Clay Pricing [2026]: Plans, Credits & Real Cost

Last updated: August 10, 2026. Prices verified on 2026-08-07 and re-checked on 2026-08-10 against Clay's published pricing page at clay.com/pricing, with both the Monthly and "Annual, save 10%" toggles captured. Cleanlist prices verified on 2026-08-10 against cleanlist.ai/pricing. One thing to know before you compare quotes: Clay's page currently states its plan prices two different ways. The plan cards on the annual view read $167 and $446 per month, and the FAQ lower down the same page describes "Launch (starting at $185/mo)" and "Growth (starting at $495/mo)". Both sets of numbers are Clay's, and 185 and 495 less the advertised 10% annual discount give 167 and 446, so they describe the same plans on different billing terms.

Clay pricing got a major overhaul in March 2026, and the platform has kept shipping changes since: Sandbox Mode went GA, email accounts became purchasable with credits, and Clay's own pricing page now links a New York Times piece noting Clay let employees sell shares at a $5 billion valuation. If you are on Clay, considering Clay, or comparing it to alternatives, the details matter, and the current Clay pricing structure changes the math for nearly every user tier.

Here is what actually changed, what it costs now, and how it stacks up against Cleanlist's credit-based model.

Clay.com pricing or pottery clay pricing? Which one this page covers

This page covers Clay.com, the B2B data enrichment and outbound software, priced at $0 Free, $185/month Launch and $495/month Growth as of August 10, 2026. It does not cover pottery clay. The split is worth stating because Google's own answer for "clay pricing", captured on August 10, 2026, spends half its response on ceramics: it quotes $0.70 to $2.00 per pound for stoneware and porcelain, links Blick and Laguna Clay through Google Shopping, and closes by asking the reader which Clay they meant. If you are here for the software, the comparison you probably want is Clay's dual-meter credit model against Cleanlist's flat ladder of $79 Starter, $229 Pro and $599 Scale, where 1 credit buys a verified email and 11 buy email plus phone.

How Much Does Clay Cost?

Clay costs $0 for the Free plan, $185/month for Launch and $495/month for Growth as of August 2026. Annual billing lowers those to $167 and $446/month. Enterprise pricing is custom, with contracts commonly landing between $12,000 and $154,000/year per Vendr's aggregated data. Every paid tier is credit-based, so your real cost also depends on how much marketplace data you buy on top of the subscription. Cleanlist prices the same job without a second meter: $79/month Starter for 1,500 credits, $229/month Pro for 5,000, $599/month Scale for 15,000, 25% off on annual billing, 1 credit per verified email and 11 for email plus phone. Verified against both vendors' published pages on August 10, 2026.

That headline number is not the floor either. Clay's plan cards carry a second, smaller number in fine print: Launch reads "Starts at $54/mo, expand anytime" and Growth reads "Starts at $185/mo". Both plans are sliders, and the advertised $167 and $446 are default positions sized to a specific action volume, not minimums. If you are switching to Clay and only need a fraction of the default allowance, the entry price is $54 a month on the annual view, not $167.

What are Clay's pricing tiers?

Clay has four pricing tiers as of August 2026: Free ($0/month), Launch ($185/month, or $167 on annual, starting at $54/mo), Growth ($495/month, or $446 on annual, starting at $185/mo) and Enterprise (custom quote). Clay consolidated its older Starter, Explorer and Pro plans into Launch and Growth in March 2026. Each paid tier bundles Data Credits plus platform Actions, and all enrichment is billed against those credits. Cleanlist's comparable ladder has three published tiers and one meter: Starter $79/month for 1,500 credits, Pro $229 for 5,000 and Scale $599 for 15,000, verified August 10, 2026.

Clay's plan cards state credits annually and its FAQ states the same allowances monthly. They agree: 100 Data Credits a month is 1,200 a year, 2,500 is 30,000, and 6,000 is 72,000. Figures verified against clay.com/pricing on August 7, 2026. Clay revises its plans periodically, so confirm the live numbers before you commit. For a flat-rate comparison, see Cleanlist's pricing.

What is the cheapest paid Clay plan?

The cheapest paid Clay plan is Launch at "Starts at $54/mo" on the annual view, not the $167 shown in the headline. Clay sells Launch and Growth as sliders: you pick an action volume and the price follows, and the number printed large on the card is a default position, not the entry point. Growth's floor is "$185/mo", which happens to be the same figure as Launch's monthly headline price, so it is easy to misread the two. The practical advice for anyone comparing Clay against a flat-rate tool is to price the slider at your actual volume before you compare anything. A team doing a few hundred enrichments a month is looking at Clay's $54 floor, not its $167 default, and that is a completely different comparison. The Cleanlist figure to set against it is Starter at $79/month for 1,500 credits, or $59/month on annual billing, published as one number with no slider and no floor, verified August 10, 2026.

Is Clay expensive?

Clay is expensive for teams whose main job is data enrichment, and more reasonable for teams that replace three or four tools with its workflow automation. The $495/month Growth plan is only the starting point: variable data credits routinely add several hundred to a few thousand dollars per month, so all-in cost for 1,000 fully enriched contacts a month commonly lands between $1,300 and $2,400.

The reason is Clay's dual-currency model. You pay for the platform subscription, then pay again in data credits every time you pull an email, phone, or firmographic from a marketplace provider. On our modelling, a single full-contact enrichment (email, phone, title, company) burns 14 to 34 credits on the Growth plan, and up to 75 credits when you layer on company data, roughly $0.70 to $3.75 per contact at Clay's published $0.05 credit floor. Clay does not publish per-provider credit costs outside the app, so treat those as estimates rather than its rate card. For enrichment-heavy teams, the data line often dwarfs the subscription. Cleanlist is flat pay-for-results by comparison: $229/month Pro covers 5,000 credits, a full contact is 11 credits ($0.55), and nothing is charged when no data is found.

Is there a cheaper alternative to Clay?

Yes. For pure data enrichment, Cleanlist is the cheaper alternative to Clay: plans run $79/month Starter for 1,500 credits, $229/month Pro for 5,000 credits and $599/month Scale for 15,000 credits, with no variable per-provider data charges and 25% off on annual billing. One credit equals one verified email and 11 credits equal a full contact, so a full enrichment costs about $0.55 versus $0.70 to $3.75 on Clay's Growth plan.

The model differs as well. Cleanlist runs waterfall enrichment across 15+ providers automatically, so you never pick sources, chain fallbacks, or guess at per-provider credit costs. AI enrichment columns answer a custom question about each lead and bill as credits per row rather than against a separate Actions meter. Triple-layer email verification is included in the credit price. CSV upload, People Search and AI Search start on Starter at $79/month; native CRM sync (HubSpot, Salesforce) and API access start on Pro at $229/month. For the full breakdown, see Cleanlist vs Clay. Apollo is the other common alternative, published on August 7, 2026 at $49 to $119 per seat per month on annual billing ($65 to $149 monthly), with an email costing 2 credits and a phone number 8 per Apollo's own enrichment calculator on apollo.io/pricing, though its data resolves against its own database with no multi-provider waterfall. If you are weighing Clay against an enterprise database instead, Clay vs ZoomInfo covers that tradeoff.

