Clay pricing in 2026, explained

What are the Clay plans in 2026?

Clay rebuilt its pricing in March 2026. The old Starter, Explorer and Pro plans gave way to three self-serve tiers and an Enterprise tier, and a single credit became two currencies. Here is the page as of October 2026.

The pricing page has a Monthly and Annual toggle and says annual saves 10%. Its plan descriptions list Launch from $185 and Growth from $495, which matches the month-to-month rate once the 10% annual saving is removed. Every plan has unlimited seats, which is unusual in this category and matters a great deal for a team of five.

What does each currency actually pay for?

This is the part people get wrong, so it is worth being precise.

• Data credits buy data from Clay's providers (150+ by the page's count): work emails, phone numbers, company details. Clay prices them from $0.05 per credit, falling with volume. They roll over up to twice your monthly allowance.
• Actions pay for platform work: each enrichment step, workflow run, AI call or integration push. Clay describes them as costing less than a cent each. They reset monthly and do not roll over.

Two rules on the page change the arithmetic. First: "If an enrichment returns no result, you're not charged Data Credits or Actions." That is new since March 2026 and many reviews still describe the old behaviour. Second: if you bring your own API key for a provider, you spend actions but no data credits, because you are paying the provider directly.

A worked example: 1,000 contacts with a verified email

Say you want 1,000 prospects with a verified work email, starting from a list of companies. A typical Clay table does four things per row: find the person, find their email, verify it, push the row to your CRM or sequencer.

The provider cost per email varies by provider, so this example uses placeholders. Check the credit cost shown on each enrichment column in your own table before you trust any number here.

1. Actions. Four steps a row across, say, 1,600 rows (you start with more than you keep, because some people have no findable email). That is 6,400 actions. Launch includes 15,000. Comfortable.
2. Data credits. Suppose finding and verifying an email costs 2 data credits per row where it succeeds, and 1,000 of your 1,600 rows succeed. Misses are free, so that is 2,000 data credits. Launch includes 2,500. Also comfortable.
3. Price. One month of Launch at the annual rate: $167. Cost per verified contact: about $0.17.

Now change one assumption. If your chosen provider costs 4 data credits per email, the same job needs 4,000 data credits, and Launch's 2,500 runs out two thirds of the way through. You either wait for next month, carry rolled-over credits, or move to Growth at $446. Cost per verified contact roughly doubles or more.

That is the honest summary of Clay pricing: the plan price is easy to read, and the cost per contact depends on which providers your table calls and how many steps each row takes. Neither is fixed until you build the table.

Why do bills still surprise people?

The miss problem is gone, so surprise now comes from three places.

• Two meters running at once. A table can be well inside its data credits and out of actions, or the reverse. You have to watch both.
• Waterfalls multiply steps. A waterfall that tries several providers is Clay's best feature, and each step that runs is an action. More coverage, more actions.
• The learning curve. Third-party reviews put getting fluent at 20 to 40 hours. Test runs during that time spend real allowance.

None of this makes Clay expensive for what it does. It makes the cost of a particular job hard to know before it runs. We wrote more on this in why Clay credits disappear, and the general case of paying for lookups that find nothing.

Where Clay is the better buy

Be clear about this before comparing anything. Clay is the strongest tool in the category for building custom enrichment workflows:

• A waterfall across 150+ providers, so coverage is hard to beat.
• Claygent, an AI research agent that reads websites and fills columns.
• Unlimited seats on every plan.
• Bring your own keys at no data-credit cost.
• A large expert community, so almost any workflow you want already has a template.

If your team has someone who enjoys building tables, or you run very custom research at volume, Clay is likely worth the price and the learning time.

How does Sluice compare on the same job?

Sluice is narrower. It does not build arbitrary tables. It finds people from places buyers leave traces (public posts, competitor reviews, Google advertisers, companies hiring, the directory), scores each 0 to 100 against your profile, and only reveals people who score 70 or more, at 5 cents each with usually a verified work email.

The same 1,000 verified contacts from the directory cost 1,000 × $0.05 = $50, or 5,000 credits. The Working plan ($39 a month) includes 3,900 credits, 5,000 in the first month. Misses are not billed, a bounce is refunded exactly what it cost, and every pass shows its worst-case price before it runs. Full plan details are on pricing, and a line-by-line comparison is at Sluice vs Clay.

What you give up: Clay's provider breadth, Claygent, and freedom to build anything. Sluice is new, has no public customer logos yet, and integrates only with HubSpot.

Which should you pick?

Pick Clay if you need custom enrichment workflows, many seats, or provider coverage above all else, and someone will own the tables. Pick a narrower tool if what you want is a short ranked list of people worth contacting, with the price known before the run. If you are still deciding, the Clay alternatives page lays out the other options side by side.