How to export contacts from Apollo

You built a saved search in Apollo, 1,800 people, VP and Head of titles at Series A and B companies. You hit Export and the counter told you that you have 1,000 export credits this month. So you exported 1,000, waited for the file, loaded it into your sender, and 180 of them bounced on day one. If that is your week, this page is for you. Here is how to export contacts from Apollo, exactly what it costs you in credits, and what to do so the bounces do not happen again.

The export path

Apollo exports come from the People search, not from a list page. The steps below match Apollo's help article on exporting contacts to a CSV.

1. Go to Search, then People.
2. Narrow the set. You can filter to saved contacts, a saved search, or a list.
3. Check the records you want, or use bulk select. On the Free plan, a bulk selection is capped at 25 records.
4. Click Export.
5. Choose whether to export all emails or verified emails only. Pick verified only unless you have a reason not to.
6. Optionally click "Edit export CSV settings" to choose the columns.
7. Click "Export records".

The file does not download in your browser right away. It is prepared in the background. Go to Settings, then Import & Exports, then CSV Exports, and download it from there. Accounts (companies) have their own export with a separate help article, so if you need company-level rows, do that as a second export.

Format is CSV only. There is no Excel or Google Sheets option. Exporting sequences and their results is not documented in the sources I could reach, so if you need the outcome of a campaign rather than the contacts in it, do not count on a button for it.

The export credit model

This is the part that trips people up. Every record you export consumes one export credit, and export credits are a monthly allowance set by your plan. Existing records in your account are not auto-enriched on export, so exporting a stale contact costs the same credit as a fresh one and gives you the stale data.

Plan	Price per user per month (billed monthly, as of September 2026)	Export credits per month	Mobile credits per month
Free	$0	10	5
Basic	$59	1,000	75
Professional	$99	2,000	100
Organization	$149, 3 seat minimum	4,000	200

Annual billing brings Basic to $49, Professional to $79 and Organization to $119 per user per month as of September 2026. One caveat: Apollo's pricing page at https://www.apollo.io/pricing is rendered in the browser and only its FAQ text loads in a plain fetch, so the plan prices here come from dated third-party breakdowns that agree with each other. The credit rules come from Apollo's own FAQ.

A few more rules from that FAQ. An email credit costs 1, a phone lookup costs 8. Non-paying accounts are capped at 10,000 credits per account per month under the Fair Use Policy. Paying "unlimited" plans are capped at the lesser of dollars paid divided by $0.025 or one million credits per account per year. You can buy add-on credits mid cycle; downgrading an add-on takes effect at the end of the billing cycle. The trial gives you 50 credits, 5 mobile credits and almost all the features of the plan you picked.

So the practical math for a founder on Basic: 1,000 exports a month. If you export the same 1,800-person search in two halves across two months, that is your whole allowance, and none of the enrichment credits you also wanted for phone numbers.

The accuracy problem

Apollo has a 240M+ contact database and it is cheaper than ZoomInfo for comparable coverage; reviewers say so and I agree. But 503 G2 reviews flag "Inaccurate Data", Capterra reviewers note "Some contact information is outdated and credit can runs out quickly with heavy usage", and the numbers from r/coldemail are worse: exports of "verified" contacts producing 18 percent hard bounces on day one, and 32 to 38 percent bounces in a 500 to 1,000 lead test. The community consensus is to re-verify with another tool before sending.

I would go further. Bounces are not just wasted rows. Hard bounces above a few percent damage the sending domain's reputation, which means the good 80 percent of your list starts landing in spam too. Every cheap re-verification tool costs less than a burned domain.

So before the CSV touches any sender:

1. Export verified emails only.
2. Run the file through an email verifier and drop anything that is not valid.
3. Check the company column against the LinkedIn URL for the top 50 leads. People who changed jobs are the most common stale record, and their emails still verify on the old domain until IT gets around to it.
4. Load only what passed.

Switching to a signal-based tool

The export credit model makes sense if Apollo is your database and you pull from it forever. It makes less sense if you are exporting because you want to leave, or because you have noticed that a static list of titles at Series A companies does not tell you who is buying this month.

The alternative is to start from a signal instead of a filter. PumpGTM is an AI go-to-market engine for founders and small B2B sales teams. It finds buyers showing intent right now: companies hiring on Greenhouse, Lever or LinkedIn Jobs, companies that just raised, companies changing tools, people engaging with a relevant LinkedIn post. It scores every lead out of 100 and anyone under 60 gets no message. Then it runs a paced LinkedIn sequence from your own account (day 0 profile view, day 1 like a relevant post, day 2 personalized connection request, then a contextual follow-up), with optional email steps from your own Gmail, Microsoft 365 or IMAP mailbox. Replies get sorted, qualified buyers get handed to you.

Your Apollo CSV still has a job here. Import it and PumpGTM treats it as a starting list, scoring each row against live signals the same way it scores leads it found itself. The ones with no signal get parked, not messaged. You can also bring a Sales Navigator list the same way. For one SF team in the last seven days of September 2026 that approach produced 546 invites, 356 accepted (68 percent, against roughly 20 percent industry standard), 98 qualified replies and 38 enterprise demo meetings.

Be clear about what you are giving up. PumpGTM is not a data vendor with a 200M contact database. It has no phone channel and no dialer. If your motion is high volume email to a broad list, or you need mobile numbers, Apollo does that and PumpGTM does not; the Apollo alternatives page lays out which tool fits which motion, and Apollo vs Clay covers the enrichment side. If you are trying to replace an SDR rather than a database, AI SDR tools for startups is the better shortlist.

Pro is $75 a month as of September 2026 (list $99), up to 3,000 leads a month, additional users $25 a month each, 7 day trial, card required when the live trial starts, cancel anytime. Start the 7 day trial and upload your verified Apollo CSV during onboarding.

Questions people ask

Where do I find my Apollo export after clicking Export records? Under Settings, then Import & Exports, then CSV Exports. The file is prepared in the background and appears there for download rather than saving directly in your browser.

How many contacts can I export from Apollo per month? It depends on your plan's export credits: 10 on Free, 1,000 on Basic, 2,000 on Professional and 4,000 on Organization. Each exported record uses one credit.

Does exporting from Apollo refresh the contact data? No. Existing records are not auto-enriched on export. You get the data as it currently sits in your account.

Can I export Apollo contacts to Excel or Google Sheets? Apollo exports CSV only. Open the CSV in Excel or import it into Google Sheets afterwards.

Why do Apollo "verified" emails bounce? Users on r/coldemail report 18 percent hard bounces on day one and 32 to 38 percent in larger tests from verified exports, and 503 G2 reviews flag inaccurate data. The consensus is to re-verify with a separate tool before sending.

Can I import an Apollo CSV into PumpGTM? Yes. PumpGTM scores every imported lead against your ICP and live intent signals, skips anyone under 60 out of 100, and runs the rest through a LinkedIn sequence from your own account, with optional email from your own mailbox.