Why does Clay's pricing page show two different prices for the same plan?

Because the plan cards and the FAQ on clay.com/pricing describe different billing terms without labelling them. On the annual view, captured August 7, 2026, the Launch card reads $167/mo and the Growth card reads $446/mo. Further down the same page, Clay's own plan summaries read "Launch (starting at $185/mo)" and "Growth (starting at $495/mo)". Both are correct: $185 and $495 are the monthly-billed prices, and the toggle advertises "Annual, Save 10%", which gives $166.50 and $445.50. On top of that, each card carries a slider floor ("Starts at $54/mo" on Launch, "Starts at $185/mo" on Growth) because both plans scale with the action volume you select. Three numbers per plan, all published, none labelled. Cleanlist publishes one number per plan, verified on August 10, 2026: $79 Starter, $229 Pro, $599 Scale, with a single annual toggle at 25% off that produces $59, $172 and $449. There is no slider, no floor price and no second number in fine print.

What is the cheapest way to buy Clay?

The cheapest way to buy Clay is the bottom of the Launch slider on annual billing, published as "Starts at $54/mo", combined with bringing your own provider API keys. Clay's FAQ states that "if you bring your own API keys for a data provider, you skip Data Credits entirely and only use Actions for the platform work Clay handles behind the scenes", and Actions are priced from under $0.01 each. For a team that already holds contracts with data vendors, that turns Clay from a data marketplace into an orchestration layer with a much smaller bill. If you do buy data through Clay, the credit price starts at $0.05 and Clay says the most-used enrichments now cost 50% fewer credits on average after its partner renegotiation.

Cleanlist takes the opposite route: you never bring keys, because the waterfall across 15+ providers is included in the credit price. One verified email is 1 credit regardless of which source returned it, a phone is 10, both together are 11, and search costs 0 credits. Starter is $79/month for 1,500 credits, verified August 10, 2026.

Does Clay have a free trial, or only a free plan?

Clay has both, and they are different products. Clay's pricing page, fetched on August 10, 2026, carries "Start 14-day trial" as its main call to action, alongside a perpetual Free plan at $0 with 100 Data Credits and 500 Actions a month (1,200 and 6,000 a year) capped at 200 rows per table. So the 14-day trial is a time-boxed look at the paid tiers, and the Free plan is the thing that never expires. Cleanlist has no clock on it at all: the free tier is 30 credits a month, no card, renewing monthly, which buys 30 verified emails or 3 phone numbers at 1 credit per email and 10 per phone. Paid starts at $79/month Starter for 1,500 credits.

How much does Claygent cost per run?

Clay does not publish a per-run price for Claygent. On the pricing page fetched August 10, 2026, Claygent appears as an included capability on every tier, described as "Enrich with Claygent, Clay's AI agent with access to web research", and its cost lands on the same two meters as everything else: Actions for the platform work, plus Data Credits if the agent buys data. Clay's own FAQ says variable-priced models show "an estimated number of Data Credits per row, indicated by a tilde symbol (~)" and that the "final cost will be determined after the run completes". That is the honest state of it: you get a tilde before, a number after. Cleanlist bills AI enrichment columns as credits per row against the same pool that costs $79/month for 1,500 credits on Starter.

How do I get a cost quote before I run the enrichment?

On Clay you get an estimate marked with a tilde and the final Data Credit cost after the run completes, per its pricing FAQ fetched August 10, 2026. Cleanlist answers the same question with a quote you can act on: the Cleanlist MCP server exposes an estimate_cost call that returns the exact credit cost of a job, your organization's current balance and whether that balance is sufficient, all before a single row runs. Search itself costs 0 credits, so you can size the list first and only then price the enrichment. Enrichment is pay-for-results, so rows that return nothing are not charged. At $229/month Pro you get 5,000 credits, and 11 of them buy a full contact.

Does Clay charge per seat?

No. Clay has no per-seat fee on any published plan, and its Free plan explicitly includes unlimited seats. That is a genuine advantage for small teams and it is why the Clay versus Apollo math on this page turns on team size: Apollo Professional is $99 per seat monthly or $79 on annual, so a ten-person team pays $790 to $990 a month against Clay Growth's flat $446 to $495. Cleanlist has no per-seat fee either, on any tier including Free. A one-person team and a ten-person team both pay $79 Starter, $229 Pro or $599 Scale and share one credit pool, so the only variable in a Cleanlist quote is how many credits you burn.

Does Clay or Cleanlist require an annual contract?

Neither requires one on its self-serve plans. Clay's Launch and Growth are available on monthly or annual billing with a 10% annual discount, and only Enterprise carries an annual commitment, per clay.com/pricing fetched August 10, 2026. Cleanlist is self-serve from $79/month Starter with no annual contract and no minimum commitment; annual billing is optional and takes 25% off, which puts Starter at $59/month, Pro at $172 and Scale at $449. The practical difference is what happens when you outgrow the entry tier. Clay's answer is a slider plus top-up credits at a published 30% premium. Cleanlist's answer is the next plan on a published ladder, still month to month.

What do Clay users on Reddit say about the new credit model?

The complaint that shows up in Google's own answer is the dual-currency model. In the AI Overview for "clay pricing" captured on August 10, 2026, Google cites one Reddit thread by name, r/gtmengineering's "Clay Just Changed Their Entire Pricing Model", and summarises it as: "Opinions on Reddit are mixed regarding Clay's dual-currency credit and action model, with some users noting that specific enrichment workflows can scale costs quickly depending on API and data provider usage." That is the same failure mode this page models at $1,295 to $2,395 a month for 1,000 full contacts. Cleanlist exists on the other side of that complaint: one meter, 1 credit per verified email, 10 per phone, 11 for both, search at 0 credits, and $229/month Pro for 5,000 credits.

How much does Clay Enterprise cost? A $30,400 median according to Vendr

Clay's published plans top out at $495/mo for Growth. Above that, pricing is custom, and what companies actually pay at the enterprise tier is rarely discussed on Clay's own site. The publicly available benchmark for this comes from Vendr, the SaaS procurement platform that aggregates anonymized contract data across thousands of customers.

Per Vendr's marketplace data on Clay (also referenced in independent pricing analyses by CloudEagle and Warmly):

• Median Clay enterprise contract: approximately $30,400/year
• Maximum reported contract: approximately $154,000/year
• Typical range: $12,000 to $154,000/year

That is a 12x spread between the lowest and highest enterprise contracts, which tells you most of what you need to know about how Clay packages enterprise: pricing scales with credit volume, the number of provider integrations included, dedicated CSM support, Snowflake or data warehouse sync, SSO/RBAC requirements, and contract length.

