HR AI Index

Index › Vendors › Apollo.io · September 2026 Edition

2 categories · Named, not ranked

Apollo.io

14Judge labels

3First choices

4Negative labels

9 of 12Models named it

2Categories

September 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table vv2026-09.1, every buyer segment counted.

Standing

3 labels, too few to rank

A product needs 10 labels in a category before a share or quadrant is stated. Apollo.io was named 3 times in Recruiting CRM and 1 other category, where Lever led with 20%. The labels and the evidence are below, counted exactly.

By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.

Small business7 of 106

under the label threshold

Mid-market15 of 88

under the label threshold

Enterprise79 of 81

under the label threshold

In recruiting crm · each standing computed within its segment · bars are 0 to 100 · the accent bar is the product's own best reading

Standing by category

Every category where a model named Apollo.io for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.

Category	Function	Share	Rank	Negative rate	Labels	Quadrant
Recruiting CRM and sourcing	Talent acquisition	2%	15 of 88	0%	2	under 10 labels · led by Lever at 20%
Employee engagement surveys	Onboarding and employee experience	0%	66 of 77	100%	1	under 10 labels · led by Culture Amp at 40%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Apollo.io yet. From the next edition this section shows, per buyer segment, whether its share moved by more than the measured noise floor.

By model

How each model treated Apollo.io across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.

Model	First choice	Mention	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	0	0	0	0
GPT-5.4 mini	0	0	0	0
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	0	0	0
Perplexity Sonar	0	0	0	0
Grok 4.1 Fast	0	0	0	0
Mistral Small	0	0	0	0
DeepSeek V4 Flash	0	0	1	1
Llama 4 Maverick	0	0	0	0
Qwen 3.7 Flash	0	0	0	0
Kimi K2	0	1	0	1
GLM 4.7 FlashX	1	0	0	1
MiniMax M2.5	0	0	0	0

By framing

Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.

FramingLabels by classFirst choices

Direct3 labels1

Paraphrase0 labelsNone

Comparative0 labelsNone

Budget-constrained5 labels2

Scale-constrained0 labelsNone

Negative6 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative14 labels in all, every segment counted; 3 of the 3 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.

What the models said for it

Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.

“the strongest starting point is Apollo.io (free) + Indeed (free posting) + Zoho Recruit (free tier)” GLM 4.7 FlashX · Recruiting CRM · budget prompt · first choice

And against it

Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.

“Apollo.io (for LinkedIn scraping features) – Flagged for terms of service violations.” DeepSeek V4 Flash · Employee engagement surv · negative prompt · hard negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Apollo.io, over the 14 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Apollo.io was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

LinkedIn Recruiter7 of 140Not in the top three

Gem4 of 141Not in the top three

Manatal4 of 141Not in the top three

Juicebox4 of 140Not in the top three

Mixmax4 of 140Not in the top three

SalesLoft4 of 140Not in the top three

SeekOut4 of 140Not in the top three

Zoho Recruit3 of 141Not in the top three

Fetcher3 of 140Not in the top three

Outreach3 of 140Not in the top three

A head-to-head page exists where both products are in a category's top three. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.

What carried it into the answer

The sites and pages cited by the answers that named Apollo.io. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, four of the twelve in this edition, so these counts come from 11 of the 14 answers that named Apollo.io and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

selectsoftwarereviews.com6

hiretruffle.com5

pin.com5

connectsafely.ai4

gem.com4

leonar.app4

cityam.com3

intervue.io3

juicebox.ai3

maestra.io3

Forty of the forty domain citations in answers naming Apollo.io came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

hiretruffle.com/blog/sourcing-tools-for-recruiters5

selectsoftwarereviews.com/buyer-guide/best-candidate-sourcing-tools5

gem.com/blog/candidate-sourcing-software4

leonar.app/blog/best-talent-sourcing-platforms4

cityam.com/four-most-useless-social-media-platforms3

connectsafely.ai/articles/best-sales-engagement-platforms-small-business-20263

maestra.io/blog/comparisons/best-customer-engagement-platforms3

turnonwork.com/how-to-choose-employee-engagement-platform3

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Is this your product?

Claim this page

Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when Apollo.io's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Apollo.io, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

It does not get any change to labels, shares or verdicts, any preview, or any say over which quotes appear. A verification link goes to your work email; an address at apollo.io is approved on the spot, any other address is reviewed by hand.

Your name and company appear on the claimed page, or the company alone if you ask below. A title and a LinkedIn address appear there too if you give them, and are left off if you do not. Your email address is never published.