Apollo.io is the largest self-serve B2B contact database that lets you search for free, which is exactly why people want to get the results out of it faster than Apollo’s credit system allows. “How to scrape Apollo” really means “how do I turn a people search into a CSV without burning my whole credit allowance”, and the honest answer depends on how many rows you need, what you will pay, and how much risk to your Apollo account you are willing to take. This guide covers the five routes that exist in October 2026, what each costs, where each stops, and which ones Apollo’s terms allow.
The short answer
If you need a few hundred rows and you are on a paid plan, use Apollo’s native export: it is the only method Apollo’s terms permit, and it costs 1 credit per email and 8 per phone number under the unified credit system. If you need thousands of rows from a search you can already see, a paste-URL export service such as the Apollo Exporter paste-URL Apollo scraper collects the rows page by page from your own session and verifies the emails before download, at a per-1,000 price shown on /pricing. Chrome extensions are the cheapest flat-rate option but have the worst reliability record. Apify actors no longer scrape Apollo at all. DIY code works until Apollo changes something, which it does often.
Five methods compared
| Method | Typical cost | Limits | Account-ban exposure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Native Apollo export | Plan credits: 1 per email, 8 per phone | 100 pages of 25 (2,500 visible rows per search); 50,000-record selection cap | None; this is what Apollo sells |
| Chrome extension | $6 to $13 a month flat | 2,500 to 50,000 rows per search URL depending on the extension | High; runs in your session, “No Results” and 24-hour blocks reported |
| Paste-URL service (Apollo Exporter, ExportApollo, ScraperCity) | $2.20 to $4.50 per 1,000 rows | Same 2,500-row display cap per search unless the service splits filters | Medium to high; Apollo Exporter runs through your own session, so the exposure is yours |
| Apify database actor | About $1.50 per 1,000 from the actor’s own database | Not a live Apollo export; coverage and freshness unknown | None for your Apollo account, because Apollo is not involved |
| DIY code | Your time; proxies if you use them | Breaks on every Apollo front-end change | Highest; unusual request patterns are the easiest thing for Apollo to detect |
The cost figures for third-party services come from their public pricing pages as of 7 October 2026 and are summarized in our tested comparison of the best Apollo scrapers. The Apollo credit figures come from Apollo’s own plan comparison and API documentation.
Method 1: Apollo’s native export
Apollo’s own export is the baseline. You build a people or company search, tick the rows you want (up to 25 per page, or select all up to the plan cap), click Export, and choose CSV. Each exported person with a revealed email consumes 1 credit, and each phone number consumes 8. Unified credit allowances are 900 a year on Free, 30,000 on Basic, 48,000 on Professional and 72,000 on Organization, according to Apollo’s plan comparison. The detail Apollo’s help articles do not state plainly is how many credits a CSV row costs when the email was already revealed earlier; treat that as unconfirmed and check your credit balance after a small test export. The display cap is the other constraint: Apollo shows at most 100 pages of 25 results, so a search of 40,000 people still only exposes 2,500 of them until you narrow the filters. The full walkthrough is in how to export leads from Apollo.
Method 2: Chrome extensions
Extensions such as AoLeads, the Apollo Exporter extension by scrapejob (unrelated to this site) and the free ConnectSafely tool inject a button into Apollo’s search page and page through results inside your logged-in browser. They are cheap, usually $5.90 to $12.60 a month, and they can run while you watch. The problems are reliability and detection. Chrome Web Store reviews for these extensions describe Apollo returning a “No Results” screen mid-run and accounts being blocked for 24 hours (Chrome Web Store reviews), and several extension listings that were indexed earlier in 2026 now load as empty store pages. Most extensions do no email verification, so the invalid share of what you download is whatever Apollo’s database carries. The live extensions, their user counts and caps are compared on Apollo scraper Chrome extensions.
