Clay pricing

About

Clay (clay.com) is an AI-powered go-to-market (GTM) platform that lets sales, marketing, and revenue-operations teams source, enrich, and act on data without stitching together a dozen point tools. Its core product is a spreadsheet-like workspace where every row can be enriched through “waterfalls” that combine 150+ data providers, researched with an AI agent called Claygent, and pushed into CRMs, ad platforms, and email sequencers. Clay positions itself around a new “GTM engineer” persona — operators who build automated prospecting and enrichment workflows the way developers build pipelines.

The company is large for its category and has scaled fast: Clay raised a $40M Series B expansion in January 2025 at a $1.25B valuation, then a $100M Series C in August 2025 at a $3.1B valuation led by CapitalG, publicly crossing $100M ARR along the way. The New York Times later reported it allowed employees to sell shares at a roughly $5 billion valuation, and its enterprise page cites more than 300,000 GTM teams including OpenAI, Anthropic, Rippling, Verkada, and Intercom. Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Brooklyn, New York, Clay framed its Series C publicly as “the GTM engineering era begins now.”

Competitively, Clay sits between single-vendor data tools (ZoomInfo, Apollo, Clearbit) and bespoke internal data pipelines. Rather than reselling one data source, it aggregates many behind a marketplace and charges for the orchestration on top — a structural choice that shapes its entire pricing model.

Pricing summary : How Clay’s two-meter Actions plus Data Credits model works

Clay uses a hybrid pricing model built on two distinct meters that most platforms collapse into one. A plan’s headline price is really a fixed Actions-capacity fee stacked on top of a selectable Data Credits volume, and the credit-based billing pool scales the price as you move the credit slider.

1. Actions (platform capacity): A fixed monthly tier that measures orchestration — each enrichment, AI run, signal, or export costs 1 Action and under $0.01. Capacity is tied to the plan: Free includes 500/mo, Launch 15,000/mo, Growth 40,000/mo, Enterprise 200,000+/mo. Actions reset monthly, do not roll over, and cannot be topped up — you upgrade tiers to get more.
2. Data Credits (marketplace usage): A metered, rollover currency that buys data and AI from 150+ providers. Credits start around $0.05 each and get cheaper at volume; a fully enriched record typically costs 6–20 credits. Each plan ships a base credit allotment (Free 100/mo, Launch 2,500/mo, Growth 6,000/mo) and a selector to buy larger monthly volumes (up to 50K+) at a published per-tier price.
3. Billing cadence: Monthly or annual, with annual saving 10% and granting all credits up front. Launch starts at $185/mo monthly vs $167/mo annual; Growth at $495/mo vs $446/mo.

What makes this different: Clay deliberately separates the cost of doing the work (Actions, near-zero, fixed) from the cost of buying the data (Data Credits, variable, marketplace-priced) — and applies 0% markup on variable AI models, so the most expensive frontier-model runs are passed through at true provider cost.

Pricing by product

Clay platform (self-serve plans)

Clay platform (Enterprise)

Data Credits volume selector (the price driver inside each plan)

Each paid plan exposes a credit-volume selector; the chosen tier sets the credit add-on price stacked on the Actions base. Monthly-billing rates observed on the pricing page:

On annual billing the same ladder is quoted as 30K/yr ($113/mo), 72K/yr ($261/mo), 120K/yr ($414/mo), 240K/yr ($792/mo), and 600K/yr ($1,913/mo), reflecting the 10% annual discount.

AI model pricing inside the credit pool

AI runs consume Data Credits, split into two structures. Fixed-price models (about 80% of models, including Clay’s native Helium/Argon) charge a flat credit count per task; variable-price models (the most advanced reasoning models) charge actual provider cost at 0% markup. Per-row Data Credit rates observed in the AI pricing doc:

Sales motions across products: PLG / self-serve for Free, Launch, and Growth (sign up and pay online, credit slider self-managed); sales-led for Enterprise (custom quote with annual commitment).

Hidden costs : What Clay teams actually pay once credit volumes scale

The “$185/mo” and “$495/mo” headline prices understate what active teams pay, because the credit selector is the real cost driver and Data Credits are consumed faster than most buyers expect (a fully enriched record is 6–20 credits, and AI columns charge every row).

Mid-size Growth team running heavy enrichment

A Growth team that outgrows its 6,000 included credits and selects the 20,000/mo tier pays roughly $1,085/mo before any mid-cycle top-up — and top-ups carry a 30% premium — so the data spend quickly dwarfs the Actions base fee.

Want to estimate your own Clay bill? Use the Clay pricing calculator to model your monthly cost based on Actions volume, Data Credits tier, and AI model mix.

Pricing evolution : From single-meter credits toward a two-axis capacity model

Clay’s pricing has gone through three structural eras: early flat-tier subscriptions (2022), a single Clay-credit meter that grew a volume selector (2023–2025), and the two-meter Actions + Data Credits model introduced in its largest restructure since 2022 (2026).

Cadence

Tracked range: 2022-06–2026-06. Quarters not listed were verified stable (0 price changes, 0 SKU additions). 2025 snapshots between the single-meter ladder and the 2026 restructure were sparse in the archive; the restructure is dated from Clay’s published pricing memo.

