Clay's cheapest plan is Free: $0, with 100 Data Credits and 500 Actions a month. The cheapest paid plan is Launch at $185 a month, or $167 billed yearly. Clay marks Growth, from $495 a month, as Recommended.
Clay publishes no price at 1M records a month, and no self-serve tier reaches the 3M Actions that a million full records need (the ceiling is 200,000). Extending its list rates past the public tiers gives roughly $268,000 to $313,000. That is arithmetic, not a published price. Clay prices two meters, Actions and Data Credits, not records. Prices below are from Clay's pricing page, September 2026.
Plans
Clay has four plans. Paid plans start from a base price that bundles an Action tier and a Data Credit tier, and both tiers can be raised.
| Plan | Price | Data Credits | Actions | Seats | API access | Limits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 100 a month | 500 a month | Unlimited | Public API and CLI per docs. No HTTP API integrations | 200 rows per table, no phone enrichment |
| Launch | From $185 a month, $167 billed yearly | From 2,500 a month | From 15,000 a month | Unlimited | Public API and CLI per docs. No HTTP API integrations | 50,000 rows per table, phone enrichment, job change signals |
| Growth (Recommended) | From $495 a month, $446 billed yearly | From 6,000 a month | From 40,000 a month | Unlimited | HTTP API integrations, CRM sync, webhooks | 50,000 rows per table, web intent signals, priority support |
| Enterprise | Custom, annual commitment | 100,000+ a month | 200,000+ a month | Unlimited | Adds API table sync and bulk enrichment over 50K records | SSO, RBAC, data warehouse sync, dedicated strategist |
Sources: Clay pricing, September 2026; Plans and billing, September 2026; Clay API docs, September 2026. Launch and Growth sell bigger tiers. Launch credits run from 2,500 a month ($125) to 50,000 ($2,125). Launch Actions run from 15,000 ($60) to 200,000 ($540).
Clay also offers a 14-day trial with 1,000 Data Credits, without phone enrichment (Clay docs, September 2026). Clay's pricing page lists "Clay API access" under Enterprise, while its docs say the developer platform is on every plan. The Clay developer platform (Public API and CLI) is on every plan, including Free and trials, while table queries through the API need Enterprise (Clay docs, September 2026). The pricing page lists 'Clay API access' under Enterprise, and the HTTP API column that calls other APIs starts on Growth (Clay pricing, September 2026).
What a credit buys
Every enrichment burns one Action. Data Credits are the second meter and pay for marketplace data or AI. Credits start at $0.05 each and fall to about $0.0425 at 50,000 a month (Clay pricing, September 2026).
| Step | Data Credits | Actions |
|---|---|---|
| Find People or Find Companies (sourcing a list) | 0 | 0 |
| Enrich a LinkedIn profile | 0.5 | 1 |
| Find an email (Clay's worked example) | 0.5 per email found | 1 |
| Validate an email (select validators) | 0 | 1 |
| Find work email via Clay-managed Icypeas | 1 per enriched cell | 1 |
| AI step, Clay Helium or GPT-5 Mini web research | 1 | 1 |
| AI step, Clay Argon web research | 3 | 1 |
| AI step, token-heavy model such as GPT-5.1 | Variable, charged at token cost | 1 |
| Push a record to a CRM, sequencer or HTTP endpoint | 0 | 1 |
| CSV export | 0 | 0 |
| Phone number lookup | Not published. Clay's docs say only that phone numbers are expensive | 1 |
Sources: Actions and Data Credits docs, September 2026; How AI is priced, September 2026; Icypeas in Clay, September 2026.
Clay says a fully enriched record typically costs 6 to 20 Data Credits. Emails are cheap and phone numbers are expensive. Clay publishes no Data Credit price for a phone lookup. The cost shows next to the enrichment inside a table. A run that finds nothing is not charged, which is a real offset.
Hidden costs
- Actions cannot be topped up. If you run out, you move up a plan tier. Unused Actions expire every cycle.
- Your own API key still costs an Action. It removes the Data Credit charge for that step, and your provider bills you separately.
- Credit top-ups carry a 30% premium. Top-ups are capped at four times your monthly allocation, $1,000 each and $5,000 in any 7 days.
- Rollover is limited. Monthly plans bank up to 2x the monthly credits. Annual plans roll over 15%, and only if you renew at the same tier or higher.
- The jump from Launch to Growth is $310 a month. It is the gap between $185 and $495. It buys CRM sync, HTTP API integrations and webhooks.
- Variable AI models are estimates. The final charge lands after the run. Clay reports that 75% of runs cost less than the estimate.
- Tables stop at 50,000 rows. Enrichment over 50,000 records at once is Enterprise only. One million records means at least 20 tables or batches.
- Yearly billing saves 10%. You pay the credits up front for the year.
- Waterfalls multiply Actions. A third-party guide models 10,000 rows with a fallback finder, a validator and a CRM push at 25,700 Actions (LeadMagic, July 2026).
Worked examples
Assumptions: a fully enriched record uses 6 Data Credits, the low end of Clay's 6 to 20 range, and 3 Actions. A light record (profile and email only) uses about 1 credit and 2 Actions, matching Clay's own 95-credit example for 100 contacts.
