The best B2B data providers and databases in Europe (2026, GDPR-ready)

Disclosure: This guide is published by Bitscale, and Bitscale is our top pick. We applied the same criteria to every provider and checked each vendor fact on the vendor's own website in October 2026. The legal sections summarize official EU and national sources. They are not legal advice.

The short answer: the best B2B data provider for most teams selling across Europe in 2026 is Bitscale. Europe isn't one data market. A provider that is strong in Germany can be thin in Spain, so Bitscale runs one email and phone waterfall across 18+ contact-data providers, verifies every result, and writes it back to Salesforce or HubSpot. The other options are strong for specific jobs:

• Cognism is the strongest single database for calling European decision-makers.
• Leadfeeder (formerly Dealfront) is the EU-built choice for register-based company data and website visitors.
• Lusha is the simplest low-cost tool for quick lookups.
• Kaspr is a low-cost LinkedIn extension for European contact details, priced in euros.
• ZoomInfo suits enterprise teams that want one global platform.
• Apollo.io is the best value all-in-one for data plus email sequences.
• National company registers are the free, official source of company records.

This guide is part of Bitscale's regional series, alongside B2B databases in North America and B2B databases for APAC. For a cross-region overview, see B2B data providers by region.

Quick comparison

Prices are list prices from each vendor's pricing page before VAT and discounts. Bitscale, Leadfeeder and Kaspr were checked October 21, 2026. Cognism, Lusha, Apollo and ZoomInfo were checked October 7, 2026.

Why European B2B data is different

Teams selling into Spain, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Ireland tend to hit the same three problems, and a US-first database won’t solve them.

1. One data law, many marketing rulebooks. The GDPR applies everywhere in the EU, but the rules for marketing emails and calls come from each country's own implementation of the EU ePrivacy Directive. The same cold email can be fine in France and need prior consent in Germany.

2. Coverage is uneven across countries. Vendors describe their European strengths region by region, and the regions differ (see the table below). No vendor we checked publishes country-level accuracy figures, so a single database is a bet on where your buyers are.

3. Company data is often free; contact data isn't. National registers in Germany and France are free to search, but they don't give you the work email or mobile number of the person you need. That gap is where contact-data providers, and Bitscale's waterfall, come in.

Which providers say they're strongest in each country

We only list a provider where its own website names that country or region as a strength. A dash means the vendor doesn't say, not that its coverage is weak.

Vendor claims checked on each vendor's website, October 21, 2026. Apollo.io makes no Europe-specific coverage claim on the pages we opened.

How Bitscale fits: Bitscale's waterfall page says provider order is "optimized by your target segment", with EMEA mid-market as one named segment, and that you can "layer in providers built specifically for non-North American ICPs." You can also reorder providers for each country yourself.

GDPR basics for B2B prospecting

The GDPR applies whenever you process data about an identifiable person. A named work email like anna.schmidt@firma.de is personal data; a generic address such as info@ is not. Four parts matter most for prospecting.

A lawful basis: legitimate interests, Article 6(1)(f). Most B2B prospecting relies on legitimate interests rather than consent. The European Commission lists direct marketing as an example, but only where the person's rights don't override yours. The EDPB says the interest must be "lawful, clear, real and present" and the processing necessary, weighed against what people would reasonably expect. Write that balancing test down before you start.

Bought or enriched lists. The Commission says you must be able to show third-party data was collected in line with the GDPR and may be used for advertising, keep it up to date, and remove anyone who has objected.

The information duty, Article 14. When data comes from a provider, you must tell people you hold it within one month, or at the latest in your first message if you contact them. The EDPB says the one-month limit can't be extended.

The right to object, Article 21. Anyone can object to direct marketing without giving a reason, and the objection must end that processing immediately.

Fines go up to €20 million or 4% of worldwide annual turnover.

Where Bitscale helps: Bitscale fills emails, mobiles, titles and firmographics with source attribution, so you can answer "where did you get my data?" from the record. Field-level control locks opt-out and do-not-contact fields so enrichment never overwrites them.

Cold B2B email and call rules by country

These are the rules for email to named work addresses, from each country's own law or regulator, as of October 2026.