For context, the median $30,400 enterprise contract is roughly 5x the annual cost of Clay Growth ($5,352/year on annual billing). Companies hitting this tier are typically running Clay across multiple GTM teams, executing high-volume enrichment workflows (100,000+ contacts/month), or layering Clay on top of multiple proprietary data sources via the marketplace.

What Cleanlist costs at the same scale. Cleanlist's published plans run from free (30 credits a month) through Starter at $79, Pro at $229 with 5,000 credits, and Scale at $599 with 15,000 credits, which is $7,188 a year at monthly billing or $5,388 on annual. Custom volume pricing is quoted above 15,000 credits a month. A team enriching at the volume that would push them onto a Clay $30,400/year enterprise contract would land on Cleanlist Scale or in the custom tier, in both cases below Clay's published enterprise median. For more on how Cleanlist's credit-based model compares, see our pricing page and the cost-per-contact tables further down this article.

Sources: Vendr marketplace pricing data for Clay (publicly aggregated, referenced by CloudEagle and Warmly's pricing analyses, 2026).

What changed between Clay's old plans and its new plans?

Clay replaced its three self-serve tiers with two. Here's the before and after.

Old pricing (before March 11, 2026)

New pricing (March 11, 2026 onwards)

The Free plan is unchanged. Enterprise is still custom. The middle is where things shifted. The switch that matters if you are pricing alternatives: the old Explorer tier at $349/mo with 10,000 credits no longer exists, and the two plans that replaced it both carry a second variable meter. Cleanlist's ladder over the same period is three fixed numbers with one meter, $79 Starter for 1,500 credits, $229 Pro for 5,000 and $599 Scale for 15,000, verified August 10, 2026.

What are the 5 biggest changes in Clay's 2026 pricing?

1. Three tiers become two

Starter ($149), Explorer ($349), and Pro ($800) are gone. They've been replaced by Launch ($185) and Growth ($495).

The Explorer tier, which sat at $349 and was popular with mid-market teams, no longer exists as a standalone option. If you were on Explorer, you're choosing between Launch (which has fewer features than Explorer had) or Growth (which costs $146 more than Explorer but includes features that were previously Pro-only). Cleanlist kept three published tiers across the same period, with the middle one closest to where Explorer sat: $79 Starter for 1,500 credits, $229 Pro for 5,000 and $599 Scale for 15,000, verified August 10, 2026.

2. Data costs dropped, and Clay now quantifies it as 50% on average

This is the headline change. Clay negotiated volume discounts with its data partners and is passing the savings to customers. As of August 7, 2026 Clay's pricing FAQ states the effect precisely: "By negotiating volume discounts directly with our 150+ partners and passing those savings on to you, the most-used enrichments cost 50% fewer credits on average." The same FAQ says "Data Credits start at $0.05 each and become more cost-effective as you grow".

That is a narrower and more useful claim than the "50-90%" range that circulated after the March announcement. Use 50% on average for the enrichments you actually run most, and treat anything beyond that as provider-specific.

Clay also reduced the top-up credit premium from 50% to 30%, and the current plan comparison confirms the 30% figure: top-ups on Launch and Growth are listed as "Buy more at a 30% premium".

3. New "Actions" system separates platform work from data

Previously, Clay bundled everything into a single credit system. Now there are two currencies:

• Data Credits: Used to purchase third-party data from providers in Clay's marketplace (emails, phones, company data). Costs vary by provider and data type.
• Actions: Used for platform orchestration, running enrichments, executing AI research, sending data to integrations. Each action costs fractions of a penny.

Clay says 90% of customers will never hit their Actions limit. The separation makes it easier to understand what you're spending on data vs what you're spending on platform usage. Cleanlist runs no Actions meter: platform work and data draw on one pool at 1 credit per verified email, 10 per phone, 11 for both and 0 for search, on plans of $79, $229 and $599 a month. For more context on how data enrichment costs compare across the industry, see our data enrichment cost guide.

4. Pro features move to Growth (at $305 less)

The most significant feature migration: CRM integrations (Salesforce, HubSpot auto-sync), HTTP API access, webhook automation, and web intent data were all locked behind the $800/mo Pro plan. They now live in the $495/mo Growth plan.

This is a genuine win for teams that needed CRM sync but couldn't justify $800/month. You're getting the same capabilities for 38% less. Cleanlist puts native CRM sync and API access on Pro at $229/month with 5,000 credits and no per-seat fee, so the same two features sit a tier lower on the ladder.

5. No charge for failed lookups, and none for bring-your-own keys

Previously, Clay charged credits even when an enrichment returned no result. Clay's pricing FAQ, captured August 7, 2026, now states it plainly: "If an enrichment returns no result, you're not charged Data Credits or Actions. If you bring your own API keys for a data provider, you skip Data Credits entirely and only use Actions for the platform work Clay handles behind the scenes."

That second sentence is the one worth acting on. If you already hold contracts with data providers, running Clay purely as orchestration on your own keys removes the Data Credit meter from your bill entirely and leaves only Actions, which Clay prices from under $0.01 each. Given the data decay rates across B2B databases, not paying for empty results is also a real saving on its own.

Cleanlist has priced enrichment this way from the start. A row that returns no verified data is not charged, so the 11 credits a full contact costs are only spent when an email and a phone actually come back, and the 1 credit for a verified email is only spent when the address passes verification. Search costs 0 credits, which means building and sizing the list before you enrich is free. On Pro at $229/month for 5,000 credits, a month where the waterfall finds nothing is a month you are billed for nothing beyond the subscription.

What has Clay shipped since the March 2026 pricing overhaul?

Clay kept shipping after the March pricing reset. Three updates matter for the cost math as of July 2026.

Sandbox Mode is GA. You can now build and test tables, formulas, and enrichment workflows without burning credits. Test runs use sample outputs instead of live marketplace lookups, so the "I spent 400 credits debugging a table" failure mode is largely gone. This quietly fixes one of the most common budget complaints from new Clay users. If you are still learning the table model itself, our Clay tables explained guide covers how tables, columns, and credits fit together.

You can buy email sending accounts with credits. Clay now sells managed email accounts for outbound sending infrastructure, purchasable with the same credits you use for data. Convenient if your sequences run on Clay-adjacent tooling, but it is one more draw on the same credit pool. Track it as its own line item or your data budget will quietly shrink.

Clay crossed $100M ARR in June 2026. Independent coverage from Salesforge, Saruggia's pricing analysis, and Industry Lens all put Clay past the $100M ARR mark roughly three months after the pricing overhaul, and Clay's own changelog reflects the shipping pace behind it. Why buyers should care: the dual-credit model is clearly working for Clay, so do not expect a simpler pricing structure any time soon. If a single meter is what you are after, Cleanlist bills 1 credit per verified email, 10 per phone, 11 for both and 0 for search, on plans of $79, $229 and $599 a month.

Clay Data Credits vs Action Credits: What's the Difference?

