Intent data providers, compared honestly.

Intent data providers are vendors that sell behavioral signals showing which companies or people are actively researching a topic right now, so you can reach them while they are still in market instead of after they have picked someone else. The market splits two ways. Account-level providers tell you a company is researching. Person-level providers tell you which individual is. That single difference changes everything about how you activate the data.

This is a list of the major intent data providers, what each one is good at, and where each one falls short. I run Buyerfeeds, so I have an obvious bias. I will be fair anyway, because pretending Bombora invented nothing or that 6sense has no orchestration would just make this page useless to you.

Let me give you the comparison first, then the detail.

Who offers the best intent data?

There is no single best intent data provider. There is a best one for your job.

Here is the honest comparison across the columns that actually decide a purchase.

Read the table this way. If you sell to large buying committees and want a platform that scores accounts and orchestrates plays, the account-level vendors are built for that. If you want to activate specific people directly, in ad platforms or in sequences, the person-level feed is the different shape.

Now the detail on each.

Bombora.

Bombora is the category standard. They built account-level intent data into a real market, and most people who say "intent data" are picturing Company Surge.

The model is a co-op. Publishers and B2B brands contribute data, Bombora aggregates it into topic signals, and members consume it. A lot of their topic data is exclusive to that co-op, which is the real moat.

What it does well: brand trust, broad coverage, a deep predefined topic taxonomy, and partnerships with almost every platform you already use. What it does not do: person-level resolution, free-text topics outside the taxonomy, or transparent pricing. Every path on their site leads to "speak to an expert."

If you want account-level intent and you want the safe, established name, Bombora is the answer. See our Bombora alternative breakdown for where a person-level feed fits instead.

6sense.

6sense is not a raw data vendor. It is an ABM platform with intent baked in.

You get predictive account scoring, audience building, orchestration, and a workflow layer on top of the signal. The intent is account-level and topic-based, like the rest of this group, but the value proposition is the platform around it.

This is a good fit if you have a real ABM motion and a team to run it. It is overkill, and overpriced, if all you wanted was the signal. Buyers regularly evaluate 6sense, like it, then bounce on the annual price. That is the most common reason people end up looking at a feed instead.

Demandbase.

Demandbase is the other big account-based platform, and it competes with 6sense more than with any pure data provider.

Same general shape: predictive intent, account identification, advertising, and orchestration in one suite. Predefined topics, account-level signal, SaaS delivery, pricing behind a demo.

Pick Demandbase or 6sense the way you pick a CRM. You are buying a system you will live in, not a data file you will pipe somewhere. If that is what you need, good. If it is not, you are paying for a lot of surface you will never touch.

ZoomInfo.

ZoomInfo's intent product (the old Clickagy engine) is bundled inside its much larger contact and company database.

The pitch is one platform for data and signal. You get firmographics, contacts, and topic-based account intent in the same place. For teams already standardized on ZoomInfo, that consolidation is the appeal.

The intent itself is account-level and predefined, same as the rest. And it is one feature inside a big enterprise contract, so you rarely buy it on its own merits. You buy ZoomInfo and the intent comes along.

Cognism.

Cognism is a contact-data platform, strong in Europe, with solid coverage of mobile numbers and GDPR-compliant data.

On intent, Cognism resells Bombora's signal. So the intent layer is account-level, predefined-topic, co-op-sourced, the same data you would get from Bombora, packaged inside Cognism's contact workflow.

That is not a knock. If you already use Cognism for contacts and want intent in the same tool, it is convenient. Just know the underlying signal is Bombora's, with the same strengths and the same limits.

Buyerfeeds.

Buyerfeeds is the person-level option, and it is delivered as a data feed, not a dashboard you log into.

Two things make it different from everything above. First, the signal is person-level. Each row is a person, not a company, and it comes with a hashed email you can match as a custom audience in LinkedIn, Meta, Google, or TikTok, plus name, location, and LinkedIn URL when available, tied to a stable identity token. Second, the topics are free-text. You type any phrase, including your exact product category or a competitor's name, instead of picking from a fixed list.

The data is from open-web intent, refreshed every 24 hours, drawn from roughly 30 billion daily signals against an identity graph of about 1.8 billion contacts. You activate it by pushing to ad-platform audiences, enriching your CRM and sales tools, sending direct mail, or pulling it straight from the API.

Where it is not the answer: if you want a full ABM platform with scoring and orchestration built in, that is a 6sense or Demandbase job, not a feed. Buyerfeeds gives you the raw person-level signal to plug into whatever you already run.

How much does intent data cost?

Honestly, the range is wide. It runs from a few thousand dollars a month to enterprise contracts well into six figures a year, and most vendors will not tell you which end you are on until you sit through a call.

The account-level platforms (6sense, Demandbase, ZoomInfo) sit at the top of that range, because you are buying the whole platform, not just the signal. Bombora and Cognism vary by coverage and seats. None of them publish a number.

Buyerfeeds publishes ranges instead. Starter is $2,000-$5,000/mo for 10k-50k records with a 30-60 day lookback and no PII. Growth is $5,000-$15,000/mo for 50k-250k records, 90-day lookback, optional PII. Unrestricted wholesale runs $25,000-$200,000+/mo on annual terms. There is a free 14-day evaluation key, no sales call required. The full breakdown lives on the pricing page.

The cost nobody lists is time. A SaaS contract means a procurement cycle measured in weeks. A feed means an evaluation key today and data flowing this afternoon.

How to choose between intent data providers.

Start with one question: do you need to know the company, or the person?

If you sell six-figure deals to large committees and you want a platform to score and orchestrate accounts, buy account-level. 6sense and Demandbase are built for that. Bombora is the signal underneath much of the market.

If you want to put the data in front of specific individuals, in ad audiences or in sequences, and you do not want a predefined topic list dictating what you are allowed to target, a person-level feed is the different tool. That is the gap Buyerfeeds fills.

And if pricing transparency and speed matter to you, weigh that too. A published range and a free evaluation key tell you something about how a vendor wants to work with you.

Go deeper.

→ Bombora alternatives — how a person-level data feed compares to the account-level category standard.

→ What is intent data? — the full primer on intent signals, account vs person level, and how to act on them.

→ Pricing — transparent ranges, what each tier includes, and the free 14-day evaluation key.