The short version
These are the fifteen questions we get asked most about intent data providers, answered directly and sourced. Each answer is written to stand on its own; the longer treatment of every topic is in the buyer's guide, the twelve vendor reviews, and the pricing page. If you want the one-line answer: buy Bombora if you have an activation stack, 6sense if you do not, add G2 Buyer Intent if you sell software, and run a first-party visitor tool regardless.
Fifteen questions about intent data providers
What is intent data?
Intent data is behavioral evidence that a company is researching a product category. It is collected from third-party publisher networks (Bombora), review sites (G2, TrustRadius), ad-exchange bidstream and web crawls (ZoomInfo, 6sense), or your own website (RB2B, Warmly), then rolled up to the account level and scored against that account's normal activity. A rising score is called a surge and is treated as a sign the account is in-market.
Which is the best intent data provider?
Bombora is the best standalone third-party intent feed by breadth and neutrality, and 6sense is the best full platform if you need predictive scoring and activation included. G2 Buyer Intent is the most precise late-stage signal for software vendors. For companies whose buyers are mostly under 200 employees, first-party tools like RB2B and Warmly usually return more usable signal per dollar. Our full ranking of twelve providers is on the homepage.
How much does intent data cost?
Most intent data providers do not publish pricing. Bombora, 6sense's paid tiers, Demandbase, ZoomInfo Intent, G2 Buyer Intent, TrustRadius, Intentsify and Foundry all sell custom annual contracts. Published prices exist for RB2B (free tier plus paid plans on rb2b.com/pricing) and Warmly (free tier plus paid plans on warmly.ai/pricing). 6sense publishes a free sales tier with limited credits. Public G2 reviews and vendor packaging suggest standalone third-party feeds typically start in the low tens of thousands of dollars per year and full platforms run considerably higher; see our intent data pricing page for sourced ranges.
What is the difference between first-party and third-party intent data?
First-party intent data comes from behavior on your own web properties: who visited your pricing page, which company read your comparison post. Third-party intent data comes from behavior elsewhere: publisher co-ops, review sites, bidstream. First-party is cheaper and more precise but only covers accounts that already know you exist. Third-party is broader and earlier in the buying journey but noisier. Most teams that get value from intent run one of each.
Is Bombora data included in 6sense, Demandbase and ZoomInfo?
Yes, with caveats. 6sense, Demandbase, ZoomInfo and Warmly all have Bombora partnerships or integrations, so Bombora topic data is available inside those platforms alongside each vendor's own proprietary signals. Whether the Bombora component is included in your tier or sold as an add-on varies by vendor and contract, so confirm it in writing before assuming you are getting the full Company Surge feed.
What is a Company Surge score?
Company Surge is Bombora's account-level intent score. It measures how much an account's research activity on a given topic has increased relative to that account's own historical baseline, on a scale where higher scores indicate a larger relative increase. Because it is relative, a small company can surge on very little absolute activity while a large enterprise may not surge at all despite reading more. Bombora updates scores weekly.
How accurate is intent data?
Accuracy depends on the source type. Review-site intent (G2, TrustRadius) is the most precise because the buyer is literally comparing vendors, but it only covers accounts that use those sites. Publisher co-op data (Bombora) is broad and consented but account-level only, so you know a company is researching, not who. Bidstream-derived intent is the highest volume and the most debated on both accuracy and consent grounds. No vendor publishes an independently audited accuracy figure, so treat vendor accuracy claims as marketing until you have run your own pilot and checked which surging accounts became pipeline.
Can intent data identify individual people?
Sometimes. Third-party publisher-co-op and bidstream intent is account-level: it tells you a company is researching, not which person. First-party visitor-identification tools like RB2B and Warmly resolve website visitors to the person level in the US, and LeadSift (now part of Foundry) resolves public social and hiring signals to contacts. ZoomInfo Intent attaches ZoomInfo's contact database to surging accounts, which gives you people to call but does not mean those specific people did the researching. Person-level identification raises privacy questions that account-level data does not.