Data Credits buy third-party data from Clay's marketplace (emails, phones, firmographics), and their cost varies by provider, typically 2 to 8 credits per lookup. Actions pay for platform work (running enrichment steps, AI prompts, webhooks, integration syncs) at fractions of a penny each. In short: Data Credits are your variable data bill, Actions are your near-flat platform bill. Clay says 90% of customers never hit their Actions cap, so Data Credits drive almost all real-world overage spend. Cleanlist runs one meter instead of two: 1 credit per verified email, 10 per phone, 11 for both, and search costs 0 credits, on plans of $79, $229 and $599 a month as of August 10, 2026.

That answer covers most buying decisions. The full mechanics (rollover rules, top-up premiums, per-provider costs) are below.

How do Clay credits actually work?

The most confusing part of Clay's new pricing is the dual-currency credit system. Here is how it actually works, and what it costs in practice.

Data Credits: Variable cost per provider

Data Credits are consumed when you purchase third-party data through Clay's marketplace. The cost per lookup varies by provider and data type.

Here are representative costs for common enrichment actions on the Growth plan:

Treat those as our working estimates, not Clay's published rates. The only credit price Clay publishes on its pricing page is the floor: "Data Credits start at $0.05 each and become more cost-effective as you grow." Per-provider costs are shown inside the app, not on the pricing page, which is the single biggest reason Clay's cost per enriched contact cannot be normalized from public information the way Apollo's or Lusha's can. Actual costs vary by provider, with premium enterprise sources at the higher end and lighter-weight finders at the lower end.

The key thing to understand: Clay's credit cost is unpredictable because it depends on which providers you chain together. A simple email lookup might cost 2 credits. A full enrichment workflow could burn 30+ credits per contact. Cleanlist's per-row cost does not move with the provider that answers: 1 credit for a verified email, 10 for a phone, 11 for both, drawn from 1,500 credits at $79/month, 5,000 at $229 or 15,000 at $599.

Actions: Fixed cost, rarely a constraint

Actions measure platform work, running an enrichment step, executing an AI prompt, triggering a webhook, or pushing data to an integration. Each action costs a fraction of a penny.

On the Growth plan, you get 40,000 actions per month. Clay says 90% of customers never exceed their action limit. In practice, you would need to run roughly 1,300 enrichment steps per day to hit the Growth cap. For most teams, actions are effectively unlimited.

Where actions do matter: teams running large-scale AI research workflows (e.g., "analyze the last 5 LinkedIn posts for every contact in a 10,000-row table") can consume actions quickly. Each AI step counts as one or more actions, and complex multi-step prompts add up. Cleanlist has no equivalent cap to watch, because there is no second meter: AI enrichment columns bill as credits per row from the same pool that costs $229/month for 5,000 credits on Pro.

Credit rollover rules

Clay's pricing page describes rollover in two places and the two descriptions differ, so read both before you plan around either. As captured on August 7, 2026:

• In the FAQ: "On Launch and Growth plans, unused credits can accumulate up to 2x your monthly credit amount (e.g., a 10,000 credit plan can bank up to 20,000 total). Enterprise customers can roll over up to 15% of their prior year's purchased credits, provided they renew at an equal or higher commitment."
• In the plan comparison grid: rollover credits are listed as "15% of annual credits" for Launch and Growth, and "Not included" for Free.
• Actions: reset each billing cycle with no rollover, in both descriptions. Clay's reasoning is that Actions "reflect the platform capacity your plan includes".

Both are Clay's own text. The safe planning assumption is the more conservative one: you cannot stockpile credits indefinitely for a big quarterly campaign, and the Free plan banks nothing at all. Annual plans do get their whole allowance upfront, which the grid lists as "Get all credits up front (annual plans)". Plan the Cleanlist side differently: cleanlist.ai/pricing, checked August 10, 2026, lists Credit Rollover as an included feature from the Free tier upward, where Clay's grid lists rollover as "Not included" on Free. So the 30 free Cleanlist credits a month behave differently from Clay's 100 Free Data Credits, and on Pro at $229/month the 5,000-credit allowance is the number to budget against.

Top-up pricing

When you exceed your plan's data credit allocation you can buy more at a 30% premium, which Clay's plan comparison states verbatim for both Launch and Growth: "Buy more at a 30% premium". Enterprise top-ups are at a custom price and Free has none. This is down from the previous 50% premium.

Clay publishes the base rate too: "Data Credits start at $0.05 each and become more cost-effective as you grow." At that starting rate a top-up credit is about $0.065. Clay's FAQ frames top-ups as the intended escape valve rather than an upgrade trigger: "Users can always buy more if they need to top up without being pushed up to a higher plan tier." Even so, at sustained volume the next slider position is usually cheaper than a standing 30% premium. Cleanlist publishes the next step as the next plan rather than a premium rate: $79 Starter for 1,500 credits, $229 Pro for 5,000, $599 Scale for 15,000, all month to month with 25% off on annual billing.

Example: Cost of a typical enrichment workflow

Let's walk through what a standard lead enrichment workflow costs in Clay credits.

Scenario: You have a list of 500 target accounts that match your ICP scoring criteria. For each, you want to find the VP of Sales, get their work email, verify it, find their direct dial, and pull company firmographics.

At Growth plan rates, that 500-contact workflow costs $325-600 in data credits alone, on top of the $495/month subscription. A Growth plan's 6,000 monthly credits covers roughly 250-460 full enrichments, depending on provider mix.

For comparison, the same 500-contact enrichment on Cleanlist costs 5,500 credits (11 per full contact) with email, phone, title, company data, and triple email verification included. That is 500 more credits than Pro's 5,000 at $229/month, so this specific job sits on Scale at $599/month with 15,000 credits. No provider selection, no credit guessing, and rows that return nothing are not charged.

Who benefits from Clay's new pricing?

Teams that needed CRM integrations: If you were on Pro ($800/mo) primarily for Salesforce/HubSpot sync, Growth ($495/mo) saves you $3,660/year for the same functionality.

High-volume data users: The 50% average data cost reduction benefits teams that were spending heavily on Clay's marketplace providers. If data credits were your biggest expense line, your total cost of ownership drops significantly.

Teams that hit failed lookup penalties: Not being charged for failed enrichments removes a frustrating and unpredictable cost. At a 25% failure rate on 10,000 lookups/month, this could save hundreds of dollars monthly. Cleanlist has priced enrichment as pay-for-results from the start, so the 1 credit for a verified email and the 11 for email plus phone are only spent when data comes back. If data accuracy is your top concern, see our data quality tools guide for a broader comparison.

Who pays more under Clay's new pricing?

Former Explorer users: Explorer was $349/mo with 10,000 credits and included HTTP API and webhooks. The new Launch plan ($185/mo) has only 2,500 credits and lacks CRM sync, HTTP API, and web intent. To get comparable features, you need Growth at $495/mo, a $146/month increase. The data cost reduction may offset this, but it depends on your usage patterns.

