# Clay Pricing in 2026: Plans, Credits per Enrichment, and What 1,000 Contacts a Month Really Costs

**By Justin McKelvey** · Published October 07, 2026 · Updated October 01, 2026 · 9 min read

> As of October 1, 2026, Clay is free for 100 data credits a month, Launch costs $167 a month billed yearly or $185 monthly, and Growth $446 or $495. Every plan bills two meters, Actions and Data Credits, and Clay's own docs put a fully enriched record at 6 to 20 credits, so Launch's 2,500 credits cover 125 to about 416 of them.

**Category:** Pricing
**Tags:** Buyer's Guide, Pricing, Sales Operations
**Canonical URL:** https://superdupr.com/blog/clay-pricing

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## How much does Clay cost? The short answer

**As of October 1, 2026, Clay is free for 100 data credits and 500 actions a month. Launch costs $167 a month billed yearly or $185 billed monthly, and Growth costs $446 yearly or $495 monthly. Enterprise is quoted. Each paid price is two meters added together: Actions, which pay for the work Clay does, and Data Credits, which pay for the data it buys. What you actually pay depends on how many credits each contact uses, and Clay's own docs put a fully enriched record at 6 to 20 credits.**

That last number is the one that matters. Launch's $185 includes 2,500 data credits. At 6 to 20 credits per record, that covers 125 to about 416 fully enriched contacts a month, not the 1,000 most teams have in mind. This page has the full ladder, what each step costs in credits, and the math on a real outbound workflow.

Every number below comes from Clay's own pages, read October 1, 2026: the pricing page (plan cards, the tier selectors and the FAQ) and two docs on Clay University, "Actions & Data Credits" and "How AI is priced." They are listed under Sources at the end.

## Clay's plans at a glance

| Plan | Billed yearly | Billed monthly | Included each month | What it adds |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Free | $0 | $0 | 500 actions, 100 data credits | Unlimited seats, waterfalls, Claygent, up to 200 rows per table |
| Launch | $167/mo ($54 actions + $113 credits) | $185/mo ($60 + $125) | 15,000 actions, 2,500 data credits | Phone enrichment, job-change and news signals, email campaigns, up to 50,000 rows per table |
| Growth | $446/mo ($185 + $261) | $495/mo ($205 + $290) | 40,000 actions, 6,000 data credits | CRM auto-sync, HTTP API, webhooks, web intent signals, ad audiences, priority support |
| Enterprise | Custom, annual commitment | n/a | 200,000+ actions, 100,000+ data credits | SSO, role-based access, workbook credit budgets, a dedicated strategist |

The toggle says yearly billing saves 10%. The math is close: $167 is 9.7% under $185, and $446 is 9.9% under $495. On Launch that is $2,004 a year instead of $2,220. Seats are unlimited on every plan, so team size does not move the price. Volume does.

## The two meters, and what each one charges for

Clay splits the bill on purpose. Its docs describe Actions as platform work that costs "a few tenths of a penny" each, and Data Credits as the money spent buying data or AI from the 150+ providers in its marketplace, at "a few pennies" each.

| What you do in Clay | Actions | Data credits |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Find people or companies from Clay's database | 0 | 0 unless the source is paid |
| Import from a CSV, your CRM or a warehouse | 0 | 0 |
| Enrich a record (email, profile, signal) | 1 per result | Varies by data type |
| Run an AI prompt or Claygent | 1 per run | By model (table below) |
| Formulas, filters, moving data between tables | 0 | 0 |
| Push a record to a sequencer, CRM or ad audience | 1 per record | 0 |
| Export to CSV | 0 | 0 |

Two rules cut the bill more than people expect. If an enrichment returns nothing, Clay charges neither an action nor a credit. And if you plug in your own API key for a provider, that step uses no data credits at all, though it still uses an action.

## How many credits each enrichment uses

Clay does not publish a full price list per provider. The product shows the cost next to each enrichment before you run it. What its docs do publish:

- **LinkedIn profile:** 0.5 credits per profile.
- **Work email:** 0.5 credits per email found.
- **Email validation:** 0 credits with the validators Clay now includes free.
- **Phone numbers:** no number published. The docs only say phone numbers are "expensive" next to emails being "cheap."
- **A fully enriched record:** "typically" 6 to 20 credits, depending on data types, waterfalls and how many of your own keys you use.

