What is Clay?
If you’ve spent any time in the B2B data enrichment space, you’ve probably heard about Clay. It’s one of those tools that people either love or find intimidating. And honestly, both reactions make sense.
Clay is a data enrichment platform that connects to over 50 different data sources. But calling it just an “enrichment platform” undersells what it actually does. Think of Clay as Zapier for data enrichment, or a spreadsheet with superpowers, or even a multi-source enrichment hub where you can pull data from dozens of providers all in one place.
The key differentiator that sets Clay apart from every other tool in this space is waterfall enrichment. Instead of querying just one data source and hoping for the best, Clay lets you try multiple sources until you find what you’re looking for. This single feature changes the game when it comes to data coverage.
How Clay Actually Works
Let’s talk about what it’s like to use Clay day-to-day. The interface looks like a spreadsheet, which makes it approachable if you’re used to working in Excel or Google Sheets. You’ve got rows and columns, but each column can be an enrichment that pulls data from external sources.
Here’s a typical scenario: You start with Column A containing company domains and Column B with contact names. Then you add enrichment columns. Column C might find emails by checking Clearbit first, then Apollo, then Hunter until it finds a match. Column D could find phone numbers by trying Cognism, then Lusha. Column E might pull company size data from Clearbit. Each column is doing work for you automatically.
The Magic of Waterfall Enrichment
Let’s say you’re trying to find someone’s email address. With a traditional approach, you’d pick one data source like Clearbit, run your query, and accept whatever coverage you get. If Clearbit doesn’t have the email, you’re out of luck. That’s how you end up with 60-70% coverage at best, leaving 30-40% of your list empty.
Clay’s waterfall approach is different. It tries Clearbit first. If found, great—use it and stop. If not found, it automatically moves to Apollo. Found it there? Perfect, use it and stop. Still nothing? Try Hunter. This continues until you find the data or exhaust your sources.
The result is coverage rates of 90% or higher instead of 60-70%. You’re not just getting more data—you’re getting significantly more data. And because Clay only charges you when data is found (we’ll get to pricing in a minute), you’re not wasting money on failed lookups.
The Data Source Library
Clay connects to more than 50 data providers. This includes the big players like Clearbit, Apollo, ZoomInfo, and Cognism for general enrichment. For email finding specifically, you’ve got Hunter, Snov.io, and Voila Norbert. For phone numbers, there’s Lusha, Cognism, and ZoomInfo. Company data can come from Crunchbase, PitchBook, or BuiltWith for technology tracking.
But it goes beyond traditional B2B data providers. Clay also integrates with social platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter, email verification services like ZeroBounce and NeverBounce, and even AI models like OpenAI and Claude for custom data processing.
AI Capabilities That Actually Matter
Speaking of AI, Clay has built-in GPT-powered features that go way beyond simple data lookups. You can use AI to extract custom data, summarize content, or generate personalized messaging at scale.
For example, you could set up a column that takes a company’s website URL and asks AI to “Summarize what this company does in 2 sentences.” The AI reads the website and generates a concise summary automatically. Or you could have AI analyze someone’s recent LinkedIn posts and generate a personalized opening line for your outreach. This kind of thing used to require custom development—now it’s just another column in Clay.
Features That Set Clay Apart
Let’s dig deeper into what makes Clay powerful for teams that need serious data enrichment capabilities.
Building Tables Your Way
Clay gives you multiple ways to get data into the system. You can upload CSV files, connect directly to your CRM, import lists from LinkedIn, use API connections, or even use their Chrome extension to scrape data while browsing. The flexibility means you can work with data however it naturally exists in your workflow.
A typical workflow might look like this: Upload a CSV with 500 company domains. Add enrichment columns to pull company details, find decision-makers, get their contact information, and validate emails. Run the enrichment and watch Clay work through your waterfall logic. Then export the enriched data or push it directly to your CRM.
Enrichment Columns Explained
Clay supports different types of enrichments depending on what you need. Company enrichments can pull firmographics, technology usage, and funding information. Person enrichments find emails, phone numbers, job titles, and LinkedIn profiles. Verification enrichments validate email addresses to reduce bounce rates. AI enrichments let you run custom GPT actions on your data. Web enrichments can scrape websites, extract specific information, or summarize content.
