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Last updated October 31, 2026. Every price below was read from the vendor's own pricing page on that date. Prices change often, so check the linked page before you buy.
Where I still use Clay, and what replaced the rest
I was a Clay nut. My 2024 videos told you to centralize everything into Clay, and I had campaigns running 65 columns wide. That's not how I build in 2026. Claude Code is my home base now, and Clay is one tool it calls.
I still pay Clay for one job: Claygent. I tried to build my own version of it over and over, and I think Clay prices it as a loss leader, the way a grocery store sells milk below cost to get you in the door. Anytime I need web research on a row or a custom snippet, that goes through Clay. Finding companies, scoring them and finding the people runs from Claude Code, and the finished rows get pushed to Clay at the end. One signal system I built that way finds Series A companies funded in the last 24 hours, enriches them and pushes them to Clay for under $2 a month.
Your plan changes the answer. When I ranked 47 GTM tools, Clay on the legacy plan was instant S tier. The newer plans meter two things: actions and data credits. Launch is $167 a month for 15,000 actions and 3,000 data credits. Growth is $446 a month for 40,000 actions and 6,000 data credits, and Clay's pricing page puts HTTP API integrations and webhook automation on Growth, not Launch. So if an agent drives Clay through HTTP or webhooks, you're on Growth, listed at $446 a month, before you add a single extra data credit. On those plans I'm far less inclined. It's still S tier for an enterprise that can afford the raw cost, so for me it lands between B and S. If you don't have the legacy plan, look at Databar, whose $99 Build plan lists MCP and CLI access, and the others below.
The biggest saving happens before you pick any tool. Your goal should be to cut leads, not add them, and to run the waterfall only on the rows you'll actually send. Back in 2024 I redid the math on a Google Maps scrape and it came out to about $1 for every 8,800 businesses, roughly 100 times cheaper than running the same job in Clay.
When we checked page 1 for "clay alternatives" on October 30, 2026, nearly every result was a vendor page ranking its own product first. Legion does not sell an enrichment tool. Legion members get GTM Studio, a workbook that runs in your IDE and can call live enrichment in any column, and it is left out of this ranking for that reason.
How we ranked them
We ranked each tool on five questions, in this order:
- Can an agent call it through MCP? An official MCP server means an agent such as Claude Code can trigger a lookup without a person opening a table.
- Is there a public API or CLI? A documented API lets a script or a Claude Code skill run the same job on a schedule.
- Does it run a waterfall? A waterfall tries several data providers in turn until one finds the email or phone, which is one of the main jobs people use Clay for.
- Is the price public? You cannot plan volume against a price you have to ask for.
- What does it replace? The whole workflow, or one piece of it.
The evidence is each vendor's public pricing page and docs, checked October 31, 2026, plus Legion's GTM tools tier list where it covers the tool. We did not run a benchmark of data quality for this page. Where a pricing page did not mention MCP, the table says "not mentioned", which is not the same as "not available".
The ranking
| Rank | Tool | What it replaces | MCP | API or CLI | Waterfall | Public price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Databar | The workflow table and enrichment | Yes, on the entry plan | CLI, your own API keys, webhooks | Listed in plan comparison | Yes |
| 2 | Cargo | The workflow tool | Yes, MCP server listed | CLI, OpenAPI spec, webhooks | Not mentioned | Yes |
| 3 | FullEnrich | The email and phone waterfall | Yes, on Pro | API on Pro | Yes, 25+ sources | Yes |
| 4 | n8n plus data APIs | All of it, if you build it | MCP Server Trigger | Full, self-hosted | You build it | Yes |
| 5 | Apollo | The database and sequencer | Yes, first-party (tier list) | Full REST per the tier list; API on Custom plans per Apollo's pricing FAQ | Listed as a product | Not in page text |
| 6 | Bitscale | The workflow table | Not mentioned | Webhook and HTTP API on Growth | Set up by its team on Enterprise | Yes |
| 7 | Persana | The workflow table | Not mentioned | Webhooks and HTTP API | Email and phone | Not in page text |
| 8 | Datablist | List cleaning and enrichment | Not mentioned | REST API on Growth | Email and phone finders | Free plan only in page text |
| Ref | Clay | (the tool being replaced) | Yes, official (tier list) | Partial: HTTP API on Growth, Clay API on Enterprise | Yes, every plan | Yes |
1. Databar
Databar's entry plan, Build, lists "Full MCP and CLI Access" alongside bring-your-own API keys and webhooks. That puts agent access on the cheapest paid plan instead of behind an enterprise contract. It is the closest like-for-like replacement for a Clay table if your agent does the driving. Its pricing page also lists waterfall enrichments in the plan comparison.
