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6sense vs Cognism - Comparison 2025

6sense vs. Cognism

Last updated on

Reviewed by Paddy Stobbs

Stackfix Co-Founder & CEO

PS

6sense Revenue AI For Sales and Cognism are comparable database only businesses focused on enterprise and mid-market customers. 6sense excels in AI-powered intent data analysis and comprehensive account tracking, making it better suited for enterprise teams focused on account-based marketing and complex sales cycles.

Cognism, with its superior contact data verification and phone number accuracy, is better suited for teams prioritizing high-volume phone-based outreach. While 6sense offers more advanced features for account intelligence, Cognism provides a richer dataset for EMEA-centric, phone focused teams.

6sense  Product Logo

Advantages of 6sense

6sense is significantly better at intent data analysis
6sense's AI-powered intent data analysis helps sales teams identify in-market buyers with greater precision than Cognism. The platform provides detailed buying stage predictions and insights into persona importance, which is particularly valuable for teams focusing on account-based marketing strategies.
6sense offers superior lead scoring functionality
While Cognism lacks lead scoring capabilities entirely, 6sense provides automated scoring across multiple dimensions including account profile fit, intent, and reach. This helps sales teams prioritize their outreach more effectively.
6sense has more comprehensive company tracking capabilities
Unlike Cognism, 6sense provides detailed website engagement tracking, company news monitoring, and organizational charts. This gives sales teams deeper insights into account activities and hierarchies, which is crucial for enterprise sales strategies.
Cognism Product Logo

Advantages of Cognism

Cognism offers superior data verification
We found Cognism's multi-level verification system, including both automated email verification and manual phone verification, to be more comprehensive than 6sense's basic email confidence checks.
Cognism excels at mobile phone data quality
During our testing, we found Cognism's phone data verification to be particularly strong, with an in-house team manually verifying phone numbers (marked with a 'diamond' in the interface). 6sense, while providing phone numbers, lacks any verification system for this data.
Cognism is significantly easier to use than 6sense
We found Cognism's interface to be remarkably intuitive and quick to master, taking less than 10 minutes for an average SMB employee to learn. In contrast, 6sense's interface is cluttered with unnecessary technical jargon and requires multiple clicks for basic tasks like unlocking email addresses.

6sense is best for

  • Businesses with a moderate prospecting volume (200-1000 leads per month)
  • Who need to identify in-market buyers through intent signals and need predictive analytics to score accounts
  • And/or who want a large verified contact database and already have a common CRM solution in place

Cognism is best for

  • Businesses with high prospecting volume (1000-5000 leads per month)
  • Who need verified mobile phone data for B2B outreach and need manual verification of contact numbers for focused outreach
  • And/or who want extensive EMEA contact coverage and only need basic prospecting functionality without email outreach

6sense is less good for

  • Businesses with low or very high prospecting volume who need advanced automation and engagement features
  • Who need streamlined workflows and intuitive user interfaces for high-volume prospecting
  • And/or who need comprehensive automation capabilities like workflow automation, automated list building, or email sequences

Cognism is less good for

  • Businesses with a low prospecting volume (50-200 leads per month)
  • Who are not interest in phone data and are focused on email outreach
  • And/or who want integrated outbound functionality like email sequences, AI personalization, or call tracking

Gallery

6sense  logo6sense
6sense  screenshot
Cognism logoCognism
Cognism screenshot

Pricing, features & ratings

6sense  logo

6sense

Starting at

$0

Billed monthly

Pricing calculatorVisit Website
Cognism logo

Cognism

Custom

Contact us for a quote

Billed monthly

Pricing calculatorVisit Website
Stackfix Verdict
Functionality
4

Functionality

4/10

<p>At its core, 6sense Revenue for Sales is just a contact database. While the predictive AI feature may help identify in-market buyers, the filtering options are rather standard. An exception is that you can track website engagement on 6sense to see how your prospects are engaging with you. Beyond that, there’s no additional functionality—you can’t even send emails directly from the platform.</p>
3