Low-volume teams on Starter: The old Starter was $149/mo with 2,000 credits. The new Launch is $185/mo with 2,500 credits. That's a $36/month price increase (24%) for 25% more credits. Whether the added features (job signals, email integrations) justify the bump depends on your workflow.

Teams that don't use much marketplace data: The 50% average data cost reduction only helps if you're buying data through Clay's marketplace. If you primarily use Clay for orchestration with your own API keys (BYOK), the plan price increase is a net cost with less offsetting savings.

The group with the clearest case for pricing an alternative is the former Explorer cohort: $349/mo and 10,000 credits became $495/mo Growth and 6,000 Data Credits plus a variable marketplace bill. Cleanlist Pro is $229/month for 5,000 credits with CRM sync, API access and triple email verification on the same tier, and Scale is $599/month for 15,000, both verified August 10, 2026.

How does Clay's new pricing compare to Cleanlist?

Clay Growth is $495/month ($446 on annual) plus variable Data Credits from $0.05 each; Cleanlist Pro is $229/month ($172 on annual) with 5,000 credits and no second meter, both verified August 10, 2026. Clay and Cleanlist solve overlapping problems, data enrichment, with different approaches. Here's how the pricing compares for common use cases.

Platform comparison

Cost per enriched contact

This is where the comparison gets real. Clay's credit cost per contact varies dramatically based on which providers you chain together.

*Cleanlist includes company firmographics in the full contact enrichment at no extra credit cost.

At Clay's Growth plan base rate (~$0.05/data credit), a full contact enrichment costs $0.70-3.75 depending on depth. Cleanlist's Pro plan delivers a full contact enrichment for $0.55 with company data included.

Where Clay wins

• Workflow flexibility: Clay lets you build custom multi-step enrichment and outreach sequences. If your enrichment needs are non-standard (e.g., "find the CTO, check if they use Salesforce, then write a personalized AI email based on their last LinkedIn post"), Clay's workflow builder is unmatched.
• Provider choice: 150+ data providers means you can pick the exact sources for your niche. If you know that Provider X has the best data for healthcare executives, you can prioritize it.
• Orchestration beyond enrichment: Clay does workflow automation on top of enrichment. You can build sequences that combine data enrichment with outreach, CRM updates, and AI research in one flow.

Where Cleanlist wins

• Simplicity: No workflow building required. Upload a list or search for contacts, and waterfall enrichment handles the multi-provider logic automatically. For a full explanation of how this works, see waterfall enrichment explained. What takes hours to set up in Clay takes minutes in Cleanlist.
• Predictable pricing: 1 credit = 1 email verification. 11 credits = full contact enrichment (email + phone + firmographics). No variable per-provider costs, no credit consumption guessing. You know exactly what you'll spend before you start.
• Built-in verification: Every email passes Cleanlist's triple-layer verification (syntax check, DNS and MX lookup, SMTP handshake), plus catch-all detection and disposable email filtering. Clay relies on third-party verification providers, which consume additional credits.
• Lower cost at equivalent volume: For teams that primarily need data enrichment (not complex workflow automation), Cleanlist delivers comparable data quality at a fraction of the cost. A team enriching 2,000 contacts/month pays $229/mo on Cleanlist vs $495+/mo on Clay. For more on how the best waterfall enrichment tools stack up, see our 2026 comparison.
• A published feature ladder with no slider: CSV upload, People Search, AI Search and basic Smart Agents start on Starter at $79/mo. CRM import and native sync plus API access start on Pro at $229/mo, where the v2 API is poll-based and carries no webhook delivery. Playbooks, advanced agents and the analytics dashboard are on Scale at $599/mo. Clay gates CRM sync, HTTP API and web intent behind its $495/mo Growth plan, and prices each of its own tiers from a slider rather than a fixed number.

What does enriching 1,000 contacts a month cost on Clay vs Cleanlist?

Let's run the numbers for a common scenario: enriching 1,000 contacts per month with email, phone, title, and company data.

Read the Cleanlist column carefully, because the plan choice is doing work here. One credit buys a verified email, but a full contact (email plus phone plus company data) is 11 credits, so a thousand full contacts a month is 11,000 credits. That is more than the 5,000 Pro includes at $229, which is why the table prices Scale at $599 with 15,000 credits. If the job is emails only, 1,000 verified emails is 1,000 credits and Pro at $229/month covers it five times over. Rows that return nothing are not charged either way, so the credits above are a ceiling rather than a bill.

Even with Clay's 50% average data cost reduction, the total cost of ownership for enrichment-focused teams is significantly higher than Cleanlist. The gap narrows for teams that use Clay's workflow automation extensively, if you're replacing 3-4 separate tools with Clay, the TCO comparison shifts.

What is Clay's total cost of ownership by team size?

Headline plan pricing tells you the floor. Real TCO depends on how many people on the team use the tool, how much data they pull each month, and whether Sales Navigator and verification add-ons are part of the workflow.

The table below models three common team sizes. Clay numbers assume team usage scales credit consumption ~2.5x per additional active user on Launch, ~5x on Growth. Cleanlist numbers reflect Cleanlist's actual published plans with no per-seat fees on any tier.

Footnotes on the Clay math:

• Sales Navigator add-on: $99.99/mo per seat is listed because Clay does not own a contact database. Many Clay workflows depend on a LinkedIn Sales Navigator seat to source target lists before enrichment runs, so it is a real line item.
• Credit usage scaling: Clay's plan-included credits cover roughly 167 fully enriched contacts/mo on Launch (2,500 credits at ~15 credits/contact for a 5-provider waterfall) and ~400 on Growth (6,000 credits). Teams beyond 1-2 active users typically blow through plan-included credits in the first half of the month and rely on top-up credits at a 30% premium.
• Clay has no per-seat fee. This is a real advantage at small team sizes. The TCO gap narrows for a single user. It widens as data consumption scales with team size.

Footnotes on the Cleanlist math:

• No per-seat fees on any plan. A 1-person team and a 10-person team pay the same plan price, just at different credit volumes.
• Email verification, CRM sync, API access included. Clay's Growth-tier features are in Cleanlist's Pro tier at $229/mo.
• Waterfall cost is included in the credit price. 1 credit = 1 verified email regardless of which of the 15+ providers in the waterfall returned the result.
• Cleanlist figures use monthly billing. Annual billing takes 25% off, which puts Starter at $708/yr, Pro at $2,064/yr and Scale at $5,388/yr.

For the 10-person team scenario in particular, the modelled gap is about $22,252 a year, because Cleanlist Pro stays at $229/month for 5,000 credits no matter how many people on the team use it.

Which is cheaper at 500, 2,000 and 10,000 contacts a month?

Cleanlist is cheaper at all three volumes for verified-email work, and the gap widens as volume rises. The table below prices verified emails only, because that is the one enrichment where both vendors publish enough to compare. Clay's Data Credits are modelled at 2 to 5 credits per email at its published $0.05 floor, with overages at Clay's published 30% top-up premium ($0.065). Cleanlist credits are fixed at 1 per verified email. All prices verified August 10, 2026.

