Keencrest guides

Clay alternatives for lead enrichment and list building

By Keencrest · 2026-11-01

Prices checked 2026-11-01 on each vendor's own pricing page or Apify Store listing. Prices change; check the linked page before you buy. We have not tested the competitors' output quality, so this guide compares price, billing unit and limits only. We make the Data Gleaner Actors and the Keencrest lead packs, and say where they lose.

Demand check: about 480 US searches a month for "clay alternatives", with a $41.28 suggested bid (DataForSEO Google Ads data, 2026-11-01). The bid is high, so the people searching are mostly buyers comparing paid tools, and this page is written for them.

What Clay is, and what it costs (clay.com/pricing)

Clay is a table where each column pulls data from a provider (it says 150+) or an AI research agent, chained in a "waterfall" so a second source fills what the first missed. It is a workflow builder first and a data source second. Billing has two meters: data credits and actions.

PlanPriceIncludes
Free$06,000 actions and 1,200 data credits a year; tables capped at 200 rows; no phone-number enrichment
Launch$167 a month billed annually; $185 billed monthly2,500 data credits and 15,000 actions a month (180,000 actions a year, 30,000 data credits a year)
Growth$446 a month billed annually; $495 billed monthly6,000 data credits a month (72,000 a year) and 480,000 actions a year, plus CRM auto-sync
EnterpriseContact sales-

The page says data credits start at $0.05 each and fall with scale, and actions cost under a cent each. Launch's $167 over 2,500 credits is about 6.7 cents per credit if you use only credits and no actions. A one-off list therefore costs you at least a month of a plan plus time to learn the tool.

Alternatives, by what you are doing

OptionPrice (source)Pick it whenCatch
ApolloFree plan; Basic $49 per seat a month billed annually, $65 billed monthlyYou want a ready people database rather than building waterfallsFewer data sources than a waterfall; per-seat pricing
LushaFree 40 credits a month; Starter $37.45 a month billed yearly for 4,800 credits a yearYou need verified phones and emails for named people, nothing builtAbout 9 cents a credit on the paid plans
Data Gleaner Google Maps Leads (ours)$0.0015 per place; contacts $0.002 only when found (Apify listing)The list is local businesses and you want name, address, phone, website and published email in one run15 users on its listing; no people, no waterfall, no AI research
Data Gleaner Website Contact Details Scraper (ours)$0.002 per website where an email is found, nothing otherwise (Apify listing)You already have company domains and need the addresses the companies publishNo named people, no job titles, no verification, no phones for large firms; 56 users on its listing
Keencrest lead packs (ours)$19 for 250 leads, $49 for 1,000, $99 for 2,500; free 25-lead sampleYou want a finished CSV of local businesses for a trade and cityOrdered by email, paid by PayPal invoice; local businesses only, not a people database

When Clay is worth it

When it is not: you need a list of plumbers or dentists in a city. A Maps-based scraper or a finished pack costs a few dollars to tens of dollars, with no subscription. Compare the three Maps tools in best Google Maps lead scrapers in 2026, and the buying routes in B2B lead list for local services.

Everything here compares published prices and stated limits. We have not tested any of these tools' data quality, so we say nothing about whose contacts are more accurate; test a sample of your own contacts on the free tier before paying anyone.

Try it: Google Maps Leads Scraper on Apify. $0.0015 per place, contacts $0.002 only when found. The Apify free plan includes monthly credit, so a test run costs nothing out of pocket.

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