ZoomInfo

The platform is a database first. ZoomInfo describes 500M+ contacts and 100M+ companies assembled from public web sources, regulatory filings, job postings and a contributory network, with AI deduplication and 300+ human researchers verifying records. Search, company and contact lookup, buying intent signals, website visitor identification and CRM enrichment are the working surfaces.

What changed recently is how you reach it. Alongside the web app there is a REST API with search, enrich, lookup, bulk and webhook endpoints, a GTM CLI, and an MCP server that Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Replit can call directly. The MCP toolset covers find, enrich and research for both accounts and contacts. Its own docs are blunt about the limits: MCP does not write to your CRM and does not run bulk exports, which stay with the web app, the API or the CLI.

Billing is consumption-based rather than per seat. Data credits are charged one per new record enriched, capped at 10 records per call, and a record counts as new only if nobody in your organization enriched it in the past 12 months. AI credits cover research: Account Research and Contact Research cost most often 5 to 15 credits per call, Conversation Intelligence at least 9, and Audience Analysis scales with the audience.

The published rates sit on the GTM AI pricing page: AI credits at a flat $0.05, data credits on a volume curve quoted at $0.38 per credit at the $1,000 spend tier, top-ups from $20 with no sales call. Search, lookup and find similar never cost credits. Two things cut against the clean arithmetic. The docs state ZoomInfo shows no cost preview before a tool call, and the pricing FAQ says credits expire 12 months after they are granted while the credit slider panel says credits never expire while the account is active. Those two sentences are on the same page.

A new account gets 1,000 data and 1,000 AI credits once, with no card, and platform access through MCP, API and CLI is listed as always included. The free column of the plan comparison caps it at 5 connected apps and 5 audiences of 500 rows, and marks Records Under Management as absent, so on the free tier the same record can be charged twice within a year.

That sits beside a separate offer: the full platform trial runs typically 7 days with usage limits and no card, and the homepage FAQ describes ZoomInfo Lite as a permanent free plan. Three different free paths, documented in three places, is worth knowing before a buyer assumes one of them is the one being discussed.

Agent Teams, built on technology from DoubleO.ai and part of GTM Studio rather than a separate SKU, runs multi-agent GTM plays from triggers such as CRM events, schedules, webhooks and website visits. It writes back to Salesforce or HubSpot, enrolls prospects in Outreach or SalesLoft sequences, and sends email and Slack messages.

Governance is role-based access, admin dashboards, organization Knowledge Bases and a credit estimate before activation. The human checkpoint is not there yet: the vendor's own FAQ says a "Pause for Review step for human-in-the-loop approval is on the roadmap for a future release." A buyer handing outbound email to this should read that sentence before the marketing line about approvals being built in.

The security page names ISO 27001, ISO 27701, ISO 27017 and ISO/IEC 42001:2023 certifications plus a SOC 2 Type II attestation, AES256 encryption at rest, TLS 1.2 minimum, and MFA or SSO for access. GDPR is handled on a legitimate-interest basis with TRUSTe GDPR and CCPA certifications, and ZoomInfo registers as a data broker under Texas law.

What is not published is as relevant. No retention window or deletion control is stated for customer data, no storage region can be chosen, and no page says customer data is kept out of model training. The MCP security page pushes that question outward instead, telling buyers to review their own AI provider's retention settings and turn off training where they can. There is also a tier contradiction on SSO: the plan table shows SSO/SAML checked for the free tier, while the same page's FAQ lists SSO/SAML as available on enterprise plans.

It fits B2B revenue teams that already route data into Salesforce or HubSpot and want verified records behind their AI tools, and it fits developers who want that data headlessly without a contract. The free credits make the MCP server genuinely testable in an afternoon.

It fits badly where cost must be predictable in advance. There is no published rate card for the Sales, Marketing or Talent packages, GTM Studio is quoted per customer and described as an early access program, and credit consumption on research agents varies per call with no preview. Teams that need a storage region, a stated retention window or a written no-training commitment will not find those on the published pages and will have to get them in a negotiated agreement.