TL;DR
- Cognism is the strongest fit for teams whose outbound depends on connecting by phone in Europe, where its notified-contact process and DNC screening remove most of the compliance objection that stops European phone outbound before it starts. It is also the most expensive by a wide margin, starting around $15,000 platform plus roughly $1,500 per user annually.
- Lusha is the strongest fit for individual reps and small teams who want self-serve access without a procurement cycle, starting at $37.45 per user per month annually. Independent testing found coverage thin enough that it should not be a primary data source for a team with a real quota.
- Kaspr is the strongest fit for LinkedIn-native prospecting on a budget, at €45 per month annually. It is Cognism-owned, which makes it the cheapest route into a subset of the same data, with meaningful workflow limits.
- The three are not really the same product. Cognism is a compliance-first database, Lusha is a self-serve contact finder, and Kaspr is a LinkedIn extension with a database attached.
- If your ICP is enterprise and upper mid-market in Europe, the compliance question is not a detail. It determines whether your outbound programme is defensible, and it is the single dimension on which these three differ most.
Contents
- The short answer
- Coverage and connect rates compared
- Pricing compared
- Cognism in detail
- Lusha in detail
- Kaspr in detail
- The compliance question that actually separates them
- Why connect rate claims should be read carefully
- Waterfall as the alternative to picking one
- Which provider fits which team
- FAQ: Cognism, Lusha, and Kaspr
The short answer
European phone data is a harder problem than European email data, and the three tools most often shortlisted solve it at three completely different price points and levels of rigour.
Cognism built its European position on a specific operational choice: it screens numbers against do-not-call registers across European jurisdictions and notifies contacts that their data is held. That process is expensive to run, which is most of why Cognism costs what it costs. Lusha and Kaspr both offer European numbers without that layer.
The practical consequence is that these tools are not interchangeable even where their coverage overlaps. A team selling $50,000 contracts into German enterprises has a different risk profile from a founder doing 30 calls a week, and the correct answer changes accordingly.
Coverage and connect rates compared
| Dimension | Cognism | Lusha | Kaspr |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary strength | European mobile coverage with compliance screening | Self-serve breadth, fast access | LinkedIn-native extraction |
| Claimed phone accuracy | 98% connect rate on Diamond Data verified numbers | Not published as a connect rate | Not published as a connect rate |
| Database scale | Not publicly itemised by region | Not publicly itemised by region | 200M+ profiles |
| DNC screening | ✅ Across European jurisdictions | ❌ | ❌ |
| Contact notification | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Free tier | ❌ | ✅ 40 credits monthly | ✅ 100 lifetime exports |
| Self-serve purchase | ❌ Sales-led only | ✅ | ✅ |
| Workflow | Platform plus browser extension | Platform plus browser extension | LinkedIn extension first |
| Practical dimension | Cognism | Lusha | Kaspr |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry cost | ~$15,000 platform + ~$1,500 per user annually | $37.45 per user monthly annually | €45 monthly annually |
| Procurement effort | Weeks, annual contract | Minutes, card payment | Minutes, card payment |
| Ownership | Independent | Independent | Cognism |
| Prerequisite | None | None | 20+ LinkedIn connections |
| Best-fit ACV | $20,000+ | Under $10,000 | Under $10,000 |
1. Cognism
Best for: Teams running phone-led outbound into European enterprise and upper mid-market accounts, where the compliance posture has to survive a procurement review or a legal question.
Cognism's differentiator is not raw database size. It is the operational layer around the data. The company screens numbers against do-not-call lists in European jurisdictions and runs a notification process for contacts whose data it holds. For a company selling into regulated European buyers, that is the difference between an outbound programme the legal team signs off on and one it does not.
Diamond Data is the tier of phone numbers Cognism has human-verified, and it carries a claimed 98% connect rate. That claim deserves the scrutiny given below, but the underlying idea is sound: a smaller set of verified numbers beats a larger set of speculative ones when a rep's time is the scarce resource.
Pricing: Standard at roughly $15,000 platform fee plus approximately $1,500 per user annually. Pro at roughly $25,000 plus approximately $2,500 per user annually. Annual contracts only, sales-led, no self-serve entry and no free tier. A five-person team on Standard lands near $22,500 in year one before negotiation.
