Clay vs BlitzAPI (2026): Data, Pricing and API Compared

Clay and BlitzAPI both feed enrichment workflows, but they bill in opposite ways. Clay is a table where you chain 150+ data providers and pay in credits. BlitzAPI is one dataset behind a flat monthly fee. At 1M records a month BlitzAPI publishes a price for accounts opened by September 30, 2026, and Clay publishes none.

Verdict

• Pick Clay if an ops team builds enrichment in tables, wants several providers tried in order, and values unlimited seats and its research agent (Clay pricing, September 2026).
• Pick BlitzAPI if a developer wants verified work emails, job postings and company data from one API on a flat fee, and opened the account by September 30 (BlitzAPI pricing, September 2026).
• Pick neither if you want emails and phones on one flat plan, an MCP server that returns records, and bulk export. Clay meters credits and caps tables at 50,000 rows below Enterprise. BlitzAPI's MCP reads docs and it documents no export. LeadOcean is one option, covered below.

Side by side

Prices are monthly list first, billed yearly after. Both vendors change plans often, so check the pricing pages before you buy.

Data and coverage

BlitzAPI is one dataset. Clay is mainly a marketplace of providers, plus search over its own GTM database with no published size (Clay developer docs, September 2026). BlitzAPI lists 550M+ profiles, 65M+ companies, 65M+ verified work emails and 45M+ US phone numbers (BlitzAPI docs, September 2026). For enrichment, Clay sells access to 150+ providers, so its coverage is whatever the providers you pick can find.

That changes how each behaves. In BlitzAPI one source answers, and a miss is a miss. In Clay you build a waterfall: ask provider A, then provider B if A fails. A waterfall raises your hit rate, but email quality depends on which provider answered.

Neither vendor publishes a hit rate. BlitzAPI's own figures put verified emails at about 12 percent of profiles (65M of 550M), so expect many misses on a cold list. Clay publishes no coverage figure at all.

Phones are the sharper gap. BlitzAPI phones are US only and need the $599 Full plan (BlitzAPI pricing, September 2026). Clay prints no phone price. The credit cost shows inside a table next to the enrichment, and its docs only say phones cost more than emails.

API and developer experience

Both have a REST API and an MCP server. BlitzAPI gives you a synchronous lookup. Clay gives you a routine you start and then poll. The placeholders below stand in for real people and companies.

BlitzAPI, find a work email from a LinkedIn URL. It authenticates with an x-api-key header and costs one record on a hit (BlitzAPI docs, September 2026).

curl --request POST \
  --url https://api.blitz-api.ai/v2/enrichment/email \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --header "x-api-key: $BLITZAPI_API_KEY" \
  --data '{"person_linkedin_url":"https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-doe"}'

The answer comes back in the same call, with found, email and an all_emails array. A found: false means no verified email exists, and email is null.

Clay uses a clay-api-key header. You run a function routine over a list of items, then read results by run id (Clay developer docs, September 2026).

curl --request POST \
  --url "https://api.clay.com/public/v0/routines/function:t_abc123/run" \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --header "clay-api-key: $CLAY_PUBLIC_API_KEY" \
  --data '{"items":[{"id":"row-1","inputs":{"domain":"acme.com"}}]}'

The response holds a routine_run_id. You call GET /routines/run/{id}/results until it returns HTTP 200. A run takes 1 to 100 items, and the function behind it is something you build in Clay first.

Plan gates matter more than endpoints. Clay's Public API and CLI are on every plan, Free included. Search is capped at 50 results per request on Free and 500 on paid (Clay docs, September 2026; Clay developer docs, September 2026). The HTTP API column, which calls other APIs from a table, starts on Growth at $495 a month, or $446 billed yearly (Clay pricing, September 2026).

BlitzAPI gates by data type. Core at $399 has no emails or phones, Plus at $499 adds emails, and Full at $599 adds US phones (BlitzAPI pricing, September 2026). Paid plans carry no SLA, and Find People stops at 50,000 results per query.

Rate limits differ in kind. Clay's Public API limit is per workspace with no published number. BlitzAPI publishes numbers: 50 requests per second per endpoint on the launch offer and 5 as standard (BlitzAPI pricing, September 2026). The limit applies to each endpoint on its own, so email and phone calls do not compete (BlitzAPI docs, September 2026).