The power is in combining these different enrichment types to build exactly the dataset you need.
Custom Formulas and Logic
Clay supports formulas similar to Excel or Google Sheets, letting you build custom logic into your workflows. You might create a formula that categorizes companies as “Enterprise” or “SMB” based on employee count. Or concatenate first names and company names to create personalized greeting text. Or use GPT formulas to generate entirely custom content based on multiple data points.
This is where Clay goes from being a simple data tool to a real workflow engine. You’re not just pulling data—you’re transforming it, analyzing it, and preparing it exactly how you need it.
Integration Ecosystem
Once you’ve enriched your data in Clay, you need to get it where it matters. Clay integrates with major CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot, sales engagement platforms like Outreach and Salesloft, and communication tools like Slack. You can also use webhooks to send data anywhere with an API.
The two-way integrations mean you can also pull data from your CRM into Clay for enrichment, then push it back with all the new information added.
Pricing: What You’ll Actually Pay
Clay uses a credit-based pricing model, which makes sense given the waterfall approach. You pay for what you use, and you only get charged when data is actually found.
Here’s the breakdown: The Free plan gives you 100 credits to test things out. Starter is $149 per month for 3,000 credits. Explorer costs $349 per month and includes 12,000 credits. Pro is $800 per month with 60,000 credits. Most serious teams end up on Explorer or Pro depending on their volume.
Each data lookup costs credits. A Clearbit company lookup might cost 1-2 credits. An Apollo person search costs 1 credit. Hunter email finding is 1 credit. AI actions typically cost 1-5 credits depending on complexity. Web scraping is usually 1 credit.
Here’s where waterfall gets interesting from a cost perspective. If you’re finding an email with a 3-source waterfall, best case scenario costs you 1 credit (found on the first try). Worst case is 3 credits (had to check all three sources). You’re not paying for failed lookups at each source—only for the successful one.
To optimize costs, order your waterfall by accuracy (most accurate source first), use conditional logic to skip unnecessary lookups when you already have data, cache previous results to avoid duplicate enrichments, and make sure you’re on the right plan for your usage level.
Real-World Use Cases
Let me walk through some scenarios where Clay really shines.
Maximum Email Coverage
Your goal is to find emails for 90% or more of your target list. You set up an email column with a waterfall that tries Clearbit first (high accuracy), then Apollo (good coverage), then Hunter (pattern matching), and finally Snov.io as a backup. Running this waterfall typically gets you 92% email coverage compared to 65% if you’d just used one source.
Account Research at Scale
You need to research hundreds of target accounts quickly. You start with company domains as your input. Then you add enrichments for company size from Clearbit, tech stack from BuiltWith, recent funding from Crunchbase, key contacts from Apollo, and an AI-generated summary from GPT. The output is complete account profiles ready for your sales team to use.
Personalization Without the Manual Work
You want to generate personalized first lines for outreach to each contact. You enrich your list with recent LinkedIn posts, company news, and role-based challenges. Then you add an AI column that says “Write a personalized first line for this person who is a VP of Sales at this software company. Reference their recent post about scaling their team.” Clay generates a custom first line for each contact automatically.
Intelligent Lead Scoring
You need to score leads based on multiple factors. You enrich for company size, industry, tech stack, funding rounds, and intent signals. Then you use formulas to calculate scores: 20 points if company size is over 100 employees, 15 points if they’re in the SaaS industry, 10 points if they use Salesforce, 25 points if they’ve raised funding recently. The result is a lead score that helps your team prioritize outreach.
The Good, The Bad, and The Learning Curve
Let’s be honest about Clay’s strengths and weaknesses.
What Clay Does Really Well
The coverage you get from waterfall enrichment is unmatched. You’ll consistently hit 90%+ coverage rates when other tools top out at 60-70%. The flexibility to build any workflow you can imagine is incredible—if you can think of a data enrichment process, Clay can probably do it. AI integration is built in, not bolted on, making it easy to use GPT features. You only pay when data is found, which is more cost-efficient than paying for failed lookups. And having 50+ data sources in one platform beats managing separate subscriptions to each provider.
