8 Best B2B Intent Data Providers in 2026: Signal Quality, Coverage, and Cost Compared

The three kinds of intent data

Buyers conflate these constantly, and vendors are happy to let them.

Co-op or third-party intent is aggregated from a network of publisher sites. Bombora invented this model and remains the reference implementation, with a data co-operative spanning thousands of B2B publishers. It tells you that someone at Acme Corp has been reading about your category somewhere on the open web. It is broad and it is early-funnel.

First-party intent comes from your own properties: your website, your product, your emails. It is the highest-quality signal you will ever get because there is no inference step, but it only covers people who already found you.

Review-site intent comes from G2, TrustRadius, and Capterra. It is narrow in volume and unusually high in quality, because comparing two products on a review site is a late-stage buying behaviour.

The practical implication: a team buying only co-op intent gets volume without precision. A team buying only first-party intent cannot expand beyond existing awareness. Mature programmes layer them.

Comparison table: source, coverage, and cost

The 8 providers reviewed

1. Bombora

Best for: Teams that need the widest possible topic taxonomy and are willing to pay for the category's reference dataset.

Bombora built the B2B intent co-op and still runs the largest one. It analyses billions of content consumption events monthly across thousands of publishers, covering 21,600+ intent topics, and resolves signals to 2.8 million businesses using a patented method combining deterministic, behavioural, and IP-to-company data. The company reports that 86% of the co-op data is exclusive to Bombora.

Pricing: Quote-only, annual contracts mandatory. Third-party aggregators place basic Company Surge access at roughly $25,000 to $30,000 per year, with mid-market medians near $50,000 to $60,000 and enterprise deployments exceeding $100,000. G2 records an average discount of 14%, a median implementation of one month, and a median declared ROI horizon of 17 months.

Where it falls short: There is no way to evaluate without a full commercial process. Bombora is also frequently consumed through a partner platform such as 6sense, RollWorks, or Demandbase rather than directly, which means many buyers pay for it twice without realising.

Verdict: The strongest fit where topic breadth is the binding constraint. Check whether your existing ABM platform already includes it before buying standalone.

2. 6sense

Best for: Teams that want a predictive model and account scoring rather than a raw signal feed they have to interpret.

6sense positions itself as a GTM intelligence platform rather than an intent vendor. It combines thirteen years of proprietary Signalverse intent, your first-party CRM and web data, and third-party signals including job changes and funding, then runs predictive AI to score accounts by likelihood to buy. Keyword-level intent is a meaningful step up in granularity from topic-level.

Pricing: A free plan exists with 50 credits per month. Paid pricing is entirely quote-based. Reported entry tiers start around $25,000 per year, with median buyers near $55,000 to $63,000. Vendr data puts small deployments at $50,000 to $120,000, mid-market at $120,000 to $250,000, and enterprise at $250,000 to $400,000 or more. Add 15 to 25% for implementation and professional services.

Where it falls short: The pricing opacity is itself a deterrent for mid-market buyers, with procurement cycles running four to twelve weeks. The platform also requires dedicated RevOps headcount to operate well, which is a real cost that does not appear on the quote.

Verdict: The strongest fit for teams with a RevOps function that can operate it. Without that, it becomes expensive shelfware.

3. Demandbase

Best for: Enterprise ABM programmes where intent needs to sit alongside programmatic advertising and sales orchestration in one platform.

Demandbase One bundles account intelligence, intent, advertising, and sales workflows. The pricing model is a platform fee plus a flat per-user fee, which is more legible than most competitors.

Pricing: Quote-only. Vendr's median across 184 purchases is $68,591 per year, with a range from $24,000 to $164,379 and average savings of 13%. Third-party breakdowns place entry single-module deals at $18,000 to $30,000, professional at $45,000 to $65,000, and enterprise from $70,000 to $300,000 or more.

Where it falls short: For most SMB and mid-market teams the pricing and operational complexity put it out of reach. If advertising is not part of your motion, you are paying for a large module you will not use.

Verdict: Reasonable where display advertising is genuinely core. Overbuilt where it is not.

