Clay: Free Plan, Actions, Data Credits & Alternatives
AI-powered GTM data enrichment and outbound workflow platform
Clay helps go-to-market teams enrich leads, research accounts, and build outbound workflows using data providers, AI steps, and spreadsheet-like operations.
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Clay is a candidate when sales or growth operations need to research accounts, fill missing company/contact fields, and prepare data for a downstream workflow. Compare it on usable, verified records and their cost. For general app-to-app routing, Make or n8n may be the more relevant starting point.
What Clay adds to a research workflow
Clay combines data providers and AI research in a table-based workflow. Its waterfall enrichment feature tries multiple providers for missing information. That can improve coverage, but a filled cell still needs to refer to the right company or person.
Enrich known accounts
Suggested use: start with a small, relevant company list and fill only fields needed for qualification. Review domain and company matches.
Research with sources
Suggested use: answer a specific question about an account. Check the supporting page before turning an AI answer into a sales claim.
Prepare a handoff
Suggested use: export approved records to the existing process. Keep ownership, deduplication, and field mapping explicit.
Free access and upgrade gates
Clay's pricing page lists Free access with 100 Data Credits and 500 Actions per month, unlimited seats and tables, and up to 200 rows per table. Free access and the separately advertised 14-day trial are different offers.
The official plan FAQ lists Launch from $185/month and Growth from $495/month. Launch covers initial prospecting workflows; Growth adds capabilities such as CRM synchronization, HTTP API integrations, and webhooks. Annual billing and selected capacity affect the quoted total. Sources checked September 7, 2026; verify the current checkout configuration rather than treating these starting figures as a fixed quote.
Choose the tier by the required handoff first. A workflow that must automatically update the CRM has a different requirement from downloading a small research sample.
Actions and Data Credits pay for different things
According to Clay's usage documentation, Actions cover platform work such as enrichment or AI runs; Data Credits pay for purchased data or AI usage. Bringing a supported provider API key can avoid Clay Data Credits for that provider, while Actions and the provider's own charges can still apply.
Actions reset with the billing cycle; Data Credit rollover has plan-specific conditions. CSV download itself does not consume Actions or Data Credits. Sending records into another tool can have different usage rules.
A better pilot metric: count records that are both correctly matched and useful to your workflow. Divide the actual spend by that number. A low cost per filled field is misleading if many records are irrelevant or wrong.
Decision table
| Your requirement | What to check |
|---|---|
| Account/contact research | Check match accuracy, source relevance, freshness, and cost on a representative sample. |
| CRM enrichment | Confirm the integration and plan, then test field mapping and duplicate handling. |
| General visual app routing | Compare Make if the needed data is already available. |
| Custom APIs or self-hosting | Compare n8n; that does not replace the cost of acquiring data. |
When to skip or narrow the pilot
Do not start by enriching an entire database. Begin with a small list you have a legitimate reason to process, define the fields that matter, and review the results before any outreach.
- Remove irrelevant and duplicate records before paid enrichment.
- Review a sample of company/person matches against their sources.
- Track Actions and Data Credits separately.
- Verify the destination mapping before enabling a recurring sync.
If the only job is moving known data between apps, enrichment features may add cost without helping that task. If research output lacks a useful source, keep it out of customer-facing claims.
FAQ
Does Clay have a free plan?
Yes. The published Free plan includes 100 Data Credits and 500 Actions per month, with up to 200 rows per table. A separately advertised trial can have different terms.
Does bringing my own API key make Clay free?
No. A supported provider key can avoid Clay Data Credits for that provider, but Clay Actions and the provider’s own charges may still apply.
Does CSV export use Clay Actions?
The official usage documentation says CSV download does not consume Actions or Data Credits. Exporting or syncing records to an external tool is a different operation.
Review basis and sources
Official sources checked September 7, 2026. This is an editorial assessment, not a hands-on benchmark. The suggested pilots above have not been run for this review; no reliability, cost-saving, or conversion result is claimed.
- Free access and selectable plan capacity
- Paid starting prices and feature gates
- Actions, Data Credits, provider keys, and CSV export
- Multi-provider enrichment
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