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

Clay is the one to pick if an ops team will build enrichment workflows in tables. Crustdata is the one to pick if engineers want an API-first index with live and change data. At 1M work emails a month, neither publishes a price, so you cannot forecast either bill from public pages.

Verdict

• Pick Clay if people who do not write code will build and edit the workflow. You get tables, waterfalls across 150+ data partners and AI research columns on every plan (Clay pricing, September 2026).
• Pick Crustdata if you build in code or with agents and want search at 0.03 credits a result. It also carries jobs, posts and change watchers that a plain contact database lacks (Crustdata pricing docs, September 2026).
• Pick neither if you pull people and company data by API at volume and want a price you can forecast. Clay's two meters and Crustdata's credits both get awkward there. LeadOcean is one option, covered below.

Side by side

Data and coverage

Clay does not publish a record count. Its pricing page sells data from 150+ partners through Data Credits. Its developer docs call search a query over "Clay's proprietary GTM database" (Clay pricing, September 2026; Clay developer docs, September 2026). So Clay's coverage is what the partner you hit can answer, and a waterfall tries the next one.

Crustdata claims 1B people on its homepage. Its homepage gives two company counts, so the page quotes none (Crustdata, September 2026). The index also covers jobs, social posts and live web pages, not only contacts.

Neither vendor publishes how many of its people have an email or a phone. Both charge for contact fields as an add-on, so the count matters and you cannot see it. Crustdata's contact endpoint returns four email statuses: deliverable, catch_all, invalid and unknown (Crustdata contact docs, September 2026). With Clay, the status depends on which provider answered.

Run a sample of your own list through both before you buy. Fill rate on your titles and countries is the only coverage number that counts.

API and developer experience

Both have an API and a hosted MCP server. They differ in what a call looks like and who can use it. Placeholders below stand in for real people and companies.

Clay, run a function over a list of domains. Clay-managed functions cover common enrichment and research jobs, and each item gets an id so you can match results later (Clay 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 is asynchronous. You get a routine_run_id, then poll a results endpoint until the status is complete. One call takes 1 to 100 items. The Public API is on every plan, but search results are capped by plan: 50 a request on Free, 500 on paid (Clay developer docs, September 2026).

Crustdata, enrich a person by profile URL.

curl --request POST \
  --url https://api.crustdata.com/person/enrich \
  --header "authorization: Bearer $CRUSTDATA_API_KEY" \
  --header "content-type: application/json" \
  --header "x-api-version: 2025-11-01" \
  --data '{"professional_network_profile_urls": ["https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-doe/"]}'

That returns the base profile, synchronously, for 1 credit. One request takes up to 25 URLs (Crustdata docs, September 2026). The pricing docs list business email at +1 and phone at +2 on top, so a work email costs 2 credits (Crustdata pricing docs, September 2026). The enrichment guide points to Contact Enrich for emails and phones instead. Call GET /account/endpoints to see the cost on your own key.

Contact Enrich needs an enterprise plan. Self-serve keys get a 403 (Crustdata contact docs, September 2026).

Rate limits split them. Crustdata enrich allows 15 requests a minute and 25 URLs a request. That is 375 profiles a minute at most, so 1M profiles take about 44 hours (1,000,000 / 375 = 2,667 minutes). Batch jobs of up to 10,000 identifiers are the alternative, and they are asynchronous (Crustdata rate limits, September 2026). Clay publishes no number for its Public API, so you find the ceiling when you hit a 429 (Clay developer docs, September 2026).

Pricing

Clay charges an Action for the work and Data Credits for the data. Crustdata charges credits per call and prints no dollar price per credit. Figures use the monthly list price first, with the billed-yearly price after it.

At 10,000 work emails a month

• Clay: Clay's docs example is 0.5 credit per email find, plus 1 Action per enrichment (Clay docs, September 2026). So 10,000 lookups need 5,000 credits and 10,000 Actions. The cheapest Launch combination that covers it is 15,000 Actions at $60 plus 6,000 credits at $290. That is $350 a month, or $315 billed yearly at 10 percent off (Clay pricing, September 2026). Real credit cost varies by provider.
• Crustdata: 10,000 x 2 credits (1 base + 1 business email) = 20,000 credits on /person/enrich, or 10,000 credits on the enterprise-only contact endpoint. No public price per credit, so no dollar total (Crustdata pricing docs, September 2026).

At this size Clay is the only one you can price from public pages. A Crustdata blog post reports a lowest tier from $95 a month, but the pricing page does not list it (Crustdata blog, September 2026).

At 1M work emails a month

• Clay: 1,000,000 lookups need 1,000,000 Actions. Actions cannot be bought as top-ups, and the largest public tier is 200,000 a month. That tier is $850 plus $2,125 for 50,000 credits, so $2,975 a month, or $2,678 billed yearly, and it covers 100,000 lookups at 0.5 credit (Clay pricing, September 2026). Above that is an Enterprise quote. No public 1M price.
• Crustdata: 1,000,000 x 2 = 2,000,000 credits on /person/enrich, or 1,000,000 on the contact endpoint. No public 1M price (Crustdata pricing docs, September 2026).

Do not multiply either rate out to 1M and call it a price. Ask Clay for an Enterprise quote. Ask Crustdata for a price per credit, or call GET /account/endpoints with your key to see the credit cost on your own account.

Search is cheaper on Crustdata. It charges 0.03 credits a result, so 1,000,000 search results is 30,000 credits before any enrichment. Crustdata's docs say purchased credits expire 12 months after purchase (Crustdata credits, September 2026). A Crustdata blog post from 30 July 2026 says 6 months, so confirm the term before you buy in bulk.

Where Clay wins

• A no-code workflow. Ops people edit columns, add run conditions and watch each row process.
• Waterfalls across 150+ data partners, so a long-tail source is one column away (Clay pricing, September 2026).
• A price you can read at small volume. Plans and tier grids are public, and a lookup that returns nothing is not charged.
• API on every plan, Free included, with sign-in through a plugin and CLI (Clay docs, September 2026).
• AI research columns (Claygent) and job-change tracking inside the same table. Job-change signals start on Launch (Clay pricing, September 2026).

Where Crustdata wins

• A larger claimed people index: 1B on its homepage. Clay publishes no count to compare.
• Jobs, social posts, live web fetch and change watchers in the same API.
• Cheap discovery. Search is 0.03 credits a result, and a contact lookup with no match is not billed.
• One meter. You buy credits for calls, not Actions on top of data.
• Built for code and agents first, with a hosted MCP server that takes OAuth or an API key.

If you need volume through an API

LeadOcean is a data API and MCP server with no credits and no table builder. Pro costs $499 a month flat, with unlimited searches, enrichments and lookups. The Free plan gives 1,000 records, one-off, with no card, on the same REST API and 12-tool MCP server. Rate limit is 100 requests per second per key, and POST /v1/exports returns up to 50,000 rows per request (LeadOcean exports docs, September 2026). Try it on a list you already know, then read Clay alternatives, the Clay alternative page and pricing.

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