Clay vs Hunter.io (2026): Data, Pricing and API Compared

Clay and Hunter.io both find work emails, but they work differently. Clay is a table where you stack many data providers and run them as a waterfall. Hunter is one email index you query by domain, name or LinkedIn handle.

Verdict

• Pick Clay if a GTM engineer will build waterfalls and research workflows across many providers. You get unlimited seats and no charge for an empty result (Clay pricing, September 2026).
• Pick Hunter if you need emails by domain or name, up to a few thousand a month, at a price you can read. Growth is $149 a month for 10,000 credits (Hunter pricing, September 2026).
• Pick neither if you pull people and company data by API at volume. Clay has no public 1M price, and Hunter's 1M price is a one-off credit pack. LeadOcean is one option: Pro is $499 a month, flat.

Side by side

Data and coverage

Neither tool publishes a database size, so you cannot compare coverage on paper. Clay says it reaches 150+ data partners (Clay pricing, September 2026). Hunter says it has verified 150,430,313 email addresses (Hunter, September 2026).

Those numbers measure different things. Clay's is a count of sources. Hunter's is a count of addresses. A Clay waterfall asks providers in turn until one answers, and Clay describes it that way itself, so read it as its claim, not a test.

Hunter starts from a company domain. Domain Search lists the addresses it has found there, and Email Finder returns the likeliest address for a name. Clay starts from whatever you put in a table and runs the columns you add.

Phones are the open question on both. Clay has no phone enrichment on Free, and its credit price per phone is not on the pricing page or the credits doc (Clay docs, September 2026). Hunter's docs list a phone_number field on some results but no phone endpoint and no count (Hunter API docs, September 2026).

Run the same 500 people through both free plans before you pay. Match rate depends on what you feed in, so use the inputs you really have.

API and developer experience

Both have an API on every plan, Free included. The shape differs. Hunter is a plain GET with a synchronous answer. Clay runs a routine you build first, then you poll for results.

Hunter finds an email from a name and a domain. Placeholders below stand in for a real person (Hunter API docs, September 2026).

curl -G "https://api.hunter.io/v2/email-finder" \
  -H "X-API-KEY: $HUNTER_API_KEY" \
  --data-urlencode "domain=acme.com" \
  --data-urlencode "first_name=Jane" \
  --data-urlencode "last_name=Doe"

A miss costs no credit. One quirk matters in code: a rate-limited call returns 403, and 429 means you ran out of credits or plan quota (Hunter API docs, September 2026).

Clay uses a clay-api-key header and runs routines. A routine is a function you build in Clay or a Clay-managed function. You start the run, 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 poll GET /routines/run/{id}/results until it returns 200. A run takes 1 to 100 items.

Limits differ in kind. Hunter limits each endpoint on its own: 500 a minute on Email Finder, 300 on Email Verifier. Clay's Public API limit is per workspace with no number published, and you get a 429 with a Retry-After header when you pass it (Clay developer docs, September 2026).

The HTTP API column, which calls other APIs from a table, lets you set your own limit, for example 10 requests per second. It starts on Growth (Clay docs, September 2026). Clay also caps API search by plan: Free allows 50 results per request and 100 per 30 days (Clay developer docs, September 2026).

On MCP, both ship a server. Hunter's takes your API key in a header, is included in every plan and spends your plan credits (Hunter MCP, September 2026). Clay MCP exposes its providers, research agents and your saved workflows inside ChatGPT, Claude and Codex (Clay MCP guide, September 2026).

Pricing

Clay charges a plan fee built from an Action tier plus a Data Credit tier. Hunter charges per credit, with one pool shared by unlimited team members. Figures use the monthly list price first, with the billed-yearly price after it.

At 10,000 records a month

Take 10,000 work emails. Hunter: Growth includes 10,000 credits for $149 a month, or $104 a month billed yearly (Hunter pricing, September 2026).

Clay: use Clay's worked example of 0.5 credit per email find. That is 5,000 Data Credits and 10,000 Actions. On monthly billing, the 15,000 Action tier is $60 and the 6,000 credit tier is $290, so $60 + $290 = $350 a month. Billed yearly it is $54 + $261 = $315 (Clay pricing, September 2026).

At this size Hunter is cheaper: $149 against $350 monthly, $104 against $315 yearly. The 0.5 credit is an example, and real Clay cost varies by provider. Clay says a fully enriched record typically costs 6 to 20 Data Credits (Clay docs, September 2026).

At that rate 10,000 full records need 60,000 to 200,000 credits. The top self-serve tier is 50,000 a month.

At 1M records a month

Hunter: 1,000,000 Search credits on Data Platform cost $6,900, paid once and valid 12 months. That is $0.0069 a credit (Hunter Data Platform, September 2026). Above 1M is custom, so 1M every month is a quote.

The all-in-one route costs more. Scale is $299 a month for 25,000 credits, and packs cap at 180,000 per purchase (Hunter help, September 2026). At 1M, use Data Platform.

Clay: no public 1M price. One million lookups need 1,000,000 Actions, and Actions cannot be bought as top-ups. The largest self-serve tier is 200,000 Actions and 50,000 Data Credits a month. Above that, Clay sells Enterprise by quote (Clay pricing, September 2026).

The top Growth tier costs $850 + $2,125 = $2,975 a month on monthly billing, 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.

Time matters too. Hunter's 500 a minute on Email Finder means 1,000,000 / 500 = 2,000 minutes, about 33 hours.

Where Clay wins

• Many providers in one flow. A waterfall tries one source after another, so a miss on one does not end the search.
• Unlimited seats. The whole team works in one workspace for one plan fee (Clay pricing, September 2026).
• Research beyond a database. Claygent, its research agent, is on every plan including Free. It runs web research to fill custom data points (Clay pricing, September 2026).
• No charge for a miss. An enrichment with no result uses no Data Credits and no Actions.

Where Hunter.io wins

• Cheap and readable at small volume. Starter is $34 a month billed yearly for 24,000 credits a year, and Growth gives 10,000 credits for $149 (Hunter pricing, September 2026).
• A published price at 1M. Data Platform lists 1,000,000 credits at $6,900. Clay lists nothing at that size.
• Published rate limits. 15 a second and 500 a minute on Email Finder, in writing, per endpoint.
• Simple API. One GET, one answer. No routine to build and no polling.

If you need volume through an API

We build LeadOcean, so weigh this section accordingly. LeadOcean holds 693M people and 63M companies, and you reach them over REST and MCP. Free is 1,000 records, one-off, with no card. Pro is $499 a month, flat, with unlimited searches and lookups and a limit of 100 requests per second per key (LeadOcean pricing, September 2026).

For bulk work, POST /v1/exports returns up to 50,000 rows per request. The app also has an Exports page with a filter builder and CSV download (LeadOcean exports docs, September 2026). There is no table builder or sequencer, so keep Clay if your ops team lives in it. The Clay alternative page and the Clay alternatives roundup have the line-by-line versions.

More Hunter matchups: Hunter vs Wiza, Hunter vs Kaspr and Hunter vs Icypeas.

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