Dun and Bradstreet competitors in 2026: credit bureaus and sales data tools, compared separately

Dun and Bradstreet competitors fall into two groups, because this one search has two different buyers. If you want a credit report and a risk score on a company, the competitors are Experian, Equifax and Creditsafe. If you want the people at that company with work emails and phone numbers, they are ZoomInfo, Apollo.io, Cognism, Lead411, UpLead, Crunchbase, Clay and Scalelist.

Almost every page that ranks for this term serves only one of those buyers and never says which. This one sorts you in the first screen, then compares the eight sales-data tools on identical fields: coverage, the contact fields you get, work email versus mobile number, how it is sold and what one contact costs.

We make Scalelist, one of the eight. Scalelist is not a credit bureau. It sells no risk scores and no D-U-N-S numbers, and its entry below says exactly that.

Credit report or sales contact data? Sort yourself first

Dun & Bradstreet sells two unrelated products under one brand, so the right alternative depends on which one you were using. One side answers “will this company pay me”, the other answers “who do I call there”.

• You want a credit report, a score, a D-U-N-S number or a payment history. Stay in the credit world: D&B’s own cheaper tiers, Experian, Equifax or Creditsafe. Skip to the next section and then stop reading.
• You want names, titles, work emails and phone numbers to run outbound. That is D&B Hoovers territory, and the eight tools in the table further down replace it at a published price.

The two jobs do not substitute for each other. A business credit score tells you nothing about who heads operations at that company, and a verified mobile number tells you nothing about how fast they pay invoices.

If you came here for a business credit report

If you need a business credit report, your options are D&B itself at a lower tier, Experian, Equifax or Creditsafe. Scalelist is not in this group, and neither are the sales-data tools below.

Dun & Bradstreet publishes real prices for its small-business credit products, even though D&B Hoovers has none. From its Small Business Pricing Schedule, as of 14 October 2026: one Business Information Report costs 189.99 USD, a BIR Snapshot 139.99 USD and one Credit Evaluator Plus report 61.99 USD.

Subscriptions sit alongside those packs. D&B Credit Insights runs 49 USD a month (499 USD a year) for Basic, 149 USD (1,499 USD) for Plus and 199 USD (1,999 USD) for Premium.

Provider	What it sells	Published US price	Sales contact data
Dun & Bradstreet	Business Information Reports, Credit Evaluator, Credit Insights tiers, D-U-N-S Number	189.99 USD per report; Credit Insights from 49 USD a month	Sold separately as D&B Hoovers, price not published
Experian Business	Business credit reports and scores on US, Canadian and international companies	Not published on the product page	Not sold
Equifax Business	Commercial credit and risk scoring on “76 million U.S. based businesses”	Not published (quote)	Not sold
Creditsafe	Company credit reports with a score and a suggested credit limit, plus group structure	Not published (one report is offered at no cost to business users)	Company and contact data on “more than 66 million companies in 13 countries”, pricing not published

Getting a D-U-N-S Number itself is free, and US non-public companies can view and request updates to their own file for free through D-U-N-S Manager. D&B also notes that a D-U-N-S Number “isn’t required for U.S. federal government contracts”, though many other agencies and companies still use it.

That is the end of our credit coverage. We sell contact data, not credit data, so we are not the right source for a credit decision. The rest of this page is about the other half of the search.

What type of company is Dun & Bradstreet?

Dun & Bradstreet is a business data and analytics company, founded in 1841, whose products are anchored to the D-U-N-S Number, “a unique nine-digit identifier used exclusively for businesses”. It sells business credit and risk data to finance, procurement and compliance teams, and company and contact data to sales and marketing teams through D&B Hoovers.

It is no longer a public company. Clearlake Capital completed its acquisition of Dun & Bradstreet Holdings on August 26, 2025, paying 9.15 USD per share, and the stock was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange.

The deal was announced on March 24, 2025 and approved by shareholders on June 12, 2025. The last full year D&B reported as a public company was 2024, with revenue of 2.38 billion USD.

