Clay Review (2026)

Pricing (2026)

✓ Pricing re-verified 19 Oct 2026

Clay meters two things separately — actions and data credits — and each paid plan is an expandable volume rather than a fixed tier, which is the part most write-ups still get wrong, ours included until the August 2026 update. The free plan is real: 6,000 actions and 1,200 data credits a year, unlimited seats and tables, multi-provider waterfalls and Claygent, capped at 200 rows per table and with no phone enrichment.

Launch is advertised at $167/mo and Growth at $446/mo, and the page's own figures show how those are built: the smallest action step plus the smallest data-credit step on annual billing ($54 + $113 = $167 for Launch, $185 + $261 = $446 for Growth). The plan FAQ's “starting at $185/mo” for Launch and “$495/mo” for Growth are the same pairs billed monthly ($60 + $125 and $205 + $290).

Plans change — always verify the live price on their site.

Category context: Growth & Revenue. Across the 85 tools in this category that we researched with a public US-dollar price, the median entry price is about $30 a month (lowest paid plan as listed, per seat where the vendor prices per seat). Compare pricing conditions in the Software Cost Atlas →

What the price did

We read Clay’s own pricing page on a schedule and keep every reading, so this is our record of the page — not a forecast, and not someone else’s summary. A change appears here only after we confirmed the new price on the page itself.

Clay’s pricing page, as we read it

Watch the video review

The video version of this review, from our YouTube channel.

What Clay does

Waterfall enrichment and custom research workflows for go-to-market teams. It enriches rather than sends, so you still need a separate email tool.

What buyers report about Clay

Hands-on: tested 2026-10-30Reported by buyers: G2, Trustpilot and a survey of 500 GTM professionals, read August 2026

Themes from the buyer-review sites listed at the foot of this page, read in August 2026. We tested Clay ourselves on 2026-10-30, but one test is a narrow sample, so here is what other buyers report. We summarise it here because the complaints are usually the part a vendor page leaves out.

When the paid plan is worth it

Clay's free tier is a demo surface: 100 Data Credits and 500 Actions a month, 200 rows per table, and no phone number enrichment. Launch is priced at $167/mo on the plan card and $185/mo in the plan FAQ, with 2,500 Data Credits and 15,000 Actions a month. That is where it becomes operational: phone numbers, job-change and signal tracking, email campaign integrations and scheduled recurring enrichment runs. Clay's documentation sizes the Launch band, 2,500 to 10,000 Data Credits, at roughly 1,000 records a month; the FAQ's 2,500 is that band's floor.

Growth, $446/mo on the card and $495/mo in the FAQ, brings 6,000 Data Credits and 40,000 Actions. But the real reason to take it is plumbing: CRM auto-sync, HTTP API integrations, webhook automation, web intent signals and warehouse connections, with up to 250k CRM and warehouse imports. Without a CRM to write back to, the step is hard to justify. Seats and tables are unlimited on every plan, so you pay for throughput, not headcount.

Every enrichment costs one Action even with your own provider API key, Actions never roll over, and credit top-ups on Launch and Growth carry a 30% premium.

What we found running Clay ourselves

Questions we are still checking

How to actually use Clay

Nothing happens in Clay until a table has a source: a CSV, a Find People or Find Companies list, a CRM import, or a webhook. Clay's documentation puts CRM, warehouse and webhook imports outside the Action meter, and importing first-party data consumes neither Actions nor Data Credits. Sourcing accounts and contacts costs no Action either, but does spend Data Credits unless you access free data or use your own API keys.

From there the work is a waterfall: pick the data point, order the providers, enter the required inputs, such as email addresses or social profile URLs. A documented stumbling block: adding a Find Company source to an existing table errors unless columns for professional social URLs or company domains already exist. Editing a source's filters after a run does not update existing rows; delete and re-run the step, or duplicate the table.

At the row limit, Clay imports records up to the limit and stops automatically, with no error message displayed. Salesforce Reports cap at 2,000 records (API restriction).

