Clay Pricing in 2026: Run the Credit Math First
Clay's March 2026 overhaul replaced three plans with two and cut marketplace data prices. Inside: what each tier includes, and what enriching a real 1,000-lead list actually costs.
Start with the math on a real job: enriching 1,000 leads with verified work emails. Third-party testing by Prospeo and Cleanlist puts a found email at 2 to 5 data credits depending on which waterfall provider returns it, so call it 3. At an 80% match rate, that run consumes about 2,400 credits, almost exactly one month of the base Launch plan's 2,500 credits at $167/mo billed annually. On the Free plan's 100 monthly credits, the same list is a 2-year project. Add mobile numbers at 2 to 25 credits per hit and 1,000 leads can pass 7,000 credits, which means a higher credit tier, top-ups at about a 30% premium, or the Growth plan's 6,000 monthly credits at $446/mo.
Those numbers reflect Clay's March 11, 2026 pricing overhaul, its biggest ever. Starter ($149/mo), Explorer ($349/mo), and Pro ($800/mo) were retired in favor of Launch and Growth, billing was split into Data Credits for marketplace data and Actions for platform work, marketplace data prices dropped 50 to 90%, and failed lookups stopped costing anything. Existing customers kept legacy pricing indefinitely, but the window to switch between legacy plans closed April 10, 2026.
The subscription is only part of the total cost. Clay is built for a dedicated operator, the role the company itself named GTM engineering, and the teams hitting the per-lead numbers above are the ones staffing it. Budget the software and the hours together.
Clay plans and prices
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 100 data credits + 500 actions per month, unlimited seats and tables (200 rows per table), waterfalls, Claygent, native sequencer |
| Launch | $167/mo billed annually ($185/mo monthly) | 2,500 data credits + 15,000 actions per month at the base tier, phone enrichment, job-change signals, 50,000 rows per table; sliders scale credits and actions higher |
| Growth | $446/mo billed annually ($495/mo monthly) | 6,000 data credits + 40,000 actions per month at the base tier, CRM auto-sync, webhooks and HTTP API, web intent signals, priority support |
| Enterprise | Custom; median about $30,400/yr per Vendr | 200,000+ actions and 100,000+ data credits per month, SSO, RBAC, data warehouse syncs, dedicated Growth Strategist; annual commitment, contracts observed from about $12,000 to $154,000/yr |
Prices verified July 2026 from public pricing pages and documented buyer data. Vendors change pricing; confirm before you buy.
What the pricing page doesn't tell you
Two meters, one bill
Since March 2026 Clay charges Data Credits for marketplace data and Actions for platform work: running a table, calling an AI model, sending data to a third-party system, exporting. Data credits roll over up to 2x your monthly allotment on Launch and Growth; actions reset every month with no rollover. A workflow-heavy team can exhaust actions while data credits sit unused.
Provider choice moves cost by 10x
A work email costs 2 to 5 credits and a mobile number 2 to 25 depending on which provider in your waterfall returns it, per Prospeo and Cleanlist testing, with ContactOut and Datagma at the expensive end for phones. Two tables that look identical can produce very different bills. Waterfall order is a real cost lever, and tuning it is exactly the ops work Clay assumes someone owns.
Top-ups carry about a 30% premium
Run out of data credits mid-month and top-ups cost about 30% more than your plan's effective rate, per Salesmotion's 2026 breakdown, down from about 50% before the overhaul. Chronic top-ups are the signal to move up a credit tier, where per-credit pricing drops below the $0.05 starting rate.
CRM sync starts at $446/mo
Launch has no CRM auto-sync. If your definition of done is enriched records landing in HubSpot or Salesforce automatically, the real entry price is Growth at $446/mo billed annually ($495 monthly). Before March 2026 this feature sat on the $800/mo Pro tier, so it did get cheaper, but it is still not on the entry plan.
The operator is the biggest line item
The learning curve is the most cited drawback in Clay's G2 reviews, and buyer guides agree that cost-efficient waterfalls need a dedicated owner. Teams either staff a GTM engineer or RevOps lead, hire a Clay agency, or watch credits burn on badly tuned tables. Whatever plan you pick, price in the hours next to the subscription.
