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.
- Clay's pricing page lists Launch 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, or $167 and $446 a month billed annually.
- Clay prices each meter separately. On Launch, 2,500 Data Credits cost $125 and 15,000 Actions cost $60 a month, and 6,000 Data Credits cost $290 a month on either plan.
- Clay says its most-used enrichments cost 50 percent fewer credits on average since the March 2026 update, and an enrichment that returns no result is not charged.
- Extra Data Credits cost 30 percent more than the plan rate on Launch and Growth, and Vendr's buyer data puts the median Clay contract at $50,000 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 Clay buys for you from its marketplace, and for most AI model runs, which cost a flat number of Data Credits per task. Actions pay for the platform work, which Clay describes as routing the request, calling the provider, running the workflow and returning the result to your table. A lookup that returns nothing costs neither meter, and a run on your own API key uses Actions only. 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 each enrichment step that returns a result is charged. 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, read on September 23, 2026, shows Launch at $185 a month and Growth at $495 on monthly billing, each carrying its own allowance on both meters. The Free plan exists for evaluation rather than work, capped at 200 rows per table.
Plan prices and allowances were read on Clay's own pricing page on September 23, 2026. Each plan price is the sum of two lines chosen separately on that page, one for Actions and one for Data Credits.
That split shows where the money goes. On Launch, the Actions line costs $60 a month for 15,000 Actions and the Data Credits line $125 for 2,500 credits, which puts a Data Credit at $0.05, the entry rate Clay gives in its FAQ. On Growth, 6,000 Data Credits cost $290 a month, the same price as the 6,000-credit tier on Launch, and 40,000 Actions cost $205 against $150 for the same volume on Launch. Data costs the same on both plans, and the $55 difference sits in the Actions line of the plan that includes CRM sync, the HTTP API, webhooks and web intent.
| Option | Price |
|---|---|
| Freelvy Starter | €49/month |
| Clay Launch, annual billing | $167/month |
| Clay Launch, monthly billing | $185/month |
| Clay Growth, annual billing | $446/month |
| Clay Growth, monthly billing | $495/month |
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. Clay sizes the Actions line to cover 90 percent of customer usage and lets you choose each line separately, so a table that needs more data calls for a higher Data Credit tier rather than a higher plan. Top-ups cost 30 percent more than the plan rate, so a team that tops up every month should compare that cost with the next Data Credit tier. A ratio well above six means HTTP calls, CRM pushes or runs on your own API keys are driving the Actions.
What does annual billing change?
Annual billing saves 10 percent. Clay's pricing page shows $185 and $495 a month on monthly billing, and $167 and $446 a month billed annually, with all credits granted up front on annual plans. On Growth that is $5,352 a year instead of $5,940.
What are the costs that are not on the pricing page?
Three, and the largest is not Clay's. Extra Data Credits cost 30 percent more than your plan's rate on Launch and Growth, and more Actions come from moving to the next Action tier, per Clay's pricing page. Enterprise customers may also pay $2,000 to $10,000 for custom integrations, onboarding or professional services, according to Vendr.
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. Vendr notes that using ZoomInfo data inside Clay requires a ZoomInfo contract, which can add $10,000 to $50,000 or more a year. Clay is the orchestration layer, and orchestration layers sit on top of bills rather than replacing them.
Vendr's buyer data puts the median Clay contract at $50,000 a year, with a range of $16,260 to $154,000 across 92 purchases, in a guide last updated in February 2026, before the pricing rebuild.
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 good for buyers. Clay says its most-used enrichments now cost 50 percent fewer credits on average, and an enrichment that returns no result is not charged. CRM integrations and web intent moved from the former Pro plan, listed at $720 a month billed yearly on Clay's pricing page in January 2026, into Growth at $446 billed yearly. One change went the other way. The HTTP API and webhooks, included in the former Explorer plan at $314 a month billed yearly, now require Growth, as Salesforge's analysis of the change also notes.
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 for Clay's lower data prices to matter. Growth teams with a RevOps or 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. If that is your team, our guide to Clay alternatives for a small team sorts the replacements by situation.
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 Freelvy 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, 18 providers in cascade for emails and 12 for phone numbers, and writes and sequences the outreach from the same brief. The waterfalls find and verify more than 92% of emails and find more than 90% of phone numbers. 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 phone numbers rather than an allowance you have to model. Where Clay asks you to build the waterfall, the waterfall is already inside Freelvy's data enrichment. There is a free 7-day trial, no credit card, at freelvy.com.
How we verified these numbers
We read Clay's pricing page and pricing FAQ on September 23, 2026, and the January 31, 2026 archive of that page for the legacy plans. Plan prices, the price of each meter, the annual discount, top-ups and rollover rules come from Clay. Provider spend and Enterprise contract values come from Vendr and are attributed inline. The six-Actions-per-credit ratio is our own arithmetic on the published allowances.
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 and for most AI model runs. Actions pay for platform work, such as running enrichment steps, API requests and CRM pushes. 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, and Clay also offers a 14-day trial of its paid plans. Cleanlist estimates that 100 credits yield 20 to 50 enriched contacts, depending on the providers a table calls. 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. Our Clay vs Apollo comparison costs both on the same 1,000 verified emails.
What happens if you run out of Clay credits?
You can top up or move to a larger tier. On Launch and Growth, extra Data Credits cost 30 percent more than your plan's rate, and more Actions come from moving to the next Action tier. Enterprise contracts set the top-up price in the contract, which is one reason to negotiate.
Did Clay get more expensive in 2026?
It depends on what you used. Billed yearly, the entry plan moved from Starter at $134 a month in January 2026 to Launch at $167, and the cheapest plan with the HTTP API moved from Explorer at $314 to Growth at $446, while CRM integrations fell from Pro at $720 to Growth. Data got cheaper, since Clay says its most-used enrichments cost 50 percent fewer credits on average. 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 read on September 23, 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
Clay's pricing page and pricing FAQ were read on September 23, 2026, together with the January 31, 2026 archive of that page for the legacy plans. Third-party pages below were read on September 13, 2026 and again on September 23, 2026, and the figures taken from them are attributed in the text.
- clay.com, pricing
- web.archive.org, clay.com pricing
- cleanlist.ai, blog 2026 03 12 clay pricing changes 2026
- salesforge.ai, blog clay pricing
- vendr.com, marketplace clay
- https://freelvy.com/pricing
Related reading: Apollo alternatives compared by problem, Cognism pricing in 2026, and the best AI prospecting tools of 2026.