Functionality

3/10

<p>Cognism's functionality is very limited. Whilst it does offer one of the largest contact databases on the market with a relative strength in mobile data - the product does very little beyond that.</p><p>We were disappointed by the omission of any kind of outbound functionality (email or phone) and were not impressed by the quality of other facets of the product including the granularity of filter provided or the lack of any material automation/AI features.</p>
Ease of Use
3

Ease of Use

3/10

<p>For a tool with limited functionality, 6sense still manages to introduce unnecessary friction. The use of overly technical jargon like "Technographics" instead of "tech stack" or "Psychographics" instead of "keywords" feels needlessly complicated. Basic workflows, like creating a new list after bulk-selecting contacts, are clunky. Even small tasks, such as unlocking email details, require you to click on them one by one—a frustrating and time-consuming process.</p>
8

Ease of Use

8/10

<p>Cognism's lack of functionality makes it simple and intuitive to use. Its core prospecting interfaces are familiar and easy to grasp. It would take an average SMB employee less than 10 minutes to master the platforms use.</p>
Look and feel
4

Look and feel

4/10

<p>6sense is a functional, no-frills database. While the information is laid out clearly and organized well, performance is a letdown. Pages can take up to 5 seconds to load, which disrupts the overall experience.</p>
7

Look and feel

7/10

<p>Cognism's design is modern and relatively simple, especially when compared with a lot of its competitors. When tested, we find both searches and general interfaces to be fast to load. Additionally, contact profile pages and lists were well laid out and easy to consume.</p>
Customisability
2

Customisability

2/10

<p>Customization options are extremely limited. The platform only allows you to create custom lists. You can’t add custom fields, save searches, or share searches with your team—basic features you’d expect from a tool like this.</p>
5

Customisability

5/10

<p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Cognism offers a handful of basic avenues for customisations. Beyond the ability to create custom searches or build targeted lists, you are also able to define an ideal customer persona to help hone and narrow searches more easily.</span></p>
Ease of Setup
5

Ease of Setup

5/10

<p>Though 6sense gates most of its pricing tiers behind a sales call, they do offer a limited self-serve free trial with a limited range of features. When tested, we found the platform reasonably simple to set up and onboard into. Additionally, the lack of any kind of native outbound functionality means that there isn't much further integration or customization work that needs to be done either.</p>
3

Ease of Setup

3/10

<p>Frustratingly, Cognism does not offer a self-serve option to try out the platform. Instead, you’ll need to trudge through a sales demo before you are able to access their trial. Once access was granted, we found the platform very simple to set up and use. Given the lack of outbound functionality, there isn't much further setup required either.</p>
Customer Support
4

Customer Support

4/10

<p>There’s no in-platform help, which is disappointing. 6sense claims to offer a support portal and help center through a separate site called RevCity, but we were shown an error message when attempting to login to the platform.</p>
3

Customer Support

3/10

<p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">You can contact Cognism's customer support via a live chat widget inside their web app. At first, you'll be greeted by an AI bot which, when tested, we find to be relatively unhelpful and eager to hand off to irrelevant help centre articles. Additionally, we found it difficult to get in contact with a real support agent and instead having to rely on account executives/sales reps who are more focused on driving purchases than provided information succinctly. </span></p>
Integratability
4

Integratability

4/10

<p>6sense offers native integrations with popular CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot, as well as sales engagement platforms like Salesloft. However, it lacks key integrations with tools like Zapier or Outreach, which are widely used in sales workflows. While it does provide an API, relying on this for custom integrations may not suit every team.</p>
5

Integratability

5/10

<p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Cognism provides a number of native integrations with popular CRMs (Salesforce, Hubspot), sales engagement platforms (Outreach, Salesloft) and automation platforms like Zapier. Additionally, it offers an API through which users can interact with Cognism's database directly (however this is not part of their standard offering and you will need to pay more to access this).</span></p>
Ease of Migration
7

Ease of Migration

7/10

<p>6sense allows you to export both contact and company data via self-serve functionality. It also offers a well-documented API for businesses that want to interact with its database programmatically.</p>
4

Ease of Migration

4/10

<p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Cognism offers self-serve export functionality within its web app. Additionally, Cognism offers an API through which businesses are able to interact with their database directly (however this is not part of their standard offering and you will need to pay more to access this).</span></p>
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