Load Apollo data to DuckDB

Apollo is a sales intelligence and engagement platform providing REST API access for data enrichment, search, and record management. Everything needed to build a working Apollo → DuckDB pipeline is on this page: the API's base URL, authentication, endpoints, pagination and incremental field — plus a prompt that hands the whole job to your coding agent.

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Build your Apollo to DuckDB pipeline

Paste this prompt into Claude, Codex, or Cursor. The agent does the rest.

PromptCopy prompt
Run uvx dlthub-init@latest to build a pipeline from Apollo to DuckDB and run it on dltHub

That scaffolds a dltHub workspace and installs the dltHub AI harness — the project rules, the secrets-management skill, and the dlt MCP server your agent needs to work safely. From there it reads the Apollo API, proposes the endpoints to load, then writes, runs and validates the pipeline while you review rather than type. Credentials are inspected through MCP tools, so your agent never reads secrets.toml itself. How the LLM-native workflow works →

Prefer to write it yourself? Every fact the agent uses is below.

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Apollo API at a glance

These values come from the Apollo API reference — the authoritative source if anything here looks out of date.

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How do I authenticate with the Apollo API?

Apollo users must pass an API key in the 'x-api-key' request header for all calls. Partners use OAuth 2.0 with a Bearer token in the 'Authorization' header.

1. Get your credentials

To obtain API credentials for the Apollo GraphOS Platform API, follow these steps: 1) Sign in to Apollo GraphOS Studio at studio.apollographql.com. 2) Navigate to your organization or graph settings. 3) Locate the API Keys or Access Management section. 4) Create a new API key, selecting the appropriate scope and expiration duration. 5) Copy the generated key immediately, as it will be stored securely and may not be viewable again.

2. Add them to .dlt/secrets.toml

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[sources.apollo_source]
api_key = "your_api_key_here"

dlt reads this file automatically at runtime. With the harness, the setup-secrets skill prompts you for the values and never handles the raw credential in chat. For production, see setting up credentials with dlt.

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What Apollo data can I load into DuckDB?

These are the Apollo endpoints dlt can load into DuckDB:

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How do I load only new Apollo records?

Apollo exposes page on contacts/search, so dlt can request only the records that changed since the last run. Set it as the cursor_path and dlt tracks the high-water mark for you between runs.

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{"name": "contacts_search", "endpoint": {
    "path": "contacts/search",
    "data_selector": "contacts",
    "incremental": {"cursor_path": "page", "initial_value": "2024-01-01T00:00:00Z"},
}}

On the first run dlt loads everything from initial_value; on every run after that it requests only what changed and appends with write_disposition="merge" if you set a primary key. See incremental loading.

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What does the generated Apollo pipeline look like?

A standard dlt REST API pipeline — the same code you would write by hand, loading graphql and platform_api_graph from the Apollo API into DuckDB:

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import dlt
from dlt.sources.rest_api import RESTAPIConfig, rest_api_resources

@dlt.source
def apollo_source(api_key=dlt.secrets.value):
    config: RESTAPIConfig = {
        "client": {
            "base_url": "https://api.apollo.io/api/v1",
            "auth": {"type": "api_key", "api_key": api_key, "name": "x-api-key", "location": "header"},
        },
        "resources": [
            {"name": "contacts_search", "endpoint": {"path": "contacts/search", "data_selector": "contacts"}},
            {"name": "people_search", "endpoint": {"path": "people/search", "data_selector": "people"}}
        ],
    }
    yield from rest_api_resources(config)


def load_apollo_to_duckdb() -> None:
    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name="apollo_pipeline",
        destination="duckdb",
        dataset_name="apollo_data",
    )
    load_info = pipeline.run(apollo_source())
    print(load_info)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    load_apollo_to_duckdb()

Run it with python apollo_pipeline.py. The agent iterates on this until it loads cleanly — you review and approve, rather than write it from scratch.

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How do I query Apollo data in DuckDB?

dlt creates one table per resource. Query the loaded data with Python or SQL — or ask your agent to, through the MCP server's execute_sql_query tool.

Python (pandas DataFrame):

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import dlt

data = dlt.pipeline("apollo_pipeline").dataset()
df = data.contacts_search.df()
print(df.head())

SQL:

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SELECT * FROM apollo_data.contacts_search LIMIT 10;

See querying your data with dataset and exploring it in marimo notebooks.

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How do I deploy the Apollo to DuckDB pipeline in production?

The pipeline runs locally, which is ideal for prototyping and one-off analysis. When you need it on a schedule, monitored on every load, and shared with your team, deploy the same dlt code on the dltHub platform — no infrastructure to maintain. The prompt above already ends with "run it on dltHub", so your agent can take it there directly.

• Deploy & schedule — run the pipeline as a managed job with automatic retries.
• Monitor — observable job queues, alerting, and load metrics for every run.
• Transform — promote raw Apollo loads into governed, documented models.
• Visualize & share — explore data in notebooks and publish live dashboards instead of static screenshots.

Book a demo →

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What other destinations can I load Apollo data to?

dlt loads into any of these — only the destination argument changes:

Set dlt.pipeline(destination="snowflake") and add credentials in .dlt/secrets.toml. On the dltHub platform the same pipeline runs against a managed Iceberg lakehouse. See the full destinations list.

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Next steps

• Ready for production? Book a demo of the dltHub platform →
• dlt LLM-native workflow docs
• REST API source reference
• Join the dlt community on Slack