Lusha vs Cognism for Phone-Verified Direct Dials: Accuracy, DNC Coverage and Price

Lusha vs Cognism at a glance

My own lists run on email and LinkedIn, not the phone, but phone data still crosses my desk every time a client's list goes through an enrichment step before it reaches their CRM. A wrong number costs nothing until someone actually dials it, so I read these vendors from the same angle you probably are: what proof does each one give that a number is real before you spend a seat's worth of credits finding out. No tool in this article pays me, and there are no affiliate links.

From Lusha's data accuracy FAQ and pricing page, and Cognism's data page and pricing page.

What's the difference between a direct dial and a mobile number?

A direct dial is a desk or office extension that reaches one named person without going through a switchboard. A mobile is the person's own cell number. Both matter for a different reason: a mobile usually gets picked up faster, a direct dial is less likely to be screened by a receptionist in the first place.

Lusha treats the two as separate, named fields. Its accuracy FAQ states plainly that direct dials and mobiles come back separately, each with its own Do Not Call status, so you can see which kind of number you're about to dial before you spend the credit. Cognism's current site, checked today, talks about verified mobiles under the Diamond Data name and doesn't describe a current, separate direct dial product the way Lusha does. If your list leans on office extensions rather than personal cells, that's worth confirming directly with Cognism's sales team rather than assuming the feature exists because an older page once mentioned it.

Whose phone data is more accurate?

Lusha publishes a number: 86% phone accuracy globally and 85% in the US, refreshed daily, on its accuracy FAQ. It doesn't say exactly how accuracy is measured against a sample, so treat the percentage as the vendor's own count, not an independent audit.

Cognism doesn't publish a single accuracy percentage for Diamond Data. Instead, its data page describes the method: a human research team confirms a mobile number reaches the named contact before it's added, and the result, in the vendor's own words, is "a 3x improvement in connect rates with phone-verified mobiles compared to industry average." That's a claim about what happens after you dial, not a lab accuracy figure, and it's still Cognism grading its own homework.

Neither number settles which one is better for your list. A method beats a percentage when you can't check the percentage yourself, which is the case with both vendors here, so the test later in this article matters more than either headline claim.

Do Not Call screening and GDPR, compared

If you're building a calling list for Europe, this section is the one to read twice. Cognism's own pages don't agree with each other on the exact count: its data page claims "16 DNC lists globally, more than any other B2B data provider," while its compliance page names a shorter, specific list: the UK (TPS and CTPS), the US, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Croatia, Sweden and Belgium. Count TPS and CTPS as two and that's 13, not 16, so ask Cognism directly which registry covers the country you're calling into rather than trusting either headline number.

Lusha's accuracy FAQ states that every phone record carries its Do Not Call status, without naming the specific national lists it checks against. On data residency and certification, Lusha's data privacy page claims ISO 27701, ISO 27001 and ISO 27018 certification plus SOC 2 Type 2, and says it's GDPR and CCPA compliant with an independent ePrivacy and TrustArc validation. Cognism's compliance page states it processes data "under the lawful basis of legitimate interest, as allowed under Section 6.1(f) GDPR" and that it "generally" keeps collected data inside the European Economic Area, alongside the same ISO 27001, ISO 27701 and SOC 2 Type II certifications.

A lawful basis to hold a contact's details is not permission to email them. Whether you may send a cold email at all depends on each country's own rules, which I go through in is B2B cold email legal in the EU. Do Not Call lists govern phone calls specifically and say nothing about your inbox.

What each costs (checked 28 October 2026)

Lusha: published, per plan

A phone number costs 5 credits on every paid plan, per Lusha's pricing page. Pro and Premium run on a credit slider, so the per-credit cost moves with how many you commit to.

Cognism: no published price, two packages

Cognism's pricing page shows no numbers at all. It sells Standard and Pro, both including 5 seats, and routes everyone to a quote:

• Standard: contact and company data, hiring and funding signals, CSV enrichment, API and MCP access.
• Pro: everything in Standard, plus enhanced mobile data, on-demand mobile verification and intent data.
• CRM Enrichment: an add-on to either package, or sold standalone.

The credit model is flat: 1 credit reveals 1 contact, whether the field you need is an email or a phone number, and viewing that contact again is free unless they change jobs. That's a real difference from both Lusha and Apollo, where a phone costs more credits than an email. I go through Apollo's version of this same credit math, including how it stacks up against Cognism on coverage and compliance, in Apollo vs Cognism for prospecting.