2. Cargo
Cargo's site lists a CLI, an MCP server for Claude and ChatGPT, an OpenAPI spec and webhooks. It prices by credits with public tiers from 100 free credits up. Choose it if you want an agent and a script to share one workflow tool with a documented API behind it. Its pricing page does not describe a waterfall, so check that it covers the providers you need.
3. FullEnrich
FullEnrich replaces one piece of Clay: the email and phone waterfall. Its pricing page lists waterfall enrichment across "25+ Sources", an API and an MCP server on the Pro plan, and you pay only when it finds verified data. Legion's tier list rates its surface well (an official MCP with OAuth, bulk jobs and credit checks, over a v2 async waterfall API) and adds that the service is easy to replace. My own grade for it is between B and C. Waterfall providers do a valuable job, but it's often a redundant one, and you can usually find it cheaper. Buy one primary database first and treat a waterfall as the supplement. Use FullEnrich when you already have a list and need contact data.
4. Build your own: n8n plus direct data APIs
The do-it-yourself option replaces Clay with a workflow tool and the data APIs it would have called. n8n's Community Edition is self-hosted and free on GitHub, and its pricing page lists an MCP Server Trigger, so an agent can start a workflow. Pair it with data providers that expose a full API; the tier list rates AI Ark and Prospeo as the best primary databases for this. You trade setup time for control, and you pay the data providers directly instead of through a platform's credits.
Two cautions from my own ranking. You need a sequencer more than you need n8n, so sort sending first. And between Zapier, n8n and Make I'd pick n8n, but I put Trigger.dev a cut above it, because its workflows retry on their own and hold up across hundreds of thousands of runs. Skip paid intent tools while you're at it. I think they're overrated, and you can find most of those signals cheaper yourself with Claude Code. The guide to finding every company and contact in a market covers where the data comes from.
5. Apollo
Apollo is a database and sequencer more than a workflow table. Legion's tier list notes a first-party remote MCP with OAuth and a full REST API with an OpenAPI spec, and ranks it C because of the data: my most recent test showed roughly 40 percent of listed people had left their company. Apollo's own pricing FAQ says "API access is available on Custom plans." Its pricing page showed no plan prices in its text when we checked.
6. Bitscale
Bitscale's Growth plan includes "Connect webhook and HTTP API". Its pricing page does not mention MCP, and it mentions waterfalls only as something its team will set up on Enterprise. Its prices are public.
7. Persana
Persana's pricing page lists email and phone waterfalls, a "Webhooks HTTP API" feature and bring-your-own API keys. It does not mention MCP, and its plan prices did not appear in the page text when we checked.
8. Datablist
Datablist's Growth plan includes "REST API + Call HTTP", and its Starter and Growth plans include waterfall email and phone finders (25 credits per email found, nothing charged on a miss). Its Free plan has 500 credits a year. The paid plan prices did not load in the page text when we checked.