Why people look for Dun & Bradstreet alternatives

Most teams look for D&B alternatives on the sales side, because the data they need is sold without a price and without published contact coverage.

• No published price for D&B Hoovers. The product page’s only options are “Request a Free Trial” and “Contact Us”. Nothing on dnb.com states what a seat or a year costs.
• Contact coverage is not published. D&B Hoovers describes “trusted company and contact data, buyer intent, website engagement, trigger events”, with no figures for contacts, phone numbers or mobiles.
• One-off credit checks are expensive. 189.99 USD for a single Business Information Report is a hard number to defend when you need 40 companies checked this quarter.
• Some products cannot be bought online. Several lines on the pricing schedule, including Credit Insights Score View, are marked “D&B Agent Sale Only”.
• The sales use case is a side door. D&B’s own positioning is a “context layer” for compliance, procurement, finance and data teams. Outbound is one of seven solutions, not the product.

To be fair to D&B: the D-U-N-S Number is a genuine standard, free to obtain, and nothing on this page replaces it. Its business files, trade payment data and corporate hierarchies are the reason finance teams buy it, and no sales-data tool below publishes anything comparable.

If you need company identity and risk, D&B is not the thing to replace. If you need a list of people to email and call, it is.

For the pricing side of the same question, see what we found on D&B Hoovers pricing.

Dun and Bradstreet competitors compared at a glance

The eight sales-data alternatives differ most on three things: whether you can see a price, whether you get a mobile number, and whether a miss costs you anything.

Tool	Best for	Entry price	Mobile numbers	Miss is free
D&B Hoovers	Company identity and risk, with sales data attached	Not published (trial or quote)	Not published	Not published
Scalelist	Teams that call as much as they email	29 USD a month, 500 credits	20 credits per mobile found	Yes, always
ZoomInfo	One enterprise data contract	Not published; Lite tier is 0 USD	Yes, on paid plans	Not published
Apollo.io	Data, sequences and a dialer in one seat	49 USD per seat a month, billed yearly	8 credits per phone number	Yes, in Apollo’s own data
Cognism	Calling into Europe	Not published (quote, 5 seats)	Yes, phone-verified mobiles	Not published
Lead411	Low-cost US exports with dials included	49 USD a month, 1,000 exports	Included in the export	Not published
UpLead	One credit for the email and the mobile	99 USD a month, 170 credits	Included in the 1 credit	Yes, for addresses it cannot confirm
Crunchbase	Prospecting by funding and growth signals	49 USD a month billed yearly, first year	Not clearly sold	Not published
Clay	Building your own enrichment workflows	185 USD a month (167 billed yearly)	Yes, through providers	Yes, nothing found is not charged

Which Dun & Bradstreet alternative is best?

The best Dun & Bradstreet alternative depends on which half of D&B you were using. For company identity, hierarchies and risk at enterprise scale, ZoomInfo is the closest sales-side equivalent, and only a credit bureau replaces the credit file itself. For a list of people to email and call this week, the published-price tools win: Scalelist, Apollo.io, Lead411 and UpLead all show you a number before a sales call.

If your reps live on the phone, judge the shortlist on mobile numbers alone. A phone number costs 8 credits on Apollo.io and 20 credits on Scalelist, comes bundled in the export on Lead411 and UpLead, and is priced per provider inside Clay. On D&B Hoovers, phone coverage is not published at all, which is the single biggest reason callers leave.

How we picked these Dun and Bradstreet competitors

We picked tools that replace a job D&B does for a revenue team, then gave every one the same fields from its own website.