Where it falls short: The price puts it out of reach for teams below roughly $2M ARR, and the platform fee means small teams pay a disproportionate share for seats they do not use. There is no way to trial it without engaging sales. Coverage outside Europe and North America thins considerably, so it is not the right anchor for a genuinely global territory.
Verdict: If European phone outbound is a core motion rather than an experiment, Cognism is the strongest fit, and the compliance layer is what you are actually buying. If phone is a secondary channel, the platform fee is difficult to justify.
2. Lusha
Best for: Individual reps, founders, and small teams who need contact data today without a procurement conversation.
Lusha's proposition is access. You can be inside the product with a card in under five minutes, the browser extension works on LinkedIn and company websites, and the free tier gives 40 credits monthly, which is enough to evaluate whether the coverage suits your territory before paying.
Pricing: Free at 40 credits monthly. Starter at $49.90 monthly, $37.45 annually. Pro at $69.90 monthly, $52.45 annually. Premium at $399.90 monthly, $299.95 annually. Per user, self-serve, no platform fee.
Where it falls short: Coverage is the problem. Cleanlist's March 2026 test found Lusha returned emails for 31% of a 300-contact sample. That figure comes from a competitor, which is reason to treat it cautiously, but it is a published, specific, reproducible test rather than an assertion, and no comparable Lusha-published benchmark contradicts it. At a 31% hit rate, a rep building a 200-account list spends more time filling gaps than selling. There is also no DNC screening and no contact notification, so the compliance posture is materially weaker than Cognism's for European calling.
Verdict: The strongest fit for low-volume, self-serve use where speed of access matters more than coverage depth. For a team with a quota that depends on list completeness, it should be one source in a waterfall rather than the primary source.
3. Kaspr
Best for: Reps who prospect primarily inside LinkedIn and want phone numbers surfaced in that workflow at the lowest credible price.
Kaspr is owned by Cognism, which is the most important fact about it and the one most comparison articles omit. It draws on a related data estate at a fraction of the price, packaged as a LinkedIn-first extension rather than a full platform. For a rep who lives in Sales Navigator, the workflow fit is genuinely better than either alternative.
Pricing: Free with 100 lifetime exports. Starter at €45 per month billed annually. Business at €79 per month. 200M+ profiles.
Where it falls short: Kaspr requires 20 or more LinkedIn connections on the account using it, which is a real constraint for a newly created prospecting profile. It does not carry Cognism's DNC screening or notification process, so buying Kaspr is not a cheap route to Cognism's compliance position, only to a slice of its data. Bulk workflows and CRM integration are thinner than either alternative, and it is built around one channel.
Verdict: The strongest fit for LinkedIn-native individual prospecting on a constrained budget. It is not a team data platform, and treating it as one will create gaps.
The compliance question that actually separates them
For European outbound the compliance layer is not a procurement checkbox. It is the deciding factor, and it is where the price gap between these three is concentrated.
European jurisdictions maintain do-not-call registers, and calling a registered number carries real exposure. The registers differ by country, they change, and checking them is ongoing operational work rather than a one-time import. Cognism runs that screening and notifies contacts whose data it holds. Lusha and Kaspr do not publish equivalent processes.
The distinction matters more the larger your deals are. A $60,000 enterprise contract will typically pass through a procurement process that asks how you sourced the buyer's mobile number. Being able to answer that question with a documented screening and notification process is worth something concrete. For a $3,000 SMB deal, nobody asks.
This is also the honest reason the price gap exists. Cognism is not charging ten times more for ten times the data. It is charging for an operational process the other two do not run. Whether that is worth it depends entirely on who you sell to, which is why the answer differs so sharply by segment.
Why connect rate claims should be read carefully
Cognism's 98% Diamond Data connect rate is the most-cited number in this category, and it needs context before you build a business case on it.
A connect rate can mean several different things. It can mean the number is live. It can mean a human answered. It can mean the intended person answered. These produce very different figures from the same dataset, and vendors are rarely explicit about which definition they are using. Diamond Data is also a verified subset rather than the full database, so the 98% figure does not describe what you get when you export a full list.