AI steps cost credits by model. These are the fixed rates from Clay's AI pricing doc; models marked "variable" bill the provider's actual token cost with no markup, after holding an estimate up front.

| Model | Writing (credits per row) | Web research (credits per row) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| GPT-5 Nano | 0.2 | 0.5 |
| GPT-5 Mini | 0.4 | 1 |
| Gemini 2.5 Flash | 0.5 | 1 |
| Claude 4.5 Haiku | 1 | variable |
| Claude 4.5 Sonnet | 1.5 | variable |
| GPT-5.1 | 2 | variable |
| Clay Helium / Clay Argon | n/a | 1 / 3 |
| Claude 4.6 Opus | 7.5 | variable |

The spread is the point. A first line written by GPT-5 Mini costs 0.4 credits. The same line from Claude 4.6 Opus costs 7.5, almost 19 times as much.

## The full credit and action ladders

The plan cards show starting prices. The selectors under each card carry the rest. These are the Launch tiers on monthly billing, with the per-unit price worked out from them:

| Data credits per month | Price | Per credit | Actions per month | Price |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 2,500 | $125 | 5.0 cents | 15,000 | $60 |
| 6,000 | $290 | 4.8 cents | 40,000 | $150 |
| 10,000 | $460 | 4.6 cents | 60,000 | $200 |
| 20,000 | $880 | 4.4 cents | 100,000 | $290 |
| 50,000 | $2,125 | 4.25 cents | 200,000 | $540 |

Credits and actions have separate selectors, so you raise one without paying for more of the other. Yearly billing lowers both. 2,500 credits a month drops to $113 (about 4.5 cents a credit) and 50,000 drops to $1,913 (about 3.8 cents).

One detail the cards hide: Growth charges more for the same actions. 40,000 actions cost $150 a month on Launch and $205 on Growth, and 200,000 cost $540 against $850. That gap is the price of Growth's CRM sync, HTTP API and webhooks. If you need those, you are on Growth whatever your volume is.

## A worked example: 1,000 new prospects a month

Take a B2B team with one rep doing outbound. Each month it pulls 1,000 new contacts and runs each one through this table on Launch, billed monthly:

1. Find the contacts in Clay's people database: 0 credits, 0 actions.
2. Enrich each LinkedIn profile: 1,000 × 0.5 = 500 credits, 1,000 actions.
3. Find a work email. Clay's own example assumes 90% are found, and misses are free: 900 × 0.5 = 450 credits, 900 actions.
4. Validate the 900 emails: 0 credits, 900 actions.
5. Write a first line with AI: 1,000 actions, credits depend on the model.
6. Push the 900 contacts with an email into the sequencer: 900 actions.

That is 4,700 actions a month whatever model you pick, under a third of Launch's 15,000. The credits are where the model choice shows up:

| AI step | Credits per month | Fits in 2,500? | Monthly bill on Launch |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| GPT-5 Mini, writing (0.4) | 1,350 | Yes, 1,150 left over | $185 |
| Claude 4.5 Sonnet, writing (1.5) | 2,450 | Yes, 50 left over | $185 |
| Clay Argon, web research (3) | 3,950 | No, 1,450 short | $350 on the 6,000-credit tier, or about $279 with a top-up |

The top-up figure is our reading. Clay says one-time top-ups carry a 30% premium; applied to Launch's 5-cent rate that is 6.5 cents a credit, so 1,450 credits come to about $94. Per credit, the 6,000 tier is cheaper (4.8 cents), and its unused credits roll over. Per month, the top-up is the smaller bill because you only buy the gap. Check the exact top-up price in Settings, under Usage, before you count on it.

At the margin, the light version costs about 8.6 cents a prospect: 1.35 credits at 5 cents plus 4.7 actions at 0.4 cents.

## What "fully enriched" does to the same 1,000 contacts

The workflow above skips phone numbers and company data. Add them and you are in Clay's own range of 6 to 20 credits a record. For 1,000 records:

- **At 6 credits:** 6,000 credits. The 6,000 tier is $290, plus $60 in actions: **$350 a month.**
- **At 10 credits:** 10,000 credits. $460 plus $60: **$520 a month.**
- **At 20 credits:** 20,000 credits. $880 plus $60: **$940 a month.**

Clay's sizing guide says Launch fits "~1,000 records/month" with 2,500 to 10,000 credits. Both things are true: the plan fits, but the $185 starting price does not. At 1,000 fully enriched records, plan on $350 to $940 a month on Launch billed monthly. The base 2,500 credits cover 125 to about 416 of them.

Your own API keys are the biggest lever here. Clay's example on 100 contacts drops from 95 credits to 50 with your own email-finder key, and its docs put the savings at 50 to 80% of data credits. You pay that provider separately, and every step still uses an action.