Two things fall out of that. At 500 emails a month Clay's own included allowance is enough, so the comparison is $79 against $185 and nothing else moves. At 10,000 the Cleanlist number is still $599 while Clay's swings by nearly $2,000 depending on which providers the waterfall hits, which is the forecasting problem rather than the price problem. Phones change the math on both sides: a Cleanlist phone is 10 credits and email plus phone is 11.

What should teams considering Clay do now?

If you're already on Clay

Check whether your current usage maps better to Launch or Growth. If you were on Explorer ($349/mo) and relied on HTTP API or webhooks, you'll need Growth ($495/mo), but the data cost reductions may offset the plan increase. Run the math on your specific data spend before switching.

Existing customers were grandfathered on legacy plans by default, and they can stay there. But the window to change between legacy plans (Starter, Explorer, Pro) closed on April 10, 2026, so the only self-serve move now is forward onto Launch or Growth. Run the credit math before you switch: once you leave a legacy plan, you cannot go back. If that math sends you looking, the flat comparison is Cleanlist Pro at $229/month for 5,000 credits, with CRM sync and API access on that same tier.

If you're evaluating Clay for the first time

The pricing is more competitive than before, especially at the Growth tier. But the total cost of ownership still depends heavily on data credit consumption, which is variable and hard to predict upfront. Ask for a trial and track actual credit usage against your enrichment volume before committing. Cleanlist is the fixed reference point to price that trial against: 30 credits free a month with no card, then $79/month Starter for 1,500 credits, at 1 credit per verified email and 11 for email plus phone.

If enrichment is your primary need

Clay's strength is workflow automation. If you are primarily enriching contacts and pushing them to your CRM, without complex multi-step sequences, you are paying for orchestration capabilities you may not use. Cleanlist delivers comparable enrichment quality with simpler setup and lower cost. For a broader look at how all the major players compare, see our best data enrichment tools comparison, or read our full Clay data enrichment review for a detailed breakdown of pros, cons, and alternatives.

How does Clay pricing compare to Apollo and Cleanlist?

Clay Growth is $495/month with variable Data Credits on top, Apollo Professional is $99 per seat monthly or $79 on annual, and Cleanlist Pro is $229/month flat for 5,000 credits, all verified against published pricing pages in August 2026. Clay, Apollo, and Cleanlist are the three most-compared tools for B2B data enrichment in 2026, and each packages price differently: a slider plus a marketplace, a per-seat licence, and a flat credit ladder. Here is how they stack up side by side.

Clay: The workflow automation play

Clay's strength is orchestration rather than enrichment on its own. The $495/month Growth plan makes sense for teams building complex, multi-step workflows that combine data enrichment with AI research, personalized outreach, and CRM automation in a single table. If you are replacing 3-4 separate tools (enrichment + outreach + research + automation), Clay's total cost can be competitive.

The downside: variable data credit costs make budgeting unpredictable, and the platform has a steep learning curve. Building and maintaining Clay tables requires technical capacity that not every sales team has.

For a deeper dive, see our full Clay vs Apollo comparison.

Apollo: The all-in-one sales platform

Apollo bundles a large contact database with email sequencing, a dialer and CRM features at $79 per seat per month on annual billing, or $99 on monthly, per apollo.io/pricing on August 7, 2026. It also publishes what a credit buys, though not in the plan table: the enrichment calculator further down apollo.io/pricing lists 2 credits for an email (enrichment plus waterfall verification, ~88% match rate) and 8 credits for a phone number (~81% match rate), with 48,000 credits per seat per year on Professional. That works out to roughly $0.04 per email, the cheapest published rate in this comparison. Apollo notes the ladder covers its own database only, so waterfall lookups against third-party providers can cost more.

The catch: Apollo's per-seat model gets expensive fast. A 10-person sales team pays $790 a month for Professional on annual billing, or $990 on monthly, against Clay Growth's flat $446 to $495. Apollo's enrichment also resolves against its own database rather than a multi-provider waterfall, so coverage varies on niche or non-US contacts even though the credit itself is cheap.

For more on Apollo's pricing model, see our Apollo pricing guide and the Cleanlist vs Apollo comparison.

Cleanlist: The enrichment-first approach

Cleanlist focuses entirely on data quality and enrichment. The $229/month Pro plan includes 5,000 credits, built-in waterfall enrichment across 15+ providers, triple email verification, CRM integrations, and API access, all without per-seat pricing. Starter is $79/month for 1,500 credits and Scale is $599/month for 15,000, with 25% off on annual billing at every tier.

The tradeoff: Cleanlist does not offer email sequencing, AI research workflows, or the 150+ provider marketplace that Clay provides. If your primary need extends beyond enrichment into full sales engagement, Cleanlist covers the data layer while you pair it with a dedicated outreach tool.

For teams where enrichment accuracy and cost predictability matter most, Cleanlist delivers the strongest ROI per dollar spent. For a broader view of how all major B2B data providers compare, see our 2026 roundup.

Is Clay Worth It? Decision Framework

Choosing between Clay, Cleanlist, and Apollo comes down to one question: what problem are you actually solving? Here is a framework to help you decide.

Choose Clay if:

• You need complex multi-step workflows. Clay excels when your enrichment process involves chained logic, "find the CTO, check if they use Salesforce, research their latest funding round, write a personalized email based on their investor." No other tool matches Clay's workflow builder for this.
• You want 150+ provider choice. If you need specific data providers for niche verticals (e.g., healthcare executive data, European GDPR-compliant sources), Clay's marketplace gives you granular control over exactly which sources to query.
• Your team has technical capacity to build and maintain tables. Clay tables are powerful but require ongoing configuration. If you have RevOps or a technical SDR who enjoys building workflows, Clay unlocks significant automation.
• You are replacing 3+ separate tools. When Clay replaces your enrichment tool, AI research tool, outreach personalization tool, and automation platform, the $495/month can deliver positive ROI even at the higher price point.

Choose Cleanlist if:

• Your primary need is data enrichment and verification. If 80%+ of your use case is "give me accurate emails, phones, and company data for these contacts," Cleanlist does this faster and cheaper than Clay.
• You want managed waterfall without configuration. Cleanlist's waterfall enrichment runs automatically across 15+ providers. No table building, no provider selection, no fallback logic to maintain.
• You need predictable pricing. One credit = one email. Eleven credits = one full contact. No per-provider variability, no top-up surprises, no mental math to estimate monthly spend.
• You need built-in email verification. Every email through Cleanlist passes triple-layer verification (syntax check, DNS and MX lookup, SMTP handshake), plus catch-all detection and disposable filtering. On Clay, email verification requires a separate provider integration and additional credit spend.
• Budget matters. At $229/month vs $495/month (before data credits), the cost difference is substantial. For enrichment-focused teams, that $266/month savings compounds to $3,192/year, real money for growth-stage companies.

