Clay alternatives compared: price and features
One row per tool from this page, Clay first for reference: who it suits, its entry price for the same need (credits only, email and LinkedIn) and what it does. The sections below explain each choice.
credits only
for reference
One price per result, emails and phone numbers
Finding and verifying emails, nothing else
Email finder with cold email included
A waterfall of its own, priced by credit tieremail and LinkedIn
for reference
Multichannel sequences billed per identity
Email, LinkedIn and calls per userMonthly prices, billed monthly unless stated, excluding VAT, read on each publisher’s site (checked between October 6, 2026 and October 16, 2026). Emelia’s prices follow your currency; tools billed in dollars only stay in dollars, and those billed in euros only stay in euros.
Cheaper per email found: Emelia, Icypeas, Hunter and, at some volumes, Pipecorn
A recurring complaint about Clay is the credit bill: G2 reviewers name pricing and the credit system among its weak points, and a recent one-star Trustpilot review describes credits gone within minutes. If what you mainly do in Clay is find work emails, a dedicated finder costs less, at least at some volumes (table below).
- 1
Best for: One price per result, emails and phone numbersOne credit per email found and verified, nothing when the search comes back empty, and no second meter for actions as in Clay. The monthly pack starts at $19 for 1,000 credits, needs no plan and its credits stay valid 12 months; a phone number costs 50 credits, looked up through a waterfall across several providers and refunded when none is found.
- YesCredits valid for 1 year, even after cancelling
- NoBuilt-in B2B contact database
- YesEmail finder
- Price
- $19/month (credit subscription, no plan needed · 1,000 credits)
- Who it’s for
- Teams that mostly used Clay to look up work emails and phone numbers, and want a single price per result.
- 2
Best for: Finding and verifying emails, nothing else1 credit per email found, 0.1 per verification, plans from 1,000 credits a month; it has a dollar and a euro grid. Icypeas also sits in Clay’s marketplace, usable there without an Icypeas account. It sends nothing.
- NoPhone number finder
- YesEmail finder
- NoCold email from your own mailboxes
- Price
- From $19/month
- Who it’s for
- Teams that only need to find and verify emails at a low cost per credit.
- 3
Best for: Email finder with cold email includedA Free plan, then Starter with 2,000 credits and sending mailboxes for $49 a month (same figure in dollars), up to Scale; above that, an Enterprise quote. Hunter is one of the providers in Clay’s email waterfall too. Against Clay, it costs less per email found but has no multi-provider tables.
- NoPhone number finder
- YesEmail finder
- YesEmail verification
- Price
- From $49/month
- Who it’s for
- Teams that want an email finder with simple campaigns, starting free.
- 4
Best for: A waterfall of its own, priced by credit tierPipecorn (formerly ProntoHQ) runs its own provider waterfall and charges 3 credits per email found, 30 per mobile number. It undercuts Clay at 1,000 and 50,000 emails a month, but costs more at 10,000. Against Clay, it is simpler to set up, with no tables to build.
- NoCold email from your own mailboxes
- YesEmail finder
- YesPhone number finder
- Price
- From $49/month
- Who it’s for
- Teams that want a provider waterfall without building Clay tables.
Public price for 1,000, 10,000 and 50,000 emails found a month
Launch tiers; help-centre reading, the cheaper of the two
Launch tiers; pricing-calculator reading
Basic · Advanced · Hypergrowth
Starter · Growth · on quote
Build · Scale · Scale
The smallest monthly credit pack, with no plan
Before tax and billed monthly; the other tools appear in US dollars (Hunter and Pipecorn charge the same figure in euros), Emelia in your currency. Hunter’s prices include sending mailboxes. Emelia’s line is its credit subscription on its own, the same kind of purchase as Icypeas or Pipecorn, which send nothing; sending with Emelia starts at $37 a month on Start. The credits Emelia gives once at signup are left out.
Enrichment plus LinkedIn automation: Emelia, La Growth Machine, lemlist
Clay sends no LinkedIn invitation or message; it hands leads to HeyReach, La Growth Machine or a lemlist campaign, each paid separately. These three tools find emails and run LinkedIn steps in the same sequence.
- 1
Best for: One plan for mailboxes and LinkedIn accountsClay finds the data but sends no LinkedIn invitation or message; Emelia does both in one sequence, with LinkedIn steps and cold email from warmed-up mailboxes. Start at $37 a month covers 3 mailboxes and 1 LinkedIn account, Grow 50 and 3, Scale unlimited mailboxes and 10 accounts. Emails found cost 1 credit, with monthly packs from $19, but there is no waterfall across many providers as in Clay.