Method 3: Paste-URL export services
This is the category Apollo Exporter belongs to, alongside ExportApollo.com, ExportApollo.io, ScraperCity and Ample Leads. The user copies the URL of an Apollo search and pastes it into a web app; the service pages through the results and returns a CSV or XLSX. Prices cluster at $2.20 to $4.50 per 1,000 rows. The important difference inside the category is where the rows come from. For some services it is not public whether they pull live from Apollo or from a cached copy. Apollo Exporter is explicit: the export runs through your own logged-in Apollo session via the Apollo Exporter Chrome extension, so the rows are the same ones you see on screen, no credentials are shared with us, no shared accounts are used, and emails are verified before the file is built. Measured validity and delivery figures are published on the methodology page rather than quoted here.
Step by step: the paste-URL route with Apollo Exporter
- Build your people search in Apollo and apply every filter you need. Check the result count; if it is above 2,500, split it by location, headcount or title so each slice fits under the 100-page display cap (see Apollo export limits).
- Copy the search URL from the address bar. The Apollo search URL parser will show you which filters the URL contains and whether it parses cleanly.
- Install the Apollo Exporter Chrome extension and stay logged in to Apollo in the same browser. The extension is what lets the export run through your own session.
- Paste the URL into Apollo Exporter, confirm the row count and the per-1,000 price, and start the export. Sign-up comes with 500 free credits, so the first exports cost nothing.
- Wait for the pages to collect and for email verification to finish, then download the CSV or XLSX. The file contains the 25 standard Apollo people fields: name, title, company, LinkedIn URL, email, email status, phone where Apollo shows one, location, industry, headcount, website and the rest.
Method 4: Apify actors
Until 22 September 2025, Apify hosted a dozen community Apollo scrapers (curious_coder, code_crafter, supreme_coder, Apollo Easy Scrape and others) that took an Apollo cookie or search URL and returned rows. Apify removed every one of them after legal pressure from Apollo, stating that the scrapers could only work using Apollo accounts, which breached Apollo’s terms (Apify Discord, ScraperCity status page). The actors still listed under “Apollo” today, such as the Leads Finder at about $1.50 per 1,000 (Apify), query their own databases, and at least one states that it does not return emails or phone numbers (Apify). They carry no Apollo account risk because your Apollo account is not involved, but they are not a scrape of your Apollo search. If you built an n8n, Make or Clay flow on the old actors, see the Apify Apollo scraper alternative for what replaced them.
Method 5: DIY code
Developers sometimes replay Apollo’s internal search endpoint from a script, reusing their own session cookie and paging through results. It costs nothing but time, and it is the most fragile option: Apollo changes its front end and request signatures often, GitHub repositories for Apollo scrapers are small and sporadically maintained (the one that ranks most widely has 13 stars), and a script that fetches pages faster than a human reads them is the easiest pattern for Apollo to detect. Add proxies and you have also added a telemetry mismatch between your login and your requests. If you go this route, keep request rates human, never share the session with anyone else, and expect to rewrite it within months.
How to scrape Apollo for free
There is no free route to thousands of rows. The realistic free options are: Apollo’s free plan, which includes 900 unified credits a year, enough for roughly 900 email reveals or a much smaller number of phones; free extensions such as ConnectSafely’s, which run in your own session and inherit the ban exposure above; and the 500 free credits Apollo Exporter gives on sign-up, with verified emails, which exists so you can check the file format against your needs before paying. Apollo’s own free-tier limits are covered in Apollo pricing and credits.
How to extract emails from Apollo
Apollo stores emails for most contacts but only displays them once you reveal them, which costs 1 credit per contact. Once revealed, the email and Apollo’s email status (“verified”, “guessed”, “unavailable” and similar) travel with the row into a native export or a paste-URL export. Two cautions. First, Apollo’s own 98% accuracy claim does not match third-party testing: a 2026 study of 100,000 exported Apollo contacts found 73.2% valid, 18.4% catch-all and 5.8% invalid (Cleanlist, BounceZero). Second, extracting emails is the activity Apollo’s compliance article on email scrapers is aimed at, so it is the use case with the clearest terms-of-service exposure. More on both in Apollo database accuracy.