Cognism is a contact database with strong European coverage and phone-verified mobile numbers. HighTempo is a done-for-you account intelligence service. Teams compare them, but they are answering two different questions, and knowing which question you are actually asking saves a lot of money.
Cognism answers who exists, and how do I reach them. We answer which of these accounts is worth working this month, and why.
The short version
| Cognism | HighTempo | |
|---|---|---|
| Core product | Contact and company database | Ranked account list with evidence |
| Answers | Who exists, how to reach them | Which accounts to work now, and why |
| Strongest at | Mobile numbers, EMEA coverage, compliance | Prioritisation and verifiable timing |
| Model | Annual licence, per seat | Per list, paid on delivery |
| Who operates it | Your reps, daily | Us |
What Cognism is genuinely strong at
Three things, and they are not trivial.
European coverage. Plenty of databases are excellent in North America and thin once you cross the Atlantic. If you sell into DACH, the Nordics or Benelux, coverage depth is a real differentiator and Cognism has invested in it.
Phone-verified mobiles. Human-verified numbers mean a rep dials fewer dead lines. For teams that actually make calls, this changes the working day.
Compliance posture. Notified lists and a documented approach to European data protection matter when your legal team asks questions, and they will.
If your problem is that your reps cannot reach the people they have already decided to call, a contact database is the correct purchase and we would tell you so.
What a contact database cannot do
It cannot tell you which of the 3,000 companies matching your filters deserve attention this month.
This is not a criticism. It is a description of the category. A database is optimised for coverage and accuracy: more companies, more contacts, more correct numbers. Those are the right things for a database to optimise for.
But coverage creates its own problem. Run a filter and you get thousands of accounts, all equally plausible, with nothing to separate them. The filtering step — deciding which fifty get worked — sits outside the tool, and in most teams it sits outside anybody's job description too.
A database answers who exists. It does not answer who is ready. Those are different questions and most teams only buy an answer to the first.
So the list gets built once, works for a quarter, drifts from the business, and reps fall back to accounts they already know. We have written about how this pattern plays out across most of the category.
What we do differently
We start where a database output stops.
Every account we return is scored against a written methodology you approve before anything runs — ICP fit, buying signals, and modifiers for structural barriers. You can read the scoring, disagree with a bracket, and change it. Nothing is sourced until you have signed it off, which is what stops the result being dismissed as a black box.
Then every account carries evidence: the source link, the date, and the verbatim sentence the signal came from. Not a probability score. A rep clicks the link, reads the original, and decides for themselves.
Contacts are part of it — verified decision-makers, up to two per account where they exist — but they arrive attached to a reason to call, which is the part that changes whether the number gets dialled.
On pricing models
Cognism is an annual licence with per-seat pricing, quoted on request. That model makes sense for a tool used daily by a whole team: the cost is spread across constant use.
Ours is per list, paid on delivery, with no subscription and nothing to renew. That makes sense for work that is periodic rather than daily — you commission a list when you need one.
The genuine risk with an annual licence is not the price, it is the shape. You commit for twelve months on a projection of usage, and usage is the thing most likely to disappoint. A seat bought in January and unopened by April still costs the same. That is worth modelling honestly before signing.
These are not really alternatives
Here is the thing worth saying plainly: for a lot of teams the answer is both, and we would rather be straight about that than pretend otherwise.
A contact database is plumbing. It is how your reps reach people. Ranking is a separate job that decides which people are worth reaching. Owning excellent plumbing does not tell you where to point it.
Where teams go wrong is assuming the database purchase solved prioritisation. It did not, and the gap shows up as reps working familiar logos while the accounts showing real signals go untouched.
Which to buy first
Buy the database first if
- Reps know who they want to call and cannot get through
- Your contact data is stale or thin in your target region
- You are calling at volume and dial connect rates are the constraint
- You have no compliant contact source for European outreach
Solve ranking first if
- You already own contact data and reps still cannot agree who to work
- Your target list was built once and nobody has revisited it
- Coverage is not the problem — too many equally plausible accounts is
- You want a reason to call, not just a number to call
If you already pay for a database, ranking is almost certainly the higher-value next purchase, because it makes the thing you already own more useful rather than duplicating it.
The test
Ask a rep how they chose the accounts they worked last week.
If the answer involves a filter they ran once, a list someone built a while ago, or accounts they already knew, coverage was never your constraint. More contacts will not help. Knowing which fifty deserve the week will.
Book a call and we will tell you honestly which of the two problems you have.