Clay vs Apollo.io (2026)

What sets it apart Waterfall enrichment across a marketplace of 150-plus data providers, querying sources in sequence to raise match and fill rates, combined with Claygent, an AI agent that researches companies and people from the web

Best for Technical go-to-market, RevOps, and sales-operations users who build enrichment and prospecting workflows in a table-and-logic environment, at company sizes from startup to enterprise · Pricing model Credit-based subscription with a free tier (100 data credits and 500 actions per month). Paid tiers on the vendor pricing page: Launch from $167/mo, Growth from $446/mo, and custom Enterprise. Two meters are billed separately: data credits (from $0.05 each) for records sourced from providers, and actions (under $0.01 each) for enrichment, workflow, and AI runs.

Clay is a data-enrichment and outbound platform built around a spreadsheet interface: teams assemble tables of accounts or people, then enrich each row by drawing from a marketplace of 150-plus data providers. Its defining mechanic is the waterfall, which queries providers in sequence until one returns a match and so lifts fill rates beyond what any single source gives. The product also runs an AI research agent, Claygent, to scan websites and summarize findings, and it suits technical GTM and RevOps operators comfortable with conditional logic rather than reps wanting a turnkey tool. Pricing is credit-based, splitting "data credits" for sourced records from "actions" for platform and workflow runs.

Sources Clay pricing page · Clay homepage · Clay blog: Data Enrichment · First Round Review: Clay's Path to Product-Market Fit

What sets it apart Combines a native B2B contact database with built-in outreach sequences, a dialer, and CRM enrichment in a single workspace, rather than only supplying data or only automating sends

Best for SDRs, account executives, and B2B revenue teams that want prospecting data and outreach sequencing in one tool, spanning solo users through enterprise · Pricing model Freemium with per-user subscriptions. Free plan available; paid tiers are Basic $49/user/mo (annual) or $59 (monthly), Professional $79/$99, and Organization $119/$149. Usage is additionally metered by credits (email, mobile, export, data) that reset each billing cycle with no rollover.

The platform pairs a B2B contact database (Apollo cites 230M+ contacts and 30M+ companies) with the outreach tooling to act on it: prospecting filters, multi-step email and call sequences, a built-in dialer, and enrichment that syncs to Salesforce and HubSpot. What sets it apart from standalone data vendors or standalone sequencers is that both sit in one workspace, letting a rep move from finding a contact to messaging them without exporting elsewhere. Access to that data is metered by credits (email, mobile, export, and data pools) that reset each billing cycle, so export volume tends to drive cost more than seat count. It fits SDRs, account executives, and revenue teams from individual users to larger organizations, with a free plan and paid tiers starting at $49 per user per month billed annually.

Sources Apollo.io homepage · Apollo.io pricing page · Salesmotion - Apollo.io Pricing Breakdown 2026