FreshGeo vs Clearbit + Cognism
Clearbit, Cognism, Apollo and ZoomInfo sell B2B contact and firmographic databases for humans in a CRM. FreshGeo sells live grounding for agents — seven domains of fresh signal, typed for models, priced for loops.
Cognism has the best GDPR-compliant EU mobile coverage in the category, and Clearbit (now HubSpot Breeze Intelligence) still sets the bar for firmographic enrichment inside a CRM.
The data-provider stack was built for SDRs filtering lists and for CRMs enriching records. FreshGeo is built for agents asking questions in a loop. The difference is not "who has more contacts" — it is response shape (typed JSON with sources[]), freshness cadence (hourly for intent, daily for pricing), per-agent spend caps, and MCP-native delivery so Claude/GPT/Gemini can actually use it without glue code.
When Clearbit + Cognism wins
- →You need millions of contact-level records (emails, direct dials) for outbound at scale — FreshGeo does not sell contact data.
- →Your primary consumer is a human SDR working in HubSpot, Salesforce or Outreach, not an agent.
- →You need deep firmographic enrichment (revenue bands, tech stack, employee counts) as a bulk CSV.
- →You already have the CRM integration and your workflow is list-based, not question-based.
When FreshGeo wins
- ✓Your consumer is an agent, not a human — it asks questions, it does not filter lists.
- ✓You need fresh signals (intent, jobs, pricing changes, news), not static firmographics from last quarter.
- ✓You want sources[] per field so the agent can cite and your compliance team can audit.
- ✓You need per-agent API keys with hard spend caps — data providers price for seats, not loops.
- ✓You want MCP-native tool calls, not a REST API wrapped in a custom function per endpoint.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Clearbit + Cognism | FreshGeo |
|---|---|---|
| Primary consumer | Human SDR / CRM enrichment | AI agent via MCP |
| Core asset | Contact + firmographic database | 7 live signal APIs |
| Contact data (email, phone) | Yes, core offering | — |
| Live intent signals | Cognism/ZoomInfo: weekly | Hourly |
| Competitor pricing | — | Daily, typed, with diff |
| Response format | CSV / REST records | Typed JSON with sources[] |
| MCP-native | — | First-party MCP server |
| Auth model | Seat-based licence | Per-agent keys + spend caps |
| Pricing model | Annual seats + credits | Per typed call, cached free |
| Entity linking across domains | Firmographics only | Shared company_id across 7 domains |
| Deterministic replay | — | cache_id |
| EU/UK residency | Cognism yes, others US | UK-hosted |
| GDPR posture | Cognism strong, others mixed | No personal contact data held |
| SLA | Enterprise-tier only | 99.95% on all plans |
| Time to first agent call | Days (procurement + integration) | ~10 min via MCP |
Detect buying intent for a target account this week
// Cognism Intent API
const res = await fetch('https://api.cognism.com/v1/intent', {
method: 'POST',
headers: { 'Authorization': 'Bearer ' + KEY },
body: JSON.stringify({
domain: 'acme.com', topics: ['revops','crm'],
}),
});
const data = await res.json();
// Agent must interpret scores, thresholds,
// and map topics back to your taxonomy. import { FreshGeo } from 'freshgeo';
const fg = new FreshGeo({ apiKey: KEY });
const intent = await fg.intent.check({
company: 'acme.com', window: '7d',
});
// -> { surging: true, themes: ['revops'],
// evidence: [{type:'jobs',...},
// {type:'news',...}],
// sources: [...], cache_id: '...' } How teams make the switch
- 01 Separate your use cases: list-building and CRM enrichment stay on Clearbit/Cognism; agent-time questions move to FreshGeo.
- 02 Identify the questions your agent keeps asking (intent, hiring signals, pricing moves, news risk).
- 03 Map each to a FreshGeo domain and wire the MCP server into your agent runtime.
- 04 Stop paying for contact-database seats your agent was not using — agents do not need dashboards.
- 05 Set per-agent spend caps before production; data-provider invoices do not have kill switches.
- 06 Keep Cognism as your human SDR tool and FreshGeo as your agent tool. They are different products.
Questions buyers ask us
Does FreshGeo have contact data like Apollo or ZoomInfo? +
No. FreshGeo deliberately does not sell emails or direct dials. We cover seven non-PII business domains — pricing, intent, jobs, social, real estate, competitor monitoring, news/risk. If you need contacts for outbound, keep Apollo or Cognism. Agents rarely need an email; they need a reason to act, which is what FreshGeo provides.
Is this a replacement for Clearbit enrichment? +
For CRM enrichment, no — Clearbit (HubSpot Breeze Intelligence) is the right tool. For agent-time grounding, yes. The gap is freshness and shape: Clearbit gives a record snapshot optimised for a CRM row; FreshGeo gives a typed answer optimised for a model in a loop, with sources per field.
How fresh is the intent data vs Cognism/ZoomInfo? +
FreshGeo recomputes intent hourly from live signals (jobs posted, pricing changes, news mentions, social). Cognism and ZoomInfo typically refresh intent weekly from bidstream and web activity. Different inputs, different cadence. Our intent is better for "what changed today"; theirs is better for "who is in-market this quarter".
What about GDPR and EU data residency? +
FreshGeo is UK-hosted and holds no personal contact data — just company-level signals with public sources. SOC 2 is in progress. Cognism is strong on EU GDPR for contact data; we are strong because we avoid contact data entirely. Different risk posture, both defensible.
Can I point my existing agent at it without rewriting? +
Yes. FreshGeo ships as an MCP server. Claude Desktop, GPT clients and Gemini agents add it as one tool source and pick up all seven APIs with typed schemas. Integration is typically under ten minutes. No REST wrappers, no function-definition JSON to maintain per endpoint.
How is pricing structured vs seat-based providers? +
Per typed call, with cached hits free via cache_id. No seats, no annual minimums for the self-serve tier. Agent workloads are spiky — a research loop can burn thousands of calls in a morning — so we priced for loops and shipped per-agent hard spend caps so a bug cannot cost you a month of budget overnight.
Data providers for humans. FreshGeo for agents.
Keep Cognism or Clearbit for your SDR team. Connect the FreshGeo MCP server for the agents in the loop.