Choose Apollo if:

• You want a full sales engagement platform. Apollo combines a contact database with email sequences, a built-in dialer, meeting scheduling, and conversation intelligence. If you need outreach tools alongside enrichment, Apollo bundles them.
• You need per-user access for a large team. Apollo's per-seat model means every rep gets their own access. For teams where individual reps do their own prospecting, this matters more than a shared credit pool.
• Email sequences are a priority. Apollo's sequence builder is mature and well-integrated with its database. If your SDRs live in sequences all day, Apollo reduces context-switching.

When none of them is the right fit

If you need enterprise-grade data governance, compliance workflows, or data warehouse integrations, you are likely looking at ZoomInfo, Cognism, or D&B, and that is a different kind of purchase. ZoomInfo Q2 2026 results, filed August 5, 2026, report 1,891 customers at $100,000 or more in annual contract value (down 9 quarter over quarter), GAAP revenue of $310.4M up 1.2% year over year, net revenue retention of 89%, a $650.5M goodwill impairment and a GAAP net loss of $643.7M; the company now trades as NASDAQ: GTM. Cleanlist does not sell into that tier. It is self-serve from $79/month with no annual contract and 30 credits free to test. See our sales intelligence platforms guide for that end of the market.

How do you cancel Clay?

If you have decided Clay is not the right fit, the cancellation flow is self-serve for monthly and annual self-serve plans (Launch and Growth). Enterprise contracts are handled by Clay's account management team.

Step 1: Open billing settings. Log in to your Clay workspace, click your workspace name in the top-left to open the workspace menu, and select Settings. From the left sidebar, choose Billing. This is the same page where you upgrade or change plans.

Step 2: Choose Cancel Subscription. Inside the Billing panel, scroll to your current plan and click Cancel Subscription (or Manage Plan then Cancel, depending on which Clay UI version your workspace is on). Clay will present a brief retention flow asking why you are cancelling. Selecting a reason is optional; you can proceed without filling it in. Your subscription remains active through the end of the current billing period, and you keep access to your enrichment tables, data, and credits until the period ends.

Step 3: Export your data before the period closes. Clay tables can be exported as CSV from the ... menu on any table view. Workflows themselves are not exportable, so screenshot or document any cascade configurations you want to rebuild on another platform. Once the billing period ends, the workspace downgrades to the Free tier (100 credits, 500 actions) and tables remain accessible at that lower volume cap unless you fully delete the workspace.

For enterprise contracts: cancellation typically requires written notice before the renewal date specified in the contract (commonly 30 to 90 days). Contact your assigned Clay account manager or email Clay support to initiate the offboarding process and confirm the data export window. Per standard SaaS enterprise terms, mid-term cancellation usually does not produce a refund of unused contract value.

If you are moving from Clay to a managed waterfall, see Cleanlist's import flow. CSV upload starts on Cleanlist's Starter plan at $79/month for 1,500 credits, and the waterfall runs on every row you import without any workflow to rebuild.

What does moving from Clay to Cleanlist cost?

Zero to test, then $79/month if you keep it. Export your Clay tables as CSV from the table's "..." menu (free, and worth doing before the billing period closes, since the workspace drops to Clay's Free tier afterwards). Cleanlist's free tier is 30 credits a month with no card, run through the Chrome Extension or manual entry, which is enough to check the data before you pay anything. CSV upload and People Search start on Starter at $79/month for 1,500 credits, and search itself costs 0 credits, so building and re-sizing the list adds nothing to the bill. Enrichment is pay-for-results, so rows the waterfall cannot resolve are not charged. Pro is $229/month for 5,000 credits if you need CRM sync and API access. The one thing that does not migrate is Clay workflow logic: Clay tables are not exportable as workflows, so document any cascade configuration you want to rebuild.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does Clay cost per month now?

Clay's headline prices are $185 a month for Launch (2,500 data credits, 15,000 actions) and $495 for Growth (6,000 data credits, 40,000 actions), and annual billing saves 10%, bringing them to $167 and $446. Both plans are sliders with a published floor below the headline: Launch reads "Starts at $54/mo, expand anytime" and Growth reads "Starts at $185/mo". The Free plan is $0 with 100 data credits and 500 actions a month (1,200 and 6,000 a year). Enterprise is custom. Verified against clay.com/pricing on August 7, 2026 and re-checked August 10, 2026. Cleanlist's equivalent ladder on the same date is $79 Starter for 1,500 credits, $229 Pro for 5,000 and $599 Scale for 15,000, with no slider and no second meter.

What happened to Clay's Starter, Explorer, and Pro plans?

Clay consolidated its three self-serve paid plans into two. Starter ($149/mo) and Explorer ($349/mo) are replaced by Launch ($185/mo). Pro ($800/mo) is replaced by Growth ($495/mo), which includes all Pro features at a lower price. Existing customers remain grandfathered on legacy plans and can move to the new structure at any time, but the window to switch between legacy plans closed on April 10, 2026. Former Explorer users at $349/mo who mainly needed enrichment rather than orchestration are the group most likely to price Cleanlist Pro at $229/mo for 5,000 credits instead, since CRM sync and API access sit on that tier.

Did Clay actually cut prices or raise them?

Both, and the answer changed again in 2026. The March overhaul cut data marketplace costs (Clay's page now quantifies it as "the most-used enrichments cost 50% fewer credits on average") and dropped the most feature-rich self-serve plan from $800 to $495. The entry-level paid plan went from $149 (Starter) to $185 (Launch), a 24% increase, and Explorer users at $349 who needed API or CRM features moved to Growth at $495, a 42% increase. What softens that today is the slider floor: Launch now publishes "Starts at $54/mo" on the annual view, so a low-volume team can enter Clay below the old Starter price. The net impact depends on your credit consumption rather than the headline. For a fixed reference point to price against, Cleanlist publishes $79 Starter, $229 Pro and $599 Scale as of August 10, 2026, with 1 credit per verified email and 11 for email plus phone.

What are Clay Actions vs Data Credits?

Actions measure platform orchestration work, enriching data, running AI research, and sending data to other tools. Each action costs fractions of a penny and most users never hit the limit. Data Credits purchase third-party vendor data from Clay's marketplace (emails, phones, company info). Costs vary by data type and provider. The separation helps you understand where your money goes. Cleanlist has no equivalent split: one credit pool covers both the platform work and the data, at 1 credit per verified email, 10 per phone, 11 for both, and 0 for search.

Do Clay credits roll over?

Yes, with limits. On monthly plans, unused data credits accumulate up to 2x your monthly allocation. On annual plans, up to 15% of your annual credits roll over when you renew at the same or higher tier. Actions reset monthly and don't roll over, and Clay's Free plan banks nothing. Cleanlist lists Credit Rollover as an included feature from the Free tier upward, per cleanlist.ai/pricing on August 10, 2026, so the 30 free credits a month behave differently from Clay's 100 free Data Credits.

How does Clay's pricing compare to Cleanlist?

