Clay pricing in 2026, the two meters explained

Clay costs $185 a month on Launch and $495 on Growth in 2026, and each plan runs two separate meters, Data Credits and Actions.

Key takeaways

The March 2026 rebuild replaced Starter, Explorer and Pro with Free, Launch and Growth, and split consumption into two counters.
Launch is reported at $185 a month with 2,500 Data Credits and 15,000 Actions. Growth is $495 with 6,000 Data Credits and 40,000 Actions.
Growth costs more per Data Credit than Launch, roughly $0.0825 against $0.0740, which is unusual for a higher tier.
Data marketplace prices fell 50 to 90 percent across most enrichment providers in the same March 2026 update.
Unnegotiated overage is reported at $0.01 to $0.05 per credit, and Enterprise contracts commonly land between $12,000 and $154,000 a year.

Most people looking up Clay pricing are not trying to compare $185 against $495. They are trying to work out what a month of real usage will cost, and the two-meter design is why that question is hard.

Why is Clay pricing hard to predict?

Because a single enrichment step can draw on both meters at once. Data Credits pay for the data you buy from the marketplace. Actions pay for the platform work that fetches it, which includes enrichment steps, AI calls, API requests, CRM pushes and exports. One row can spend from both counters, and the plan runs out when either one empties.

That design is a real improvement over the old single credit pool, because marketplace data is now priced closer to what it costs Clay to buy. It is also the reason a spreadsheet-shaped tool needs a spreadsheet to forecast. Teams that budget only for Data Credits discover the Actions meter, and teams that budget only for Actions discover the marketplace.

What are the criteria that decide your real Clay bill?

Four things decide it. How many rows you enrich a month. How many enrichment steps each row passes through, because a waterfall of six providers is six attempts. How much AI work runs per row. And whether your results push into a CRM, which spends Actions on the way out.

Everything else is noise. Seats are not the lever they are on a database tool, and the plan name matters less than the ratio between those four numbers and your allowance. Score any plan against them before you look at the price.

What do Clay's 2026 plans cost?

Clay's own pricing page, checked at the source on September 14, 2026, shows Launch starting at $185 a month and Growth at $495, each carrying its own allowance on both meters. The Free plan exists for evaluation rather than work, capped at 200 rows per table.

Plan	Monthly price	Data Credits	Actions	Cost per Data Credit	Cost per Action
Free	$0	100	500	n/a	n/a
Launch	$185	2,500	15,000	~$0.0740	~$0.0123
Growth	$495	6,000	40,000	~$0.0825	~$0.0124
Enterprise	Quote	Custom	200,000+	n/a	n/a

Plan prices and allowances were read on Clay's own pricing page on September 14, 2026, and agree with the 2026 analyses from Landbase and Cleanlist consulted the day before. The two right-hand columns are our own division, not figures either source published.

Read those two columns together. The Action rate is effectively flat across tiers, so Growth buys you scale rather than a discount. The Data Credit rate is actually worse on Growth, which means upgrading for data volume alone is the wrong reason to upgrade.

Which meter runs out first?

The Data Credit meter, on most workloads. Launch gives you six Actions per Data Credit and Growth gives 6.67, so if your average enriched row consumes more than six Actions per credit of purchased data, Actions bind first. Below that ratio, credits bind first.

That ratio is the single most useful number to measure in your first month. Run a representative table, then divide the Actions consumed by the Data Credits consumed. If the answer is under six, you are paying for Actions you will not use, and a smaller plan with a credit top-up is cheaper. If it is above six, AI steps and CRM pushes are your cost centre, not the data.

What does annual billing change?

Roughly 10 percent, and the sources disagree on how it is presented. Landbase reports Launch and Growth available monthly or annually with a 10 percent annual discount, bringing them to about $167 and $446 a month. Other 2026 breakdowns describe $185 and $495 as the annual rates with monthly billing adding around 13 percent.

The two descriptions land within a few dollars of each other, which is reassuring for the size of the discount and unhelpful for knowing which number appears on your invoice. Check the toggle on the vendor page before you commit. On a Growth plan the difference between the two readings is about $600 a year.

What are the costs that are not on the pricing page?

Three, and the largest is not Clay's. Unnegotiated overage is reported at $0.01 to $0.05 per credit, which is modest per unit and unbounded in aggregate. Enterprise integrations and professional services are reported at $2,000 to $10,000.

The one that reshapes a budget is bring-your-own-key data. Clay orchestrates third-party providers, and teams that plug in their own ZoomInfo, Clearbit or Apollo contracts pay those separately. LaGrowthMachine's 2026 breakdown puts that additional spend at $10,000 to $50,000 a year for teams running provider subscriptions alongside Clay. Clay is the orchestration layer, and orchestration layers sit on top of bills rather than replacing them.

Enterprise contracts themselves commonly land between $12,000 and $154,000 a year according to Vendr's marketplace data.

What changed in Clay pricing in 2026?

The whole model, in March 2026. Starter, Explorer and Pro were replaced by Free, Launch and Growth. The single credit pool became two meters. Legacy customers kept their old plans, and the ability to switch between legacy tiers closed in April 2026.

