Clay Pricing 2026

Figures below were taken from Clay’s public pricing page on 20 October 2026. The page itself carries several internal contradictions, which are flagged as they come up. Check the live page and the in-app sliders before committing.

Most pricing posts in this category exist because the vendor hides the numbers. Clay publishes a great deal of detail, and the difficulty is the opposite one: the headline price tells you almost nothing about what you will pay.

Clay has two meters. Understanding that is the whole post.

The two currencies

Data Credits pay for third-party data (emails, phone numbers, company records) bought through Clay’s provider marketplace. They start at $0.05 each and the page says they get cheaper at volume.

Actions pay for Clay doing things: enriching a record, running a table, calling an AI model, pushing data to another system, exporting. They cost less than a cent each, also cheaper at volume.

You buy both, in separate tiers, and both scale with how you work. A team that budgets for one of them and not the other is the normal way a Clay bill surprises someone.

What the plans actually cost

Here is where the headline price misleads. Each plan has a base, and then you choose an Actions tier and a Data Credits tier, and those ranges are enormous.

So “Launch, $167 a month” describes a plan that runs from roughly $167 to about $2,665 a month depending on the two sliders, and Growth reaches around $2,975 on monthly billing at the top of both.

That is not a criticism of usage-based pricing, which is defensible and often fairer. It is a warning about reading the headline. If someone tells you they are “on Clay’s Growth plan”, you have learned very little about their spend.

Two further complications:

The page contradicts itself on the base prices. Plan cards show Launch at $167 and Growth at $446; the FAQ says Launch starts at $185 and Growth at $495. Roughly an 11% gap, unexplained. The card figures are used above.

Intermediate tier prices are not all published. The ranges give endpoints. A team needing 30,000 data credits a month, between the published 2.5K and 50K monthly points, has to work it out in the product. Annual billing saves 10%.

What Clay genuinely does better

Four things, and they are not small. Any fair reading of this pricing page has to acknowledge them.

1. No charge for misses. If an enrichment returns nothing, you pay neither Data Credits nor Actions. This is the single biggest problem with waterfall enrichment economics elsewhere, a three-provider cascade over 1,000 records can bill 1,650 lookups for 805 results, roughly doubling your effective cost per record. Clay removing that is a material advantage and most competitors do not match it.

2. No markup on token-based AI. About 80% of models carry a fixed Data Credit cost per task. The token-heavy ones are billed on actual token usage with no markup, with an estimate shown and the page claiming 75% of runs land under it. Reselling inference at cost is unusual.

3. Bring your own API key. Use your own model key and the run costs one Action and no Data Credits. For heavy AI research workflows, this is the difference between a workable bill and an unworkable one.

4. Unlimited seats on every plan, including Free. No per-seat fee anywhere on the page. In a category where per-seat is the default, that is a genuine structural advantage, and it is the reason Clay spreads inside companies the way it does.

The four traps

1. The 30% top-up premium. Running out mid-cycle costs a 30% premium on Launch and Growth, with no dollar figures published. That is the standard credit-model trap: under-buy and pay a penalty, over-buy and pay for unused capacity. It pushes you toward over-provisioning, which is the intent.

2. Actions do not roll over. They reset each cycle. So an Actions tier sized for your busiest month is wasted in every other month, and a tier sized for the average fails during list-building pushes.

3. The rollover rules conflict. The comparison table says Launch and Growth roll over “up to 1 month’s credits (15% of annual credits)”. The FAQ says unused credits “can accumulate up to 2x your monthly credit amount”. These are different policies. Get it in writing before sizing your plan around either.

4. Bulk enrichment is Enterprise-only. Enriching 50,000+ records in one operation requires Enterprise. This is the one that catches agencies: the use case most likely to drive someone to Clay is gated behind the tier with no published price.

Two smaller gates worth knowing: 15-minute source sync is Enterprise-only, so Clay as a live GTM data layer rather than a batch tool means Enterprise. And ad audience pushes start at Growth.

Worked totals

Small team: ~2,000 enriched records a month

Actions 15K/mo ($60) and Data Credits 2.5K/mo ($125) on monthly billing, or the equivalent annual tiers.

