Did you know that roughly 97 percent of business buyers leave your site without filling out a form? That silent majority is still dropping dozens of clues about what they want—clues you can capture with intent data. When you plug those signals into your go-to-market (GTM) engine, you can spot accounts that are already researching a solution like yours and reach them before the competition. In this guide you’ll learn
- what intent data actually is,
- how to choose a provider that fits your budget and tech stack, and
- seven market-leading platforms that will help you zero-in on high-value B2B leads in 2025.
Understanding Intent Data Basics
First-, Second-, and Third-Party Signals
- First-party = activity you capture on your own properties (website, product, emails).
- Second-party = exclusive data from a partner such as a publisher or review site.
- Third-party = aggregated behavior from thousands of external domains, ad networks, and co-ops.
Where the Data Comes From
Page views, white-paper downloads, review comparisons, search terms, technographic crawls, and even anonymized clickstream logs all feed the modern intent data engine.
Why Intent Beats Spray-and-Pray Lists
Unlike static lead lists, intent data refreshes every few days (sometimes minutes) and tells you who is in market, what they care about, and how to tailor your outreach. The result is higher open rates, shorter sales cycles, and less wasted ad spend.
How We Selected the “Magnificent Seven”
To keep this list honest, we cross-referenced the Forrester Wave for B2B Intent Data (Q1 2025), the latest G2 Grid, and recent product announcements. Scoring factors included:
- Topic and account coverage
- Contact-level enrichment
- Data freshness and accuracy
- GDPR/CCPA compliance
- Native integrations (CRM, MAP, CDP)
- Pricing transparency and entry tiers
The 7 Best Intent Data Providers for 2025
| # | Provider | Secret Sauce | Best For | Primary Signal Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bombora | 17 K-plus topic taxonomy & trusted co-op | Mid-market + enterprise ABM | 3rd-party web content |
| 2 | 6sense | AI “Revenue AI” that scores next-best action | RevOps teams that need one pane of glass | Mixed (1st + 3rd) |
| 3 | Demandbase One | Firmographic + technographic + intent in one UI | Mature ABM programs | Mixed |
| 4 | ZoomInfo Intent | World-class contact database plus real-time Streaming Intent | Fast-growing sales teams | 3rd-party + review clickstream |
| 5 | TechTarget Priority Engine | Exclusive readership from 150+ tech sites | B2B tech vendors | 2nd-party (publisher) |
| 6 | Intentsify | Forrester Wave leader with persona-level precision | Teams needing buying-group insights | Multi-signal 3rd-party + AI |
| 7 | G2 Buyer Intent | 2 M-plus monthly software buyers, late-stage clues | SaaS vendors | 2nd-party (review site) |
Below you’ll find a 300-word deep dive on each vendor so you can decide which fits your pipeline goals and budget.
1. Bombora
Bombora is the pioneer that put third-party intent data on the map. Its Company Surge® scores come from a co-operative of 5 000+ B2B websites and now monitor more than 17 210 business topics after the March 2025 taxonomy update.
How it works: Each Monday you get a CSV, API feed, or Salesforce report that flags accounts whose content consumption on those topics is spiking compared with a 12-week baseline.
Shining feature: Surge scoring ranks interest on a 0-100 scale, making it simple to set SDR thresholds.
Integrations: Salesforce, HubSpot, Marketo, Eloqua, LinkedIn Matched Audiences, and more.
Pricing: Starts around $25 K/year for the base Surge Daily package; scaled by number of topics and accounts.
Ideal use cases:
- Always-on ABM display campaigns
- Weekly account prioritization for SDRs
- Co-op enrichment to amplify first-party data
Pros
- Huge topic library; refreshed quarterly
- Clear, numeric surge scores
- Privacy-safe consent framework
Cons
- Purely account-level (no contact emails)
- Needs manual topic tuning to avoid false-positives
2. 6sense
6sense markets itself as “Revenue AI,” and the label is deserved. The platform stitches Bombora-style third-party signals, your CRM history, ad clicks, and website visits into one predictive model that flags in-market accounts and even recommends who on your team should act next. Recent case studies show firms doubling opportunity rates after rolling out its predictive scoring engine.
How it works: 6sense assigns each account a Buying-Stage score—Target, Awareness, Consideration, Decision—so you can send different emails or ads based on depth of interest.
Shining feature: “Next-Best-Action” cards inside Salesforce that tell reps exactly what to do today.
Integrations: Deep hooks into Salesforce, HubSpot, Outreach, LinkedIn, Demandbase, and most ad platforms.
