Clay Review 2026: Pricing, Credits, Features and Verdict

What it is

Clay is a spreadsheet like workspace where every column can call a data provider, an AI model or another tool. You start with a list of companies or people, then add columns that find emails, phone numbers, tech stack, funding, job changes or anything an AI agent can research on the web. When one provider has no answer, Clay tries the next one in a "waterfall."

From there you can push results to a CRM, an ad audience, an email sequencer or Clay's own Sequencer. That makes Clay the backbone for what the industry now calls GTM engineering: building outbound and inbound workflows instead of buying a fixed SDR tool.

Clay's customers listed on its pricing page include OpenAI, Anthropic, Rippling, Vanta, Verkada, Intercom and Mistral AI. A New York Times article linked from Clay's site describes an employee share sale at a $5 billion valuation, and Clay's blog says it passed $100 million in ARR. This is a well funded, fast growing company, not a side project.

Pricing explained

Prices as listed on Clay's pricing page in October 2026.

Plan	Monthly	Annual (save 10%)	Actions	Data credits	What it adds
Free	$0	$0	500 a month	100 a month	Unlimited seats, waterfalls, Claygent, 200 rows per table
Launch	From $185	From $167	15,000 a month	2,500 a month	Phone enrichment, job change and news signals, email campaign integrations, 50,000 rows per table
Growth	From $495	From $446	40,000 a month	6,000 a month	CRM auto sync, HTTP API, webhooks, web intent, ad audiences, priority support
Enterprise	Custom, annual	Custom	200,000+	100,000+	SSO, SCIM, RBAC, credit budgeting, dedicated growth strategist

How the two meters work

Launch's $185 is two line items: $60 for 15,000 actions and $125 for 2,500 data credits. You can scale either independently. On monthly Launch, actions go from 15,000 ($60) up to 200,000 ($540), and data credits from 2,500 ($125) up to 50,000 ($2,125). Growth starts at 40,000 actions ($205) plus 6,000 data credits ($290).

• Actions cover platform work and cost under a cent each. They reset every cycle and never roll over.
• Data credits buy data and AI from Clay's marketplace, from $0.05 each. On Launch and Growth they roll over up to 2x the monthly amount. Enterprise can roll over 15% of the prior year's credits if it renews at the same or higher commitment.
• Top ups cost a 30% premium on Launch and Growth.
• No result, no charge: if an enrichment returns nothing, Clay charges neither actions nor credits.
• Bring your own keys: one action per run and zero data credits.

AI pricing

About 80% of AI models in Clay cost a fixed number of data credits per task. Token heavy models, such as GPT 5.1 and Claude Sonnet, bill on actual token use with no markup, shown with a tilde estimate before you run. Clay says 75% of variable runs cost less than the estimate.

Price math

• Founder on Launch, annual: $167 x 12 = $2,004 a year for 180,000 actions and 30,000 data credits.
• RevOps team on Growth, monthly: $495 a month, or $5,940 a year, for CRM sync and 6,000 data credits a month. Seats are unlimited, so the whole team shares it.
• Heavy enrichment: 20,000 data credits a month on Launch costs $880 in credits plus your action tier.

Full scenarios are on our Clay pricing page, and the AI Price Index compares Clay with every sales tool we track.

Key features

Waterfall enrichment

150+ data providers in one place, run in sequence until one returns a verified result. Clay says the most used enrichments cost 50% fewer credits on average after its renegotiated provider deals.

Claygent

An AI agent with web access that researches each row and writes a custom data point. Included on every plan. Clay also lists account agents, an inbound SDR agent and a new global agent for longer running GTM plays.

Signals

Job changes, promotions, new hires, company news and social listening on Launch and up; web intent signals and webhook triggers on Growth.

Audiences and ads

Unlimited search and CSV uploads into Audiences from Launch; Growth adds up to 250,000 imports from CRM and data warehouse and unlimited ad audience pushes to LinkedIn, Meta and Google.

Sequencer and integrations

Clay Sequencer sends email natively. Launch adds email campaign integrations. Growth adds CRM auto sync, HTTP API, webhooks and native Snowflake, Fivetran, Postgres, Databricks and BigQuery connections. Clay also offers a CLI, an API and an MCP server for reps.

Data accuracy and deliverability

Clay's strength is coverage. Because it checks several providers, it usually finds more valid emails and phones than one database, and it does not charge for empty results. It cannot fix a bad list strategy, though. Clay Sequencer sends, but deliverability depends on the domains and mailboxes you connect; Growth lets you buy domains and mailboxes inside Clay. Verify emails before sending and keep volume per mailbox modest.

What users say

Clay scores 2.8 on Trustpilot from 26 reviews, a small sample. Recurring complaints:

• Credits burning faster than expected, especially with AI columns
• A steep learning curve; you need to think in tables and formulas
• Billing surprises when tables re run

Praise centers on flexibility and enrichment rates. The customer quotes on Clay's own pricing page cite 3x enrichment rates and 2x cold email performance; treat those as vendor case studies.

Privacy and security

Clay lists SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, CCPA, ISO 27001 and ISO 42001 on its pricing page, with the SOC 2 report available in its trust center. Enterprise adds SSO, SCIM, IP allowlists, RBAC, connection controls and a custom DPA. Because Clay passes your data to third party providers in a waterfall, review its subprocessor list and the providers you enable.

Who it is for

• RevOps leaders and GTM engineers who build workflows
• Teams whose results depend on better data than one database provides
• Signal based outbound and ABM programs
• Companies that want unlimited seats on one bill

Who should skip it

• Founders who want a plug and play sender; Apollo or Instantly are faster
• Teams that want an autonomous AI SDR; see Artisan or Reply.io
• Anyone who needs CRM sync on a small budget, since it requires Growth at $495
• Buyers who need a fixed, predictable bill every month

Alternatives

• Apollo: one database, sequences and dialer from $49 a seat on annual billing
• ZoomInfo: a single, larger enterprise data set with intent
• Instantly: cheap sending with its own 450M+ lead database
• lemlist: sequences plus waterfall enrichment from 25+ providers as an add on

See the full list on Clay alternatives and the head to head in Apollo vs Clay.

Verdict

Clay is the strongest enrichment and research layer you can buy without an enterprise contract. Unlimited seats, 150+ providers, Claygent on every plan and data credits that roll over make it good value for teams that build. It is a poor fit for anyone who wants outbound to run itself, and the move to Growth at $495 for CRM sync catches many buyers. Start on Free, model your credits on Launch for a month, and only commit to annual once your per lead cost is stable.