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

Clay and Prospeo solve different problems, so the right pick depends on whether you want a workflow tool or a lookup. Clay is a table where you chain 150+ data providers. Prospeo is a finder that returns a verified email or mobile for one person. At 1M records a month neither publishes a simple plan.

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 Prospeo if you mainly need verified work emails and mobiles for known people, by API or Chrome extension, and you want to pay only for matches (Prospeo help center, September 2026).
• Pick neither if you pull people and company data by API at volume. Clay has no public 1M price and Prospeo needs dozens of seats. 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

Prospeo owns a database and Clay does not. Prospeo's API docs claim 200M+ contacts and 30M+ companies, and its homepage claims 280M verified leads and companies (Prospeo API docs, September 2026; Prospeo, September 2026). Clay sells access to 150+ providers, so its coverage is whatever the providers you choose can find.

That shapes how each one behaves. In Prospeo you send a name and a company website, or a LinkedIn URL, and one source answers. 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 an email or phone hit rate. Prospeo's homepage claims 98% data accuracy, and we have not tested it (Prospeo, September 2026). Clay publishes no accuracy figure at all.

Phones are where the two diverge on cost. Prospeo charges 10 credits per mobile found, which is ten times an email (Prospeo help center, September 2026). Clay does not print a phone price on its pricing page. The credit cost shows inside a table next to the enrichment, and Clay's docs only say that phones cost more than emails.

API and developer experience

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

Prospeo, enrich a person by name and company website. It authenticates with an X-KEY header (Prospeo enrich docs, September 2026).

curl -X POST "https://api.prospeo.io/enrich-person" \
  -H "X-KEY: $PROSPEO_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"only_verified_email": true, "data": {"first_name": "Jane", "last_name": "Doe", "company_website": "acme.com"}}'

The response comes back in the same call. The flags only_verified_email and enrich_mobile decide when credits are spent. Prospeo's docs advise the bulk endpoint, up to 50 people per request, for speed.

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. Search is capped at 50 results per request on Free and 500 on paid (Clay docs, September 2026; Clay developer docs, September 2026). The HTTP API column, which calls other APIs from a table, starts on Growth.

Prospeo's Free plan is the murkier case. The pricing table shows no public API on Free, while the help center lists limited API access on Free (Prospeo help center, September 2026). Test a free key before you plan around it.

Rate limits differ in kind. Clay's Public API limit is per workspace and has no published number. You get a 429 with a Retry-After header when you pass it (Clay developer docs, September 2026). Prospeo publishes numbers. Enrich is capped at 2,000 requests a day on Starter, 5,000 on Growth and 500,000 on Pro (Prospeo rate limits, September 2026).

On MCP, Prospeo's server is hosted at mcp.prospeo.io with 8 tools (Prospeo MCP docs, September 2026). Clay's MCP server runs in Claude, ChatGPT and Codex (Clay MCP guide, September 2026).

Pricing

Both tools meter by the unit, so cost scales with volume. 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).
• Prospeo: one Growth seat gives 5,000 credits for $99. The 5,000-credit add-on is $90. That is 10,000 credits for $189 a month. Billed yearly, 2 Growth seats at $74 give 10,000 credits a month for $148 (Prospeo pricing, September 2026).

At 10,000 emails Prospeo is cheaper on list price, $189 against $350. Clay's figure rises fast for full records. Clay's docs say a fully enriched record typically costs 6 to 20 Data Credits, so 10,000 full records need 60,000 credits or more. 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).
• Prospeo: (1,000,000 - 350,000 add-on credits) / 15,000 per Pro seat = 44 seats x $249 = $10,956, plus the 350,000-credit add-on at $3,500. That is 1,010,000 credits for $14,456 a month. Billed yearly, 3 Pro seats at $2,241 plus the 500,000-credit yearly add-on at $4,500 is $11,223 once, with 1,040,000 credits upfront (Prospeo pricing, September 2026).

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

Prospeo publishes nothing above 350,000 add-on credits a month or 500,000 a year. Extended pricing is enabled on request (Prospeo help center, September 2026). The 1M figure assumes every lookup finds a result and uses emails, not mobiles. A mobile costs 10 credits, so 1M mobiles is 10M credits, and no public plan sells that.

Misses are free on both. Clay charges no Data Credits or Actions for a no-result enrichment, and Prospeo charges no credit for no result. Prospeo's unused credits expire at the end of each cycle (Prospeo help center, 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 pricing, September 2026).

Where Prospeo wins

Prospeo wins on price and simplicity at small and medium volume. One verified email is 1 credit, a miss is free, and re-enriching the same record within 90 days is free (Prospeo help center, September 2026). A solo user pays $49 for 2,000 credits.

It publishes its rate limits and has a Chrome extension on every plan, plus HubSpot and Salesforce sync on Growth and Pro (Prospeo pricing, September 2026). It also has a published 1M path, which Clay does not. For finding 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 seats and no credits, 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 Prospeo all day should keep them.

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