Clearbit vs. Bombora: Which should you choose?

About Clearbit

Clearbit transforms minimal inputs like email addresses or domains into robust B2B data profiles. It pulls from public web sources and proprietary databases to deliver firmographics, contact details, tech stack information, and IP intelligence for visitor identification. The system plugs directly into HubSpot (now branded as "Breeze"), Salesforce, Marketo, and others—enabling real-time enrichment on forms and inside your CRM.

What makes Clearbit shine? It dramatically shortens web forms to boost conversion rates while maintaining global data coverage with frequent updates. Since HubSpot acquired it, pricing has become less transparent and primarily flows through sales channels. It's ideal for growth teams hunting for better lead quality and developers building custom data workflows. The catch? While Clearbit excels at enrichment, it's strictly a data provider—you'll need other tools for complete sales functionality, and its volume-based pricing can quickly become expensive as lead flows increase.

About Bombora

Bombora tracks and analyzes company-level intent through its cooperative network of B2B websites. Their flagship product, Company Surge, identifies when businesses show above-normal research interest in specific topics compared to their baseline behavior. They offer hundreds of intent categories but provide NO personal contact information—focusing exclusively on company behavior patterns that signal buying interest.

The platform connects with major CRMs, marketing systems, and ABM tools like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Demandbase. Pricing works on a usage basis and gets customized for each client. Bombora delivers most value to B2B marketing teams that already have contact acquisition methods and need to prioritize accounts showing relevant research activity. Their data comes from global sources—strongest in North America and Europe—and they've built their offering to be privacy-compliant by avoiding personal data collection entirely.

Comparison

Clearbit

• Clearbit enriches contact and company records, pulling information from public sources to complete data profiles with minimal input. It integrates smoothly with various CRMs and marketing platforms but focuses solely on enrichment—no outreach capabilities included.
• Pricing begins around $99/month but scales with usage, potentially becoming costly for high volumes. As part of HubSpot now, it offers especially tight integration with that platform, but its developer-friendly API enables custom implementations across many tools.

Bombora

• Bombora specializes in company-level intent data, tracking content consumption across B2B websites to spot which companies are researching specific topics. It doesn't provide contact information but plugs into existing CRM and marketing systems.
• Pricing is customized based on usage, with costs varying by the number of accounts monitored and intent topics tracked. Its power lies in helping teams prioritize accounts showing interest in relevant topics—making it valuable for account-based marketing strategies.

Clearbit fits best for growth teams needing to enhance lead data quality with firmographic details and contact information. It's perfect for companies wanting to shorten forms, boost conversion rates, and personalize outreach based on company details. The developer-friendly API makes it ideal for technical teams building custom workflows.

Bombora serves teams already practicing account-based marketing who need to identify which target accounts are actively researching relevant topics. Unlike Clearbit, Bombora can't enable contact-based marketing since it provides NO individual contact data. This limitation forces marketers to pair Bombora with another solution to reach actual people at interested companies—a critical capability for executing personalized outreach campaigns.

Do you need account-based marketing, or something else?

Here's the revelation that's flipping ABM on its head: your funnel isn't about anonymous accounts. It's about the decision-makers and influencers within those accounts.

That's what makes contact-based marketing (CBM) a breakthrough. Instead of focusing on broad account intent signals, contact-based marketing pinpoints the EXACT people engaging with your content in real-time, even when they don't convert.

How does this solve the traditional tension of intent-based marketing? It clears up the ambiguity.

With contact-level data, you can reveal high-priority leads by identifying the individuals behind key touch points. Deliver hyper-targeted ads based on specific contact behaviors. And bridge the gap between marketing and sales alignment with actionable, lead-level insights.