Clay is the tool that made waterfall enrichment and AI-researched outbound accessible without a full data-engineering team. It's the backbone we use for client prospecting work: you build a data pipeline on a spreadsheet-style canvas, and it enriches, researches, and personalises at scale.
Need smarter outbound data? Book a call →
What is Clay?
Clay is a go-to-market (GTM) data platform built around three ideas: waterfall enrichment across 100+ data providers, a visual table interface that feels like Airtable with superpowers, and an AI research agent called Claygent that can answer custom questions about any company or contact by reading the live web.
Target audience
RevOps leaders, SDR managers, lead-gen agencies, growth teams, and founders running sophisticated B2B outbound. Clay is most impactful when you have 500+ target accounts and need to go deeper than basic firmographics.
Core capabilities
- Waterfall enrichment, check providers in order, pay for hits only
- Claygent, AI agent that answers custom research questions
- Lookalike company and contact discovery from a seed list
- AI email and message drafting grounded in researched context
- Native CRM sync (HubSpot, Salesforce, Outreach, Apollo)
- Integration with Instantly.AI, Smartlead, and other senders
- Webhook and API surface for connecting to n8n or custom flows
Expanded benefits for SMBs
- One tool replaces many. Apollo + Clearbit + ZoomInfo + PhantomBuster + custom scripts collapse into a single Clay workspace.
- Pay-per-hit economics. You only spend credits when a provider returns data, not per-lookup, coverage goes up, cost goes down.
- AI research that sounds human. Claygent reads case studies, job posts, and news, producing personalisation that beats template mail-merge by a wide margin.
- Spreadsheet familiarity. The table interface means anyone on the team can read, filter, and understand what's happening, no black box.
Real use cases
- Personalised opening lines. Claygent reads every prospect's LinkedIn and company blog, then writes a one-sentence opener that actually references their work.
- Job-change triggers. Track when champions move to new companies and trigger re-engagement emails automatically.
- Tech-stack-based outbound. Filter prospects by installed technologies (BuiltWith integration) and craft messaging that speaks to their current stack.
- Inbound enrichment. Every website form submission is enriched and scored in under 30 seconds before hitting the rep's inbox.
How it might fit into a workflow
A production outbound pipeline with Clay:
Clay is the data and research layer; Instantly handles deliverability and sending; HubSpot stores the relationship. Each tool does what it's best at.
Pros and considerations
Strengths
- Best-in-class waterfall enrichment coverage
- Claygent pushes outbound personalisation to new levels
- Spreadsheet-style UI is familiar and transparent
- Active community with templates for every use case
Watch-outs
- Credit-based pricing can get expensive quickly at scale
- Learning curve for non-technical users building complex tables
- Not a sender, you still need Instantly, Smartlead, or similar
- Data accuracy varies, always sample before scaling
Who should explore this tool
- RevOps teams at growth-stage B2B companies running outbound at scale
- Lead-gen agencies running personalised campaigns for clients
- Founders building their first repeatable outbound motion
How Aurora Designs approaches tools like this
Clay is powerful but can become a monster if left unchecked, runaway credit burn and dirty data are common failure modes. We scope every Clay build with clear acceptance criteria: how many accounts, how accurate, how often, and at what cost per sourced meeting. Then we set up monitoring and credit alerts so surprises don't hit the card.
Security
Clay is SOC 2 Type II certified with encryption in transit and at rest. Enterprise plans add SSO/SAML, audit logs, and data residency options. Customer data is never resold to third parties; enrichment happens via direct API calls to providers you've authorised.
When Clay is worth it
- You're running B2B outbound on 500+ accounts at a time.
- You care about research-driven personalisation, not templates.
- You have, or are willing to build, a data-hygiene discipline.
- Waterfall coverage + AI research would replace 3+ tools in your current stack.
FAQ
What is Clay?
A GTM data platform combining waterfall enrichment across 100+ data providers with an AI research agent (Claygent) and AI personalisation. It replaces a stack of prospecting and enrichment tools.
What is waterfall enrichment?
Clay checks multiple data providers in sequence and picks the first one that returns a result. You only pay for hits, and you get much higher coverage than any single provider alone.
What is Claygent?
Clay's built-in AI research agent. Describe what you want to know about a company or contact in plain English, and Claygent searches the web, reads pages, and returns structured answers.
Who uses Clay?
RevOps teams, SDRs, lead-gen agencies, growth teams, and founders running sophisticated outbound. Popular in B2B SaaS, cybersecurity, and professional services.
How much does it cost?
Starter begins at $149/month with included credits. Explorer and Pro ($349–$800/month) add higher credit limits and integrations. Enterprise is custom-quoted.
Can Clay send emails directly?
Clay focuses on data and drafting, it pushes personalised sequences to your sending platform (Instantly.AI, HubSpot, Outreach, Apollo) rather than sending directly.