Clay pricing: plans, credits and the real cost per lead

Clay pricing has two meters, not one. Every paid plan sells data credits, which pay for third-party data such as emails and phone numbers, and actions, which pay for Clay's own platform work. The plan price is the floor; the number that decides your bill is how many data credits each lead burns.

This post reads Clay's pricing page as it stood on 2026-11-03, lays out the four plans, shows what one data credit costs at the entry paid plan, and turns that into a cost per enriched lead. Then it shows the per-call route an agent can take for the same lookups, with live prices, so you can compare the two on your own list.

Clay pricing: the four plans

Clay has a Free plan, two self-serve paid plans (Launch and Growth) and a custom Enterprise plan. Every plan has unlimited seats. The paid plans differ in how many data credits and actions they include and in what they connect to: Growth adds CRM sync, HTTP API integrations and webhook signals.

Three details on that page trip people up. The Launch credit count conflicts: the plan card says 3,000 data credits a month, the FAQ says 2,500. The plan cards show the annual price, and the FAQ shows the month-to-month price, so you will see two numbers for the same plan. And both paid plans have bigger tiers: the card shows where each plan starts, not where it tops out.

What does one Clay data credit buy?

A data credit is Clay's unit for third-party data. Clay's page says a credit starts at five cents and gets cheaper with volume, and that an action costs under a cent. How many credits one enrichment takes depends on the provider Clay calls, and a waterfall that tries three providers can spend credits on more than one of them.

Three rules in that table matter more than the headline price:

• No result, no charge. An enrichment that finds nothing costs no data credits and no actions.
• Your own keys cost one action. If you bring an API key for a provider, Clay charges an action and no data credits, and you pay the provider directly.
• Extra credits cost more. Running out mid-month on Launch or Growth means buying credits at a premium over the plan rate, so size the plan to your real volume.

The real cost per enriched lead

Cost per lead is the credits one lead spends times the price of a credit, plus the plan you pay whether you use it or not. On Launch with month-to-month billing, the plan price divided by the 2,500 data credits Clay's FAQ includes at that price gives the effective price of one credit, actions included. The plan card says 3,000 credits instead; the table notes the conflict, and if you get 3,000, each figure drops. The table above works that through for a lead that spends three credits and one that spends six.

Two things move the real number away from that arithmetic:

1. Unused credits. Launch and Growth roll unused data credits over up to twice the plan amount, and actions reset each cycle. If you enrich 500 leads in a quiet month, you still paid for the full plan.
2. Waterfall depth. A work email that the first provider finds costs one lookup. One that only the third provider finds costs up to three. Your hit rate on the first provider decides most of your cost per lead. The mechanics are in waterfall enrichment explained.

Is there a cheaper route than Clay for the same lookups?

For the lookups alone, a per-call route is often cheaper, because you pay only for the calls you make and there is no plan floor. An agent can call the same kind of providers Clay calls, one lookup at a time, and pay each call from one prepaid balance. What you give up is Clay's table editor, its sequencer and its CRM sync.

The table below reads looot's live price for each lookup from the catalog when the page loads.

To compare, take the credits a lead spends in your Clay table and price the same steps from this table. The side-by-side for every Clay feature, including the ones looot does not cover, is on the Clay alternative page, and can I replace Clay walks through which jobs an agent can take over. If you are choosing between Clay and Apollo, see Clay vs Apollo.

Run it with an agent

Paste this into Claude Code, Cursor or any agent that reads a skill file. It prices before it spends and stops after five leads.

What it cannot do

• Clay's table editor. looot has no spreadsheet view. Your agent returns results in chat or writes them where you tell it.
• Scheduled re-enrichment. Refreshing a list on a timer needs scheduled runs, not available yet. Your agent runs when you ask.
• Free credit. looot has no free trial credit; you top up a prepaid balance first, and the price of each call is shown before it runs. See pricing.

Last checked 2026-11-03. Clay's prices were read that day from the page linked in each table. looot prices are read from the live catalog when the page loads.