## Overages, rollover and the settings that cap a bill

- **Out of actions:** no top-ups. You move to a higher action tier or a higher plan.
- **Out of credits:** raise the credit tier with no premium, or buy a top-up at a 30% premium. The minimum top-up is 250 credits.
- **Auto top-ups:** available on paid self-serve plans. Each one is capped at $1,000, with $5,000 in any rolling 7 days, and all top-ups together can add up to 4 times your monthly credits.
- **Rollover:** actions reset every cycle. On monthly plans, unused credits bank up to 2 times your monthly amount. On yearly plans you get every credit up front, and 15% of what is left rolls over if you renew at the same tier or higher.
- **Silent spend:** Clay's own list of surprise charges is Auto-Update re-running enrichments, AI columns running on every row, and re-running a column you already ran. Turn Auto-Update off on tables you are not watching.

## Which plan fits which team

**Free** is a test bench. In the workflow above, 100 credits cover about 74 prospects a month, the 200-row limit caps any table, and phone enrichment is not included.

**Launch** is right for one or two reps doing list-building, emails and AI first lines, up to around 1,000 light records a month. Budget $185, and plan for $350 or more once phones enter the workflow.

**Growth** is right once you need Clay writing back to your CRM automatically or calling other systems through HTTP and webhooks. Those features, not volume, are usually the reason to move up.

If you are still choosing between Clay and an all-in-one tool, our [Clay vs Apollo vs Instantly](/blog/clay-vs-apollo-vs-instantly) comparison covers what each one is for, and the [Apollo alternatives](/blog/apollo-alternatives) list covers the lighter contact finders. Clay's two meters work much like Zapier's tasks: price per unit falls as you climb, and the AI step decides the bill. The task version of that math is in [how much Zapier costs](/blog/how-much-does-zapier-cost).

## When renting the stack stops making sense

Clay is strong when a growth person wants to build and tune lists by hand. The bill gets harder to predict when enrichment, sequencing and CRM sync run every day on autopilot and three meters move at once. If you are weighing those subscriptions against having the system built for you, [AI automation pricing](/blog/ai-automation-pricing) lays out what agencies charge and how the packages are structured, and [SuperDupr's AI sales agents](/solutions/ai-sales-agents) are built around your own process and CRM.

## Sources

- Clay, Pricing page (plan cards, tier selectors, plan comparison and FAQ), clay.com/pricing, read October 1, 2026.
- Clay University, "Actions & Data Credits," university.clay.com/docs/actions-data-credits, read October 1, 2026.
- Clay University, "How AI is priced," university.clay.com/docs/ai-pricing, read October 1, 2026.

## Frequently Asked Questions

### How much does Clay cost per month?

As of October 1, 2026, Clay's Free plan is $0 with 500 actions and 100 data credits a month. Launch is $185 a month billed monthly, or $167 a month billed yearly, with 15,000 actions and 2,500 data credits. Growth is $495 monthly or $446 yearly with 40,000 actions and 6,000 data credits. Enterprise is quoted with an annual commitment. Higher credit and action tiers cost more.

### What is the difference between Actions and Data Credits in Clay?

Actions pay for the work Clay does: each enrichment result, each AI run and each record pushed to a sequencer or CRM uses 1 action, at a few tenths of a cent. Data Credits pay for the data or AI Clay buys from its marketplace, starting at 5 cents each. Most enrichments use both. Imports, formulas, filters and CSV exports use neither.

### How many credits does a Clay enrichment use?

It depends on the data type. Clay's docs list a LinkedIn profile at 0.5 credits and a work email at 0.5 credits, with select email validators free. A fully enriched record typically uses 6 to 20 credits, and phone numbers are the expensive part, though Clay does not publish a per-phone figure. The exact cost shows next to each enrichment in the product before you run it.

### How many contacts can I enrich on Clay's Launch plan?

Launch includes 2,500 data credits a month. At Clay's own range of 6 to 20 credits per fully enriched record, that covers 125 to about 416 records. A lighter workflow, LinkedIn profile plus email plus a GPT-5 Mini first line, uses about 1.35 credits a contact, so 1,000 contacts fit inside the 2,500. Full enrichment on 1,000 records takes the 6,000 to 20,000 credit tiers: $350 to $940 a month on monthly billing.

### What happens when you run out of Clay credits?

You can raise your data credit tier at the plan's price, or buy a one-time top-up at a 30% premium with a 250-credit minimum. Automatic top-ups are capped at $1,000 each and $5,000 in any rolling 7 days. Actions cannot be topped up; running out of actions means moving to a higher action tier or plan. Without auto top-ups, a run that hits a zero balance stops instead of going negative, and finished rows keep their results.

### Can I use my own API keys in Clay to save money?

Yes. With your own key for a data or AI provider, that step uses no Clay data credits, though it still uses 1 action, and you pay the provider directly. Clay's docs say this saves 50 to 80% on data credits. In Clay's 100-contact example, using your own email key cut the run from 95 credits to 50.


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*Originally published at [https://superdupr.com/blog/clay-pricing](https://superdupr.com/blog/clay-pricing) by SuperDupr.*