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Our 11 Picks for the Best B2B Prospecting Software in 2025
September 18, 2025
By
Irina Maltseva
Manual prospecting kills your sales team’s ability to generate leads at high volume. A single SDR can spend an hour finding, researching, and messaging a single prospect, who is unlikely to respond anyway because the outreach messages were rushed.
This is why B2B prospecting software is so critical to sales growth. It automates the repetitive tasks involved in prospecting, so sales teams can generate high-quality lead lists and conduct personalized outreach in minutes, not hours.
Read on to learn about B2B prospecting software, including the key features, whether to use paid or free tools, and the 11 best tools on the market.
B2B prospecting software is any tool that helps B2B sales teams efficiently identify, research, and contact high-potential leads. Common features include searchable lead databases, outreach automation, web visitor tracking, and even AI BDRs who reach out to leads on your behalf.
Unlike a CRM, which is used throughout the sales process, prospecting tools are purpose-built to automate the early part of the sales cycle—a phase known as outbound lead generation.
Not all sales prospecting tools are created equal. Some focus on automating a specific outreach method, such as cold emailing. Others provide lead and company data, but no outreach tools whatsoever. For some businesses, point solutions might be a good fit. However, most companies and SaaS startups will get the most out of a holistic prospecting solution with the following features:
A lead database is an organized collection of information about companies and professionals, including job titles, revenue numbers, email addresses, and much more.
They offer advanced filters that enable reps to quickly build lead lists based on demographics, technographics, firmographics, location, and other criteria. For example, a BDR could find leads with the following qualities: “Real estate companies with under 50 employees located in the Nashville area, without a CRM.” Databases help sales teams discover new leads and build targeted prospecting lists of ideal leads, which they’ll use as the basis of their cold outreach.
B2B database tools differ in size, data accuracy, and filter availability, so make sure you find one that provides the data you need for your cold outreach.
The best sales prospecting software fits nicely into your sales tech stack and workflows.
They offer two-way sync CRM integrations with popular brands like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Pipedrive. These syncs allow for the automatic flow of data between systems. For example, the cold emails you send in your prospecting tool are automatically reflected in your CRM under the contact record. This keeps your team from having to do double data-entry and ensures everyone on your sales and marketing team is operating from the latest intel.
In addition to auto-logging outreach activity, prospecting tools should also offer cross-platform task automations—where an activity in one solution triggers an action in another. For instance, you could set up an automated follow-up sales email in your prospecting solution that sends whenever a lead fills out a web form connected to your marketing automation tool.
Sales prospecting solutions should make it simple to create and execute personalized, multi-channel outreach sequences that connect with leads over email, calls, and LinkedIn.
The most important outreach automation tools are:
The best tools take automation to the next level. They don’t just speed up the process of creating outreach sequences. They write them for you based on lead behavior and context.
Email outreach is a key part of prospecting, so it makes sense that the best prospecting solutions come with tools that ensure your emails find their way into your leads’ inboxes.
Email deliverability tools feature dynamic send limits, inbox rotation, and bounce prevention. The most important feature is email warm-up, which gradually boosts the reputation of your email address with email service providers like Gmail or Outlook. This helps your outreach messages avoid spam filters and reach your leads.
Prospecting tools usually offer a data enrichment feature that automatically updates incorrect or empty fields in your contact records. For example, if a lead’s email address was missing, the tool would fill that in with its data.
Some tools also come with intent signals that alert salespeople when leads take some online action that signals readiness to buy, like getting a promotion on LinkedIn or visiting your pricing page. These alerts allow sales professionals to focus on high-intent leads and reach out to them at the ideal time, a tactic known as intent-based targeting.
Can’t decide whether to go with a free or paid tool? Below, we’ll help you figure it out by going over the major reasons to choose each option.
Free plans can be a good option for small businesses looking to streamline some of their prospecting tasks. But most users will quickly run into credit caps and access limits that keep them from driving real impact. For example, a free tool might offer 50 email address reveals per month. That’s simply not enough for companies doing large-scale prospecitng.
Here are some types of businesses that would benefit most from free tools:
When teams scale, they usually need more company and contact information to fuel their outreach. They also need real-time sync with their CRMs, automation capabilities, and intent signals. Paid solutions allow them to truly transform their prospecting process from manual to automated, allowing them to reach far more leads in a personalized manner than they could with basic free tools.
Below are the four pricing models to expect:
Below are the best B2B sales prospecting tools out there based on price, features, reputation, and integrations. Whether you’re a BDR manager at a Fortune 500 company or a Sales Director at a startup, you should find the right tool for your specific needs on this list.