Two changes were straightforwardly good for buyers. Marketplace data costs fell 50 to 90 percent across most providers, per Cleanlist. And CRM integrations, HTTP API access and Web Intent moved down from the former $800 Pro plan into the $495 Growth plan, per Salesforge's analysis of the change. A team that needed API access in 2025 paid $800 for it. In 2026 it costs $495.

The change that was not good for buyers is forecastability. One meter was easy to reason about. Two are not.

Who should pay for Clay, and who should not

Pay for it if you have someone who enjoys building, a real use case for multi-provider waterfalls, and enough volume that saving 40 percent on enrichment costs matters. Growth teams with an operations person get more out of Clay than out of any database, because the product rewards the work you put into it.

Do not pay for it if you want a list rather than a system. Clay is not a database and does not claim to be one. It is an orchestration layer over providers you still choose, and its learning curve is the price of admission alongside the subscription. If nobody on the team will own the tables, the tables will not get built, and the subscription becomes the most expensive spreadsheet in the company.

Where Freelvy sits in this conversation

Freelvy is our product, an AI sales platform. It works the way ChatGPT or Claude does. You describe the customer you want in one prompt, and the agent searches 40+ live sources at query time, maps, official company registries, job boards, storefronts and ad libraries, rather than filtering a stored database. It then enriches every row with verified contact data, six providers in cascade for emails and nine for phone numbers, and writes and sequences the outreach from the same brief. Search, enrichment and sequencing sit in one thread instead of three tools.

On pricing, the difference is the number of meters. Plans start at €49 per month for 1,500 credits, team members are unlimited on every plan, and the published credit catalogue prices each action directly, with a verified email at 3 credits and a verified phone number at 15. A row that fails verification is never delivered and never billed, so an entry plan carries 500 verified emails or 100 verified mobiles rather than an allowance you have to model. Where Clay asks you to build the waterfall, the waterfall is already inside the product. There is a free 7-day trial, no credit card, at freelvy.com.

How we verified these numbers

Clay's pricing page renders in JavaScript and our web access on September 13, 2026 was restricted to search, so the first draft rested on third-party analyses. A verification pass on September 14, 2026 read the official pricing page and its FAQ at the source, which confirmed the plan prices, the credit allowances, the 200-row cap on the free tier and the rollover rules described above. Overage rates, provider spend and the Enterprise contract range still rest on third-party analysis and are attributed inline. The cost per Data Credit, the cost per Action and the six-Actions-per-credit ratio are our own arithmetic on those published allowances. The annual billing discrepancy is reported rather than resolved, because the sources genuinely disagree on presentation.

FAQ

How much does Clay cost per month in 2026?

Clay's official pricing page lists Launch starting at $185 a month with 2,500 Data Credits and 15,000 Actions, and Growth at $495 with 6,000 Data Credits and 40,000 Actions. A free plan offers 100 Data Credits and 500 Actions, capped at 200 rows per table. Enterprise is quoted individually.

What is the difference between Data Credits and Actions?

Data Credits pay for data bought from Clay's marketplace of third-party providers. Actions pay for platform work, which covers enrichment steps, AI calls, API requests, CRM pushes and exports. Both meters run at once on most workflows, and a plan is exhausted when either counter empties first.

Does Clay have a free plan?

Yes, with 100 Data Credits and 500 Actions a month and a cap of 200 rows per table. That is enough to learn the interface and run ten to twenty basic enrichments. It is an evaluation tier rather than a working plan, and the row cap is what stops it being usable in production.

Is Clay cheaper than Apollo or Cognism?

It is not comparable, because Clay sells orchestration and they sell data. Apollo bundles a database, sequences and a dialer from $49 per seat. Cognism is quote-only at five figures a year. Clay sits on top of providers you pay for separately, which is why total cost depends on your stack, not on the plan.

What happens if you run out of Clay credits?

You can buy more or wait for the cycle. Unnegotiated overage is reported at $0.01 to $0.05 per credit in 2026 analyses, which is cheap per unit and easy to accumulate. Enterprise contracts usually pre-negotiate the rate, which is the main reason to negotiate at all.

Did Clay get more expensive in 2026?

For most self-serve users, no. Marketplace data costs fell 50 to 90 percent in the March 2026 rebuild, and API access and CRM integrations moved from the $800 tier down to the $495 tier. What got harder was forecasting, because one credit pool became two meters that empty at different speeds.

Do Clay credits roll over?

The two meters behave differently, per Clay's own pricing FAQ checked on September 14, 2026. Actions reset every billing cycle and never roll over. Data Credits do roll over: on Launch and Growth, unused credits can accumulate up to twice your monthly amount, and Enterprise customers can carry up to 15 percent of the prior year's purchased credits into a renewal at an equal or higher commitment.

Sources and methodology

Third-party pages below were consulted on September 13, 2026. Clay's own pricing page and its pricing FAQ were read at the source on September 14, 2026, and the plan prices, allowances, free-tier cap and rollover rules come from there. Figures still resting on third-party analysis are attributed in the text. Per-credit and per-action costs are our own arithmetic.