On MCP, Clay's server runs in Claude, ChatGPT and Codex and exposes its providers and your functions. BlitzAPI's server gives an assistant live access to its documentation only, so an agent cannot search people or enrich a lead through it.

Pricing

Clay meters by the unit and BlitzAPI charges a flat fee. The worked example uses work emails only, every lookup a hit. For Clay it uses 0.5 Data Credit per email find, an example in Clay's own docs and not a price list (Clay docs, September 2026).

10,000 records a month

• Clay: 10,000 emails at 0.5 credit is 5,000 Data Credits, plus 10,000 Actions at one each. The 15,000 Action tier is $60 and the 6,000 credit tier is $290, so $60 + $290 = $350 a month. Billed yearly is 10 percent off, about $315 (Clay pricing, September 2026).
• BlitzAPI: Plus at $499 a month covers work emails. No billed-yearly figure is published (BlitzAPI pricing, September 2026).

At 10,000 emails Clay is cheaper on list price, $350 against $499. The gap closes fast for full records. Clay's docs say a fully enriched record typically costs 6 to 20 Data Credits. So 10,000 full records need 60,000 credits or more, above the largest self-serve tier of 50,000 a month.

1M records a month

• Clay: no public 1M price. 1,000,000 lookups need 1,000,000 Actions, Actions cannot be bought as top-ups, and the largest public tier is 200,000 Actions and 50,000 Data Credits a month (Clay pricing, September 2026).
• BlitzAPI, for an account opened by September 30, 2026: $499 x 1 month = $499 for work emails, since 1,000,000 results sits under the 15,000,000 results a month fair use line (BlitzAPI pricing, September 2026). Only emails found count as results.

The top public Clay Growth tier costs $850 + $2,125 = $2,975 a month, or $2,678 billed yearly. At 0.5 credit per email its 50,000 credits cover 100,000 lookups, not 1M. Do not multiply that out and call it a quote. Above the public tiers Clay sells Enterprise by quote.

Check the fine print on BlitzAPI. The $499, the 15,000,000 results and the 50 requests per second apply to accounts opened by September 30, 2026, and the terms lapse if you cancel (BlitzAPI Terms, September 2026). BlitzAPI has not published prices or limits for accounts opened after that date, beyond a standard 5 requests per second.

Time matters too. At 50 requests per second, 1M lookups take 20,000 seconds, about 5.6 hours. At 5 per second the same pull takes 200,000 seconds, about 2.3 days. Misses are free on both: Clay charges nothing for a no-result enrichment, and BlitzAPI counts nothing for a call that finds nothing.

Where Clay wins

Clay wins on workflow. It is a spreadsheet where ops people add columns, set conditions and watch each row run, with no code. Seats are unlimited, so ten reps cost the same plan fee as one (Clay pricing, September 2026).

It also reaches 150+ providers, so a long-tail source or a fallback is one column away. Its research agent, Claygent, runs web research per row and is included on every plan, Free too. Its MCP server returns Clay's data inside Claude and ChatGPT, which BlitzAPI's does not.

Where BlitzAPI wins

BlitzAPI wins on price clarity and signals. On a launch-offer account, one flat fee covers 1M email lookups with no credit math, and a miss costs nothing (BlitzAPI pricing, September 2026). Clay's cost needs two tier grids and a guess at credits per record.

It also has data Clay does not list as its own: 100M+ job postings and endpoints to search them (BlitzAPI docs, September 2026). A developer who wants one key, typed SDKs and a published rate limit will find it simpler to wire up. It has a documented Clay integration, so you can call it from a Clay table.

If you need volume through an API

We build LeadOcean, so weigh this section accordingly. LeadOcean is a people and company data API with a hosted MCP server. Free gives 1,000 records, one-off, with no card. Pro is $499 a month flat, with no credits and no per-record price, over REST and MCP, with phones on the same plan (LeadOcean pricing, September 2026). Export up to 50,000 rows per request with POST /v1/exports, or use the Exports page in the app (LeadOcean exports docs, September 2026). It is only the data layer, with no table builder, sequencer or job-postings dataset, so teams that live in Clay should keep it.

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