• The job it replaces: company intelligence, contact data, or both.
• Published price: the cheapest paid plan, taken from the vendor’s pricing page rendered in a browser on 27 September 2026, with Scalelist’s own prices from our pricing page. Quote only means “not published”.
• Contact fields: what you actually receive per person, and whether that includes a work email, a mobile number or a switchboard line.
• Cost of a miss: whether the tool charges you when it returns nothing.
• Evidence over claims: coverage figures come from our own published benchmark where a tool was in it. Vendor accuracy claims are labeled as claims.
• Same fields, same order, for all eight. Unknown is written “not published”, never guessed.

Two tools that often appear on these lists are missing on purpose: SalesIntel, whose pricing page blocks automated rendering, and the bureaus, which are in the credit section above. For the SalesIntel side of the market, see our page on alternatives for US emails and direct dials.

The 8 best Dun and Bradstreet alternatives for sales data in 2026

Each entry uses the same eight fields. Prices are from each vendor’s own pricing page, rendered in a browser on 27 September 2026, and from our own Scalelist pricing.

1. Scalelist

• What it is: Scalelist is an AI Lead Finder. You describe the people you want in one plain-English sentence, see how many match before you spend anything, then get them with verified work emails and mobile numbers.
• Published coverage: in our own benchmark of 8 providers across 4 regions, Scalelist found an email for 92% of the North America list and a phone number for 87%, with 89% and 73% in EMEA, 76% and 75% in APAC, and 86% and 85% in Latin America.
• Contact fields you get: name, title, company, location, company size, work email with a status, and a mobile number.
• Work email, mobile or direct dial: both a verified work email and a mobile number, priced separately so you only buy the mobile when you need it.
• How it is sold: self-serve monthly plans, no seats, no annual contract, 20 free credits to start.
• Pricing: 29 USD a month for 500 credits up to 649 USD for 20,000, with custom plans above that. 1 credit per lead found, 1 per email found, 20 per mobile found, and nothing when nothing is found. That is about 1.16 USD per mobile on the entry plan and about 0.65 USD at 20,000 credits.
• Best for: small and mid-size teams that call as much as they email and want to pay per result instead of per seat.
• Where it falls short: it is not a credit bureau. No risk scores, no payment history, no D-U-N-S numbers, no corporate hierarchies. On email-only volume it is not the cheapest either, and HubSpot is the only native CRM push.

2. ZoomInfo

• What it is: ZoomInfo is an enterprise B2B go-to-market data platform covering contacts, companies and intent, sold on custom-quoted annual contracts.
• Published coverage: its data page claims “500M+ verified professional profiles”, “122M+ company records”, “300M+ Verified Emails”, “135M+ Direct Dial Numbers” and “87% Mobile Number Accuracy”. Those are ZoomInfo’s claims, not test results.
• Contact fields you get: contact and company records with “direct dials, mobile numbers, org chart data” on paid plans, plus intent topics.
• Work email, mobile or direct dial: all three on paid plans, inside the exported record.
• How it is sold: quote only. “Most paid plans are billed annually upfront. Monthly billing is not standard.” Paid plans carry a seat minimum.
• Pricing: not published. ZoomInfo Lite is 0 USD with 10 credits a month. On paid plans, “for each exported record, one credit is charged”, and two users exporting the same record spend two credits.
• Best for: larger teams that want one data and intent contract and can commit for a year.
• Where it falls short: no public price, credits expire at the end of the term, contact views are capped per user, and renewal pricing can rise. See ZoomInfo pricing credit by credit and ZoomInfo competitors and alternatives.

3. Apollo.io

• What it is: Apollo.io is an all-in-one sales platform: a B2B contact database plus sequences, a dialer and deal tools, sold per seat with a credit allowance.
• Published coverage: “Access 240M contacts & 30M companies” and a claimed “seven-step email verification”. In our benchmark, Apollo found a phone number for 50% of the North America list, 63% in EMEA and 8% in APAC.
• Contact fields you get: contact and company records, email, phone numbers typed as mobile, work direct, home or other, plus sequence and dialer activity.
• Work email, mobile or direct dial: all three, priced apart. “Apollo doesn’t charge credits for HQ or corporate phone numbers.”
• How it is sold: per seat, monthly or annual, with a free plan. Organization is annual only with a 3-seat minimum.
• Pricing: 49 USD per seat a month billed yearly, 65 USD billed monthly. An email costs 1 credit, a phone number 8.
• Best for: SMB and mid-market teams that want data, sequencing and dialing in one per-seat tool.
• Where it falls short: mobile credits are not refunded, seats add up as the team grows, and APAC phone coverage was 8% in our test. More in Apollo.io alternatives.

