Where the data comes from
ZoomInfo builds and sells one database: 500M+ professional profiles and 100M+ companies, assembled from 1.5B+ data points processed a day, 300+ human researchers and the mailboxes that ZoomInfo Lite users connect. You search it for free and pay per record exported; ZoomInfo adds its own intent signals (4,500+ topics) and website-visitor data.
Clay is a workflow first. A table row is sent to one provider, then the next, out of 150+ in its marketplace, until an email or a phone number comes back, and you pay in data credits and actions along the way. Clay’s own pages disagree on whether it has data of its own: its help centre mentions “900M” people searchable in Clay, while a FAQ answer says it has no native data and its blog post against ZoomInfo says it has not built a proprietary contact database.
The practical difference: with ZoomInfo, coverage is what ZoomInfo has (137.9 million contacts in the US, 15.5 million in the UK); with Clay, it depends on the providers you chain, and Clay itself warns that coverage outside the United States is 15 to 25% lower.
The price of one email: GTM.AI credits against Clay credits and actions
ZoomInfo’s app has no public price, so ZoomInfo is represented by GTM.AI, its self-serve API, at 1 credit per record. Clay is shown at its Launch tiers with the help-centre reading of an email (0.5 data credit + 1 action), the cheaper of the two it publishes; the pricing calculator counts 1 credit + 3 actions, which at 5,000 emails costs $350 instead of $185. Emelia appears with its monthly credit pack alone, as its email finder needs no plan. GTM.AI is the most expensive of the three at every volume below. Emelia is the cheapest on every line.
1,000 emails found a month
1,100 emails found a month
5,000 emails found a month
10,000 emails found a month
10,500 emails found a month
50,000 emails found a month
100,000 emails found a month
GTM.AI and Clay in US dollars, their only currency; Emelia in your currency, at the same figure in euros or dollars. Monthly need, at each tool’s published prices. A GTM.AI record carries the direct line and job title too; a Clay row may hit several providers; an Emelia credit is an email found and verified, nothing when none is found. Free plans and credits given once (1,000 at GTM.AI, those Emelia adds to a plan) are left out.
Contracts: a yearly quote against a monthly plan
ZoomInfo: prices on quote, contracts of 1 to 3 years billed in advance, and licence terms that call the agreement not cancellable. Its terms up to March 6, 2024 renewed automatically unless notice was given 60 days before the end, at 10% more; the current version leaves renewal to the order form. In return the contract guarantees 99.9% availability and 95% contact accuracy, with a pro rata refund if ZoomInfo misses them.
Clay: public prices, monthly or yearly (10% off yearly), unlimited seats, and cancellation from the billing settings at any time; the plan runs to the end of the period, then the workspace drops to Free. Fees are non-refundable under Clay’s terms, though credits come back when a provider refunds Clay for invalid data. Only Enterprise, on quote, requires a yearly commitment.
Emelia sits on Clay’s side of this line: published prices, monthly billing (or $370 a year for Start), and no seat count, since its plans follow mailboxes and LinkedIn accounts.
Sending: Engage as an option, the Sequencer from Launch
ZoomInfo sells sequences as Engage, an add-on without a public price: one email provider per user and 500 campaign emails a day, according to its help centre. Its site now sends “sales automation” visitors to its Salesloft partnership, and GTM Workspace has you send AI drafts one by one from Gmail.
Clay’s Sequencer, built on Smartlead, sends cold email from Launch: 1 action per lead enrolled, sequences of up to 4 emails, 10 to 500 sends a day per connected mailbox (20 advised). Mailboxes bought inside Clay need Growth, at $4.50 per mailbox a month.
Emelia’s plans set how many of your own mailboxes you can connect: 3 on Start, 50 on Grow, unlimited on Scale under fair use, with the LinkedIn steps in the same sequence.
LinkedIn: neither one automates it
Neither tool sends LinkedIn invitations or messages for you, according to their product documentation (a ZoomInfo blog post says it “combines LinkedIn automation”). ZoomInfo’s extension reads LinkedIn and Sales Navigator profiles to show a record from its database, Engage only lists a LinkedIn step as a manual task, and LinkedIn otherwise appears as an advertising channel (audiences exported to LinkedIn and Meta). Clay has no LinkedIn automation of its own either: it passes leads to HeyReach and La Growth Machine on your own account, and sends ad audiences to LinkedIn from Growth.
If LinkedIn is part of the plan, Emelia runs invitations and messages from 1, 3 or 10 accounts included in its plans ($29 per extra account), on its own servers, alongside the emails.
ZoomInfo, Clay and Emelia: what each one is built for
Emelia: finding the work emails of leads you already target on LinkedIn and sending the campaign. You export your Sales Navigator searches with no cap on the number of exports, from $37 a month, then Emelia charges 1 credit per email found and sends the sequence, LinkedIn steps included.
ZoomInfo: a large, ready-made database that a sales team searches without building anything, with phone numbers in the same record, intent signals and contractual guarantees, on a yearly contract negotiated with a sales rep.
Clay: enrichment tables that someone on the team designs and maintains, combining many providers and AI research, at public monthly prices with a Free plan to start. More on each tool: ZoomInfo and Clay.
ZoomInfo vs Clay: frequent questions
Nobody can say for ZoomInfo’s app, which is on quote. Against GTM.AI, the part of ZoomInfo with public prices, Clay costs less per email on every line we compared: 1,000 emails a month cost $410 through GTM.AI and $185 on Clay Launch, and $19 with Emelia.
Both. Clay’s Free plan gives 500 actions and 100 data credits a month. ZoomInfo has ZoomInfo Lite, free for non-customers with a work email, and GTM.AI gives 1,000 data credits once. Emelia has a 7-day trial instead.
Only with your own ZoomInfo account. Clay lists 4 ZoomInfo actions (enrich a company, enrich a contact, enrich by ZoomInfo ID, search contacts), all marked “bring your own account”: the records come out of your ZoomInfo contract, and each run also takes Clay actions. It does not replace a ZoomInfo subscription.
ZoomInfo publishes its own figures, 7.7 million contacts in France and 7.0 million in Germany, and says teams that sell into a single market outside North America should test coverage first. Clay’s coverage depends on the providers in the waterfall, and Clay expects it to be lower outside the US.
Emelia features: Email finder · Emelia pricing
Emelia is a ZoomInfo competitor. We have tried to stay fair: every figure about ZoomInfo comes from its own website or public review sites.