How Clay pricing compares to VisiLead
Clay and VisiLead do different jobs, and it helps to keep them straight. Clay enriches contacts you already have or sources from databases: you bring a list, it fills in emails, phones, and firmographics from a 200+ provider marketplace, then automates what happens next. VisiLead works in the opposite direction: it identifies the companies (worldwide) and the individual people (on US traffic) already visiting your website, and ties those visits to the marketing channels that drove them. One buys data about strangers on a list; the other tells you who is already standing in your store.
The two can feed each other. Teams pipe visitor data into Clay tables through Zapier or webhooks for enrichment and outreach, and Clay's own web intent signals only appear on its $446/mo Growth plan. If visitor identification is the specific job, VisiLead prices it on its own: a card-free plan with 10 monthly credits, then Starter at $29/mo (100 credits), Growth at $79/mo (500), and Scale at $299/mo (2,500), with annual billing saving 20% and credits charged only when a company or person is actually identified. VisiLead does not replace Clay for list building or enrichment; it covers the visitors a database tool never sees.
Is Clay worth it?
Clay is worth the price for exactly one kind of buyer: a team with a named operator who will live in the tool. For them, the March 2026 repricing made it clearly better value, with marketplace data down 50 to 90%, failed lookups free, and CRM sync at $446 instead of $800. For a founder or lone SDR without ops hours, the same subscription underperforms a $49 Apollo seat, because Clay credits do not spend themselves well. Decide the staffing question first and the plan second.
Clay pricing FAQ
How much does Clay cost per month?+
On annual billing, Launch is $167/mo and Growth $446/mo ($185 and $495 month to month), alongside a $0 Free plan. Enterprise is custom-quoted with an annual commitment; Vendr contract data puts the median at about $30,400 per year, with observed deals from about $12,000 to $154,000. Credit sliders on Launch and Growth raise the price as you add data credits and actions.
Does Clay have a free plan?+
Yes. Clay's Free plan costs $0: you get 100 data credits plus 500 actions each month, unlimited seats, tables capped at 200 rows, and access to waterfalls, Claygent, and the native sequencer. It is a real testing tier rather than a working plan: 100 credits covers about 30 to 50 found work emails per month at typical waterfall rates.
How much does a Clay credit cost?+
Clay data credits start at $0.05 each and get cheaper at higher volume tiers. What matters more is credits per result: third-party testing puts a found work email at 2 to 5 credits and a mobile number at 2 to 25 credits depending on the provider that returns it. Only the returning provider charges you, and failed lookups have been free since the March 2026 overhaul.
Is Clay worth the price?+
Clay is worth it if someone on your team will own it and you enrich at volume; it is poor value otherwise. With an operator running tuned waterfalls, 1,000 leads with verified emails costs about 2,400 credits, close to one base Launch month at $167, cheaper than most per-seat database tools at that volume. Without an operator, G2 reviews and buyer guides agree the credits burn on badly built tables long before the value shows up.
What is a cheaper alternative to Clay?+
FullEnrich is the cheapest way to replicate Clay's core waterfall trick, with 50 free credits, usage-based paid tiers, and a work email at 1 credit. Apollo starts free and runs $49/user/mo billed annually for an all-in-one database plus sequencing, and Persana AI starts at $68/mo billed annually for guided AI prospecting. A hand-rolled Zapier or n8n stack wired to individual provider APIs is cheaper on paper, but you rebuild and maintain the waterfall logic Clay sells. If the underlying need is knowing who visits your website, that is a different category: visitor identification tools like VisiLead start at $29/mo.
Do Clay credits roll over?+
Partly. Unused data credits accumulate up to 2x your monthly credit amount on Launch and Growth plans, and Enterprise customers can carry up to 15% of the prior year's purchased credits into renewal. Actions never roll over; they reset every month. Annual plans also price about 10% below monthly billing.
Did Clay get cheaper or more expensive in 2026?+
Both, depending on where you sat. The March 11, 2026 overhaul cut marketplace data prices by 50 to 90% and made failed lookups free, so cost per enriched lead fell for most workflows. At the same time, the cheapest paid plan moved from Starter at $149/mo to Launch at $167/mo on annual billing ($185 monthly), so the entry point rose. Existing customers kept their legacy pricing indefinitely.
Know what you pay for, and what it returns
VisiLead starts free and tells you which channels actually close revenue. $29/mo entry, no annual lock-in, no sales call.