4. Cognism

• What it is: Cognism is a B2B sales intelligence platform selling contact data, including phone-verified mobile numbers, through quote-only Standard and Pro packages.
• Published coverage: no record counts on its pricing page. It claims “a 3x improvement in connect rates with phone-verified mobiles compared to industry average” and that director-level and above data “is continually refreshed on a 30 day basis”.
• Contact fields you get: one revealed contact record with emails and phone numbers; intent topics on Pro.
• Work email, mobile or direct dial: emails and mobiles in the same reveal, with on-demand mobile verification as a Pro feature.
• How it is sold: quote only, with 5 seats included in both packages. CRM enrichment and data-as-a-service are add-ons.
• Pricing: not published. One credit reveals one contact, and “a credit is only used again if that contact changes jobs”.
• Best for: teams prospecting into Europe that want phone-verified mobiles and can buy a multi-seat package.
• Where it falls short: no public price, no single-seat plan, and whether a miss is charged is not published. See Cognism alternatives.

5. Lead411

• What it is: Lead411 is a B2B contact database with verified emails, direct dials and intent data, sold on export-based plans to SMB outbound teams.
• Published coverage: it claims “96%+ accuracy on email deliverability” and re-verification “every 3-6 months”. No contact counts are published on the pricing page.
• Contact fields you get: contact and company records with email, direct phone numbers, and intent on annual plans.
• Work email, mobile or direct dial: both, with every plan listing “Direct Phone Numbers Included” and “Double Verified Direct Dials”. Mobile versus desk line is not broken out.
• How it is sold: monthly or annual, by number of exports. Trial: 50 exports over 7 days.
• Pricing: 49 USD a month for 1,000 exports on Spark, or 490 USD a year for 12,000. Unused exports roll over.
• Best for: small US outbound teams that want dials bundled at a low monthly price.
• Where it falls short: intent data and unlimited exports are annual only, API access starts one tier up, and whether an export with nothing found is counted is not published. See Lead411 competitors compared.

6. UpLead

• What it is: UpLead is a B2B contact database that sells verified emails and mobile direct dials on monthly credit plans, where one credit unlocks one contact.
• Published coverage: “200M+ leads, AI-verified as you search and ranked by freshness”, with a claimed 95%-plus accuracy. It was not in our benchmark.
• Contact fields you get: one contact record per credit, including the email and the mobile direct dial, exportable or pushed to a CRM.
• Work email, mobile or direct dial: both, inside the same single credit.
• How it is sold: month to month with no contract on Essentials and Plus; Professional is annual. One user seat on the two lower plans.
• Pricing: 99 USD a month for 170 credits on Essentials. A credit is only deducted when the address comes back Valid or Accept All.
• Best for: one-person or two-person teams that want the email and the mobile in a single predictable credit.
• Where it falls short: 170 credits a month is a small ceiling, buyer intent and full API access sit on the annual plan, and the trial is 5 credits. Prices in detail: UpLead pricing.

