n8n Data Enrichment Tools Compared: What Actually Works

n8n is the go-to workflow tool for teams that want self-hosted automation without vendor lock-in. But when you need company data enrichment inside an n8n workflow, the choices get messy fast. Apollo, Hunter, Clay, ZoomInfo, and generic search APIs all solve different slices of the problem. Here is when to use each.

Apollo: good for contacts, weak on company data

Apollo excels at people data -- job titles, email addresses, phone numbers. Its company data is secondary: revenue ranges, employee counts, industry tags. The n8n HTTP node hits Apollo's API cleanly. Free tier gives 10K records/mo. Professional at $79/mo annual unlocks enrichment endpoints. The limitation: company data is often self-reported or scraped from LinkedIn, so accuracy varies by segment. SMBs are particularly unreliable.

Hunter.io: email-focused, not enrichment

Hunter finds and verifies email addresses. That is it. The Starter plan at $34/mo annual gives you domain search and email verification. It does not return company revenue, tech stack, funding history, or anything beyond contact details. Useful as one node in a pipeline, not as your enrichment layer.

Clay: powerful but expensive at scale

Clay aggregates 50+ data providers into one interface. It is genuinely good at waterfall enrichment -- trying one provider, falling back to the next. The problem is cost: Clay credits burn fast when you chain multiple enrichments. For high-volume workflows in n8n, you end up paying Clay on top of n8n infrastructure costs. Also, Clay's native automation competes with n8n, so the integration story is not as clean as API-first tools.

ZoomInfo: enterprise gate

ZoomInfo has the best B2B company data. It also requires annual contracts starting at enterprise pricing, sales calls, and minimum commitments. If you are building an n8n workflow for a 5-person agency, ZoomInfo is not realistic. If you are at a company already paying for it, the API works fine with n8n's HTTP node.

Search API enrichment: the flexible middle

A search API returns whatever is publicly indexed about a company: recent news, hiring pages, tech stack mentions, funding announcements, product launches. It is not structured like Apollo or ZoomInfo -- you get raw search results that need parsing. But it catches signals that databases miss entirely: a company blog post about migrating to a new CRM, a job listing for a role that signals growth, a press release about a new funding round.

// n8n Function node: enrich company with search signals
const company = $input.first().json.company_name;
const domain = $input.first().json.domain;

// Call search API via HTTP Request node (previous node)
const results = $input.first().json.search_results.organic_results || [];

const signals = {
  company,
  domain,
  is_hiring: results.some(r =>
    (r.title + r.snippet).toLowerCase().includes("hiring") ||
    (r.title + r.snippet).toLowerCase().includes("careers")
  ),
  recent_funding: results.some(r =>
    (r.snippet || "").toLowerCase().includes("funding") ||
    (r.snippet || "").toLowerCase().includes("raised")
  ),
  tech_mentions: results
    .flatMap(r => (r.snippet || "").match(/\b(Salesforce|HubSpot|Slack|AWS|Azure)\b/gi) || [])
    .filter((v, i, a) => a.indexOf(v) === i),
  freshest_result_date: results[0]?.date || "unknown"
};

return [{ json: signals }];

The practical n8n pipeline

The workflow that actually works chains multiple sources. Start with Apollo or Hunter for contact data. Then hit a search API for company signals. Merge in the n8n Merge node. Filter on combined criteria: only keep leads where the contact is verified AND the company shows growth signals. This multi-source approach catches what any single provider misses.

# n8n HTTP Request node config for search enrichment
# Method: POST
# URL: https://api.scavio.dev/api/v1/search
# Headers: x-api-key = {{$env.SCAVIO_API_KEY}}
# Body (JSON):
# {
#   "query": "{{$json.company_name}} news funding hiring 2026",
#   "platform": "google",
#   "num_results": 10
# }
#
# n8n pricing: Community (free self-hosted), Starter EUR 24/mo, Pro EUR 60/mo
# Scavio: 250 free credits/mo, $30/mo for 7K credits

Cost comparison for 1,000 companies/month

Apollo Professional: $79/mo. Hunter Starter: $34/mo. Clay: varies heavily, typically $150-300/mo at this volume. ZoomInfo: $15K+/year. Search API enrichment via Scavio: $5 at $0.005/credit (1 credit per search). The realistic stack for a small team is Apollo for contacts + search API for company signals, running on n8n Community (free self-hosted). Total: $84/mo plus infrastructure.

How Scavio fits

Scavio plugs into n8n as a standard HTTP Request node. POST to the search endpoint with your API key, get back structured results. The free tier at 250 credits/mo lets you test the enrichment pipeline before scaling. At $0.005/credit, the cost stays predictable even when you process thousands of companies monthly.