Key takeaways
- Name the question first: market, accounts, people or timing.
- Cited research suits strategy; data and signals suit targeting.
- Check whether a tool's data covers your regions and segments.
- Intelligence only helps if it reaches the people who act on it.
What questions does market intelligence answer
Market intelligence answers questions about your market, your accounts and the right moment to contact them. Some tools research markets and competitors; others supply company and contact data, buying signals or website visitor data.
- Who are the competitors and how do they position themselves?
- Which companies fit our ideal customer profile?
- Which accounts show signs of buying now?
- Who at those companies should we talk to?
How do the market intelligence tools differ
The market intelligence tools differ in the question they are built to answer. These notes come from each product's own pages.
- Perplexity: web search with citations in every answer, and deep research reports on paid plans.
- ZoomInfo: contact data including mobile numbers, buyer intent, website visitor data and Chorus conversation intelligence.
- 6sense: behavioural intent data, predictive account scoring and advertising for account-based programmes.
- Dealfront: website visitor identification and buying signals, built and hosted in the EU according to its own trust badge.
- Common Room: intent, website, product and community signals resolved to people and accounts, with CRM and Slack connections.
- Clay: waterfall enrichment across many data providers, with Claygent for web research.
How do you pick the right mix
Pick one tool for understanding the market and, if you need it, one for timing and targeting. Take an illustrative company entering the Nordic logistics market: it uses cited research to map competitors and segments, then a data or signals tool to find accounts worth contacting.
Check coverage for your regions before buying data. Strength in one market says little about another.
How should intelligence reach the sales team
Intelligence should reach sellers inside the tools they already use, at the moment they need it. A weekly report nobody reads changes nothing; an account note in the CRM before a call does.
Market intelligence tools at a glance
The category each product gives itself and whether its own site lists a free plan.
| Category | Free plan | |
|---|---|---|
| Perplexity | AI answer engine and research assistant | Yes |
| ZoomInfo | B2B data and sales intelligence platform | No |
| 6sense | Account-based marketing and intent platform | No |
| Dealfront (Leadfeeder) | Website visitor identification and B2B data | Yes |
| Common Room | Buyer intelligence and signals platform | No |
| Clay | Data enrichment and GTM workflow builder | Yes |
| Pebbles Ai | Go-to-market workspace with cited research; no intent data | No |
Plans change; check each product's own pricing page before you decide. Pebbles Ai has no free plan; Pro and Team start with a 1-month free trial.
The products compared
Perplexity
AI answer engine and research assistant
An AI answer engine that searches the web and returns cited answers, with deep research, app connectors, the Comet browser and an enterprise tier that searches company files.
Best for: People who want quick, cited answers from the web and deep research reports, and organisations that want the same over their internal files.
Pricing model: Free, Pro and Max for individuals, plus Enterprise plans for organisations. Source: Perplexity pricing
ZoomInfo
B2B data and sales intelligence platform
An enterprise B2B data platform for sales and marketing teams, offering contact and company data, buyer intent, website visitor data and AI email generation in packaged, quote-based plans.
Best for: Larger sales and marketing organisations that need deep contact coverage, intent signals and conversation intelligence under one enterprise contract.
Pricing model: Packages priced by features, licences and credits (1 export = 1 credit); quote-based. Source: ZoomInfo pricing
6sense
Account-based marketing and intent platform
An account-based revenue platform built on behavioural intent data and predictive analytics, with advertising, sales intelligence and AI email agents, sold through quotes.
Best for: Marketing and sales teams running account-based programmes on intent data.
Pricing model: Quote-based starting points: Revenue Marketing, Sales Intelligence and 6sense Intelligence. Source: 6sense pricing
Dealfront (Leadfeeder)
Website visitor identification and B2B data
A B2B platform, now under the Leadfeeder brand, that identifies companies visiting your website, adds buying signals and a global company database, and offers display ad targeting.
Best for: Teams that want to see which companies visit their site and prioritise accounts from buying signals, with EU hosting.
Pricing model: Lite (free), Discover, Activate, Scale and Enterprise, tiered by companies identified each month; Discover and Activate bill monthly or annually, Scale annually. Source: Dealfront (Leadfeeder) pricing
Read the comparison with Dealfront (Leadfeeder) Visit Dealfront (Leadfeeder)
Common Room
Buyer intelligence and signals platform
A buyer intelligence platform that unifies signals from CRM, product, marketing, website and community activity, resolves them to people and accounts, and adds a contact directory and AI agents.
Best for: Go-to-market teams that want to act on intent, website, product and community signals and route them into their CRM and sales engagement tools.
Pricing model: Essential, Advanced and Enterprise; Essential billed annually, Advanced and Enterprise custom; contact limits and credits for prospecting, research and phone enrichment vary by plan. Source: Common Room pricing
Clay
Data enrichment and GTM workflow builder
A spreadsheet-style workspace for building enrichment and prospecting workflows, pulling from many data providers with waterfalls and an AI web research agent, priced by actions and data credits.
Best for: GTM engineers and RevOps teams who want to design custom enrichment and research workflows across many data sources.
Pricing model: Free, Launch, Growth and Enterprise; monthly actions and data credits; unlimited seats. Source: Clay pricing
We make Pebbles Ai. Facts about other products come from their own public pages, checked on .
Where Pebbles Ai fits
- CapabilityResearch & analysisAssistants research markets, competitors and companies from websites and public sources, and answer with inline numbered citations and a source list.
- CapabilityProspecting & customer recordsDescribe your ideal customer and an assistant finds matching companies, up to 50 a search, then the right people at up to ten of them.
Common questions
Is market intelligence the same as sales intelligence?
They overlap. Market intelligence looks at markets and competitors; sales intelligence focuses on accounts, contacts and buying signals.
Can AI research replace a data provider?
Not fully. AI research is good at understanding companies and markets from public sources, while data providers supply contact details and signals at scale.
How often should market intelligence be refreshed?
Refresh it whenever you plan a campaign or enter a new segment, and keep competitor notes current as positioning changes.
About this page. Written by the Pebbles Ai team for people who run sales, marketing and growth. Last updated .