7. Crunchbase

• What it is: Crunchbase is a private-company data and signals platform covering funding, growth and acquisitions, with contact data as an add-on.
• Published coverage: “Search 6M+ private companies with full results” and “39 billion live private company signals”. Contact data is described as verified and reviewed monthly.
• Contact fields you get: company records with funding and growth signals, plus decision-maker “email addresses, and phone numbers” from a contact allowance.
• Work email, mobile or direct dial: emails and phone numbers; mobile versus direct dial is not specified.
• How it is sold: per seat, monthly or annual, with contact packages bought on top.
• Pricing: Pro at 49 USD a month billed yearly for the first year, or 99 USD monthly. Contact packages start at 29 USD a month for 100 contacts, and exports are capped at 2,000 rows a month on Pro.
• Best for: teams that prospect by company events such as a funding round rather than by job title.
• Where it falls short: it is company-first, so contact depth is thin, the 49 USD rate is a first-year offer, and API access is sold separately. It replaces D&B’s company intelligence, not its credit file.

8. Clay

• What it is: Clay is a go-to-market data and workflow platform that runs 150-plus data providers, research agents and signals in one table, then syncs the result to your CRM or sequencer.
• Published coverage: none of its own. Coverage depends on the providers you turn on.
• Contact fields you get: whatever you assemble: company records, people, emails, phone numbers and custom research columns.
• Work email, mobile or direct dial: both, through third-party providers from the Launch plan up. Phone enrichment is not on the free plan.
• How it is sold: usage-based on two meters, Actions and Data Credits, with unlimited seats.
• Pricing: 185 USD a month for Launch (15,000 actions and 2,500 data credits), or 167 USD billed yearly. Data Credits start at 0.05 USD. “If an enrichment returns no result, you’re not charged.”
• Best for: operators who want to build their own enrichment and signal workflows and can manage two meters.
• Where it falls short: phone numbers have no fixed price, CRM sync starts on the 495 USD tier, and top-up credits cost a 30% premium. See Clay alternatives.

Why Scalelist fits teams that call the companies they check

Scalelist replaces one half of D&B: the people. You credit-check a company somewhere else, then describe the buyer you want in one sentence in the AI Lead Finder and get the mobile number of the person who signs.

We ran the same lead lists through 8 data providers across four regions and published the raw data in our B2B data provider comparison. Scalelist found a phone number for 87% of the North America list, 73% in EMEA, 75% in APAC and 85% in Latin America.

Apollo.io, the only other tool on this page that was in that test, found 50%, 63% and 8%, and was not tested in Latin America.

It is our own test, so run 100 of your own contacts through any shortlist before you sign anything.

The pricing difference is just as blunt. One Business Information Report from D&B costs 189.99 USD. For 199 USD a month, Scalelist gives you 5,000 credits, which is about 227 fully enriched contacts at 22 credits each (1 for the lead, 1 for the email, 20 for the mobile), and misses cost nothing.

Where Scalelist is the wrong choice: if you need a risk score, a payment history, a corporate family tree or a D-U-N-S number, buy from a bureau. If you want sequences and a dialer in the same tool, Apollo.io has both. If you want to build multi-provider workflows yourself, Clay is built for that.

How to choose a Dun & Bradstreet alternative

Choose by writing down the two jobs separately, then buying the cheapest tool that does each one well.

1. Name the job out loud. “Will they pay me” goes to a bureau. “Who do I call there” goes to a contact tool. Teams waste a quarter buying one and asking it to do the other.
2. Ask for the contact coverage in writing. Not “millions of contacts”. Ask what share of a 100-row list of your own accounts comes back with a mobile number.
3. Price the mobile, not the record. 8 credits on Apollo.io, 20 on Scalelist, bundled on Lead411 and UpLead, per provider on Clay, not published on D&B Hoovers.
4. Ask who pays for a miss. Scalelist and Clay charge nothing when nothing is found. Most of the rest do not publish an answer.
5. Check the contract shape. Quote-only annual deals with seat minimums (ZoomInfo, Cognism, D&B Hoovers) behave differently at renewal than month-to-month plans.
6. Run the same 100 contacts through your shortlist. Count connected calls and replies, not rows returned. Our notes on what B2B data costs per email and per mobile show how to turn that into a cost per meeting.
7. Check the calling rules for the markets you dial. Rules differ by country and by channel; our guide to B2B cold calling laws is the starting point, and your own counsel is the finish line.

