Clay vs Clearbit (Breeze Intelligence) (2026): Data, Pricing and API Compared

Clay and Clearbit (Breeze Intelligence) both fill in B2B records, but they work in different places. Clay is a table workflow that buys data from 150+ providers on credits. Clearbit is data enrichment inside HubSpot, with no price of its own.

Verdict

• Pick Clay if you want a visual workflow that tries several data sources per row and you can live with two usage meters. It has a Public API on every plan and a Clay MCP for Claude, ChatGPT and Codex (Clay docs, September 2026).
• Pick Clearbit (Breeze Intelligence) if your contacts and companies already live in HubSpot and you want them filled in without code (HubSpot docs, September 2026).
• Pick neither if you pull people and company data by API at volume. Clay has no public price at 1M and Clearbit needs a HubSpot plan. LeadOcean is one option, covered below.

Side by side

Clay and Clearbit figures were checked in September 2026. Both vendors change plans often, so confirm before you buy.

Data and coverage

Neither tool publishes a record count, so size is not a fair way to pick. Clay buys data from 150+ providers and runs them as a waterfall, so the email you get depends on which provider answered (Clay pricing, September 2026). It also has a search over its own GTM database, capped at 500 results per request (Clay developer docs, September 2026).

Clearbit does not search. HubSpot enriches a contact from a first name, last name and work email, and a company from a domain (HubSpot docs, September 2026). The contact fields are job title, seniority, role, location and LinkedIn URL. There is no email or phone field in the default contact list.

Clearbit's homepage lists 6-digit NAICS, GICS and SIC codes, parent and subsidiary mapping, and normalized role and seniority (Clearbit, September 2026). It is firmographics, not a list of people to contact. Run the same 100 records through both before you choose, since neither prints a match rate.

API and developer experience

Clay lets you read its docs and call its API before you pay. Clearbit has an API too, but the docs sit behind a sign-in. Clay is the only one of the two where you can check a request first.

Clay, run a function over two domains. The key goes in the clay-api-key header, and results come back by polling (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 run returns a routine_run_id. You then poll GET /routines/run/{id}/results until it returns HTTP 200. A run takes 1 to 100 items a call. The function itself is one you build in the Clay UI.

Clearbit, no public request. The docs redirect to a sign-in page, so we do not show one (Clearbit docs, September 2026).

Sign-ups since December 2023 need a HubSpot account (Clearbit release notes, September 2026). We found no public route to the API without one. Inside HubSpot, enrichment is a settings switch. A Super Admin turns on automatic enrichment, and it is off by default.

Rate limits differ in kind. Clay's Public API has a per-workspace limit and no published number, and over it you get HTTP 429 with a Retry-After header (Clay developer docs, September 2026). For the HTTP API column you set the limit yourself, for example 10 requests per second (Clay docs, September 2026). Clearbit publishes none.

On MCP, Clay MCP exposes its providers, research agents and your saved functions inside Claude, ChatGPT and Codex (Clay MCP guide, September 2026). HubSpot's remote MCP server reads and writes CRM records such as contacts and deals. We found no MCP server for enrichment itself (HubSpot MCP, September 2026).

Pricing

Clay bills a plan fee plus two meters. Clearbit bills nothing of its own, because enrichment sits inside a HubSpot plan. Clay figures use the monthly list price first, with the billed-yearly price after it.

At 10,000 work emails a month

• Clay: one Action per enrichment, so 10,000 Actions. At the docs example of 0.5 credit per email find, that is 5,000 Data Credits (Clay docs, September 2026).
• On Launch, the 15,000 Action tier is $60 and the 6,000 credit tier is $290. That is $350 a month billed monthly. Yearly billing saves 10 percent, about $315 (Clay pricing, September 2026).
• Clearbit: no per-record price. You pay the HubSpot plan, and HubSpot lists plan prices in local currency, per hub and seat (HubSpot pricing, September 2026). From an index page you enrich 100 records at a time, so 10,000 is 100 batches. Imports, segments and workflows take larger jobs.

A full profile costs more. Clay says a fully enriched record typically costs 6 to 20 Data Credits (Clay docs, September 2026). At 6 credits, 10,000 records need 60,000 credits, above the 50,000 a month top public tier.

Phones are a separate cost. Clay publishes no per-phone credit price outside the table, and its docs say only that phones cost more than emails.

At 1M work emails a month

• Clay: No public 1M price. A run needs 1,000,000 Actions, and the largest public Action tier is 200,000 a month. Actions cannot be bought as top-ups. Above that, Clay sells Enterprise by quote (Clay pricing, September 2026).
• For scale, the largest public Growth combination (200,000 Actions plus 50,000 credits) is $2,975 a month billed monthly, or $2,678 billed yearly. It covers a fifth of the Actions.
• Clearbit: No public 1M price. HubSpot publishes no per-record rate to multiply and no monthly enrichment cap to size against.

We do not multiply a rate out to 1M for either tool. A number built that way is arithmetic past the public tiers, not a price anyone will quote you.

Where Clay wins

• A visual table workflow. Ops people add columns, conditions and waterfalls without code.
• Choice of sources. It runs 150+ providers per row, and you can bring your own provider keys to skip credits and pay only Actions.
• A Public API and CLI on every plan, so a developer can test before buying a seat.
• A no-result enrichment costs nothing. No Data Credits or Actions are charged when a lookup returns empty (Clay pricing, September 2026).
• Claygent research columns on every plan, Free included.

Where Clearbit (Breeze Intelligence) wins

• Enrichment inside HubSpot. Automatic enrichment fills new records without anyone writing code.
• Richer company data: 6-digit NAICS, GICS and SIC codes, plus parent and subsidiary mapping (Clearbit, September 2026).
• Form shortening, so a form asks only for fields it cannot enrich from an email address.
• No per-record price to track when you already own a HubSpot plan.
• One vendor if HubSpot is already your CRM and your data layer.

If you need volume through an API

LeadOcean is a data API and MCP server with no credits, no per-record price and no CRM in front of it. Pro costs $499 a month flat, and the Free plan gives 1,000 records one-off with no card. Both plans get the same REST API and 12-tool MCP server, and POST /v1/exports returns up to 50,000 rows per request (LeadOcean exports docs, September 2026). It has an export app, not a table workflow builder, so compare it on a list you know. See pricing or the Clay alternative.

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