We have not run first-party connect testing across these three providers on a common European sample. Nobody publishing on this topic appears to have done so with a disclosed methodology, which is itself worth noting. The Cleanlist test of Lusha is the closest thing to independent evidence in this comparison, and it covers email rather than phone, from a competitor.
The practical response is to run your own test before committing. Take 200 accounts from your actual ICP, run them through each tool's trial or free tier where one exists, and measure what you get. That costs a day and produces better evidence than any published figure, including the ones in this article.
Waterfall as the alternative to picking one
The framing of this comparison assumes you pick one provider. In practice, most teams running serious European outbound in 2026 do not.
Waterfall enrichment routes each lookup through providers in sequence until one returns a result, so you pay for successes rather than subscriptions. For phone data specifically, this matters because no single provider has strong coverage across all European markets. Coverage in the Nordics differs from coverage in southern Europe, and a waterfall absorbs that variance where a single subscription does not.
BetterContact and FullEnrich both aggregate multiple providers, with FullEnrich drawing on 25 or more vendors and reporting a 70 to 85% hit rate on US contacts. Clay orchestrates over 100 providers and repriced in March 2026 with data costs down 50 to 90% and failed lookups now free, which changes the economics of running a wide waterfall considerably.
The honest trade-off is that a waterfall does not solve the compliance question. If you route a lookup through five providers and one returns a number, you inherit the weakest compliance posture in that chain, not the strongest. Teams selling into regulated European buyers often run Cognism as the anchor precisely for that reason, and use a waterfall to fill gaps for lower-risk segments.
Which provider fits which team
| Your situation | Recommendation | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| Phone-led outbound into European enterprise | Cognism | The DNC screening and notification process is the product |
| $20K+ ACV, procurement scrutiny expected | Cognism | You will be asked how you sourced the number |
| Founder-led sales, under 50 calls weekly | Kaspr | Lowest credible entry point, LinkedIn-native |
| Rep prospecting primarily in Sales Navigator | Kaspr | Best workflow fit for that specific motion |
| Need data today, no procurement patience | Lusha | Self-serve in minutes, free tier to test coverage |
| Team of 5+ with real coverage requirements | Cognism, or a waterfall | Lusha's tested hit rate does not support list building at scale |
| Global territory, not Europe-specific | A waterfall | None of these three anchors a global territory well |
| Budget under $5,000 annually | Kaspr or Lusha | Cognism's platform fee alone exceeds this |
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FAQ: Cognism, Lusha, and Kaspr
Is Kaspr just a cheaper Cognism?
No, though it is owned by Cognism. Kaspr gives access to a slice of related data through a LinkedIn extension, but it does not carry Cognism's do-not-call screening or contact notification process. If you are buying Cognism for the compliance layer, Kaspr does not substitute for it.
Which one has the best European mobile coverage?
Cognism is the strongest fit for European mobile specifically, and it is the only one of the three that has built its positioning around that claim. No independent benchmark with a disclosed methodology compares all three on European mobile coverage, so treat any confident ranking, including a vendor's own, with caution.
What is the best free option for testing coverage?
Lusha's 40 monthly credits and Kaspr's 100 lifetime exports both let you test coverage against your real ICP before paying. Cognism has no free tier, so evaluating it requires engaging sales. Running the same 100 accounts through both free tiers is the fastest way to see which handles your territory.
How much does Cognism actually cost for a small team?
Standard starts around $15,000 for the platform plus roughly $1,500 per user annually, so a five-person team lands near $22,500 in year one before negotiation. Pro runs roughly $25,000 plus $2,500 per user. Both are annual commitments. This is the main reason Cognism rarely suits teams below roughly $2M ARR.
Do I need do-not-call screening for European outbound?
It depends on your jurisdictions and your risk tolerance, and this is a question for your legal counsel rather than a blog post. What is clear is that European registers exist, that calling registered numbers carries exposure, and that only one of these three providers runs screening as part of the product. The larger your deals and the more regulated your buyers, the more that matters.
Should I use one of these or a waterfall?
If your outbound is phone-led into regulated European buyers, anchor on Cognism and use a waterfall for lower-risk segments. If phone is secondary and coverage breadth matters more than compliance posture, a waterfall through BetterContact, FullEnrich, or Clay will usually cost less per verified contact than any single subscription here.
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.