More head-to-head comparisons live on the Scalelist blog, including the difference between a direct dial and a mobile number.

FAQ

Who are Dun & Bradstreet’s main competitors?

It depends on the product. For business credit reports and risk scores, Dun & Bradstreet’s main competitors are Experian, Equifax and Creditsafe. For the sales and marketing data sold as D&B Hoovers, the main competitors are ZoomInfo, Apollo.io, Cognism, Lead411, UpLead, Crunchbase, Clay and Scalelist. No single vendor replaces both halves.

What type of company is Dun & Bradstreet?

Dun & Bradstreet is a business data and analytics company founded in 1841. Its products are built on the D-U-N-S Number, a nine-digit business identifier. It sells credit and risk data to finance, procurement and compliance teams, and company and contact data to sales and marketing teams through D&B Hoovers. Getting a D-U-N-S Number is free.

Is Dun & Bradstreet being sold?

It was already sold. Clearlake Capital completed its acquisition of Dun & Bradstreet Holdings on August 26, 2025, paying shareholders 9.15 USD a share. The company is now privately held and its stock was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. The deal was announced on March 24, 2025 and approved by shareholders on June 12, 2025.

Is Dun & Bradstreet a Fortune 500 company?

No. Dun & Bradstreet does not appear on the Fortune 500. Its revenue for 2024, the last full year it reported as a public company, was 2.38 billion USD, well short of the companies on that list, and since August 26, 2025 it has been privately held by Clearlake Capital rather than listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

What companies use Dun & Bradstreet?

Dun & Bradstreet publishes no customer list, so treat any specific count you read with suspicion. What it does say is that organizations use your D-U-N-S Number “to evaluate your business credit profile, maintain their records, onboard your company, and maintain compliance”, and that a D-U-N-S Number is not required for US federal government contracts even though many agencies and companies still use it.

Does D&B Hoovers include mobile phone numbers?

Not published. The D&B Hoovers product page lists “company and contact data, buyer intent, website engagement, trigger events” but gives no figures for phone numbers, direct dials or mobiles, and no price. Among the alternatives, Scalelist charges 20 credits per mobile found, Apollo.io 8 credits per phone number, and Lead411 and UpLead bundle dials into the export.

Is there a cheaper alternative to D&B Hoovers?

Yes. Every alternative with a published price undercuts a quote-only enterprise contract for a small team. Lead411 starts at 49 USD a month for 1,000 exports, Scalelist at 29 USD a month for 500 credits, Apollo.io at 49 USD per seat a month billed yearly and UpLead at 99 USD a month for 170 contacts. ZoomInfo and Cognism stay quote-only.

Can Scalelist replace Dun & Bradstreet?

Only the sales half. Scalelist, an AI Lead Finder, replaces the contact data in D&B Hoovers: you describe the people you want and get verified work emails and mobile numbers, at 1 credit per email and 20 per mobile, charged only when found. It does not sell credit reports, risk scores, payment histories or D-U-N-S numbers, so pair it with a bureau if you need those.

Sources

• Dun & Bradstreet: home
• Dun & Bradstreet: D&B Hoovers
• Dun & Bradstreet: Small Business Pricing Schedule
• Dun & Bradstreet: about the D-U-N-S Number
• Dun & Bradstreet: Clearlake completes acquisition
• SEC: Dun & Bradstreet Holdings Form 10-K for 2024
• Experian: business credit reports
• Equifax: small business
• Creditsafe: business credit reports
• ZoomInfo: data
• ZoomInfo: how much does ZoomInfo cost
• ZoomInfo: overview of credits
• Apollo.io: pricing
• Apollo.io: B2B data
• Apollo.io: how data requests work
• Cognism: pricing
• Cognism: our data
• Lead411: pricing
• UpLead: pricing
• UpLead: API docs
• Crunchbase: select a product
• Crunchbase: contact-level data
• Clay: pricing
• Clay University: actions and data credits