• Germany (UWG §7). Email advertising without the recipient's "prior express consent" is always an unreasonable nuisance, with no exception for businesses. Calls to a business need at least presumed consent. The only email exception is for existing customers and similar products.
• France (CNIL). B2B email can rely on legitimate interest when the message relates to the recipient's job, such as software offered to an IT director. The person must have been told their address could be used for prospecting, and every message must name the sender and offer a simple opt-out.
• Spain (LSSI Article 21). Promotional emails are prohibited unless the recipient asked for or expressly authorized them, with no distinction between business and consumer recipients. The exception is for existing customers.
• Netherlands (Telecommunicatiewet Article 11.7). Unsolicited commercial email needs prior consent, business recipients included, unless you use an address the recipient published for receiving such messages, for the purposes they stated.
• Ireland (S.I. 336/2011, Regulation 13). Email to an address mainly used for the person's business, about that business, falls outside the consent rule for individuals. Companies can opt out, and you must stop once they do. Marketing calls to mobiles need consent.

The UK has its own rules: the ICO says the email consent rule doesn't apply to companies, but live B2B calls must be screened against the TPS and CTPS registers. Our guide to B2B data providers in the UK covers it in full.

What this means for your data: you need each contact's country so your sequencer can apply the right rule. In Germany, Spain and the Netherlands, cold email to named contacts generally needs consent first, so plan for LinkedIn, events and existing-customer email to carry more of the load there. Bitscale fills titles and firmographics on the records it enriches, so you can split sequences by country before anything is sent.

How we evaluated these providers

We built this list for teams prospecting into European companies. For each provider we checked the European countries it names as strengths, its stated compliance features (legal basis, Article 14 notices, do-not-call screening, certifications, hosting), its public pricing, and whether data writes back to Salesforce and HubSpot. We didn't run our own accuracy test in each country, because results vary by country, industry and seniority. Use the country-split test below instead.

The 8 best B2B data providers and databases in Europe for 2026

1. Bitscale: best overall for multi-country European coverage

Bitscale is our top pick because European coverage is spread across many providers, and no one vendor is strongest everywhere. It's also the highest-rated tool in our B2B prospecting tools comparison on G2, at 4.8/5.

• Pricing:
  • Free plan with 200 credits, no card required.
  • Growth is $349 per month ($314 billed annually) for 15,000 credits a month, with two-way HubSpot sync.
  • Booster is $799 ($719 annually) for 50,000 credits a month, with the Salesforce integration.
  • Enterprise starts at $15K per year.
  • Pricing is per account, not per seat. Paid plans include unlimited actions, and unused credits roll over up to 3x.
• Data: 18+ contact-data providers in one waterfall and 100+ data sources overall. Bitscale delivers 95% email and phone coverage with bounce rates below 0.5%.
• What stands out for European teams:
  • A provider chain tuned for EMEA. The waterfall runs a different chain for EMEA mid-market than for North American enterprise, and you can reorder providers by country.
  • You pay only for results. You're charged only for the provider that returns a valid result, so adding providers for a harder country doesn't multiply your cost.
  • Verification before the CRM. Every email passes syntax, MX and SMTP checks before it reaches Salesforce or HubSpot.
  • Two-way CRM sync with field-level control. Bitscale writes back only changed fields and flags job changes, bad emails and dead domains.
  • An AI research agent that reads company websites and runs Google and Perplexity research.
  • Security. Bitscale's security page lists GDPR compliance and a completed SOC 2 Type II examination.
  • Done-for-you setup. Bitscale GTM engineers handle setup and migration, with GTM engineer support on every paid plan and a dedicated engineer on Enterprise.

What customers report: "Our email and phone waterfall hits 92% coverage on European ICP. Nothing else we tested came close," says Shannon Jhanji, Growth Operations at Guidebook.

Choose Bitscale if you sell into several European countries and want the highest coverage you can get in each, verified before it lands in Salesforce or HubSpot, without a contract with every regional data vendor.

2. Cognism: best for calling European decision-makers

Cognism markets "Europe's most trusted B2B data", with a focus on compliance and verified phone numbers.

• Pricing: Quote only. Standard and Pro plans each include five seats. Pro adds Bombora intent data and on-demand mobile verification.
• Data: Cognism says it has over 200M European contacts and over 10M phone-verified contacts globally. Phone-verified means Cognism calls the number and confirms the right person picks up.
• Countries it names: the UK, DACH, Benelux, the Nordics, France and Spain.
• Compliance: Cognism relies on legitimate interest and says it notifies contacts of their inclusion "within GDPR timeframes". It screens phone data against do-not-call lists including Germany, France, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Croatia, Sweden, Belgium and the UK.
• Watch out for: No public pricing, and five-seat packages make it a team purchase.
• G2: 4.5/5.

Choose Cognism if your team calls European prospects and wants one database with do-not-call screening built in. Pair it with Bitscale to fill the contacts it doesn't have.

