🎯 AI Lead Gen Agent — Apollo, Clearbit & ZoomInfo Alternative

A pay-per-result AI lead-generation agent that finds companies matching your ICP, enriches them with firmographics, and surfaces verified contact data. Built as a cheaper, no-seat-license alternative to Apollo.io ($49-149/mo), Clearbit ($99-999/mo), ZoomInfo ($14K+/yr), Lusha, and Cognism for sales teams, agencies, and founders building outbound pipelines.

Why AI Lead Gen Agent Beats Apollo, Clearbit, ZoomInfo & Lusha

Feature	NexGenData AI Lead Gen Agent	Apollo.io	Clearbit	ZoomInfo	Lusha
Cost	Pay-per-result, no seats	$49-149 / user / month	$99-999 / month	$14K+ / year contract	$39-99 / user / month
ICP query interface	Natural language + filters	Boolean filter UI	API-only	Boolean filter UI	Limited
Firmographics	Domain, industry, size, location	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Contact discovery	Email, role, seniority	Yes (credit-gated)	Yes (paid tier)	Yes	Yes (credit-gated)
Bulk export	JSON / CSV / Excel	Plan-gated	API-only	CRM-only	CSV
API access	Apify REST + SDKs	Paid plan	Paid plan	Enterprise	Paid plan
Auth required	Apify token	Account + plan	API key	Enterprise contract	Account + plan
Monthly minimum	None	$49+	$99+	$$$$	$39+

Most outbound + RevOps teams pick this actor instead of stacking Apollo + Clearbit because the per-lead cost is 5-20× lower at the same data quality. It is a drop-in alternative to seat-based prospecting tools — no per-user license, no annual contract, and the output plugs straight into HubSpot / Salesforce / Lemlist without a Zapier middleware seat.

What You Get Per Lead

Each dataset item is a flat JSON record:

• company, domain, company_url, linkedin_url
• industry, size_range, country, region, city
• tech_stack — detected SaaS + infra (when available)
• contacts — array of {name, role, seniority, email, linkedin}
• funding_stage, last_funding_round, headcount_growth_90d
• intent_signals — hiring spikes, tech-stack changes, recent press
• ai_summary — 1-2 sentence narrative on why this matches your ICP

Use Cases

• Outbound SDR teams — replace a $1,500/mo Apollo + ZoomInfo stack with pay-per-lead pulls scoped to this week's ICP
• Agencies — build cold-email lists for clients without managing 10 prospecting seats
• Founders / solo operators — bootstrap pipeline without an enterprise prospecting contract
• Recruiting + hiring — find companies hiring for specific roles + their decision-makers
• VC / private-equity sourcing — map a vertical (e.g. "Series A AI infra companies in NYC") with verified contacts
• Account-based marketing — enrich a target-account list with multi-threaded contacts in one call

Quick Start (Python)

from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("nexgendata/lead-gen-ai-agent").call(run_input={
    "icp_query": "Series A SaaS companies in the US hiring ML engineers",
    "max_leads": 200,
    "include_contacts": True
})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["company"], item["contacts"])

Pricing — Pay Per Lead

• Actor start: $0.01
• Lead: $0.05

A 200-lead daily ICP refresh = $10.01. A 1,000-lead campaign list = $50.01. No monthly minimum, no seats.

Related NexGenData Lead-Gen Actors

Use case	Actor
B2B leads finder (multi-source)	b2b-leads-finder
Company enrichment from domain	company-enrichment-tool
Find emails on a domain	company-email-finder
Email validator (deliverability)	email-validator
Contact info scraper (emails + phones)	contact-info-scraper
Lead-list enricher (CSV in → enriched CSV out)	lead-list-enricher
Hiring-signal detector (intent triggers)	hiring-signal-detector
Website email extractor	website-email-extractor
Tech-stack detector (BuiltWith alt)	company-tech-stack-detector

FAQ

Q: How fresh is the data? A: Firmographics refresh weekly; intent signals (hiring, funding, news) refresh daily. Each run pulls live.

Q: Email accuracy? A: Pattern-derived + verified against MX records and SMTP RCPT. Hard-bounce rate is comparable to Apollo / Lusha at ~3-7%.

Q: Can I bring my own ICP filters? A: Yes — natural-language query plus optional structured filters (industry, size, country, funding stage, tech stack).

Q: GDPR / CCPA? A: Output covers business contacts in a B2B context. You are the controller for downstream outreach — follow your jurisdiction's opt-out and prospecting rules.

Q: How does it compare to Apollo on price? A: Apollo's cheapest paid tier is $49/user/month plus credit overages. This actor has no seat fee and bills $0.05/lead — break-even at ~1,000 leads/month/user.

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How NexGenData Pricing Works

Every NexGenData actor uses pay-per-event pricing — you only pay for results that actually land in your dataset. No monthly minimum, no seat fees, no surprise overage bills.

• Actor Start: a single-event charge each time you spin the actor up (scaled to memory size)
• Result / item: charged per item written to the default dataset
• No charge for retries, internal proxy rotation, or failed sub-requests — those are absorbed by the platform

Apify Platform Bonus

New to Apify? Sign up with the NexGenData referral link — you get free platform credits on signup (enough for several thousand free results) and you help fund the maintenance of this actor fleet.

Integration Surface

Every actor in the NexGenData catalog can be triggered from:

• Apify console — point-and-click run
• Apify API — REST + webhooks
• Apify Python / JS SDKs — programmatic batch
• Zapier, Make.com, n8n — official integrations
• MCP — many actors are exposed as MCP tools for Claude / ChatGPT / Cursor agents
• Schedules — built-in cron for daily / weekly / monthly runs
• Webhooks — POST results to any HTTPS endpoint on dataset write

Support

NexGenData maintains 260+ Apify actors and ships updates regularly. Bug reports via the Apify console issues tab get a response within 24 hours. Roadmap requests are welcome — high-demand features ship in the next version.

Home: thenextgennexus.com Full catalog: apify.com/nexgendata