- YesCredits valid for 1 year, even after cancelling
- NoBuilt-in B2B contact database
- YesEmail finder
- Price
- From $37/month
- Who it’s for
- Teams that enrich and contact the same leads without stitching two tools together.
- 2
Best for: Multichannel sequences billed per identityLa Growth Machine is one of Clay’s two dedicated LinkedIn integrations, and it also replaces part of Clay on its own: each identity, a sender with a LinkedIn account and an email address, gets enriched leads every month (250 on Basic). Its sequences mix LinkedIn and email steps. Its enrichment stays simpler than Clay’s tables and waterfalls.
- YesLinkedIn automation
- YesEmail finder
- YesEmail and LinkedIn in one sequence
- Price
- From $70/month per identity
- Who it’s for
- Sales teams that want enrichment and LinkedIn outreach per salesperson.
- 3
Best for: Email, LinkedIn and calls per userlemlist covers enrichment and outreach in one subscription: Multichannel at $109 per user a month adds LinkedIn, calls and 400 credits per user, and finding and verifying an email takes 5 credits. Its contact database replaces part of what Clay pulls from providers. Clay remains the tool for custom enrichment workflows.
- YesLinkedIn automation
- YesEmail finder
- YesEmail and LinkedIn in one sequence
- Price
- $109/month per user
- Who it’s for
- Teams that want data, email and LinkedIn in one tool rather than a workflow builder.
A built-in database with sequences: Apollo
Apollo is the tool most often searched for next to Clay. The logic is reversed: Apollo sells its own database (240M contacts, 30M companies) per licence, with email sequences, while Clay rents data from many providers and bills the work. Basic costs $65 per licence a month ($49 on yearly billing) with 2,500 credits; an email costs 1 credit there, a phone number 8. LinkedIn steps in Apollo are manual tasks.
The two also work together: Clay offers 14 Apollo actions, all of which require your own Apollo account. Our Apollo vs Clay page compares the cost of the same enriched emails on both.
Quote-based databases: ZoomInfo and Cognism
For teams that want someone else’s verified data rather than a waterfall, and accept a sales process: ZoomInfo claims 500M+ contacts and 100M+ companies and usually sells 1- to 3-year contracts without a published subscription price; Clay publishes its own comparison with it. Cognism claims 400M+ business contacts, with an emphasis on Europe, and also prices on quote.
Neither is a cheaper path to an email: they suit companies that buy data for a sales team by the year. Clay’s blog, in its list of ZoomInfo alternatives, ranks itself first, ahead of Apollo, Cognism and Lusha.
Clay next to Apollo and Emelia: credits, sending, LinkedIn
The three tools a Clay buyer most often weighs, on what drives their price and what each one does by itself.
Billed on
Monthly entry price, data and sending
Email found
Searchable database
Cold email
LinkedIn invitations and messages
Free use
Currency
Before tax. Clay and Apollo in US dollars, Emelia in your currency at the same number, so the entry-price mark only stands where it would at any exchange rate. Credits are not worth the same in each tool, so the email lines compare a unit, not a price.
Clay’s data workshop: 150+ providers in one table, and what Emelia adds
None of the tools above replaces all of Clay. Its waterfall over 150+ data providers, the Claygent research agent, job-change and intent signals, technology, funding and revenue columns, a two-way CRM sync, data warehouses (Growth or Enterprise, depending on the page), advertising audiences, an API and a CLI that the help centre opens on every plan, an MCP server: that is a data workshop for an operations team, with unlimited seats.
A Clay table leaves Clay as a CSV export (free in actions and credits) or through one of Clay’s 14 sending integrations, each with its own subscription. A team that mostly looks up work emails and then sends a sequence pays for a workshop it does not use: Emelia charges 1 credit per email found and runs the email and LinkedIn sequence in the same plan.
Clay alternatives: what people ask
Not really: HubSpot is a CRM with its own sequences, while Clay feeds a CRM. Clay syncs with HubSpot both ways from Growth and can push leads into HubSpot’s sequencer. We do not compare their prices here.
Emelia starts free: 20 free credits at sign-up with a work email, and a 7-day free trial without a card. Clay itself has a Free plan (500 actions and 100 data credits a month), and Hunter and Apollo have free plans with a few credits.
Emelia features: Email finder · Cold email · Email warm-up · Emelia pricing
Emelia is a Clay competitor. We have tried to stay fair: every figure about Clay comes from its own website or public review sites.
