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

Clay and ContactOut do different jobs, and at 1M records a month neither publishes a price. Clay is a table where you chain 150+ data providers. ContactOut is a finder that returns an email or phone for a LinkedIn profile, from a database it owns.

Verdict

• Pick Clay if an ops team builds enrichment workflows in tables, wants several providers tried in order, and values unlimited seats and its research agent (Clay pricing, September 2026).
• Pick ContactOut if recruiters or reps work from LinkedIn in a browser and want a cheap, fixed monthly price per person for emails and phones (ContactOut pricing, September 2026).
• Pick neither if you pull people and company data by API at volume. Clay has no public 1M price and ContactOut's API needs a sales meeting. 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

ContactOut runs its own database. Clay mostly resells data from 150+ providers. ContactOut claims 800M people profiles, 200M work emails, 150M personal emails, 100M direct dials and 40M company profiles. Those figures come from its data page (ContactOut data, September 2026). Clay sells access to 150+ providers, so its coverage is whatever the providers you pick can find.

ContactOut's own pages disagree on size. The homepage headline says 350M professionals and the MCP page says 600M+ (ContactOut, September 2026; ContactOut MCP, September 2026). Ask which number your plan reaches, because we have not tested any of them.

That shapes how each one behaves. In ContactOut you send a LinkedIn URL and one source answers, and it claims 150M personal emails. In Clay you build a waterfall: ask provider A, and if it misses, ask provider B. A waterfall raises your hit rate, but email quality then depends on which provider answered.

Neither vendor publishes a hit rate. ContactOut says its emails and phones are triple-verified with 99% confidence, which is a claim and not a test result (ContactOut data, September 2026). Clay publishes no accuracy figure at all.

Phones are where Clay is hardest to price. It does not print a phone price on its pricing page, and the credit cost shows inside a table next to the enrichment. ContactOut sells phones as a plan tier: Email + Phone adds them for $99 a month on monthly billing (ContactOut pricing, September 2026).

API and developer experience

Both have a REST API and an MCP server. The shape is different. ContactOut gives you a synchronous lookup keyed on a LinkedIn URL. Clay gives you a routine you start and then poll. The placeholders below stand in for real people and companies.

ContactOut authenticates with a token header, and you request a key by booking a meeting (ContactOut API docs, September 2026). This call returns the profile and any contact details for one LinkedIn URL.

curl --get "https://api.contactout.com/v1/linkedin/enrich" \
  --data-urlencode "profile=https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-doe" \
  -H "Accept: application/json" \
  -H "token: $CONTACTOUT_API_TOKEN"

It uses 1 email credit if an email is found and 1 phone credit if a phone is found. Set profile_only=true to skip contact details, which costs 1 search credit (ContactOut API docs, September 2026). The bulk v2 endpoint takes up to 1,000 profile URLs and returns a job_id you poll or receive on a callback.

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 then call GET /routines/run/{id}/results until it returns the answer. A run takes 1 to 100 items, and the function behind it is something you build in Clay first.

Plan gates matter more than the endpoints. Clay's Public API and CLI are on every plan, Free included. The HTTP API column, which calls other APIs from a table, starts on Growth (Clay docs, September 2026; Clay pricing, September 2026). ContactOut has no self-serve API plan. You book a meeting first.

Rate limits differ in kind. ContactOut publishes numbers: 60 requests a minute on People Search and 1,000 a minute on most other endpoints (ContactOut API docs, September 2026). Clay's Public API limit is per workspace with no published number, and you get a 429 with a Retry-After header over it (Clay developer docs, September 2026).

On MCP, ContactOut's server lists 15 tools and 600+ free credits at onboarding (ContactOut MCP, September 2026). Clay's MCP server runs in Claude, ChatGPT and Codex, and new accounts get 500 free credits on first connect (Clay MCP guide, September 2026).

Pricing

The two tools meter differently, so the worked example uses work emails only, every lookup a hit. For Clay it uses the 0.5 Data Credit per email find from Clay's own docs, which is an example 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, $54 + $261 = $315 a month (Clay pricing, September 2026).
• ContactOut: one account covers 2,000 emails a month under fair use, so 10,000 emails is 10,000 / 2,000 = 5 account-months (ContactOut terms, September 2026). One Email account is $49 a month ($39 billed yearly), so list arithmetic is 5 x $49 = $245. But self-serve is one user per company, so that is not a path you can buy (ContactOut pricing, September 2026). These are the prices the page shows now, next to higher struck-through originals.

At 10,000 emails Clay publishes a price you can buy and ContactOut does not. Clay's figure rises fast for full records. Its docs say a fully enriched record typically costs 6 to 20 Data Credits, so 10,000 full records need 60,000 credits or more (Clay docs, September 2026). The largest self-serve credit tier is 50,000 a month.

1M records a month

• Clay: no public 1M price. 1,000,000 lookups need 1,000,000 Actions, and Actions cannot be bought as top-ups. The largest public tier is 200,000 Actions and 50,000 Data Credits a month (Clay pricing, September 2026).
• ContactOut: no public 1M price. At 2,000 emails per account per month, 1M emails is 500 account-months, and self-serve allows one user per company. The API has no published price (ContactOut terms, September 2026; ContactOut API docs, September 2026).

The top public Clay Growth tier costs $850 + $2,125 = $2,975 a month, or $765 + $1,913 = $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.

ContactOut's highest public tier is Email + Phone at $99 a month ($79 billed yearly). It allows 600 exports a month and 2,000 email and 1,000 phone credits under fair use (ContactOut pricing, September 2026). A separate agreement can change those limits. Its refund, renewal and credit expiry terms sit in a Subscription Agreement that is not public.

Misses are handled differently. Clay charges no Data Credits or Actions for a no-result enrichment (Clay pricing, September 2026). ContactOut charges credits when an email or phone is found, and 1 search credit if a lookup returns no contact details (ContactOut API docs, September 2026).

Where Clay wins

Clay wins on workflow. It is a spreadsheet where ops people can 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. Clay also publishes plans you can buy up to 200,000 Actions a month, which ContactOut's self-serve plans cannot match.

Where ContactOut wins

ContactOut wins on price and simplicity for one person. Email is $49 a month and Email + Phone is $99, with a Free plan of 5 emails and 5 phones a day (ContactOut pricing, September 2026). A recruiter can start in a browser with no table to build.

It also runs its own data, and it claims 150M personal emails and 100M direct dials, a line Clay has no equivalent for. Those are vendor claims (ContactOut data, September 2026). It publishes its API rate limits and has a Chrome extension (ContactOut, September 2026). For finding one person's contact details, a narrower tool is an advantage.

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 (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 Chrome extension, so teams that work in Clay or ContactOut all day should keep them.

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