Clay vs Apollo: pricing, data and which one you need

Clay vs Apollo.io: side by side

	Clay	Apollo.io
Entry paid price	Launch: $185/mo monthly, $167/mo annual (unlimited seats)	Basic: $65/seat/mo monthly, $49/seat/mo annual
Free plan and trial	Free plan: 100 data credits and 500 actions/mo, 200 rows per table; 14-day trial	Free plan: 900 credits per seat per year; 14-day trial with 75 credits
Pricing model	Two meters per account: Actions (platform work) and Data Credits (marketplace data)	Per seat, with a credit pool shared across the team
Data source	Marketplace of 150+ providers, plus your own API keys	Own database: 240M contacts and 30M companies (Apollo's figure)
Email and phone cost	Varies by provider; data credits start at $0.05	Email 1 credit, phone number 8 credits
Unused credits	Data credits roll over; actions reset each cycle	Expire at the end of each billing cycle
Sending	Launch and up: send via Clay's email sequencer or a sequencing integration	Basic: 250 emails/day, 1 mailbox per user; Professional: unlimited daily sends
Warm-up	Not listed on the pricing page; Growth can buy domains and inboxes for Clay Sequencer	Deliverability suite and email warm-up on Basic and up (warm-up uses credits)
CRM integrations	Growth plan and up ($495/mo monthly)	Basic plan and up (Salesforce, HubSpot and others)
Clay integration	Not applicable	Native Clay integration: enrich person or company, find people, add contact to sequence
Security and GDPR	SOC 2 Type II; DPA published	Pricing page states GDPR compliant; ISO 27001 and SOC 2 certified

Clay vs Apollo: what is the real difference?

The real difference in Clay vs Apollo is that Apollo sells you data and a place to send it, while Clay sells you a way to combine other people's data. Apollo says its database holds 240M contacts and 30M companies, and its plans include sequences, a dialer and CRM sync.

Clay holds no core database of its own in the same sense. It connects to a marketplace of 150+ providers, adds its Claygent AI research agent, and lets you chain steps in a table: find the company, find the person, run a waterfall for the email, write a first line, push to a sender.

So the question is less which tool is better and more which job you have. If one good database is enough, Apollo is simpler. If your targeting needs signals no single vendor holds, Clay is built for that.

How do Clay and Apollo price their plans?

Clay prices per account and Apollo prices per seat, which is the biggest structural gap. Clay Launch costs $185 a month on monthly billing and includes 15,000 actions and 2,500 data credits; Growth costs $495 a month with 40,000 actions and 6,000 data credits. Both include unlimited seats.

Apollo Basic costs $65 per seat per month on monthly billing ($49 annual) with 2,500 credits a month, Professional $99 ($79 annual) with 4,000, and Organization $149 ($119 annual, minimum three seats) with 6,000. Apollo's annual plans grant the whole year's credits up front.

Clay's data credits roll over and its actions reset each cycle. Apollo's credits, including purchased add-ons, expire at the end of each billing cycle, so buying a big annual pool only helps if you use it.

What does 1,000 new contacts a month cost in each tool?

For 1,000 new contacts a month with a verified work email and one user, Apollo Basic costs $65 a month on monthly billing. Apollo charges 1 credit per email, so 1,000 emails use 1,000 of the 2,500 monthly credits, and sequencing is included at 250 sends a day.

Clay Launch costs $185 a month, but the per-email data cost depends on which provider runs, so Clay does not publish one number. One transparent way to price it is bring-your-own key: Clay counts a run on your own API key as one action with no data credits. Adding Prospeo Starter ($49 a month, 2,000 credits, 1 credit per email) gives $185 + $49 = $234 a month. Even at 10 actions per contact, 1,000 contacts use 10,000 of Launch's 15,000 actions.

If you also want mobile numbers, Apollo charges 8 credits each, so 1,000 phones (8,000 credits) exceed even Professional's 4,000 monthly credits. That is where per-credit costs, not plan prices, decide the winner.

Which tool is better for sending and CRM sync?

Apollo is better for sending out of the box because sequences, a deliverability suite and email warm-up are part of every paid plan. The limits matter: Basic allows one mailbox per user and 250 sends a day, while Professional allows unlimited Google and Microsoft mailboxes plus 5 SMTP mailboxes per user.

Clay Launch can send through Clay's own email sequencer or through an integration with a tool like Instantly, Smartlead or lemlist. Buying domains and inboxes for the Clay Sequencer is a Growth feature.

CRM sync is a clear split. Apollo includes CRM integrations from Basic. Clay lists CRM integrations, data warehouse sync and HTTP API integrations only on Growth and Enterprise, so a team that needs Clay to update HubSpot or Salesforce automatically should budget for $495 a month.

Should you use Clay vs Apollo, or both?

Most small teams should start with Apollo, and add Clay once one database stops being enough. Many teams settle on both: Clay's native Apollo integration can enrich a person or company, find people by job title and add contacts to an Apollo sequence, so Apollo becomes one source inside a wider Clay workflow.

Whichever way the Clay vs Apollo decision goes, price it on your own volume using the published credit costs above rather than the headline plan. Tentt builds Clay and Apollo workflows for B2B teams, and the free newsletter resources cover the wider GTM engineering stack.

Which should you choose?

• Pick Apollo.io if you are one to five sellers who want to search, find emails and send sequences from one login, and Apollo's filters already describe your market well.
• Pick Apollo.io if you need CRM sync on a small budget: Apollo includes CRM integrations from Basic, while Clay puts them on Growth at $495 a month.
• Pick Clay if your list needs data no single database has, such as AI research on websites, job posts or tech stack, combined with a multi-provider waterfall.
• Pick Clay if you have a larger team: Clay includes unlimited seats, so the per-seat cost of Apollo overtakes Clay's flat plan as headcount grows.
• Pick Clay if you want both: Clay's native Apollo integration lets you use Apollo as one source inside a Clay table and push contacts into Apollo sequences.

Questions people ask

Tool pages

• Clay: pricing and featuresGTM data platform that combines 150+ data providers, AI research agents and workflow automation in spreadsheet-style tables.
• Apollo.io: pricing and featuresB2B contact database with built-in sequencing, dialler, CRM enrichment and AI research, priced per seat with pooled credits.

Related guides

• Clay integrations: how the tools fit into a GTM engineering system
• Clay pricing in 2026: every plan, credit and worked cost example
• Clay tutorial for beginners: build your first outbound table step by step
• Cold email deliverability in 2026: domains, authentication, warm-up and monitoring