4. G2 Buyer Intent

Best for: Teams that want fewer, later-stage signals rather than more early-stage ones.

G2 Buyer Intent shows which companies are researching your category, viewing your profile, and comparing you against named competitors. The comparison signal is the valuable one. Someone reading a category overview is browsing. Someone opening a head-to-head comparison page has a shortlist.

Pricing: Sold as an add-on to G2 Marketing Solutions. Vendr data across 96 verified purchases shows Starter at $2,700 to $3,000 annually, Professional at $13,500 to $17,700 for the base subscription, and $15,000 to $20,000 once Buyer Intent and connector apps are included. Enterprise typically runs $21,300 to $28,300. Reported list pricing for Core plus Buyer Intent reaches $40,000 to $50,000, with roughly half of buyers negotiating discounts of 38% or more. Free Bombora-powered Company Surge data is available in the my.g2 dashboard for vendors with a profile.

Where it falls short: Volume is low by design, and it only covers buyers who use G2. The platform uses third-party matching, often ZoomInfo, to identify visiting companies, which introduces accuracy loss. Reviews note that setup requires real effort to classify ICPs and upload target lists.

Verdict: The strongest signal-to-noise ratio in the category, in the smallest volume. Best used as a trigger rather than as a list source.

5. ZoomInfo Intent

Best for: Teams already on ZoomInfo that want intent without adding a contract.

ZoomInfo layers intent on top of its contact and company database, so the signal arrives already attached to exportable contacts. That workflow advantage is real and is the main reason to choose it.

Pricing: No public pricing, annual only. Reported tiers place Professional near $14,995 per year and Advanced near $24,995, with Elite at $39,995 and up. Per-seat add-ons run $1,500 to $2,500 per user per year. Negotiated deals commonly land 20% to 40% below list. Credits are consumed on export.

Where it falls short: Topic granularity is coarser than Bombora's taxonomy or 6sense's keyword-level model. You are also deepening a dependency on a single vendor for data, intent, and workflow.

Verdict: Convenient rather than best in class. Worth it if the export workflow saves your team real time.

6. Clay

Best for: Teams that want to assemble their own intent stack from multiple sources rather than buy a single opinionated one.

Clay is not an intent provider. It is an orchestration layer that lets you call 100+ data providers, including several intent sources, and combine them into your own scoring logic. For a GTM engineering team this is often a better answer than buying a platform, because you control the definition of intent rather than accepting a vendor's model.

Pricing: Free tier with 100 data credits and 500 actions per month. Launch at $185 per month, roughly $167 annually, with 2,500 data credits and 15,000 actions. Growth at $495 per month, roughly $446 annually, with 6,000 credits and 40,000 actions. Enterprise custom. The March 2026 repricing cut data costs 50% to 90%, stopped charging for failed lookups, and moved CRM integrations and HTTP API access down from the old Pro tier to Growth.

Where it falls short: You are building, not buying. Clay does not supply co-op intent of its own, so you still pay a provider for the underlying signal. Teams without an operator find it sits unused.

Verdict: The strongest fit where you have someone who will actually operate it. Clay crossed $100M ARR in June 2026 and raised a $100M Series C at a $3.1B valuation, so platform risk is low.

7. Factors.ai

Best for: Mid-market teams that want account-level intent and analytics without a five-figure floor.

Factors.ai combines website de-anonymisation with marketing analytics and account-level intent scoring. It is the most accessible entry point in this list by a wide margin.

Pricing: A free plan exists. Paid tiers are reported at roughly $5,000 per year for Basic, $15,000 for Growth, and $25,000 for Enterprise.

Where it falls short: Signal breadth does not approach Bombora or 6sense. Coverage is weighted toward your own properties and the accounts already touching them.

Verdict: The sensible starting point for a team that has never bought intent data and does not want to spend $50,000 finding out whether it works.

8. Common Room

Best for: Teams whose buyers are visible in communities, on social platforms, and in public forums rather than on publisher sites.

Common Room aggregates person-level signals from community platforms, social channels, and public sources, then activates them with AI agents. The signal type is genuinely different from co-op intent, which makes it complementary rather than competitive.

