Best Clay alternatives · replace the job you actually used Clay for
Most Clay alternatives lists swap one logo for another. Start with your Clay bill instead.
pick this stack
Who wins
FullEnrich wins mobiles. BetterContact wins a pay-on-valid waterfall for emails and phones. AI Ark wins cheap lookalike lists with rollover credits. Apollo wins when you want the database and the sequencer in one seat. Clay keeps AI research tables.
- Clay Launch is $185 a month: $60 for 15,000 actions plus $125 for 2,500 data credits. About 32% pays for the table.
- Clay Free has no phone enrichment.
- FullEnrich: $0.55 per found mobile at the 1,000-credit tier. Nothing charged on a miss.
- BetterContact: $0.49 per valid mobile on Pro ($49 for 1,000 credits).
- AI Ark: 100 free credits, then $49 a month for 5,000 credits that roll over.
- Apollo: database plus sequencer in one seat. Check your plan's credit grant in Apollo.
- AI research tables have no clean swap here.
Ranked picks
- #1
Fullenrichtop pickBest for: Teams that used Clay mainly to find mobile numbers.
- Clear price per found mobile: $0.55 at the 1,000-credit tier.
- Nothing charged when it can't verify a number.
- No table to build or actions to count.
- #2
Best for: Teams that used Clay to run an email and phone waterfall.
- Lowest printed price per valid mobile here: $0.49 on Pro.
- Pay only on valid results.
- Emails and phones from one credit pool.
Compare
| Tool | Price band | Best for | Dealbreaker |
|---|---|---|---|
| #1 Fullenrich | Free trial is $0 with 50… | Teams that used Clay mainly to find mobile numbers. | A mobile is 10 credits, so enriching every row burns budget fast. |
| #2 BetterContact | Starter is $15 per month… | Teams that used Clay to run an email and phone waterfall. | Starter's per-mobile price is higher at $0.75. |
| #3 AI ARK | Free: 100 credits per month. | Teams that used Clay to build lookalike or ideal-customer lists. | List building only. |
| #4 Apollo | Free is 900 credits per… | Teams that want a contact database and a sequencer in one seat. | Credits don't roll over. |
MethodHow we scored these tools▾
We started from Clay's own pricing page and split the bill by job. Each pick replaces one job and prints a price per find or per credit you can check. Prices come from each vendor's pricing page as of October 5, 2026. Per-find dollar figures are our math from those printed credit prices.
Who for
buy if
- You use Clay mostly to find mobiles or emails and the actions fee feels like dead weight.
- Your Clay tables ran out of actions before they ran out of data credits.
- You're on Clay Free and just found out it has no phone enrichment.
- You want a price per found mobile you can put in a budget.
skip if
- Skip this if your main Clay use is AI research columns or custom agents. Nothing here replaces that one-for-one.
- Skip this if you want a head-to-head on Clay and Apollo only. Read Clay vs Apollo.
- Skip this if you want the math on Clay actions and waterfalls. Read the Clay vs Apollo credits post.
Clay sends two bills · actions and data credits
Clay's pricing page now sells two things on every paid plan. Actions cover running the table. Data credits cover the data.
Launch is $185 a month: $60 for 15,000 actions and $125 for 2,500 data credits. On annual billing it's $167: $54 plus $113. Growth is $495 a month: $205 for 40,000 actions and $290 for 6,000 data credits.
About 32% of Launch pays for the table. Leave Clay by job. If you only replace the data, the table fee goes away with it.
The free plan has no phones
Clay Free gives 500 actions and 100 data credits a month. Clay's own pricing page says the free plan does not include phone number enrichment.
Phone-first teams start paying on day one. Or they start with a tool that charges per found mobile, like FullEnrich at $0.55.
Actions often run out before data does
Each step in a Clay table costs one action per row it runs on. Our Clay vs Apollo credits post walks through an example: 10,000 rows with four steps that run at different rates comes to about 25,700 actions. Launch includes 15,000.
So when people say Clay got expensive, the actions fee is often what pushed them up a plan. Their data credits still had room. A pay-per-find tool has no actions fee at all.
Bigger data packs barely get cheaper
Clay's data credit blocks run 2,500 for $125 up to 50,000 for $2,125. That's $0.05 per credit at the small end and $0.0425 at the big end.
So 20 times the volume gets you about 15% off per credit. On hard lists, paying nothing for misses saves more than a volume break. FullEnrich and BetterContact both charge only on a find.
300 mobiles a month · the math
Say you use Clay only to find about 300 mobiles a month.
On Clay Launch you pay $185. Clay doesn't print a per-phone price, because it depends on the provider, so the true cost per mobile is hard to pin down. The $60 table fee bills either way.
On FullEnrich, 300 found mobiles at $0.55 is about $165. On BetterContact Pro at $0.49, it's about $147. Both charge only for numbers they find, so a month with fewer finds costs less.
Most leavers start with a rough first two weeks
Henley Wing Chiu runs Bloomberry, which sells a rival tool, so read his take with that in mind. He opened his Clay alternatives post with this line: "After burning through $700 in my first two weeks with Clay on inaccurate enrichments."
It's one founder's story, told by someone with a product to sell. The lesson still holds. Know which job you were paying for, then buy that job by the find.
AI research tables · no clean swap yet
Some teams use Clay for AI research columns, custom agents, and tables that mix many sources with their own logic. None of the picks above replaces that one-for-one.
If that's your main use, keep Clay for it. Move the plain enrichment jobs out and your actions and data credits will stretch further. Freckle, Bitscale, Gumloop, and Persana are other tools people try for this job.
FAQ
What is the best Clay alternative for phone numbers?▾
FullEnrich. A mobile costs 10 credits, which is $0.55 per found mobile at the 1,000-credit tier, and nothing is charged when it can't verify a number. BetterContact is the backup at $0.49 per valid mobile on Pro.
Is there a cheaper Clay alternative for enrichment only?▾
Yes, if enrichment is all you use. Clay Launch is $185 a month, and $60 of that pays for the table. FullEnrich and BetterContact charge per find with no table fee. About 300 mobiles a month runs about $165 on FullEnrich or about $147 on BetterContact Pro.
Does Clay's free plan include phone enrichment?▾
No. Clay's pricing page says the free plan does not include phone number enrichment. Free gives 500 actions and 100 data credits a month.
What's the difference between Clay actions and data credits?▾
Actions pay for running the table, one action each time a step runs on a row. Data credits pay for data from Clay's providers. Launch includes 15,000 actions for $60 and 2,500 data credits for $125.
Can Apollo replace Clay?▾
For a database and a sequencer in one seat, often yes. For AI research columns and custom table logic, no. Apollo bills 8 credits per phone reveal, only when it finds one, so send its phone misses to FullEnrich.
next step
Closing
Pick by the job you used Clay for. For mobile numbers, open FullEnrich. For an email and phone waterfall that charges only on valid results, open BetterContact. For lookalike and ideal-customer lists, open AI Ark. For a database and a sequencer in one seat, open Apollo. For AI research tables, keep Clay for that job and move the rest. Try FullEnrich Try BetterContact Try AI Ark Try Apollo