Low figures use $0.0425 per credit, the best published rate. High figures use $0.05, the entry rate. Actions cost $0.00425 each, from the Growth 200,000 tier ($850). Enterprise rates are custom. The 1M and 25M rows need far more Actions than the 200,000 a month top public tier, so those figures are extrapolated list-rate arithmetic, not published prices or quotes.
| Volume a month | Record type | Credits | Actions | Cost range (extrapolated past 10,000) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10,000 | Full | 60,000 | 30,000 | $2,678 to $3,128 |
| 10,000 | Light | 10,000 | 20,000 | $510 to $585 |
| 1,000,000 | Full | 6,000,000 | 3,000,000 | $267,750 to $312,750 |
| 1,000,000 | Light | 1,000,000 | 2,000,000 | $51,000 to $58,500 |
| 25,000,000 | Full | 150,000,000 | 75,000,000 | $6,693,750 to $7,818,750 |
| 25,000,000 | Light | 25,000,000 | 50,000,000 | $1,275,000 to $1,462,500 |
| Any of the above | LeadOcean Pro | No credits | No actions | $499 a month flat |
The arithmetic for 1M full records: 6,000,000 credits x $0.05 = $300,000, plus 3,000,000 Actions x $0.00425 = $12,750, so $312,750. At $0.0425 the credits are $255,000 and the total is $267,750.
At 10,000 full records, 60,000 credits also exceeds the largest self-serve credit tier of 50,000. You would top up at a 30% premium or talk to sales.
LeadOcean Pro has no credits. Past its fair-usage line a very large month is paced down to one request a minute until the reset, not cut off. One email to support raises the headroom (LeadOcean pricing, September 2026).
Is it worth it
Clay is worth it if you build workflows, not if you buy records. The data is resold from 150+ providers, and the product is the table, the waterfall and the glue.
- GTM engineers and small outbound teams under 10,000 records a month. Yes. Launch or Growth gives you waterfalls, signals and a sequencer in one place. Use your own keys for the steps you already pay for.
- Agencies running several client tables. Yes, with discipline. Track Actions and credits per client, and put stable high-volume steps on the client's own provider key.
- Teams that need millions of records in code or through an agent. No. A table is the wrong shape and the credit math above is the reason. Use a flat-fee data API and keep Clay for the workflow layer if you need it.
- Solo founders testing. Start on Free or the 14-day trial. Move to Launch only when you need phone numbers or signals.
If volume is your problem, read Clay alternatives and the LeadOcean vs Clay page. For other price breakdowns, see Wappalyzer, Harmonic and ZeroBounce, or browse the blog hub.
Alternatives with a different price model
These three charge by something other than Clay's two meters. Prices are from each vendor's pricing page, September 2026.
LeadOcean: flat fee. Free gives you 1,000 records, one-off, no card. Pro is $499 a month flat with unlimited searches, enrichments and lookups, 100 requests per second and 5 API keys. There are no credits. It has 693M people, 366M with email and 166M with phone, over REST and a hosted MCP server. It has no sequencer, waterfall marketplace or table builder. Pull a million rows with POST /v1/exports, 50,000 rows per request. See LeadOcean pricing.
LeadMagic: pay per valid result. Plans run from $99 a month for 5,000 credits to $849 for 100,000. An email finder hit costs 1 credit and a mobile costs 5. Misses cost nothing (LeadMagic pricing, September 2026). One million valid emails is 1,000,000 credits. LeadMagic publishes no price at 1M a month, and its top public tier is Ultimate at $849 a month for 100,000 credits. Extending Ultimate's rate gives about $8,490, an extrapolation and not a price. See /alternatives/leadmagic and /blog/leadmagic-alternatives.
BlitzAPI: flat fee with a fair-use cap. Core is $399, Plus $499 (adds verified work emails) and Full $599 (adds US phone numbers). Every plan covers up to 15,000,000 results a month (BlitzAPI pricing, September 2026). That covers 1M, not 25M. The page ties these terms to accounts opened by September 30. BlitzAPI has not published prices for accounts opened after September 30. The pricing page shows $399, $499 and $599 a month for the launch offer only (BlitzAPI pricing). See /alternatives/blitzapi and /blog/blitzapi-alternatives.
FAQ
How much does Clay cost per month?
Free is $0. Launch starts at $185 a month ($167 billed yearly) and Growth at $495 ($446 yearly). Enterprise is custom. Bigger Action and Data Credit tiers raise the price.
What is the difference between Actions and Data Credits?
Actions count platform work: each enrichment, AI run, CRM push or HTTP call is one. Data Credits pay for marketplace data and AI. Most steps use both.
How much does a Clay Data Credit cost?
$0.05 each at the entry tier, about $0.0425 at 50,000 a month. One-off top-ups cost 30% more.
Does Clay charge for enrichments that find nothing?
No. Clay says a run that returns no result costs no Data Credits and no Actions (Clay pricing, September 2026).
Does Clay have an API?
Yes, with limits. Clay's docs describe a public API and CLI that use the same credits and Actions as in-app work. Tables are read-only through the API (Clay docs, September 2026).
What does 1M records a month cost on Clay?
Clay publishes no price at 1M. List-rate arithmetic past the public tiers gives about $268,000 to $313,000 for fully enriched records and about $51,000 to $58,500 for light records. Enterprise discounts apply. LeadOcean Pro is $499 a month flat.
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