Pricing: Platform bundles (Data, Orchestrate, and Predict) start in the mid-$40 K range for growth companies; enterprise contracts climb into six figures.
Ideal use cases:
- RevOps teams that want one unified dashboard
- Large deal cycles where timing is critical
- AI-driven orchestration of ads, chatbots, and SDR cadences
Pros
- Combines multiple data types, reducing vendor sprawl
- Prescriptive actions speed rep adoption
- Robust forecasting analytics
Cons
- Steep learning curve for marketers new to ABM
- All-in-one pricing can be a hurdle for SMBs
3. Demandbase One
Demandbase One bundles intent, firmographics, technographics, ad audiences, and personalization tools in one interface—handy if you hate juggling point solutions. In June 2025 the company launched Intent Agent, an AI assistant that writes plain-English summaries of why an account is spiking on a topic, saving you hours of detective work.
How it works: Demandbase seeds its intent engine with Bombora data, then enriches it with your first-party web analytics, ad logs, and CRM events.
Shining feature: Account Intelligence Card—hover over any logo and see tech stack, intent surges, firmographic fit, and recent engagement in one pane.
Integrations: Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Marketo, Adobe, and dozens more.
Pricing: Modular—Intent + Advertising packages start near $40 K; full Marketing + Sales bundle can exceed $120 K for large user counts.
Ideal use cases:
- Mature ABM shops craving deeper personalization
- Marketers who need ad retargeting and analytics in a single login
- Teams focused on tech installs (Demandbase’s technographics are strong)
Pros
- One vendor for ads, analytics, and intent
- AI summaries lower the learning curve
- Rich technographic filters
Cons
- Interface can feel dense for new users
- Requires tight CRM hygiene for best results
4. ZoomInfo Intent
ZoomInfo pairs the industry’s largest B2B contact database with third-party clickstream, Bombora co-op data, and an exclusive Streaming Intent feed that delivers near-real-time alerts. Through a partnership with G2, software-review browsing is also piped in for extra context.
How it works: Each time an account’s activity crosses a configurable threshold, ZoomInfo pushes the alert to your CRM or outreach system so reps can call within minutes.
Shining feature: One-click “add buying committee” button that surfaces direct dials for the people most likely to influence the deal.
Integrations: Salesforce, HubSpot, Outreach, Salesloft, Pardot, and Slack.
Pricing: ZoomInfo keeps pricing behind sales calls, but analysts peg the Pro bundle around $15 K/year and the Elite tier—needed for real-time Streaming Intent—north of $50 K.
Ideal use cases:
- Outbound teams that live inside dialers all day
- Fast-growth SaaS firms craving net-new contacts + intent in one bill
- Organizations that want sub-day signal latency
Pros
- Best-in-class contact enrichment
- Real-time alerts, not weekly batches
- Tight RevOps integrations
Cons
- Opaque pricing and add-on fees
- Data quality varies by industry and region
5. TechTarget Priority Engine
Because TechTarget owns more than 150 IT and mar-tech publications, it captures second-party intent directly from its readers. That publisher relationship lets you see which individuals downloaded a white paper or read five articles on a topic. In late 2024 the company rolled out Priority Engine Demand, enabling buying-group scoring instead of single-lead scoring.
How it works: You pick up to 10 tech categories. Every week TechTarget shares ranked lists of accounts and contacts consuming related content across its sites.
Shining feature: Named-lead delivery—SDRs receive verified work emails and phone numbers, not just an account surge.
Integrations: Salesforce, Marketo, Eloqua, and custom SFTP exports.
Pricing: Starts around $30 K for a single region/topic cluster; scales with categories and geos.
Ideal use cases:
- Tech vendors (software, cybersecurity, IT hardware)
- Pipeline acceleration near end-of-quarter—contacts are often late-stage researchers
- Marketing teams needing guaranteed leads for nurture programs
Pros
- Real human readers, not anonymous cookies
- Contact-level delivery included
- Easy to prove ROI with campaign-member matching
Cons
- Limited to TechTarget’s editorial universe (mostly IT)
- Weekly cadence, not real-time
6. Intentsify
Intentsify shot to fame in 2025 when Forrester named it an overall leader and gave it the highest score for “strength of offering”. The platform uses machine learning to knit together multiple third-party sources, de-dupe overlap, and attach persona tags so you can see whether the CFO or the security architect is exhibiting interest.
How it works: Intentsify’s Identity Graph resolves anonymous cookies into buyer-group personas using probabilistic and deterministic matching. You receive a daily feed with account + persona surge scores.
