Claygent review 2026: cost per row, models, and where it struggles

Facts checked October 3, 2026. Every Clay fact below comes from Clay's own pages: the Claygent page, the pricing page, the AI pricing and Actions and Data Credits docs in Clay University, the Account Agents and Sequencer pages, and Clay's guides and blog. The Navigator price comes from Clay's launch post of August 20, 2025, the newest Clay page that states one. Cleanlist AI did not run a project through Claygent for this review, so this page has no accuracy numbers. Cleanlist AI's own plans are on the pricing page.

What is Claygent?

Claygent is the AI agent inside Clay that researches the web, one row at a time. Clay's definition: Claygents "take inputs, follow your instructions, and write a structured output." You add Claygent as a column, point it at the inputs it needs (a company domain, a name, a title), write the question, and pick a model. It visits real pages for each row and writes the answer into one or more columns.

Clay lists the jobs it sees most: account research and meeting prep, finding data no provider sells, personalizing outbound from news or job posts, scoring and qualifying lists, ranking leads from 1 to 10 and finding the right contact. Clay's Claygent page counted more than 5 billion Claygent runs on October 3, 2026.

Clay now runs two kinds of Claygent. General Claygents run in tables and workflows, on every plan. Account Agents run across segments in Clay's Audiences, keep a memory per account, and are in beta on Launch, Growth and Enterprise.

Claygent at a glance

Is Claygent expensive?

Claygent is cheap per row on Clay's fixed-price models and expensive in three places: heavy models, browser runs and plan minimums.

Every Claygent prompt costs 1 Action. Clay says Actions start at "less than $0.01 each," and Launch includes 15,000 a month. The bigger line is data credits, set by the model. Clay's AI pricing doc puts 80% of models on fixed pricing, "a flat number of data credits per task," and the rest, "the most advanced reasoning models," on variable pricing at "0% markup": Clay withholds an estimate based on the 75th percentile of past runs, then refunds or charges the difference once the run finishes.

Clay's published credit costs per row (read October 3, 2026):

On top of research, contact data has its own price. Claygent writes text answers; a verified email or phone number comes from Clay's data marketplace on more data credits. Clay's docs say each fully enriched record typically costs 6 to 20 data credits, and phone number enrichment starts on Launch. The Clay waterfall and Actions breakdown prices that side row by row.

The plan sets the floor. Free gives 100 data credits and 500 Actions a month, enough for about 100 Helium rows. Launch is $185 a month (2,500 data credits, 15,000 Actions) or $167 billed annually. CRM integrations start on Growth at $495 a month ($446 annually). Top-ups on Launch and Growth cost 30% more than plan credits. The Clay pricing guide covers the two meters in depth.

What 1,000 rows of Claygent research cost

At Clay's published entry rate of $0.05 a data credit, a 1,000-row web research job costs:

Two things move the real number. An Argon job of 3,000 credits is more than Launch's 2,500 monthly credits, so a Launch account pays for the rest at the 30% top-up premium. And variable-priced models can only be estimated: Clay's own advice for complex research prompts is to run them "on 10 or 50 rows" first and look at the charge per row.

Models, Navigator and prompts

Models. Clay's pricing reference lists 16 models across Clay, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Fireworks AI. Clay's own models (Neon, Helium and Argon) are all fixed-price. You can also connect your own API keys and skip Clay's AI credits, though Clay says tasks run through its APIs are "up to 2× faster" because of higher rate limits. Clay's guide sums up the trade: a heavier reasoning model "returns sharper judgment on messy pages but costs more per row," and a lighter one "needs an even tighter prompt."

Navigator. Navigator is Claygent with a browser. Clay's August 2025 launch post says it handles "clicks, form fills, filter toggles, pagination, and scrolling," which opens up public data that sits behind a search form, such as government registries. Each run comes with a Claygent Replay showing what Navigator clicked and filled. The same post priced Navigator at 6 credits a run and called it "still early." Navigator does not appear in Clay's current pricing reference, so check the cost in the model picker.