List prices, checked October 31, 2026
| Vendor | Plan | Price as listed | Included per month | Pricing page |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clay | Free | $0 | 500 actions, 100 data credits | clay.com/pricing |
| Clay | Launch | $167/mo | 15,000 actions, 3K data credits | clay.com/pricing |
| Clay | Growth | $446/mo | 40,000 actions, 6K data credits | clay.com/pricing |
| Databar | Build | $99/mo, billed monthly | 5,000 credits | databar.ai/pricing |
| Databar | Scale | $495/mo, billed monthly | 50,000 credits | databar.ai/pricing |
| Cargo | Entry tiers | From $0, $165, $250, $1,190 or $3,000 a month | 100, 1.5K, 2.5K, 17K or 50K+ credits | getcargo.ai/pricing |
| FullEnrich | Pro | $0.055 per credit | 1,000 credits | fullenrich.com/pricing |
| Bitscale | Free | $0 | 200 credits | bitscale.ai/pricing |
| Bitscale | Growth | $349/mo, billed monthly | 15,000 credits | bitscale.ai/pricing |
| Bitscale | Booster | $799/mo, billed monthly | 50,000 credits | bitscale.ai/pricing |
| n8n | Community Edition | Free, self-hosted | Not metered by n8n | n8n.io/pricing |
| n8n | Starter | 20€/mo, billed annually | 2.5K workflow executions | n8n.io/pricing |
| n8n | Pro | 50€/mo, billed annually | 10K workflow executions | n8n.io/pricing |
| Apollo | All plans | Not shown in the page text | Not shown | apollo.io/pricing |
| Persana | All plans | Not shown in the page text | Not shown | persana.ai/pricing |
| Datablist | Free | Free | 500 credits a year | datablist.com/pricing |
Clay prices actions and data credits separately and lets you raise both on each plan; the figures above are the defaults its page showed. Credits are not comparable across vendors. One vendor charges per action, another per row, another only when it finds a result, and a single row can use several credits. To price your own volume, take a sample of 100 rows, run them, and divide the credits used by 100. Then multiply by 1,000, 10,000 or 100,000 rows a month and match that against each plan above.
One worked example from the pages above: FullEnrich charges 1 credit per work email found and lists its Pro plan at 1,000 credits a month for $0.055 per credit. So 1,000 found work emails a month cost about $55, and a miss costs nothing.
When Clay is still the right answer
Clay sits in S tier on Legion's tier list, and for good reasons. Pick Clay when:
- You need web research at scale. The tier list calls Claygent best in class web research at the cheapest price on the legacy plan. It's the one job I still send to Clay.
- People who do not code edit the workflow. A shared table is easier for a sales team to read and change than a script.
- You want an agent to trigger lookups. Clay has an official MCP server, so an agent can run a lookup without a person opening the table.
- You want many providers in one bill. Clay runs multi-provider waterfalls on every plan, including Free.
The catch for builders, per the tier list: Clay has no public REST catalogue, so you work through inbound webhooks, HTTP imports and table lookups. The tier list adds that on Clay's newer automation-priced plans it would sit closer to B for anyone not on enterprise. Clay's pricing page lists HTTP API integrations and webhook automation on Growth, not on Launch, and its FAQ lists Clay API access on Enterprise.
Clay competitors vs Clay alternatives
"Clay competitors" usually means tools that sell the same thing: a table of companies and people with enrichment columns (Databar, Bitscale, Persana, Cargo). "Clay alternatives" is wider: it includes tools that replace one part of Clay, such as FullEnrich for contact data or Apollo for the database, and the build-it-yourself route. Decide which part you are replacing before you compare prices.
FAQ
Who are Clay's main competitors?
The closest are tools that also give you an enrichment table or workflow: Databar, Cargo, Bitscale and Persana. Apollo competes on the database, FullEnrich on the email and phone waterfall, and n8n with direct data APIs on the build-it-yourself route.
Is there a free alternative to Clay?
Partly. n8n's Community Edition is self-hosted and free, but you still pay the data providers it calls. Several vendors have free tiers or trial credits: Clay's own Free plan includes 500 actions and 100 data credits a month, Bitscale has a free plan with 200 credits, Cargo starts new accounts with 100 free credits, and Databar gives 100 free trial credits.
Which Clay alternative works best with Claude Code?
One with an MCP server or a documented API on the plan you can afford. On the pricing pages we checked, Databar lists MCP and CLI access on its entry plan, Cargo lists an MCP server, a CLI and an OpenAPI spec, and FullEnrich lists an MCP server on Pro.
Is Clay worth it in 2026?
If your team edits workflows in a shared table and you use Claygent for research, yes. If an agent or a script does most of the work, and you mainly need contact data, a tool with full API and MCP access on its entry plan will likely fit better. Price both for your volume with the 100-row method above before you switch.
Changelog
- October 31, 2026: first version. Prices and plan features read from each vendor's pricing page on this date.
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