Notable changes

• 2022-06 — Earliest archived clay.com/pricing: flat Basic $199/mo and Explorer $349/mo subscriptions with a custom Pro plan (Wayback snapshot).
• 2023-05 — Consolidated to a single Clay-credit meter (Starter $129 / Explorer $349 / Pro $700) with GPT-4 bundled and a 25% annual discount (Wayback snapshot).
• 2023-12 — “Select credits” volume selector added to every plan; Pro base rose to $800/mo (Wayback snapshot).
• 2025-01-22 — Series B expansion: $40M at a $1.25B valuation after ~6x growth in 2024 (Clay blog).
• 2025-08-05 — Series C: $100M at a $3.1B valuation led by CapitalG; Clay publicly crossed $100M ARR (TechCrunch).
• 2026-03 — Largest pricing restructure since 2022: introduced the two-meter Actions + Data Credits model, cut Data Credits 50-90%, and collapsed four paid plans to three (Clay pricing memo).
• 2026-06-02 — Live page confirms the Actions-capacity-tier plus Data-Credits-volume model with fixed vs 0%-markup variable AI pricing (clay.com/pricing, captured).

The 2026 two-meter restructure in detail

For its first three years of credit pricing, Clay collapsed two very different costs into one meter: the data it bought on your behalf and the orchestration work it performed. As Clay grew from “a simpler enrichment-oriented product to a true end-to-end GTM platform,” that single meter mispriced both — its published memo notes the smallest self-serve customers paid close to 8 cents per credit while larger ones paid roughly 80% less, a nearly 5x spread.

The 2026 restructure split the meter in two. Data Credits were cut 50-90% to match what data costs externally (removing the platform markup), and a new Actions meter began charging sub-cent fees for orchestration. The four-plan ladder (Starter / Explorer / Pro / Enterprise) collapsed to three (Launch / Growth / Enterprise), with Growth’s $495/mo positioned as “$300 cheaper” than the legacy $800/mo Pro plan. Clay framed the change as deliberately “revenue- and profit-negative” in the short term — a rare public admission that a pricing change was designed to lower bills and realign incentives with customer value rather than cost recovery.

What’s unique : Two-meter billing and zero-markup variable AI pricing

1. Two separate usage meters. Clay bills Actions (platform orchestration, fixed-capacity, near-zero per unit) and Data Credits (marketplace data purchases, metered, rollover) as independent dimensions — buyers can scale data spend without changing platform tier, and vice versa.

2. A credit slider inside every plan. A single plan name spans a wide price range because the Data Credits volume is selectable, turning packaging into a continuous usage dial rather than fixed steps.

3. Zero-markup variable AI pricing. The most advanced reasoning models pass through at exactly Clay’s provider cost, with an estimate withheld upfront and unused credits refunded after each run.

Strengths & weaknesses

Billing UX : Self-serve credit controls, dashboards, and budgets

• Data Credits volume selector — on each paid plan the pricing page and in-app Settings → Plans & billing let you pick a monthly credit tier (e.g. 2.5K, 6K, 10K, 20K, 50K), which sets the credit add-on price.
• Monthly / Annual toggle — switches every plan between monthly billing and annual billing (annual saves 10% and releases all credits up front).
• Credit usage dashboard — Settings → Credit usage shows Data Credit consumption across workspace, workbooks, and tables.
• One-time Data Credit top-ups — Settings → Usage → “Add one-time data credits” for mid-cycle needs, charged at a 30% premium and subject to rollover caps.
• Workbook-level credit budgets (Enterprise) — admins set per-workbook Data Credit spend limits that block further Actions once the cap is hit.
• Per-run AI budget and estimates — variable AI models display an estimated credits-per-row (with a ~ tilde) before running and let you cap spend per run.

Strategic wins : Pricing decisions that reinforce Clay’s GTM position

1. Separating orchestration cost from data cost

By metering Actions and Data Credits independently, Clay aligns price with two genuinely different cost drivers. See our take on choosing the right usage metric for why decoupling meters can reduce buyer friction.

2. Turning packaging into a usage dial

The in-plan credit selector lets the same plan serve a wide range of volumes, smoothing the upgrade path — a pattern explored in usage-based pricing fundamentals.

3. Zero-markup AI as a trust signal

Passing the most expensive frontier-model runs through at exactly provider cost defuses the most common objection to credit-based AI billing — that the platform is arbitraging tokens. It reframes Clay’s margin as orchestration, a theme we unpack in pricing AI products with unpredictable costs.

4. Publicly cutting prices to realign with value

Clay’s 2026 memo cut Data Credits 50-90% and called the change “revenue- and profit-negative” in the short term — a rare public price cut from a company that had just raised at a $3.1B valuation. Re-anchoring data at near-marketplace cost (and isolating Clay’s margin in the orchestration meter) trades short-term revenue for a cleaner value story, the kind of value-metric realignment most platforms avoid once they have pricing power.