3. Leadfeeder (formerly Dealfront): best EU-built option for company data

Dealfront, formed from the 2022 merger of Echobot and Leadfeeder, has rebranded as Leadfeeder: dealfront.com now redirects to a page that says "Dealfront is now Leadfeeder". Our Dealfront review covers the product in depth and predates the rebrand.

• Pricing: Lite is free (last 100 identified companies a month). Discover starts at €79 a month billed annually, Activate at €369 with verified emails and phones, and Scale at €599, annual only.
• Data: a global database of 60M companies and 400M verified contacts, built on national trade registers and chambers of commerce plus other public sources.
• Countries it names: DACH, Benelux, the Nordics and France.
• Compliance: processes data on legitimate interest, and says data is hosted on AWS in the EU, in Ireland.
• Watch out for: contact data starts on Activate, so the lower plans are company-level only.

Choose Leadfeeder if you want register-based company data and to see which European companies visit your website. Use Bitscale to find and verify the right people at those accounts.

4. Lusha: best for quick lookups on a small budget

Lusha is a browser extension and web app for revealing emails and phone numbers.

• Pricing: Free plan with 40 credits a month. Starter is $37.45 a month billed yearly. An email costs 1 credit and a phone number 5.
• Data: 515M+ contacts globally. Lusha says its deepest coverage is the US and reports 97% email accuracy in EMEA (its own figure). It doesn't name European countries.
• Compliance: GDPR certified by ePrivacyseal GmbH, and ISO 27701 certified.
• G2: 4.3/5.

Choose Lusha if you're a rep or small team that needs a few hundred contacts a month and values an independent GDPR certification.

5. Kaspr: best for LinkedIn lookups priced in euros

Kaspr is a Chrome extension that shows phone numbers and emails on LinkedIn profiles, and it markets "accurate European contact data".

• Pricing: Free plan with 15 B2B email, 5 phone and 5 direct email credits a month. Starter is €45 or €59 per user per month and Business €79 or €99, depending on billing term. Starter includes unlimited B2B email credits and 100 phone credits a month.
• Compliance: Kaspr describes itself as "GDPR aligned".
• Watch out for: it works profile by profile, which suits reps more than list building at scale.

Choose Kaspr if your reps prospect on LinkedIn and want a low-cost, euro-priced way to get contact details.

6. ZoomInfo: best for enterprise teams on one global platform

ZoomInfo is an enterprise database with a broad layer of intent and AI on top.

• Pricing: Quote only.
• Data: 500M+ contacts and 100M+ companies globally. ZoomInfo calls its EMEA coverage "strong and growing" and says North America is its deepest market.
• Compliance: ZoomInfo says it notifies data subjects as GDPR Articles 13 and 14 require, relies on legitimate interests, and holds ISO 27701 certification.
• G2: 4.5/5.

Choose ZoomInfo if you're an enterprise team selling globally, with Europe as one of several regions.

7. Apollo.io: best value all-in-one for data and sequences

Apollo combines a contact database with sequencing and a dialer in one seat.

• Pricing: Free plan with 900 credits per seat per year. Basic is $49 per seat per month billed annually. Credits don't roll over.
• Data: 240M+ contacts and 30M+ companies. Apollo makes no Europe-specific coverage claim on the pages we checked.
• Compliance: Apollo relies on legitimate interests for its business contact data, has an EEA representative, and publishes a separate Article 14 notice.
• G2: 4.7/5.

Choose Apollo if you want one low-cost tool to start outbound and Europe is a secondary market. Test it on your European list first, and use Bitscale's waterfall as a second pass.

8. National company registers: best free source of official company data

• Germany: the Handelsregister portal has given free access to all register contents since August 1, 2022.
• France: INSEE's Sirene database is free through the Annuaire des Entreprises, an API and downloadable files, covering nearly 25 million companies and 36 million establishments.
• Netherlands: KVK offers free basic business register information, and you order official extracts.
• Across the EU: BRIS, the Business Registers Interconnection System on the European e-Justice Portal, has connected national business registers since June 8, 2017.

Use registers to build and clean your account list. They don't hold work emails or mobile numbers, so Bitscale fills those for the people at each company.

Europe compliance checklist for B2B outreach

Work through these nine checks before your first European sequence.

• Before you collect data: write a legitimate interest assessment; get each provider's legal basis, notice process and data processing agreement; record the source of every contact.
• Before you send: tag each contact's country and apply its email rule; send the Article 14 notice in your first message, never later than one month; name your company, include a simple opt-out, and verify every address first.
• Calls and objections: screen numbers against national do-not-call lists, and get consent before marketing calls to Irish mobiles; stop at once when someone objects; check a suppression list before every send.

This checklist summarizes EU guidance and the national sources linked in this guide, as of October 2026. It is not legal advice. Talk to your legal team before you start outreach in a new country.

