Clay
Infrastructure to get any data, run agentic workflows, and launch GTM plays.
By Clay · HQ Brooklyn, US · 4.5/5 Value-Position score (estimate)
Positioning guardrails
Best for
- GTM ops and RevOps teams building outbound, inbound, ABM and CRM-enrichment plays on one shared data layer
- Companies that need first-party CRM and warehouse data unified with 200+ third-party data and AI providers under one contract
- Sales teams that want governed prospecting data and workflows inside Claude, ChatGPT or Codex through Clay MCP
- Enterprise GTM orgs that need reverse ETL, ad-audience sync and credit-spend governance across workspaces
Ideal size: 1–500 GTM users (unlimited seats) people · Scale-up or enterprise with a GTM ops/engineering owner and a CRM
Not for
- Buyers who want a turnkey sales-engagement suite with no workflow building required
- Teams without an ops or engineering owner to design, govern and maintain the workflows
- Firms needing on-premise deployment, FedRAMP authorisation or HIPAA-only tooling
- Very small teams with a single data need, where usage-based credits cost more than a point solution
Value metrics scorecard
Time-to-Value
1–2 weeks (self-serve)
~14 days to first production value
Total Cost of Ownership
$5,352/yr
Starts at $0 · Free tier, then monthly or annual plans metered on Actions plus Data Credits; unlimited seats on every tier
Implementation Friction
3/5
Engineering + admin effort required
Value-Position score
out of 5 · model estimate
Full cost breakdown
Mandatory implementation fee
None
Seat tiers
Unlimited seats and tables on all plans; tiers scale by Actions and Data Credits
Add-on costs
- Credit top-ups at a 30% premium (Launch and Growth)
- Bulk company, people and job data purchase (Enterprise add-on)
Company & support
Who is behind Clay, and how your team gets help once it is live.
Company
- Founded
- 2017 · 9 yrs in business
- Headquarters
- Brooklyn, US
How you get support
- PhoneNot listed
- EmailAll plans
- Live chatNot listed
- Support portal / ticketsAll plans
- Community forumAll plans
- Help centre / docsAll plans
- Dedicated account managerEnterprise only
- In person / on-siteNot listed
- Hours
- Not recorded
- Response time
- Not stated
In-app ? icon or [email protected] opens a ticket on any plan; Clay University docs and the Slack community are self-serve. Growth adds a priority support queue; Enterprise adds a dedicated Slack channel, onboarding/co-building and a growth strategist (CSM).
“Not listed” means the vendor’s public pages don’t mention that channel, not that it is unavailable. Ask about it during evaluation.
Market position
Where Clay sits against its closest alternatives. Pick any two of cost, speed, friction and buyer score, and up to 9 companies to compare.
Quadrant view
Typical annual cost × Time-to-value
The lines cross at the median of the solutions shown, so about half sit on each side of each line.
Companies on the chart 6 / 10
- Clay
- Planhat
- OnceHub
- Bizzabo
- Revenue Grid
- Conveyor
Add or change companies
Up to 10 companies including Clay. Listed closest first.
Stack fit signal
Compatibility with standard B2B ecosystems.
Ships an official MCP server. Connects to Claude Code, Claude Desktop, ChatGPT connectors and Cursor out of the box.
AI & MCP readiness
What Clay ships in AI, and what it asks of your ecosystem.
AI features shipped
Claygent and Account Agents are AI research agents that mine the web and monitor accounts; Sculptor is described as a GTM co-pilot, and AI formatting, personalised copy, lead scoring and AI-generated SQL are documented in product updates and Clay University. These are AI features inside a data-orchestration platform, not an AI-native product.
Your data & models
- Trains on your data
- Not recorded — ask the vendor
- Runs on
- OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Open-weight models
- AI pricing
- Billed by usage or credits
In your ecosystem
- AI connection
- Official MCP server
- Model key
- Not recorded
- AI usage audit
- Not recorded
Compliance attestations
* IAPP AIGP certifies individuals, not products. It means named staff hold the credential — not that the platform does.
Bottom line
Clay is horizontal go-to-market infrastructure: one workspace that pulls data from 200+ providers and first-party sources, runs AI research agents and workflows, and pushes enriched records into CRMs, warehouses, sequencers and ad platforms. It is sold free-to-enterprise with metered Actions and Data Credits, unlimited seats, and a native MCP server for Claude, ChatGPT and Codex. Best value when a GTM ops or engineering owner can build and govern the workflows; heavy lift if you want turnkey sales engagement.
Frequently asked questions
How does Clay's pricing work?
Clay has a free tier (500 actions and 100 data credits a month, unlimited seats) and paid tiers listed at $167/month for Launch, $446/month for Growth and custom Enterprise pricing. Plans are metered on two units: Actions for platform work such as running tables, calling a model or pushing data, and Data Credits for buying data or AI from Clay's 200+ marketplace vendors. Unused data credits roll over up to 2x a monthly allowance on Launch and Growth, and top-ups cost a 30% premium. No mandatory implementation fee is published.
How long until we see value, and what does onboarding require?
Clay is self-serve: a 14-day trial and a free tier let a GTM engineer build and run a first workflow in days, and the vendor markets launching new plays in days rather than quarters. The real cost is skill, not deployment time — teams lean on Clay University, cohort classes, the Slack community and the partner network, while Enterprise adds onboarding and co-building plus a dedicated growth strategist. Budget roughly one to two weeks to first production value if someone owns the build.
Which systems does Clay connect to?
Clay-built integrations cover Salesforce, HubSpot, Dynamics 365, Pipedrive, Marketo, Outreach, Salesloft, Gong, Smartlead and Instantly, plus warehouses including Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks, Fivetran and Postgres. HTTP API integrations cover anything not on the list. CRM sync, warehouse connections and HTTP API access start at the Growth tier, with Snowflake and BigQuery connections at Enterprise. Ad audiences sync to LinkedIn, Meta and Google, and enriched records can be pushed to a native sequencer or third-party sequencers.
Can reps use Clay from Claude, ChatGPT or Codex?
Yes. Clay ships an MCP server that exposes Clay contact search, enrichment and team-built Functions to Claude, ChatGPT and OpenAI Codex in natural language. Administrators keep control: prebuilt workflows and Ops-defined write-back rules govern what reps can do, and per-rep credit budgets cap spend. Clay MCP is documented with separate Clay University courses for reps and for ops, and the changelog tracks additions such as advanced cross-entity search and Codex support.
Can we use our own data providers or API keys?
Yes. Clay's marketplace spans 200+ data and AI vendors under one contract, and enrichments can run as waterfalls across several providers to maximise coverage. If you bring your own API key for a third-party data provider you skip Data Credit charges and only pay Actions for the platform work; the pricing page lists bring-your-own API key as included on every plan. Bulk purchase of company, people and job data is an Enterprise add-on.