Areas to improve : Where Clay’s two-meter model adds friction

1. Cost predictability across two meters

Two meters plus a slider plus variable AI make it hard to forecast a bill. A built-in monthly-spend forecaster tied to historical usage would reduce anxiety — see usage-based pricing for SaaS and AI.

2. Actions inflexibility

Because Actions can’t be topped up, hitting the cap forces a full tier upgrade. An á-la-carte Actions booster would soften the cliff and reduce the bill-shock risk that pushes teams to over-provision.

3. Gated Enterprise pricing

Enterprise is fully custom-quoted with no anchor numbers, which slows self-qualification. Publishing even a starting-from range or a public floor on Actions/credits would help mid-market buyers self-select before talking to sales.

Key takeaways

1. Separate your meters when costs differ structurally. Clay’s split of Actions (platform) and Data Credits (data) lets each scale on its own driver.
2. Make packaging a dial, not just steps. An in-plan credit selector turns one plan into a continuum and smooths upgrades.
3. Zero markup can be a differentiator. Passing frontier-model costs through at true cost builds trust on the most expensive line item.
4. Rollover reduces waste anxiety. Letting Data Credits bank up to 2× softens the fear of over-buying.
5. A public price cut can be a positioning move. Clay split one meter into two and cut Data Credits 50-90% in 2026, accepting short-term revenue loss to remove markup and re-anchor its margin in orchestration — repricing as strategy, not just discounting.

UBP implications

1. Multi-meter pricing is viable when cost drivers diverge. Clay shows buyers will accept two meters if each maps to a real, separable cost.
2. Pass-through variable pricing reframes AI margin. Charging frontier models at 0% markup shifts the value story to orchestration, not token arbitrage.
3. Rollover vs reset is a lever, not a default. Choosing which meter rolls over (data) and which resets (capacity) shapes upgrade behavior. Clay’s 2026 move from one credit meter to two shows that a maturing platform can re-split its value metric as the product evolves — pricing structure is not a one-time decision.

Sources

• Clay pricing page (accessed 2026-06-02)
• Clay pricing calculator (accessed 2026-06-02)
• Clay docs — Actions & Data Credits (accessed 2026-06-02)
• Clay docs — How AI is priced (accessed 2026-06-02)
• Clay Enterprise (accessed 2026-06-02)

Browse the full pricing blueprint to compare Clay against other usage-based platforms.

Bottom line

Clay turns GTM data work into a two-meter usage business: a fixed Actions tier for the orchestration it performs, and a selectable, rollover Data Credits pool for the data and AI it buys on your behalf at marketplace prices — with zero markup on the priciest frontier models. It’s a clean separation of “work done” from “data bought,” at the cost of a bill that takes two dials and a slider to predict.

Pricing timeline : Major events on a vertical axis

Each milestone below corresponds to a public pricing change, product launch, or material adjustment. Major events use a filled marker; minor adjustments use a faded one.

Live two-meter model with credit selector verified

Jun 2026

Live clay.com/pricing confirms Free, Launch (from $185/mo monthly, $167/mo annual), Growth (from $495/mo monthly, $446/mo annual), and custom Enterprise (200K+ Actions, 100K+ Data Credits). Data Credits roll over (2x on Launch/Growth, 15% annual on Enterprise); Actions reset and require a tier upgrade; annual saves 10%.

Two-meter restructure: Actions + Data Credits

Mar 2026

Clay's largest restructure since 2022 (internal pricing memo): split billing into Actions (orchestration capacity) and Data Credits (marketplace data cost), cut Data Credits 50-90% to match external prices, and collapsed four paid plans to three — Launch $185/mo, Growth $495/mo ('$300 cheaper' than the legacy $800 Pro), Enterprise custom. AI split into fixed-credit and 0%-markup variable pricing.

Five-tier single-meter credit ladder at scale

Jul 2024

Archived page shows Free $0 (100 credits), Starter $149/mo (2,000), Explorer $349/mo (10,000, 'Most Popular'), Pro $800/mo (50,000, 'Best Value'), and custom Enterprise. Still one credit meter; cost-per-credit fell ~7x from Starter to Pro, and 30,000+ teams were cited.

'Select credits' volume selector introduced

Dec 2023

Each plan gained a 'Select credits' volume picker, turning packaging into a usage dial: Starter $149+/mo, Explorer $349+/mo, Pro $800+/mo, plus a custom Enterprise tier. Pro's base moved from $700 to $800/mo as the credit selector became the price driver.

Single-meter credit model with GPT-4 included

May 2023

Pricing simplified to a single Clay-credit meter across Free, Starter $129/mo (2,000 credits), Explorer $349/mo (12,000 credits), and Pro $700/mo (50,000 credits). Annual billing carried a 25% discount; GPT-4 enrichment was bundled into every plan.

Early flat-tier subscriptions (Basic / Explorer / Pro)

Jun 2022

Earliest archived clay.com/pricing shows flat monthly subscriptions: Basic $199/mo (2,500 records, 0 premium credits), Explorer $349/mo (5,000 records, 1,500 premium credits/mo), and a Custom Pro plan. Enrichments charged 1 credit/contact; premium credits were a separate add-on bucket.