Roughly $185 a month monthly, or about $167 annually. This is the profile the headline price describes, and for this profile the headline is honest.

Growth team: ~10,000 records a month, multi-provider waterfall, some AI research

Data credit consumption depends on what you are buying, a verified email, a company record and a mobile number cost different amounts, and the marketplace provider sets the rate. Assume around three credits per fully enriched record and you need roughly 30,000 credits a month, which sits between the published endpoints.

Realistically several hundred dollars a month, and you cannot pin it from the public page. Use the in-product sliders with your actual volume.

Heavy user at the top of a published plan

Growth with 200K Actions/mo ($850) and 50K Data Credits/mo ($2,125).

$2,975 a month. On a plan whose headline is $446.

That is the number worth carrying away. Clay’s published ceiling is nearly seven times its published entry price, before Enterprise.

The question behind the price

Clay is an enrichment and orchestration layer. It does not send your email, run your LinkedIn, dial your prospects or manage your replies.

So its cost is additive to an outreach platform, not an alternative to one, and the real decision is not “Clay or a platform” but how much enrichment sophistication you actually need.

Clay earns its cost when you are doing things a platform’s native enrichment cannot: multi-provider waterfalls with custom logic, AI research per account, scoring against conditions you have invented, pushing audiences to ad platforms. Those are real jobs and Clay is very good at them.

It does not earn its cost when you are finding verified work emails for a defined ICP and sending sequences. That is what native enrichment in an outreach platform is for, at a fraction of the complexity and usually a fraction of the cost. Clay versus native enrichment works through where the line falls.

Against Outboundry

Different categories, so the comparison is on the data layer only, and one caveat up front, because it matters for honesty.

Clay’s Data Credits are not one-to-one with records. A credit starts at $0.05 and the number consumed per record depends on the marketplace provider and the data type. Outboundry’s credit costs are fixed and published per data type. So you cannot compare the two on credit price alone; you have to price the specific data you want in Clay’s marketplace.

Where Clay wins: no markup on AI tokens, bring-your-own-key, unlimited free seats, and orchestration flexibility nothing native matches.

Where it costs more: two meters to forecast instead of one, a 30% top-up penalty, Actions that do not roll over, bulk enrichment behind an unpriced tier, and a published ceiling seven times the headline.

The honest summary: if you need Clay, you need Clay, and the price is the price of a capability that has no real substitute. If you are buying it because everyone mentions it, price your actual monthly record volume against native enrichment first. What a B2B lead costs has the method.

The short version

Clay has two meters (Data Credits for third-party data from $0.05 each, and Actions for orchestration at under a cent each) and you buy tiers of both. The plan headline is a floor: Launch at $167 reaches about $2,665 and Growth at $446 reaches about $2,975 on monthly billing.

It genuinely does four things better than most: no charge for failed lookups, no markup on token-based AI, bring-your-own-API-key, and unlimited free seats.

The traps are a 30% mid-cycle top-up premium, Actions that do not roll over, two contradictory rollover policies on the same page, and bulk enrichment of 50,000+ records gated to unpriced Enterprise.

And it is a layer, not a platform. The cost is additive to whatever sends your outreach.

Next: Clay versus native enrichment, or how waterfall enrichment economics work.

Frequently asked questions

How much does Clay cost?

The Launch plan is listed at $167 a month and Growth at $446, but both are floors. You separately choose an Actions tier and a Data Credits tier, which take Launch to roughly $2,665 and Growth to about $2,975 a month at the top of each published range. Figures checked 20 October 2026.

What is the difference between Clay Actions and Data Credits?

Data Credits pay for third-party data bought through Clay’s provider marketplace, starting at $0.05 each. Actions pay for Clay doing work (enriching a record, running a table, calling a model, exporting) at under a cent each. You need both and they are metered separately.

Does Clay charge for enrichment that returns nothing?

No. Failed lookups consume neither Data Credits nor Actions, which is better than most providers and removes the main cost penalty of waterfall enrichment.

Is Clay worth it for cold email?

Only if you need enrichment a platform cannot do natively, multi-provider waterfalls with custom logic, per-account AI research, invented scoring conditions. For finding verified work emails for a defined ICP and sending sequences, native enrichment in an outreach platform is simpler and usually cheaper.