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

Clay and People Data Labs (PDL) are different products that buyers compare because both return people data. Clay is a table workflow that routes requests across 150+ data providers. PDL is a data API that sells its own dataset per record. The right pick depends on whether you want a workflow or a feed.

Verdict

• Pick Clay if an ops or RevOps team wants enrichment waterfalls in a table with AI research columns. Tables cap at 50,000 rows on paid plans. It is a workflow tool first and a data source second.
• Pick People Data Labs if developers need person and company records in code, a large schema to query, or licensed dataset files in a warehouse. Budget for a sales call above about 100,000 person profiles.
• Pick neither if you need millions of records a month over REST and MCP at a predictable price. Neither publishes a price at 1M. LeadOcean is one option: flat $499 a month, no credits.

Side by side

Figures come from each vendor's own pages, linked in the cells, checked in September 2026.

Data and coverage

PDL wins on published scale. Its full person dataset holds 2,466,510,427 profiles, and 592,376,573 of them carry an email. The catch is that the full dataset includes thin records with few fields filled (PDL datasets, September 2026).

Clay does not publish a record count or an email or phone rate. Its pricing page credits 150+ data providers behind the product (Clay pricing, September 2026). Coverage on a given lookup depends on which provider in your waterfall answers.

Clay's docs also describe Clay's own GTM database, which you can search through the API (Clay docs, September 2026). They publish no size for it.

The practical difference is auditability. With PDL you can quote a dataset size and check a match rate yourself on a sample. With Clay you test the waterfall on your own list, because no coverage figure exists to compare.

Phone is the gap to watch on both. PDL lists 470,338,967 mobile numbers, but Free obscures contact data. Clay has no phone enrichment on Free or the trial, and its phone credit cost is not on the pricing page.

API and developer experience

PDL is the simpler API. One GET call enriches a person, and you pay only when it returns a 200. A 404 is not billed (PDL docs, September 2026).

curl -G "https://api.peopledatalabs.com/v5/person/enrich" \
  --data-urlencode "profile=linkedin.com/in/seanthorne" \
  -H "X-Api-Key: $PDL_API_KEY"

That request follows PDL's authentication and bulk enrichment docs (PDL docs, September 2026). Bulk enrichment sends up to 100 people per request and bills each 200 response as if it were a single call.

Clay's API is built around searches and routines. You write a query in Clay's own query language, create a search, then page through results with a stateful iterator (Clay docs, September 2026).

SEARCH_ID=$(curl -s -X POST "https://api.clay.com/public/v0/search/query-mode" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "clay-api-key: $CLAY_PUBLIC_API_KEY" \
  -d '{"query": "select from people where experiences.any(is_current = true and job_title is_similar_to (\"software engineer\") and company.industry = \"Software Development\")"}' \
  | jq -r '.search_id')

curl -X POST "https://api.clay.com/public/v0/search/query-mode/$SEARCH_ID/run" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "clay-api-key: $CLAY_PUBLIC_API_KEY" \
  -d '{"limit": 20}'

Search results are people and company profiles. Enrichment runs through routines, which take 1 to 100 items per call and return results by polling (Clay docs, September 2026).

Caps are the other difference. Clay limits search results by plan: 50 per request on Free, 500 per request on paid, and 1,000,000 per 30 days on paid plans. Its developer docs say 30 days and its university docs say a year, so confirm the period with Clay (Clay docs, September 2026).

The HTTP API column, which calls outside APIs from a table, starts on Growth. Table queries through the API are Enterprise (Clay pricing, September 2026).

On agents, Clay has a connector for Claude, ChatGPT and Codex, and new accounts get 500 free credits on first connect (Clay MCP guide, June 2026). PDL has no official MCP server, so agent teams wrap the REST API themselves.

Pricing

Both vendors price per unit of data, so cost rises with volume. Neither publishes a price at 1M records a month.

PDL at 10,000 records a month

PDL Pro starts at $98 a month for 350 credits, which is $0.28 a credit (PDL pricing, September 2026). PDL says Pro profiles cost about $0.20 to $0.28 each depending on volume (PDL blog, September 2026).

• 10,000 x $0.28 = $2,800 a month at the entry rate.
• 10,000 x $0.20 = $2,000 a month at the low end of PDL's range.

That is arithmetic on published rates, not a quote. PDL steers self-serve buyers above roughly 100,000 person profiles a year to Enterprise (PDL blog, September 2026). Ten thousand a month is 120,000 a year, so expect a sales conversation.

Clay at 10,000 records a month

Clay charges one Action per enrichment plus Data Credits. Clay's own doc prices an email find at 0.5 credit, and a fully enriched record at 6 to 20 credits (Clay docs, September 2026).

For 10,000 email finds on monthly Launch tiers:

• Actions: 10,000 needed, so the 15,000 tier at $60.
• Data Credits: 10,000 x 0.5 = 5,000 needed, so the 6,000 tier at $290.
• Total: $60 + $290 = $350 a month billed monthly. Billed yearly is about 10 percent lower, near $315.

For 10,000 fully enriched records the maths changes. At 6 credits that is 60,000 credits, above the largest self-serve tier of 50,000 a month ($2,125). You are into extra credits at a 30 percent premium or an Enterprise quote (Clay pricing, September 2026).

Both at 1M records a month

No public 1M price for either, and we will not multiply a rate out to fake one. Each has a structural reason.

• Clay: 1M lookups need 1M Actions. Actions cannot be bought as top-ups, and the largest self-serve tier is 200,000 Actions a month (Clay pricing, September 2026). Above that is Enterprise by quote.
• PDL: Self-serve stops near 100,000 person profiles. Above that PDL quotes Enterprise only, and the 1M rate is not published (PDL blog, September 2026).

Both charge nothing for a lookup that finds nothing. Clay states it on its pricing page, and PDL does not bill 404s.

Where Clay wins

• Workflow without code. Ops teams build tables, conditions and waterfalls by hand. PDL has no table UI.
• AI research columns. Claygent runs per-row web research on every plan, including Free (Clay pricing, September 2026).
• Provider breadth. One table can try 150+ sources, which helps on hard-to-find contacts.
• An MCP connector. Reps can run Clay from Claude or ChatGPT. PDL has none.
• Low entry cost for small lists. Launch at $185 a month covers about 5,000 email finds at the 0.5-credit example in Clay's docs.

Where People Data Labs wins

• Published scale. 2.47 billion profiles and 76.6 million companies, with counts you can quote.
• A cleaner API. One GET call, one credit on a match, nothing on a miss.
• Bulk dataset files. PDL licenses its data as files for your own warehouse (PDL docs, September 2026).
• Predictable unit price on small volume. $0.28 a credit is easy to model up to the self-serve ceiling.
• A match score. Enrichment returns a likelihood score, so you can set a floor on match quality (PDL docs, September 2026).

If you need volume through an API

Clay and PDL both meter every record, and both send you to sales near 1M a month. LeadOcean is built for that case: Free is 1,000 records one-off, no card, and Pro is $499 a month flat, with no credits and no overage invoice. The same data is open over REST and a hosted MCP server with 12 tools, and POST /v1/exports returns up to 50,000 rows per request. The rate limit is 100 requests per second per key on every plan (LeadOcean docs, September 2026). It holds 693M people, fewer than PDL, so test coverage on your own list.

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