Pricing: Starter reported at roughly $12,000 per year for up to 35,000 contacts and 2 seats. Team at roughly $30,000 per year for 100,000 contacts and 3 seats. Enterprise custom, reaching $60,000 to $102,550. Vendr's median across 66 to 67 transactions is roughly $30,000 to $30,750 per year. Onboarding and implementation are frequently quoted separately at $5,000 to $20,000.

Where it falls short: Zoom announced a definitive agreement to acquire Common Room on 2 July 2026, with the technology folding into Zoom Revenue Accelerator. Pricing, packaging, and standalone availability should all be expected to change. Do not sign a multi-year contract without clarity on post-acquisition terms.

Verdict: Strong signal type, real acquisition uncertainty. Buy with short terms until the Zoom integration path is public.

What intent data does not tell you

Intent data tells you that research activity occurred at an account. It does not tell you who did it, whether they have budget, whether they are evaluating you or a competitor, or whether the research was a junior analyst building a market map for a report that will never lead anywhere.

The most common failure mode we see is treating a surge score as a buying signal and routing it straight to an SDR as a task. Reply rates on that motion are usually indistinguishable from cold, because the message assumes an intent the prospect does not have.

Intent works when it is used to change prioritisation and timing rather than to justify a message. Reorder the queue with it. Do not open an email with it.

Negotiating a quote-only category

Every meaningful provider here hides pricing, which shifts the advantage to the seller. Four things reliably move the number.

First, know the benchmark before the first call. Vendr publishes medians for most of these vendors, and citing a specific median changes the conversation immediately.

Second, buy at quarter end. Discounts of 28% to 52% have been documented in adjacent categories, and the pattern holds here.

Third, unbundle. Ask for pricing on the single module you need before discussing the platform. Vendors quote the bundle first because the bundle anchors high.

Fourth, check for duplication. If you already run 6sense, RollWorks, or Demandbase, you may already be paying for Bombora inside that contract. Buying it again is common and avoidable.

Which provider fits which team

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FAQ: B2B Intent Data Providers

What is the best free B2B intent data source?

Vendors with a G2 profile get free Bombora-powered Company Surge data inside the my.g2 dashboard, which is the single best free intent source available. Factors.ai and 6sense both offer free tiers, with 6sense limited to 50 credits per month. Your own first-party website data is free and usually more predictive than anything you can buy.

How much does B2B intent data cost?

Entry points range from roughly $5,000 per year for Factors.ai to $25,000 to $30,000 for Bombora. Median mid-market contracts land near $50,000 to $68,000 across Bombora, 6sense, and Demandbase. Enterprise deployments routinely exceed $100,000 and can reach $400,000. Add 15 to 25% for implementation.

Is intent data accurate?

Intent data is probabilistic, not deterministic. It infers research behaviour at an account from aggregated signals, and the inference can be wrong about who at the account is researching and why. Treat surge scores as a prioritisation input rather than a statement of fact.

What is the difference between first-party and third-party intent data?

First-party intent comes from your own properties and is high confidence but limited to accounts already aware of you. Third-party intent comes from publisher co-ops and covers the wider market but is inferred rather than observed. Most effective programmes use both.

Do I need intent data if I already have visitor identification?

They answer different questions. Visitor identification tells you who came to your site. Intent data tells you who is researching your category elsewhere, including accounts that have never heard of you. If your problem is pipeline coverage rather than conversion, intent data addresses it and visitor identification does not.

Which intent data provider integrates best with Clay?

Clay connects to 100+ providers and can call most intent sources through its integrations or HTTP API, with API access available from the Growth tier at roughly $495 per month. This is the usual route for teams that want to combine several intent sources under their own scoring logic rather than adopting one vendor's model.

#account-based-marketing

Yananai A. Chiwuta

Author

Yananai Chiwuta is a Go-To-Market Architect and founder of Forma Nôrden. He builds Go-To-Market growth systems for B2B companies selling into enterprise and mid-market accounts.

Celine Sky

Reviewer

Celine ensures technical accuracy and strategic alignment across all Forma Nôrden playbooks and resources.

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