Where Clay Falls Short
There’s definitely a learning curve. Clay is not pick-up-and-go easy like some simpler tools. The complexity can be overwhelming when you’re first starting out. Clay doesn’t have its own database—it’s purely an enrichment tool, not a prospecting database like Apollo or ZoomInfo. You need to actively manage your credit usage to avoid surprise bills. And while support has improved, it can sometimes be slow during busy periods.
Clay vs. The Competition
Clay vs. Apollo
Apollo is a prospecting database with 275 million contacts. Clay doesn’t have a database—it connects to many databases including Apollo. Apollo offers built-in engagement tools like email sequences. Clay focuses purely on enrichment. Apollo is simpler to use but gives you single-source coverage. Clay is more complex but delivers higher coverage through waterfall. Apollo uses per-user pricing. Clay uses usage-based pricing.
Use Apollo if you want a simpler workflow with prospecting and engagement in one tool. Use Clay if you want maximum coverage and flexibility in your enrichment process.
Clay vs. Clearbit
Clearbit is a single data source with excellent quality. Clay connects to 50+ sources including Clearbit. Clearbit’s real-time API is fantastic for live enrichment. Clay works better for batch processing and maximum coverage. If you need one high-quality source with real-time capabilities, Clearbit is great. If you need the highest possible coverage by checking multiple sources, Clay wins.
Clay vs. Building Custom Solutions
You could theoretically build custom code that queries multiple data providers with waterfall logic. Clay can be set up in hours. Custom code takes weeks to build and requires ongoing maintenance. Clay is highly flexible. Custom code gives you complete control but at the cost of development time and resources. For most teams, Clay makes way more sense unless you have very specific requirements that absolutely require custom development.
Who Should Actually Use Clay
Clay is a fantastic fit for operations and RevOps teams who have the technical capacity to learn the platform. Power users who are comfortable with complexity will love it. Teams that need maximum data coverage and are willing to invest time in setup will see great ROI. If you want flexible, customizable workflows or you’re doing AI-powered personalization at scale, Clay is built for you.
Clay is probably not the right fit if you want a simple, out-of-the-box solution that doesn’t require configuration. If you need a prospecting database rather than an enrichment tool, look at Apollo or ZoomInfo instead. Teams with limited technical capacity might struggle with the learning curve. If you’re processing very low volumes, the pricing might not make sense. And if you’re on a tight budget, the credit costs can add up quickly.
Getting Started: A Practical Timeline
If you decide to try Clay, here’s a realistic timeline for getting up to speed.
In your first week, focus on the basics. Import a small test list of 50-100 records. Try single-source enrichment to understand how columns work. Pay attention to credit consumption so you understand the costs. Export your results and verify the data quality.
Week two is when you tackle waterfall enrichment. Set up a simple 2-source waterfall and run it. Compare your coverage to what you got from single-source enrichment in week one. Experiment with source order to find what works best. Keep monitoring credit usage to understand the cost implications.
By week three, you’re ready for advanced features. Add AI enrichment to generate custom content or summaries. Build custom formulas to transform your data. Connect Clay to your CRM for automatic data flows. Create reusable templates for common workflows you’ll run repeatedly.
Key Takeaways
Clay is powerful, but it’s not for everyone. Here’s what you need to know: Waterfall enrichment from 50+ data sources delivers coverage rates above 90%, which is significantly higher than single-source tools. You only pay when data is found, making the credit-based model more efficient than paying for failed lookups. The flexible, customizable workflows mean you can build almost any enrichment process you can imagine. Clay is best suited for power users and operations teams who have the capacity to learn the platform. There’s a real learning curve, but the ceiling is high—once you master Clay, you can do things that aren’t possible with simpler tools.
The ROI is absolutely there if you invest the time to learn the platform properly. For teams doing serious data enrichment at scale, Clay often becomes indispensable.
Need Help With Clay Setup?
We’ve built Clay workflows for dozens of companies and helped them achieve coverage rates they didn’t think were possible. If you want to maximize your enrichment coverage without spending weeks figuring out the platform, book a call with our team. We’ll show you exactly how to set up waterfalls, optimize credit usage, and build workflows that actually work for your specific use case.