Clay vs ZoomInfo, side by side

Where a vendor publishes a price, its column shows the entry price we read and when; where it does not, the column says so rather than filling in a figure from elsewhere. We do not average them into a score.

Clay →

What it costs

No single entry price; the full review breaks the pricing down.

Price read on

19 Oct 2026

The catch

Two honest catches: a steep learning curve (expect 2–4 weeks, many teams need a dedicated Clay expert), and credits that are hard to forecast at scale.

Best for

modern GTM and ops teams who want best-in-class waterfall enrichment and custom research workflows — and have someone to own it

ZoomInfo →

What it costs

No published price.

Checked on

8 Oct 2026

The catch

The contract is the most-cited frustration: annual lock-in with a strict 60–90 day cancellation window and 10–20% renewal increases.

Best for

enterprise go-to-market teams that need the deepest US database, buyer-intent signals and conversation intelligence — and can absorb the contract

The ZoomInfo link above is an affiliate link — we may earn a commission if you sign up, at no extra cost to you — and the other column is a plain link. Neither changes what this table says.

The natural comparison is ZoomInfo or Apollo — the all-in-one data platforms. Weigh it against ZoomInfo on the job you actually need done.

Visit Clay →

Frequently asked questions

Can you export your data from Clay?

Exit check 2026-10-30; route excerpt: Tools > Export > Download CSV; came along (excerpts): Both rows and all eleven source columns return …; lost (excerpts): none recorded in this test; re-import: not tested.

What does Clay cost?

There is no single answer, because Clay meters actions and data credits separately and each is an expandable volume. Read on clay.com/pricing on 19 October 2026, the Launch headline of $167 a month is the smallest action step ($54) plus the smallest data-credit step ($113) on annual billing. Billed monthly, the same pair costs $60 + $125 = $185, which is the figure the plan FAQ quotes. Growth works the same way: $446 a month on annual billing, $495 billed monthly. From there, actions expand at $60, $150, $200, $290 and $540 a month for 15K to 200K, and data credits run from $125 a month for 2,500 to $2,125 for 50,000. Annual billing takes about 10% off. The page does not say whether a plan can be bought with actions only.

Is there a Clay free trial or discount?

Annual billing is the published discount, at 10% — modest by the standards of this category, where 20% is common. People search for Clay promo codes often; we have found none. The more useful lever is sizing: because both meters expand in steps, buying the step you need rather than the one above it matters more than any code would.

Why do people say Clay burns budget?

Because the plan is not the meter. Waterfall enrichment spends a data credit per lookup per provider, so a single list run through several providers consumes credits far faster than the action count suggests. The two ladders are independent: you can be well inside your action allowance and out of data credits in the same week. Watch the credit balance, not the plan.

Do unused Clay credits roll over, and what does topping up cost?

The two meters behave differently, per the pricing FAQ read on 19 October 2026. Actions reset every billing cycle and never carry over; if you hit the limit, the route is the next action tier. Data credits do carry over: on Launch and Growth, unused credits accumulate up to twice your monthly amount, so a 10,000-credit plan can bank 20,000 in total. Enterprise rolls over up to 15% of the prior year's credits, and only if you renew at an equal or higher commitment. Buying more credits mid-cycle on Launch or Growth costs 30% more than the credits in your plan. Two rules lower the bill: an enrichment that returns no result costs neither credits nor actions, and with your own provider API key you skip data credits and pay only actions.

Is this a hands-on review of Clay?

Yes. We tested Clay ourselves on 2026-10-30; the section above says what we tested, what we found and what we did not test, and where a figure comes from the vendor's own documentation instead. Most of our reviews are researched rather than run; we say which is which. We name what each tool is good and bad at, and we have no affiliate relationship with Clay — we earn nothing whether you sign up or not.

Others in this category

Reviewed growth & revenue tools that share ground with Clay — comparable in what they do, not drop-in swaps:

ApolloZoomInfoFullEnrichBookyourdataSeamless.aiall 120 reviews →