How to test European coverage before you buy

No vendor publishes independent country-level accuracy figures, so measure on your own accounts. Use the 100-contact bake-off from our prospecting tools guide, split by country:

1. Build a test list that matches your pipeline. As an illustration only: 25 contacts in Germany, 25 in France, 20 in Spain, 15 in the Netherlands and 15 in Ireland. Include a few contacts you already have verified details for, as a control.
2. Check each account against the national register, so you test contact data, not company data.
3. Run the same list through each shortlisted tool, with Bitscale's waterfall as one of them. Record find rate, verified email rate, mobile rate and credits used.
4. Compare results by country, not just in total. As an illustration only: a tool that finds 80% in Germany and 40% in Spain averages 60%, which hides the gap that matters to your Spanish reps.
5. Compare cost per usable contact, and model mobiles separately, since phone numbers usually cost more credits than emails.

How Bitscale helps teams selling into Europe

Bitscale is built for the gap between a free company register and a usable, compliant contact list in each country you sell to:

1. Start from your accounts. Pull a Salesforce report or HubSpot list into Bitscale, or an account list built from the Handelsregister or Sirene.
2. Fill emails and mobiles from 18+ providers, in the order you set for each country. The waterfall stops at the first verified result and charges only for the provider that returns it.
3. Verify before the CRM. Syntax, MX and SMTP checks run on every email, and Bitscale keeps bounce rates below 0.5%, which protects your sending domains (see our cold email deliverability guide).
4. Protect compliance fields. Source attribution on enriched fields, and field-level control so opt-outs and do-not-contact flags are never overwritten.
5. Route by country. Send French prospects a legitimate-interest sequence and German prospects a LinkedIn or event-led play instead.
6. Time your outreach. Stack signals from 15 buying triggers, such as a new VP Sales plus hiring SDRs, and launch ready-made playbooks for event attendees or champion job changes.

Teams can also run Bitscale through its API or MCP server (https://api.bitscale.ai/mcp), at the same credit rates as the app. For how multi-provider enrichment works, see our waterfall enrichment guide.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best B2B data provider in Europe?

For most teams selling into several European countries, Bitscale, because its waterfall combines 18+ contact-data providers instead of relying on one database. Cognism is a strong single database for calling, and Leadfeeder (formerly Dealfront) for EU-built company data.

Do I need consent to prospect B2B contacts under the GDPR?

Not always. Most B2B prospecting relies on legitimate interests under Article 6(1)(f), with a documented balancing test. But national email rules apply on top, and Germany, Spain and the Netherlands generally require prior consent for marketing emails.

Is cold B2B email legal in Europe?

It depends on the country. France and Ireland allow relevant B2B email to work addresses with clear sender details and an opt-out. Germany and Spain require prior consent, and the Netherlands does too unless the address was published for that purpose.

Do I have to tell prospects I hold their data?

Yes. Under Article 14 of the GDPR, when data comes from a provider you must inform the person within one month, or at the latest in your first message if you contact them. Recording each contact's source makes this and access requests easier.

Is there a free European company database?

Several countries offer free official registers. Germany's Handelsregister has been free since August 2022, and France's Sirene database is free through an API and downloads. They list companies, not the work emails or mobile numbers of the people you want to reach.

Sources

EU law and guidance (accessed October 21, 2026)

• European Commission: legal grounds for processing data
• European Commission: can data received from a third party be used for marketing?
• European Commission: enforcement and sanctions
• EDPB SME guide: process personal data lawfully
• EDPB SME guide: respect individuals' rights

National rules (accessed October 21, 2026)

• Germany: UWG §7
• France: CNIL, prospection commerciale par courrier électronique
• Spain: Ley 34/2002 (LSSI), BOE
• Netherlands: Telecommunicatiewet, Article 11.7
• Ireland: S.I. No. 336/2011, Regulation 13
• UK: ICO business-to-business marketing

Company registers (accessed October 21, 2026)

• Germany: Handelsregister free access (Amtsgericht Kempten)
• France: INSEE Sirene
• Netherlands: KVK products
• EU: Business Registers Interconnection System (BRIS)

Vendor pages (accessed October 7 and 21, 2026)

• Bitscale pricing, waterfall and security
• Cognism, compliance, Diamond Data and EMEA data
• Leadfeeder (formerly Dealfront), pricing, GDPR and Dealfront history
• Lusha FAQ and pricing
• Kaspr and pricing
• ZoomInfo global data coverage and privacy policy
• Apollo.io pricing and privacy policy

G2 product review pages, accessed October 7, 2026.