Clay is a go-to-market data platform for finding and enriching companies and people from more than 150 data providers, researching them with its Claygent AI agent and turning the results into outreach and CRM updates. Its pricing has two meters. Actions pay for work done on the platform, such as enrichment runs, AI calls and exports, and data credits pay for data bought through Clay's marketplace. The free plan includes 6,000 actions and 1,200 data credits a year. Launch starts at $185 a month, or $167 billed yearly, for 15,000 actions and 2,500 data credits a month. Growth starts at $495, or $446 yearly, and adds CRM sync, web intent signals and HTTP API integrations. Bringing your own API keys skips data credits.
Reviewed by EdGrows·Updated Oct 4, 2026This analysis is based on documentation, public user reports, and vendor materials — not yet on our own hands-on testing. How we rate
Clay is less a database than a workbench. You start with a table of companies or people, then add columns that fetch data from more than 150 providers, ask an AI agent to research each row, score the results and push them into a CRM, an ad audience or an email sequence. Growth teams use it to build the prospecting systems that off-the-shelf tools can't.
That flexibility is why Clay has a following, and why its pricing needs explaining. Since its latest overhaul, every plan is metered twice, once for the work Clay does and once for the data you buy.
Each price is the bottom of a slider, and more actions or credits cost more. Annual billing, October 4, 2026.
| Free | Launch | Growth | Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Billed monthly | $0 | From $185 | From $495 | Custom |
| Billed yearly, per month | $0 | From $167 | From $446 | Custom |
| Actions | 6,000 a year | From 15,000 a month | From 40,000 a month | Custom |
| Data credits | 1,200 a year | From 2,500 a month | From 6,000 a month | Custom |
| Highlights | Waterfalls, Claygent, your own API keys, 200 rows per table | Phone enrichment, Audiences search, job-change and news signals, email sending | CRM and warehouse sync, HTTP API, webhooks, web intent signals, ad audiences, priority support | SSO, roles, unlimited imports, a growth strategist |
Every plan includes unlimited seats, so Clay doesn't charge more as your team grows. New accounts start with a 14-day trial.
Each paid plan has two sliders, and the price is their sum. On monthly billing, the steps look like this:
| Launch actions | Price a month | Data credits | Price a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| 15,000 | $60 | 2,500 | $125 |
| 40,000 | $150 | 6,000 | $290 |
| 60,000 | $200 | 10,000 | $460 |
| 100,000 | $290 | 20,000 | $880 |
| 200,000 | $540 | 50,000 | $2,125 |
Clay's sliders on monthly billing, October 4, 2026. Growth's actions start at 40,000 for $205 and reach 200,000 for $850.
Data credits cost the same on both plans and get slightly cheaper in bulk, from 5 cents each at the smallest tier to about 4.25 cents at the largest. For most teams they're the bigger part of the bill. Actions are cheaper, and Clay says its tiers are sized so most customers rarely run out. When a team does, it moves up to the next action tier.
Actions cover the orchestration Clay does for you: enriching a row, running a table, calling an AI model, sending data to another tool or exporting it. Data credits are spent only when you buy data through Clay's marketplace, such as a verified email, a phone number or company details.
Two rules make a real difference to the bill. If you bring your own API keys for a provider, Clay skips data credits for those lookups and charges only actions. And enrichments that come back empty cost nothing on either meter.
Build on small tables first. The free plan's 200-row limit is a useful place to test a workflow before running it on thousands of records. Order waterfalls so that cheaper providers are tried first and expensive ones only fill the gaps. Bring your own keys for providers you already pay for, and avoid rerunning whole tables when only new rows need data.
The bigger cost is often time. Clay rewards people who think in data pipelines, and its own ecosystem of courses, community groups and a job board for "GTM engineers" shows how much skill it takes to get value from it. A team without that person may pay for a powerful tool it barely uses.
Plenty of teams don't. If the goal is a list of contacts and a sequence to send them, Apollo does both from $49 a seat billed yearly and works on day one. HubSpot puts prospecting inside the CRM. Sending at volume is the job of Lemlist, Instantly and Smartlead, and Outreach and Salesloft sell enterprise platforms by quote.
Clay pays off when no single provider has the data you need, so you combine several, add AI research and score the results your own way. That takes someone on the team who enjoys building workflows. Without that person, a ready-made database is usually the better spend.
Data credits pay for data bought through Clay's marketplace, such as emails, phone numbers and company details from its 150+ providers. Actions measure the work Clay does: enriching rows, running a table, calling an AI model, sending data to another system or exporting it. Each plan includes a set amount of both, and you can raise either one.
6,000 actions and 1,200 data credits a year, unlimited seats and tables, multi-provider waterfalls, Claygent and the option to bring your own API keys. Tables are limited to 200 rows, and phone number enrichment isn't included.
Launch starts at $185 a month on monthly billing: $60 for 15,000 actions plus $125 for 2,500 data credits. Yearly billing brings the starting price to $167 a month. Both meters can be raised separately, actions to 200,000 a month and data credits to 50,000.
Yes. If you connect your own accounts with data providers, Clay doesn't charge data credits for those lookups and only uses actions for the platform work. Enrichments that return no result cost neither actions nor data credits.
Apollo is a ready-made contact database with email sequences and a dialer, from $49 a seat billed yearly. Clay is a workbench for building your own data workflows across many providers, with far more flexibility and a steeper learning curve. Teams that only need contacts and sequences usually start with Apollo.
The best backlink data in the industry, sold with a credit meter and single-seat plans that make the real cost hard to read.
Genuinely generous free tier to 2,500 subscribers, then a steep step up. Built for newsletters that intend to make money.
The best fiction-tuned AI available, wrapped in a credit system that's genuinely hard to predict. Worth it if prose generation is your actual bottleneck.