Artisan is an outbound AI BDR software that automates the entire prospecting process, from lead discovery to personalized outreach on LinkedIn and email. Unlike most tools, which provide features to help your sales reps create sequences, write emails, and find new prospects, Artisan’s Ava does it all for you. The platform also comes with a large B2B lead database, email deliverability tools, automated background A/B testing, and data enrichment, making it a strong candidate for companies that want to scale prospecting with AI.
HubSpot CRM is a free all-in-one CRM for marketing, sales, support, and operations. The free package offers basic prospecting tools, including email templates, email scheduling, and web visitor identification (called Prospects). The HubSpot Sales platform, a paid product, offers more prospecting functionality, such as automated email personalization and AI-recommended next steps to keep your sales reps focused on high-priority leads and tasks.
Apollo is a sales engagement platform with a built-in B2B database, making it ideal for streamlining lead discovery and outreach efforts. Apollo users can use the filters in the database to build lead lists that match their ideal customer profile, then leverage the outreach automation features to connect with decision-makers. While its wide breadth of features can be a positive for some, other sales teams might find that this versatility steepens the learning curve.
ZoomInfo is a go-to-market intelligence platform specializing in providing B2B data that powers sales prospecting. Its database—one of the largest in the industry—contains over 70M direct-dial phone numbers and 174M verified email addresses. The software also offers (as add-ons) tools like Engage, which automates outreach, and Intent, which tracks buying signals. While an option for enterprise brands, smaller companies may find ZoomInfo is too expensive.
Cognism is a sales intelligence solution that gives sales reps, especially SDRs, GDPR-compliant B2B data that helps them find and connect with key decision-makers. In addition to its searchable AI B2B database, Cognism also offers buyer intent tracking and a data enrichment tool that keeps CRM data accurate. The platform is known for its EMEA data, making it a popular choice among businesses prospecting in European markets
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is LinkedIn’s prospecting solution that helps sales reps find target decision-makers on LinkedIn and engage them effectively. It offers advanced contact filtering, real-time alerts on target accounts, and lead recommendations based on your ideal customer profile. It also allows sellers to InMail accounts they aren’t already connected with. If your team is doing LinkedIn social selling to generate leads, it can heavily automate the process.
Lusha is a sales intelligence platform that gives growth-focused businesses B2B data for lead generation, with a B2B database that comes with advanced filtering, intent data, and company information. Lusha also enables sales teams to create basic lead scoring models to prioritize leads for outreach and follow-up. Although Lusha is easier to use and more affordable than competitors like ZoomInfo, its database is smaller and may be less reliable.
Hunter is an email finder tool that helps sales reps find the email addresses of their target leads by entering their name and the company’s domain name. Hunter also comes with basic cold email software that includes email templates, custom attributes, scheduling, and automated follow-ups. Additionally, the tool helps reps track email engagement to identify warm leads. Overall, it’s an easy-to-use tool for businesses focused on cold email prospecting.
UpLead is a B2B sales intelligence solution with a B2B database that specializes in verified B2B emails, mobile numbers, and intent data. Sales teams can use the database to build lists of high-quality leads, taking advantage of 50+ filters for contact, company, and technographic criteria. Although UpLead lacks sales engagement features, it does integrate with outreach tools like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Outreach.
Salesloft is an all-in-one revenue orchestration platform for lead generation, prospecting, and conversational intelligence. Its Cadence feature enables sales teams to build automated multi-channel outreach cadences, track lead engagement, and A/B test campaigns. Salesloft also offers tools automate work associated with closing deals, making it a popular choice for sales teams needing software for the whole sales process, not just the prospecting phase.
Seamless is a sales intelligence platform that helps businesses find target buyers through its AI-powered, real-time search engine for B2B sales leads. Seamless also offers buying intent data, job change alerts, and data enrichment. Their standout prospecting feature has to be Pitch Intelligence, which uses AI to research leads and personalize cold call scripts and emails with data about their revenue reports, tech stack, and social media activity.
When choosing a B2B prospecting tool, focus on platforms that solve the current bottlenecks in your prospecting process.
Have a great outreach methodology and tech stack, but lack quality data? You need a B2B sales intelligence tool like Cognism. Have the data, but don’t have a scalable way to reach out to leads? Investing in a sales engagement tool like Salesloft should be your priority.
Also, consider how much automation you want. Some platforms are more hands-on, requiring your reps to work in these tools daily. Others, like Artisan, are more AI-forward sales tools. They offer features like AI BDRs who don’t just help your team engage leads—they do it for you.
Once you’ve identified the reasons you need prospecting software, set up some free trials and calls to further evaluate the ones on this list that best fit your needs.
Ready to see Artisan in action? Let AI BDRs handle outreach for you—generate leads, engage prospects, and save your team hours every week.
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Irina is a Founder at ONSAAS, Growth Lead at Aura, and a SaaS marketing consultant. She helps companies to grow their revenue with SEO and inbound marketing. In her spare time, Irina entertains her cat Persie and collects airline miles.
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