A worked example: 150 verified phone numbers a month

Assume a rep needs 150 phone numbers a month, on Lusha's monthly self-serve billing. The maths: 150 numbers x 5 credits = 750 credits. Pro gives 600 credits for $69.90, so the credit slider needs to move up to around 900 to 1,000 credits, landing close to $104 to $116 a month depending on where the slider sits that month. Divide that by 150 and a verified phone number lands somewhere around 69 to 77 cents, a bit above the 58 cents a smaller 120-number month on base Pro would work out to.

Cognism can't be modeled the same way, because there's no published seat price to divide by. What you can model is the shape of the bill: a flat 1 credit per revealed contact regardless of field, 5 seats included on either package, and a quote that will ask how many contacts you expect to reveal a month. Bring that monthly number to the call, since it's the one input that moves Cognism's price the most. These are stated assumptions, not researched facts about either vendor's real invoice; swap in your own volume before you trust the total.

Email and company data: the part that isn't about phones

Both vendors sell more than phone numbers. Lusha's data page claims 515M+ contacts and 29M+ companies, with 98% email accuracy globally and regional splits (North America 98%, EMEA 97%, APAC 96%, LATAM 95%), plus contact counts by region: Europe 103.1M+, North America 162.5M+. It doesn't publish Italian contact data at all, a specific gap worth checking if that market matters to you.

Cognism doesn't publish a single contact total on the pages I checked. Its own positioning is seniority coverage rather than raw volume: 90% coverage of director level and above across Europe and the US, refreshed every 30 days, per its data page. If your list is mostly senior titles in Europe, that's a more useful number than either vendor's total contact count. For a bigger database with its own quote-only price, see Cognism vs ZoomInfo.

Sending, the extension and integrations

Lusha sends email too. Lusha Engage runs sequences from your own Gmail or Outlook at no extra charge, with no dedicated dialer. That's a platform limit, not a safe one: the number I actually run for clients is 20 to 30 emails per mailbox per day, after 3 to 4 weeks of warmup, regardless of what any tool's daily cap allows. Its extension reveals contacts on LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, company sites and inside your CRM.

Cognism stops at the data. You reveal contacts in its platform, browser extension or API, then push them into your CRM or sequencer; it lists native integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics, Pipedrive, Salesloft, Outreach and Zapier. It doesn't send email or dial on your behalf, which matches how I'd want a pure data vendor to behave: the list and the outreach are two different jobs, and conflating them in one tool usually means neither is done particularly well. For the email side specifically, I've already run that comparison for Lusha in Lusha vs Apollo for contact data.

How to test both before you sign anything

1. Pick 100 contacts you'd actually call, split across the countries and seniority levels you sell to.
2. Buy one month of Lusha on monthly billing, since it's self-serve. For Cognism, ask for its free data sample, returned within about 72 hours by its own pricing page, before committing to a quote.
3. Dial 20 numbers from each list and count right-person connects, not just a number that rang.
4. Check the field, not just the number. Was it labeled a mobile or a direct dial, and did the Do Not Call status match reality when you called a number already on a national list?
5. Divide what you paid, or would pay, by the connects that were actually usable. That's your real cost per working number, not the credit price.

"We're comparing your data against [competitor] on these 100 named contacts in Germany, Poland and the UK. For each one: mobile, direct dial or both, and current Do Not Call status?"

Sourcing the number is only half the job. I don't run cold calls for clients myself, my own work is email and LinkedIn, but if your reps are the ones dialing these lists, what they say in the first ten seconds decides whether a correct number was worth finding. I lay out openers and objection lines in cold calling scripts that book meetings.

Pick Cognism if, pick Lusha if

Pick Cognism if

• Your reps call into Europe and you want a documented verification step before a number ever reaches them.
• You sell to director level and above and coverage of that specific band matters more than a total contact count.
• You're comfortable going through a sales call for pricing in exchange for its compliance documentation.

Pick Lusha if

• You want a published price you can test on a card today, without a sales call.
• You need direct dials and mobiles as separate, labeled fields in the same record.
• You also want email sequencing in the same login, not a second tool.

Some teams run both on different parts of the funnel: Lusha for the bulk of the list and the email motion, Cognism for the named accounts worth a verified call. That's two bills, so only do it once your own test shows Cognism's verification actually lifts connects on your market.

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