Spreadsheet-style GTM workspace running waterfall enrichment, AI research and CRM sync on two separate meters: Actions and Data Credits.
Growth engineers and RevOps people who want to build their own enrichment logic rather than buy a finished SDR. Clay's pricing page puts multi-provider waterfalls, Claygent AI research and bring-your-own-API-key on every plan including Free, so you can chain providers per field and pay only the Action when you supply your own key. Growth, which starts at $185/mo annual, is the first tier with CRM auto-sync, data warehouse sync, HTTP API integrations and webhooks.
Clay meters two currencies and you can run dry on either independently. The Actions & Data Credits doc states Actions cannot be topped up at all - "You must upgrade to a higher plan tier" - while Data Credits can only be topped up at a 30% premium, and the same doc says each fully enriched record typically costs 6-20 Data Credits, so a 10,000-row list can clear a Growth plan's 6,000 monthly credits before month end. The Free plan is a demo surface rather than a working tier: 200 rows per table, and no phone enrichment, signals, scheduled runs, email campaigns, CRM integrations or HTTP API.
Pros
Cons
Clay's docs define Actions as the orchestration you run: one per enrichment, one per AI run, one per record exported. Data Credits buy the underlying data from third-party providers in Clay's marketplace. Importing your own data and transforming data inside Clay consume neither. The practical effect is that every enrichment costs one Action plus a variable number of Data Credits, and you are billed on both meters at once.
The two meters behave differently. If you exhaust Data Credits you can upgrade your credit tier at no premium, or buy a one-time top-up at a 30% premium. If you exhaust Actions there is no top-up available at all; the docs state you must upgrade to a higher plan tier. Actions reset each billing cycle and do not roll over, while Data Credits roll over for roughly one month's worth.
Partly. Clay's docs state that connecting your own provider API keys eliminates the Data Credit cost, and the pricing FAQ puts the saving at 50-80% on Data Credits. However, an Action is still consumed per enrichment, so your Actions meter burns at the same rate. For AI, usage is billed directly by the external provider rather than through Clay credits, and Clay only shows Actions used.
Clay's docs state it acts as a data processor while you remain the data controller, and that customer data is primarily processed in the United States on AWS US-East. No EU residency option is stated. The docs also state customer data is never used to train Clay's models or those of its AI providers, name OpenAI, Anthropic and Google as AI subprocessors, and state that workspace deletion removes all data after 30 days.
Facts sourced from the vendor’s own site, last verified 2026-10-10.
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