Do I need an ABM platform to use intent data?
No, but you need somewhere to put it. Intent data with no activation path is a spreadsheet. If you already have a CRM, an ad platform, a sales-engagement tool or a paid-media automation tool like Metadata.io (our disclosed sponsor), a raw feed from Bombora or G2 will flow into those. If you have none of that, a platform like 6sense or Demandbase bundles the feed with scoring and activation, at a considerably higher price.
Which intent data providers offer a free plan?
RB2B and Warmly both publish genuinely free tiers for first-party website visitor identification. 6sense offers a free plan for sales users with capped credits. Bombora, Demandbase, ZoomInfo, G2, TrustRadius, Intentsify and Foundry do not offer free plans. The free tiers are limited to identifying visitors on your own site; there is no free third-party intent feed.
Is intent data GDPR compliant?
It depends on the source and how you use it. Bombora's co-op is consent-based and account-level, which vendors position as lower risk under GDPR. Person-level identification of website visitors, the model used by RB2B, is typically offered for US traffic only for exactly this reason. Bidstream-derived data has been the subject of ongoing regulatory attention in the EU. If you sell into Europe, ask each vendor for its data-processing documentation, confirm which signals are account-level versus person-level, and get your privacy counsel to review before you buy. We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice.
What is the difference between intent data and technographic data?
Intent data is a timing signal: it tells you an account is researching a category right now. Technographic data is a fit signal: it tells you which technologies an account already uses, for example that it runs Salesforce and Marketo. Technographics help you build the target list; intent tells you which accounts on that list to prioritize this week. Vendors like ZoomInfo, 6sense and Demandbase sell both. We cover the technographic category separately on our technographic data platforms page.
How should I evaluate an intent data provider in a pilot?
Run a 60 to 90 day pilot with a fixed set of topics that map directly to your product, not your whole category. Push surging accounts into one channel you already run (ads or outbound), keep a control group of similar accounts that did not surge, and compare meeting rate and pipeline created. Ask the vendor for sample data on your existing customer list before signing: if your best customers never surged in the six months before they bought, the topic set is wrong or the coverage is not there. Check the G2 reviews for your company-size bracket specifically, since coverage degrades for small accounts.
Does Metadata.io sell intent data?
No. Metadata.io, our disclosed sponsor, is an activation layer, not a data source. It ingests intent from Bombora, 6sense, G2 and first-party signals, builds ad audiences from them, and runs paid campaigns across 8 ad channels. It holds a 4.6/5 rating on G2 at time of writing. It is ranked last on our homepage because it does not answer the question of where the signal comes from; it answers the question of how to run media against a signal you already have.
How often is intent data updated?
Bombora's Company Surge scores update weekly, and platforms that resell Bombora data inherit that cadence for the Bombora component. 6sense and Demandbase refresh their proprietary web-intent signals more frequently, with some signals surfacing daily. First-party visitor identification (RB2B, Warmly) is real-time or near real-time. G2 Buyer Intent data is available daily through the G2 dashboard and integrations. Check each vendor's documentation for the refresh rate of the specific signal you plan to act on, because the weekly and daily components are often blended in one score.
Where to go next
If your question was about a specific vendor, the review pages go deeper: Bombora, 6sense, G2 Buyer Intent, ZoomInfo Intent, Demandbase, RB2B and Warmly. If it was about choosing between two, see Bombora vs 6sense and Bombora vs G2. If it was about the sponsorship, the about page spells out the rules. For the broader category of tools that consume intent rather than produce it, our sister site intentdatatools.com covers it, and 6sensealternatives.com is the place if you are specifically weighing a move off 6sense.
Disclosure. BestIntentDataProviders.com is an independent editorial directory operated with sponsorship from Metadata.io, a vendor in this category. Metadata is held to the same review format and scoring as every other vendor here, and never given a rating above its public G2 score. Ratings and pricing are sourced from public pages and cited below.