Shining feature: Smart Content Syndication—automatically pushes your e-book or webinar only to contacts showing a score above your threshold.
Integrations: Salesforce, HubSpot, Terminus, Metadata.io, and APIs for custom dashboards.
Pricing: Land-and-expand model. Starter tier around $20 K/year for three personas and 5 000 accounts; enterprise plans scale by volume and channels activated.
Ideal use cases:
- B2B firms selling to multi-stakeholder buying groups
- Marketers who want to dial in messaging by persona pain point
- Companies employing multiple intent vendors and need deduplication
Pros
- Persona-level granularity, rare in third-party data
- Strong deduplication lowers noise
- Transparent reporting matched to pipeline metrics
Cons
- Smaller topic library than Bombora (though growing fast)
- Requires at least 30 days of historical data to train models
7. G2 Buyer Intent
Software buyers leave digital breadcrumbs every time they browse reviews, look at pricing pages, or compare vendors on G2, the world’s largest SaaS review site. G2 packages those breadcrumbs into Buyer Intent signals that reveal who is deep in evaluation mode.
How it works: Actions like viewing your profile, visiting a category page three times, or comparing you against a rival each trigger a 1–5 intensity score.
Shining feature: “Category Explorer” lets you target competitor researchers—perfect for steal-away campaigns.
Integrations: Salesforce, HubSpot, Demandbase, 6sense, and webhooks to route signals into Slack.
Pricing: Starts around $15 K/year for basic Intent plus Profile and Category views; higher tiers unlock geo filters and competitive comparisons.
Ideal use cases:
- SaaS companies targeting late-stage decision-makers
- Customer-success teams looking for upsell clues
- Paid media squads running competitor-conquest ads
Pros
- Signals come from real buyers in last-mile research
- Simple scoring; easy for reps to act on
- Useful competitive-intel dashboard
Cons
- Only covers software and services listed on G2
- Signals skew mid- to bottom-funnel; fewer early-stage clues
Activating Intent Inside Your GTM Engine
1. Build an Always-On “In-Market” Segment
Sync surge scores to your CRM and auto-assign accounts over a threshold to SDR sequences. Reps stay focused on the 10–20 percent of your TAM that is actually shopping.
2. Orchestrate Multi-Channel ABM Plays
Trigger LinkedIn or programmatic ads when an account hits the Consideration stage. Layer direct-mail or gift-card sends for Decision-stage spikes.
3. Enrich Lead-Scoring Models
Blend first-party product-usage or web-visit data with third-party intent to bump scoring accuracy.
4. Personalize Web Experiences
Show industry-specific case studies or chatbot scripts based on the topics an account is researching.
5. Measure ROI
Track lift in pipeline value, deal velocity, and win rate between intent-touched and non-intent cohorts. Quarterly attribution reviews keep budgets honest.
Compliance & Data Governance Essentials
All seven vendors comply with GDPR and CCPA, but you still own the opt-out flow on your website. Insert clear cookie banners, link to each provider’s privacy policy, and honor do-not-sell requests. For EU data, insist on Data Processing Agreements (DPAs) and Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs).
5 Pro Tips to Maximize Intent-Data ROI
- Map topics to pain points. Don’t just pick “cloud” or “security.” Choose phrases that match your value prop (e.g., cloud cost-optimization).
- Triangulate multiple sources. Using two vendors (say Bombora + G2) reduces false-positives.
- Refresh weekly. Intent ages quickly; stale scores mislead.
- Validate with call recordings. Pair surging accounts with conversational-intelligence tools to confirm fit.
- Run closed-won analysis. Compare which signals preceded revenue—double-down there.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the difference between behavioral and technographic intent?
Behavioral tracks content consumption; technographic tracks installed tech. Combining both improves targeting.
How long do intent surges stay valid?
Most spikes decay within 2–4 weeks if not refreshed.
Do I need contact-level signals?
If your sales cycle involves multiple stakeholders, yes—otherwise SDRs waste time guessing who to call.
Can intent data replace cold outbound?
Not entirely, but it lets you ditch the bottom 80 percent of your TAM that’s not showing interest right now.
Final Thoughts
Intent data isn’t a magic wand, but when you match the right provider to your ICP, messaging, and tech stack, you’ll spend less time chasing tire-kickers and more time closing real deals. Pilot at least two vendors for 90 days, benchmark pipeline lift, and keep the one that delivers the highest revenue per marketing dollar.
Ready to test drive? Spin up a two-vendor bake-off, add surge scores to your CRM, and watch your win rates climb. High-value leads are already out there—intent data simply puts them on your radar before your rivals notice.