Prompts. Clay's April 2026 prompt guide puts accuracy on the prompt more than the model, and gives three rules: force a structured schema, require the source URL, and let the model answer "Not found." It also recommends turning off auto-run before you add the column, so the agent does not fire on every row before you have tested it. Claygent Builder runs test rows "without burning a single credit."

Where Claygent works well

• Data points no provider sells. "Does this company sell to hospitals?", "Which ERP do they mention on their careers page?", "Did they announce a new office this year?" These are the questions Claygent was built for, written straight into a column.
• Research at list scale on cheap models. At 0.5 to 1 credit a row, a 1,000-account research pass costs $25 to $50 in credits on Clay's entry rate.
• Hard-to-reach public data. Navigator works through search forms and filters a plain scraper cannot, and the replay makes each answer auditable.
• Model choice. Sixteen models, plus your own keys, let a team match cost to the difficulty of each question.
• Everything else is in the same table. The research column sits next to Clay's enrichment waterfalls, scoring formulas and exports.

Where Claygent struggles

• Guessing. Clay's own guide warns that "a model with no permission to fail will fabricate to fill the field." Without a citation column and a "Not found" option, wrong answers look exactly like right ones.
• Paywalls and logins. A Clay University lesson says Claygent reaches public data "with the exception of information hidden behind paywalls or password-protected areas."
• Cost you only see afterwards. Variable-priced models bill after the run. Clay withholds an estimate first and stops at a zero balance, so a run cannot overdraw the account, but the per-row cost is unknown until the test rows finish.
• Auto-run on a new column. If auto-run is on, the column fires on every row as soon as it exists, which Clay's guide flags as paying "for a run you have not validated yet."
• Someone has to build it. Prompts, schemas, model choice and table logic are a skill. Clay's docs point teams to a directory of Clay experts and agencies for help with setup.

Account Agents, Sculptor and the Sequencer

Clay's agent line is wider than the research column.

• Account Agents, in Clay's description, reason over what you know about an account, decide the next best action and remember what they learned. They read CRM data, warehouse tables and Gong call transcripts in Audiences, keep a persistent memory per account, and write fields back to the CRM only after a person approves. They are in beta on Launch, Growth and Enterprise, at 1 Action per record plus data credits at Claygent rates.
• Sculptor is Clay's in-product assistant that turns a plain description into a workflow, and its Analyst mode answers questions about a table in natural language.
• Clay Sequencer sends cold email from Clay: you can buy inboxes and domains inside Clay, warming starts at setup, and Clay agents write "lead-specific copy" from your enrichments. The Sequencer and pricing pages mention email only. LinkedIn steps and call steps do not appear on either page.
• Clay MCP brings Clay's Functions into Claude and ChatGPT on Launch, Growth and Enterprise, with per-rep credit budgets. The Clay MCP server review covers it.

What Claygent leaves to other tools

Claygent answers questions. A full outbound motion needs a few more jobs, and Clay prices each one separately:

1. Verified contact data. Emails and phone numbers come from Clay's marketplace on data credits; phone numbers start on Launch.
2. CRM sync. Native CRM integrations start on Growth, $495 a month.
3. Sending. The Sequencer covers email; LinkedIn and call steps need another tool.
4. Upkeep. A table that runs weekly needs someone to own its prompts, models and credit budget.

Each of the four is a plan tier, a credit line or a separate tool.

Alternatives for research per row

Claude with web search

For one-off research, a chat assistant does the same job by hand. Claude Pro is $20 a month, or $17 billed annually, and reads a company's site and news on request. For research across a list, Anthropic's API charges $10 per 1,000 web searches plus model tokens (claude.com/pricing, read October 3, 2026). You write the loop and the output schema yourself, and Clay's three prompt rules apply just the same.

