Starlight vs
Apollo.io

Describe the buyer once. Starlight comes back with researched people and emails already written. Apollo is a database you still have to run.

Start free See the difference

Free plan, no credit card. Every message waits for your approval.

One prompt searches the web for your best-fit buyers

See the difference

Where Starlight pulls ahead of Apollo.io, row by row.

Starlight vs Apollo.io: a feature-by-feature comparison
Feature	Starlight	Apollo.io
Lead discovery	Describe your buyer in plain English; Starlight runs the searches	Filter-based database search you operate yourself
Outreach writing	Written for each person from live research, in your voice	Templates and snippets with AI-assist features
Human review	Review mode or autopilot, per agent	Optional (sequences send once launched)
Autonomous agents	Agents run on a schedule: find, score, write, and optionally send	Rep-driven workflows; AI features assist
LinkedIn outreach	Our own Chrome extension, aware of who you're connected to	LinkedIn tasks alongside email sequences
Scheduling	Native booking pages and links included	Included meeting scheduler
Pricing model	Pay for what you use. Free plan, no per-seat fees	Per-seat plans with block limits per tier
AI assistant access	Run it from Claude or another AI assistant	Not offered

Why Starlight wins

Plain English in, send-ready drafts out. The agents keep digging when the obvious results run out.
Every line is written from live research on that person, then scored before you see it. Weak drafts get rewritten, not shipped.
Agents run on a schedule. Pipeline keeps arriving without you opening a sequencer.
Pay for work done, not seats. Start free. No team plan required to work alone.

What you'd still do in Apollo.io

You still write the search. Filters are not a strategy.
You still write the emails. Templates with merge fields are not personalization.
You still pay per seat, whether one person is running it or twenty.

What using it actually looks like

You describe the buyer. Starlight does the rest, and shows you its work.

Starlight's search page, where an ideal customer is described in plain language

Describe the buyer. That's the setup. One sentence about who you're trying to reach. Starlight works out the searches, runs them, and keeps digging once the obvious results run out.

A Starlight contact record showing a match score and the reasoning behind it

Bad-fit prospects never reach you. Everyone is scored against your ideal customer before you see them, with the reasoning shown. You spend your attention on the ones worth having.

Starlight's metrics dashboard with a written summary above the charts

You'll know if it's working. Your numbers come with a plain-English read on what changed and what to do next, instead of a dashboard you have to interpret yourself.

AI outreach you'd put your name on.

The worry with an AI sales agent is simple: what is it saying to people, and would you have said it? Starlight answers that by showing you. Every draft is graded before it reaches you, and the weak ones are rewritten automatically.

Grounded
Every claim traces back to something real about that person or their company. Invented details get caught.
Human
It has to read like you wrote it on a good day, not like a template with the gaps filled in.
On brief
It does what you actually asked for. Ask for a reply and it won't quietly push for a call instead.

What's left takes a few seconds each to approve, edit, or delete. Once an agent has earned it, you can let it send on its own.

Starlight's Messages page showing drafted outreach waiting for review and approval

5xMore replies to cold outreach

3xMore qualified meetings per rep

50%More pipeline per rep in 90 days

5xFaster from first touch to booked

60%Fewer leads lost to slow follow-up

Why you switch from Apollo.io

Apollo sells contacts. You still have to turn them into conversations. That means filters, lists, templates, sequences, and a calendar full of work that is not selling. A database is inventory. It is not pipeline.

Starlight sells the finished motion. One sentence about the buyer. An agent that searches, scores, researches, writes, and follows up. A queue of drafts you would actually send, each one graded before it reaches you. Tuesday becomes ten minutes of yes, edit, or delete.

If you wanted a bigger directory, you already have one. If you wanted meetings, start free and watch Starlight do the job Apollo leaves on your desk.

Frequently
asked questions

Yes. Starlight replaces the database-plus-sequencer stack. You describe the buyer, and agents handle discovery, research, writing, follow-up, replies, and booking. A bigger contact database is not a better outbound motion.

Starlight sources contact data from established B2B data providers and the open web, then enriches and researches each lead before writing. You don't need a separate data subscription.

Only if you turn autopilot on. By default every email and LinkedIn message lands in a review queue and nothing sends until you approve it.