Apollo and ZoomInfo are contact databases. Give either one a company and it will find people at that company, their titles and their contact details. Neither is where a trade show exhibitor list comes from, and Apollo's own guide to trade shows says so: you pull the show's public exhibitor directory first, and the tool starts after that.
So the real question is not which product to pick. It is what fills the gap between a fair's directory and a contact database, because that gap is where the six hours go.
What each part of the job actually needs
Four steps between deciding to attend a fair and standing in front of the right stand. They need different tools and the middle two are the ones that get skipped.
| Step | What it needs | Apollo or ZoomInfo | Pengo |
|---|---|---|---|
| Get the exhibitor list | Reading the fair's own directory, to its last page | Not what they are for. Apollo's guide has you pull the show's public directory yourself | One press, read to the end and checked against the fair's stated count |
| Find out what each company sells | Reading a few hundred company websites | Firmographics and technographics, from their database | A profile per company, from that company's own pages |
| Rank them against your buyer | A judgment per company, with a reason | Filters over their database fields. Apollo's guide publishes a four-factor scoring table for doing it yourself | A score and a rationale per booth, with the source page |
| Reach the people | Names, roles and a way to contact them | This is the core product for both, at scale | Named people with the page they were read on. No constructed addresses |
What Apollo says about trade shows
Apollo publishes a guide on exactly this, updated in August 2026, and most of it is advice this page agrees with. Three parts are worth quoting because they set the boundary better than a competitor could.
- On lists: exhibitor directories are public and safe to mine, while attendee lists sold by third-party registration vendors are, in their words, frequently scams or in violation of the event's terms of service.
- On the workflow: once you have the raw list of company names, the real work starts. Their guide then describes matching those companies against your ICP using their filters.
- On timing: start booking meetings around thirty days out rather than waiting to scan badges on the floor.
Their guide also publishes a four-factor scoring model, weighting ICP fit and role relevance highly, event intent medium, and buying-group coverage alongside. It is a reasonable rubric. The thing it assumes, and the thing this page is about, is that you already have a complete and enriched list of exhibitors to run it over.
Published prices, all three
One of these is checkable in a browser and two are not, in different ways.
| Pengo | Apollo | ZoomInfo | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prices on the pricing page | Yes, three plans and eight per-action prices | Yes, a plan comparison, with a free tier they describe as free forever | No figures. The page is a Get Pricing form, split into Sales, Marketing and Talent packages |
| How usage is metered | Credits, spent per press, quoted before you press | Credits, including export credits consumed when a contact leaves Apollo | Not published on the pricing page |
| Priced per fair | Yes, by the size of the fair. 1,500 credits up to 100 stands, 2,500 up to 250 | No. Priced per seat and per credit, whatever you use them on | Not published on the pricing page |
| API access | Included from $99 a month | Their pricing FAQ puts API access on Custom plans | Not published on the pricing page |
Where the two approaches actually differ
A database answers about a company. A fair is a list you have to be sure of.
A contact database is complete in the sense that matters to it: ask about a company and you get an answer. An exhibitor directory has a different failure mode. It paginates, the copy stops at page one, and eighteen booths of a stated two thousand two hundred looks exactly like a small fair. Nothing about the eighteen rows is wrong. The list is just not the list.
That is the problem Pengo is built around rather than a feature it adds. Five signals have to agree before a directory is stamped complete, including the pass stating it reached the last entry, and silence there reads as unfinished rather than as finished.
An enrichment field is not a reason
Filtering a list to manufacturers with 200 to 1,000 employees is fast and it is not a judgment. It cannot tell you that the 400-person company in hall 6 sells the exact line you replace, or that the 900-person one three stands down is a systems integrator you never sell to. That distinction is in what the companies say about themselves, which is why the profile step exists and why the score carries the sentence it was decided on.
They are not alternatives, and the push proves it
Pengo pushes companies and people into HubSpot and Attio, and leads into Instantly and Salesforge, on a press and never on a clock. It has no dialler, no sequencer of its own and no contact database. A team already running Apollo or ZoomInfo keeps running it. What changes is what arrives in it.
Which to use when
- You have a target account list and need people at those accounts
- Apollo or ZoomInfo. This is the product, and nothing here is a substitute for it.
- You have a fair and a floor plan and three days
- You need the directory read to its end, every company profiled and every stand ranked before enrichment is worth running at all.
- You want to know which fairs to attend next year
- Neither of these, and not Pengo either. That is a portfolio question and there are event intelligence platforms built for it.
- You want attendee lists
- Nobody legitimate sells them. Apollo's own guide is blunt about the vendors who claim to, and so is our page on it.
Questions
Can you use Apollo for trade show prospecting?
Yes, for the enrichment and outreach half. Apollo's own trade show guide has you pull the show's public exhibitor directory first and then match those companies against your ICP inside Apollo. Getting a complete directory and finding out what each company sells is the step in front of it.
Does Apollo have trade show exhibitor lists?
Their guide to trade show prospecting describes pulling the exhibitor directory from the show's own website, then enriching those companies in Apollo. It treats the directory as an input you bring rather than something the database supplies.
How much does ZoomInfo cost?
ZoomInfo's pricing page does not publish figures. It offers Sales, Marketing and Talent packages behind a Get Pricing form, checked on 9 September 2026. Estimates circulating on comparison blogs are not ZoomInfo's numbers and are not repeated here.
Is Pengo an alternative to Apollo or ZoomInfo?
No. Pengo has no contact database, no dialler and no sequencer. It reads one fair's exhibitor directory, profiles every company on it and scores each stand, then pushes the survivors into HubSpot, Attio, Instantly or Salesforge. Teams run it alongside a contact database rather than instead of one.
Why not just enrich the exhibitor list in Apollo?
You can, and for the contact half you should. Enrichment fills firmographic fields, which supports a filter rather than a judgment. It will not tell you that one 400-person company sells the line you replace and another is an integrator you never sell to, because that is in what those companies say about themselves.
What does Pengo cost compared with a sales database seat?
Plans start at $39 a month with 9,500 credits. A 200-stand fair read in full, meaning every exhibitor, a profile for each and a score on every stand, is 2,750 credits or about $11. It is priced per fair rather than per seat.
Sources
- Apollo, How to Find and Reach Trade Show Exhibitors and Attendees, checked
- Apollo.io Pricing Plans, checked
- ZoomInfo Pricing and Plans, checked