Clay's lighter models

If you already pay for Clay, the cheapest alternative is a cheaper model in the same column. GPT-5 Nano at 0.5 credits a row, or Helium and GPT-5 Mini at 1, handle yes-or-no questions with a cited source well enough to test first, before you reach for Argon or a variable-priced model.

Cleanlist AI (our product)

Cleanlist AI puts per-row research inside agents. The Research skill reads a company's website, news and careers page and writes back what they do, recent news, hiring and who to contact, with the source on every line. The Qualification skill scores each lead from 0 to 100 against your ICP, gives the reasons and checks whether the lead is already in your CRM. Each skill costs 5 credits a lead, and research runs on every paid plan from Starter.

Clu, Cleanlist AI's GTM agent, turns one sentence into an agent: "every Monday, find new heads of sales at 50 to 300 person SaaS companies, research and qualify them, get verified emails and phone numbers for the ones above 70, add them to a sequence and post the run in Slack." The contact data comes from a waterfall across 25+ providers, and a missed email or phone number costs 0 credits. Pro includes 5 active agents on a schedule or a CRM trigger; Enterprise runs unlimited agents. See how agents work, or the full Cleanlist AI vs Clay comparison.

The verdict on Claygent

Claygent gives a GTM team web research on every row, with 16 models to choose from, a browser agent for search forms, free test rows and a published credit price for most models. On Clay's lighter models it costs about 1 credit a row. Buy it if you have someone who will write schemas, demand citations and tune the model per question; on those terms it answers questions no data vendor sells.

Look elsewhere if the job is the same every week and the goal is a qualified, verified, sequenced list, because each extra step in Clay (phone numbers, CRM sync, LinkedIn and call steps) is another plan tier or another tool. More options are on the Clay alternatives page, and Cleanlist AI's plans are on the pricing page.

See pricing

FAQ

What is Claygent?

Claygent is Clay's AI research agent. It takes inputs from a Clay table, follows a prompt you write, reads the web for each row and writes a structured answer into one or more columns. It is included on every Clay plan, including Free.

How much does Claygent cost?

Each Claygent run costs 1 Action plus data credits set by the model. On Clay's AI pricing page, web research costs 1 data credit a row on Clay's Helium model and 3 on Argon, and fixed-price models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google cost 0.2 to 7.5 credits a row. The heaviest reasoning models are billed on actual token cost at no markup. Clay says data credits start at $0.05 each.

Is Claygent expensive?

Per row, Claygent is inexpensive on light models: about $0.05 of credits a row on Helium at Clay's entry rate. It gets expensive with heavy reasoning models, Navigator runs, re-runs from auto-run, and the plan tiers needed for phone numbers (Launch, $185 a month) and CRM sync (Growth, $495 a month).

What is Claygent Navigator?

Navigator is Claygent with a browser. Clay's launch post says it clicks, fills forms, toggles filters, paginates and scrolls to reach public data behind search forms, and records a replay of every step. Clay priced it at 6 credits a run in August 2025.

Can Claygent find emails and phone numbers?

Claygent researches and writes answers; verified emails and phone numbers come from Clay's data marketplace on separate data credits. Clay's docs say a fully enriched record typically costs 6 to 20 data credits, and phone number enrichment is not on the Free plan.

What are Clay agents?

Clay's agents are Claygents, which research row by row in tables and workflows, and Account Agents, which reason over everything known about an account, keep a memory and recommend the next action. Account Agents are in beta on Launch, Growth and Enterprise.

Sources

• Clay, Claygent, read October 3, 2026
• Clay, Pricing, read October 3, 2026
• Clay University, AI pricing and Actions and Data Credits, read October 3, 2026
• Clay University, Account research agents, Sculptor and the lesson Claygent: AI web scraper, read October 3, 2026
• Clay, How to use Claygent for prospect research, published April 30, 2026, read October 3, 2026
• Clay, Introducing Claygent Navigator, published August 20, 2025, read October 3, 2026
• Clay, Account Agents, Sequencer and Clay MCP, read October 3, 2026
• Anthropic, Claude pricing, read October 3, 2026