Cleanlist is significantly cheaper for teams focused on data enrichment. Cleanlist Pro ($229/mo) includes 5,000 credits, CRM integrations, and built-in email verification, capabilities that require Clay's Growth plan ($495/mo) plus additional data credit spend. Clay wins on workflow flexibility if you need complex multi-step automation beyond enrichment. See the full pricing comparison.

Is Clay or Cleanlist better for waterfall enrichment?

Both offer multi-provider enrichment. Clay connects to 150+ providers but requires you to build and maintain the waterfall workflow yourself, selecting which providers to query, in what order, and configuring fallback logic. Cleanlist's waterfall enrichment does this automatically across 15+ providers with built-in verification, measured at 98% verified email and 85% direct dial on a 500-lead stratified test, without any configuration. For teams that want waterfall without the engineering, Cleanlist is the faster path. For teams that want granular control over every provider and step, Clay offers more customization.

Should I switch from Clay to Cleanlist?

Consider switching if: (1) you use Clay primarily for data enrichment without complex workflows, (2) you're spending more time building and maintaining Clay tables than prospecting, (3) your total Clay spend (plan + data credits) exceeds what you'd pay on Cleanlist for equivalent enrichment volume. Consider staying on Clay if: you rely on Clay's workflow automation for multi-step sequences that go beyond enrichment, or you need specific data providers that Cleanlist's curated waterfall doesn't include.

How much does Clay cost?

Clay costs $185 a month for Launch and $495 for Growth on monthly billing, or $167 and $446 on annual, with published slider floors of "$54/mo" for Launch and "$185/mo" for Growth. Free is $0 with 100 data credits and 500 actions a month. On top of the subscription, data credit consumption is variable: Clay publishes a starting rate of $0.05 per Data Credit and shows per-provider costs in-app rather than on the pricing page. By comparison, Cleanlist uses a fixed ladder starting at $79 a month: 1 credit per verified email, 10 per phone, 11 for both, and search costs nothing.

Is Clay worth the price?

Clay is excellent for teams that need complex, multi-step workflow automation, chaining enrichment with AI research, personalized outreach, and CRM updates in a single flow. For those use cases, the $495/month Growth plan can replace 3-4 separate tools. However, if your primary need is data enrichment, Clay's total cost of ownership (plan + data credits + verification) runs 2-4x higher than a focused enrichment tool like Cleanlist for equivalent volume, on the 1,000-contact worked example above ($1,295 to $2,395 a month against Cleanlist Scale at $599). See our data enrichment cost guide for detailed comparisons.

What are cheaper alternatives to Clay?

For data enrichment specifically, Cleanlist and Apollo are the strongest alternatives. Cleanlist offers built-in waterfall enrichment across 15+ providers with no per-credit surcharges, priced at $79 Starter, $229 Pro and $599 Scale, and the waterfall runs automatically without any workflow configuration. Apollo provides a large contact database with built-in outreach at $49 to $119 per seat per month on annual billing, or $65 to $149 monthly, per its published pricing on August 7, 2026. Both are cheaper than Clay's total cost of ownership for enrichment-led work. Clay's own $54/mo Launch floor is also worth pricing before you switch away.

Clay vs Cleanlist, which is better for data enrichment?

Clay is a workflow builder that happens to offer enrichment. Cleanlist is an enrichment platform purpose-built for data accuracy. Clay gives you 150+ data providers and full control over which to query and in what order, but you build and maintain the waterfall yourself. Cleanlist's waterfall runs automatically across 15+ providers with built-in triple email verification, measured at 98% verified email and 85% direct dial on a 500-lead stratified test, without any configuration. For pure enrichment, Cleanlist is faster to set up and cheaper to run. For complex multi-step automation beyond enrichment, Clay offers more flexibility.

Does Clay have a free plan?

Yes. Clay's free plan is 100 data credits and 500 actions per month, which its pricing page also states as 1,200 data credits and 6,000 actions per year. It includes unlimited seats and tables, multi-provider waterfalls, Claygent and the Clay sequencer, capped at 200 rows per table, and it does not include phone number enrichment or credit rollover. One hundred credits typically yields 20 to 50 enriched contacts depending on the providers used. Clay also runs a separate 14-day trial of the paid tiers, distinct from that Free plan. Cleanlist's free tier is 30 credits a month, no card and no clock, with waterfall enrichment and email verification included, which buys 30 verified emails or 3 phone numbers. People Search and AI Search start on Starter at $79 a month, and programmatic API access and CRM sync start on Pro at $229.

How do Clay credits work?

Clay uses a dual-currency system. Data Credits purchase third-party data from Clay's marketplace, emails, phone numbers, company information. Each provider charges a different credit amount (2-8 credits for an email, 3-5 for a phone number). Actions measure platform work like running enrichment steps, executing AI prompts, and pushing data to integrations. Most teams never hit the Actions limit. The split helps you see exactly where money goes: data vs platform usage. Cleanlist collapses the same thing into one number so there is nothing to reconcile: 1 credit per verified email, 10 per phone, 11 for both, 0 for search, drawn from a single monthly pool of 1,500 on Starter, 5,000 on Pro or 15,000 on Scale.

How does Clay pricing compare to Apollo?

Clay Growth costs $495 a month on monthly billing, $446 on annual, with a published floor of "$185/mo" and no per-seat pricing. Apollo Professional costs $99 per seat per month on monthly billing or $79 on annual, per apollo.io/pricing on August 7, 2026. For a single user, Apollo is cheaper. For a 5-person team on annual billing, Apollo is $395 a month against Clay Growth's $446. For 10 or more users, Apollo passes Clay at $790 a month and keeps climbing. The structural difference: Clay is a slider with 150+ data providers and workflow automation, Apollo is a per-seat platform with its own database, a published credit ladder (2 credits per email, 8 per phone) and built-in sequences. Cleanlist is the third shape: no seats, no slider, $229/month Pro for 5,000 credits at 1 per verified email and 11 for email plus phone, so a 10-person team pays the same as a solo founder. For a full breakdown, see our Clay vs Apollo analysis.

Clay's pricing changes are a net positive for the ecosystem, cheaper data and more accessible features benefit everyone. But cheaper doesn't mean cheap, and the total cost of ownership still depends on data credit consumption that's hard to predict.

For teams where enrichment is the primary use case, Cleanlist delivers comparable data quality at a fraction of the cost with simpler setup. For teams that need Clay's unique workflow automation, the new Growth plan at $495/mo is meaningfully better than the old Pro at $800/mo. For a side-by-side feature comparison, see our Cleanlist vs Clay comparison. If you are exploring options beyond Clay, browse Clay alternatives ranked for 2026, and for teardowns of Apollo, ZoomInfo, Lusha, and the rest of the market, see our pricing guides hub.

If you are buying data, the Cleanlist ladder is $79 Starter for 1,500 credits, $229 Pro for 5,000 and $599 Scale for 15,000, at 1 credit per verified email and 11 for email plus phone, verified August 10, 2026. If you are buying a workflow engine, Clay Growth is $495 a month plus Data Credits from $0.05 each.