to $1,000 a month) turn traffic you already have into named accounts or people. Third party topic intent from Bombora or 6sense assumes a marketing team and a budget you probably do not have yet.
How much do intent data providers cost?
It splits in two. Website and social signal tools publish prices: free tiers exist, and paid plans run from about $40 to $1,000 a month. Account level platforms (Bombora, 6sense, Demandbase, ZoomInfo, G2) publish nothing and sell annual contracts. UserGems, which does publish, starts at $40,000 a year, which gives a sense of that end of the market.
What is the difference between first party and third party intent data?
First party intent is behavior on your own property: website visits, product usage, docs and pricing page views. You own it and it is free to collect. Third party intent is content consumption elsewhere on the web, bought from a vendor like Bombora that runs a publisher co-op. First party is more accurate, third party has more reach.
Do intent data providers integrate with CRMs?
Nearly all of them do, and it is the first thing to check. Bombora, 6sense, Demandbase, ZoomInfo and Cognism push scores onto CRM account records. Koala, RB2B, Warmly and Common Room sync people and alerts to Salesforce, HubSpot and Slack. Confirm which direction the sync runs and which object the signal lands on before you sign.
Are there free intent data providers?
Yes, at the first party end. RB2B, Koala, Leadfeeder and Apollo all publish free plans that identify some share of your website traffic or give you a starting credit allowance. No vendor gives away third party topic intent for free, because they pay for the underlying network. Free tiers cap volume and identification rates, so treat them as a test.