Clay is not a database. It is a workflow platform that pulls from 100+ providers and runs AI research. Here is how to use it to build prospect lists that actually convert.
Rees Bayba
Founder, Astra GTM
TL;DR
Clay is not a lead database. Companies that use it as a more expensive Apollo are wasting 80% of what it can do. Clay is a workflow platform: you define a series of enrichment steps, and Clay pulls data from whichever of its 100+ integrated providers has the best answer for each row. Then it runs AI research on top of that data. The output is a prospect list that knows things about each company that no static database could tell you.
Every Clay workflow starts with a list of companies. Three ways to get that list into Clay, depending on what you have.
If you already have a list of target companies or domains from any source -- a manual research list, a trade show attendee list, an export from your CRM -- import it as a CSV. Clay will create one row per company and you enrich from there.
Clay's Apollo integration and LinkedIn Sales Nav integration let you run a search directly inside Clay and pull the results as rows. Apollo is better for broad ICP searches (industry + headcount + geography). Sales Navigator is better for searches that require LinkedIn-native filters (function, seniority, company growth rate, recent activity).
Clay has a built-in company search powered by its own data layer. Filter by industry, headcount, revenue, tech stack, geography, and keywords. Less flexible than Apollo or Sales Nav but useful when you do not have either subscription.
Once you have a company list, enrich it with the signals you will use for scoring and personalization. Four enrichments cover most use cases.
BuiltWith tells you what technologies a company's website runs on. Marketing automation tools, CRMs, analytics platforms, payment processors, CDNs. If your product competes with or integrates with specific tools, BuiltWith lets you filter to companies already using them or identify companies stuck on legacy tools. Add BuiltWith as a column, pass in the company domain, and get back a structured list of detected technologies.
Clearbit provides structured company data: industry, sub-industry, headcount, estimated revenue, funding stage, description, social profiles. More reliable than scraping LinkedIn for company size. Use Clearbit data to populate the firmographic columns you will filter and score on.
Clay's LinkedIn enrichment pulls current headcount and 6-month headcount growth rate. These two signals together reveal whether a company is actively scaling (positive hiring signal) or contracting (negative signal). Companies growing headcount by 20%+ in 6 months are often in buying mode for tools that support that growth.
Clay's native enrichment scrapes the company website and extracts a clean one-paragraph description. Useful for feeding into Claygent prompts (Step 5) and for filtering out companies that don't match your ICP based on what they actually do, not just their SIC code.
After enriching companies, find the specific people you want to reach. Clay's people search lets you filter by job title, seniority, function, and keywords within a company. For most B2B outbound, you are looking for one or two buyer personas per company.
No single data provider has complete coverage. Build a waterfall: try Apollo first (best coverage for US companies), then RocketReach if Apollo returns nothing, then Lusha as a final fallback. Clay's waterfall column type handles this automatically -- it runs each provider in sequence and stops when it finds a result, so you only spend credits when necessary.
Finding a contact name and LinkedIn profile is not enough. You need a verified email address. Run another waterfall specifically for emails, with different providers optimized for email finding.
| Provider | Strength | Clay credits | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hunter | Domain-level pattern matching | 2 credits | Professional emails on small-medium domains |
| Dropcontact | GDPR-compliant, strong European coverage | 4 credits | European contacts |
| Apollo | High volume, broad coverage | 2 credits | US/NA B2B contacts |
| RocketReach | Strong executive coverage | 5 credits | VPs, C-suite, senior ICs |
After the email waterfall, verify every result with a separate verification step. Clay integrates with NeverBounce and ZeroBounce for verification. Do not export unverified emails to your sequencer -- invalid emails burn sender reputation fast.
Claygent is where Clay separates from every other tool. It is an AI agent that browses company websites, LinkedIn pages, and recent news for each row in your table and extracts custom insights based on whatever prompt you write. No static database has this data. It has to be researched in real time.
Claygent costs 5-10 credits per row depending on how complex the research task is. Run it after filtering -- you do not want to spend Claygent credits on companies that will not pass your scoring threshold. Score first (Step 6), then run Claygent only on companies that score above your cutoff.
Apollo, LinkedIn, BuiltWith, Clearbit, Bombora, Crunchbase, ZoomInfo, Hunter, RocketReach, Lusha, and 90+ more. The value is not any single provider -- it is the ability to waterfall across all of them and use AI to synthesize the outputs.
Before you export or push to a sequencer, score each company and filter to your best-fit accounts. Clay's formula columns let you build a simple point-based score.
Score = 0 + 1 if funded (funding_stage is not null) + 1 if tech match (builtwith_technologies includes your target tool) + 1 if hiring signal (headcount_growth_6mo > 10%) + 1 if company size match (headcount between 50 and 500) + 2 if Claygent found a recent trigger (ai_trigger is not null) Filter to score >= 3 before export.
A tight score filter turns a raw list of 5,000 companies into 400 high-confidence targets. Your sequencer performance is almost entirely determined by the quality of the list going in. The scoring step is where you earn your reply rate.
Clay connects directly to Instantly, SmartLead, HubSpot, Salesforce, and most other sales tools. You can push rows that pass your score threshold directly into a campaign, or export as CSV and import manually.
Clay's pricing is credit-based. Each enrichment action costs a certain number of credits. Understanding the credit cost of each step prevents expensive surprises.
| Action | Credits used | Approx. cost |
|---|---|---|
| Apollo company enrichment | 2 credits | ~$0.02 |
| BuiltWith tech stack lookup | 2 credits | ~$0.02 |
| Clearbit firmographics | 3 credits | ~$0.03 |
| Hunter email find | 2 credits | ~$0.02 |
| RocketReach email find | 5 credits | ~$0.05 |
| Claygent research (standard) | 5-10 credits | ~$0.05-0.10 |
| NeverBounce email verification | 1 credit | ~$0.01 |
| Clay native company search | 0 credits (free) | $0 |
Is Clay worth it compared to just using Apollo?
Apollo is a database. Clay is a workflow platform that can use Apollo as one of its sources. If you only need a list of contacts with emails, Apollo is cheaper and simpler. If you want to enrich companies with tech stack data, run AI research on each account, build signal-based scoring, and push enriched data directly to your sequencer, Clay does things Apollo cannot. The value grows with the complexity of your ICP and personalization requirements.
How much does it cost to build a list of 1,000 companies in Clay?
For a standard workflow (company enrichment + contact finding + email waterfall + basic Claygent research), expect 15-25 credits per row. At 1,000 rows, that is 15,000-25,000 credits. Clay's Starter plan includes 2,000 credits/month ($149). The Explorer plan includes 10,000 credits/month ($349). Most teams running regular prospecting workflows land on the Explorer or Pro plan.
What is the best way to find contact emails in Clay?
Use a waterfall: Hunter first (fastest, cheapest), then Apollo, then RocketReach or Lusha if the first two find nothing. Set the waterfall to stop as soon as any provider returns an email. After the waterfall, run NeverBounce or ZeroBounce verification on every email. Do not push unverified emails to any campaign platform.
Can Claygent access LinkedIn data?
Claygent browses public LinkedIn company pages (not Sales Navigator) and can extract public information -- company description, recent posts, employee count, recent job postings. It cannot access private profiles or Sales Navigator-gated data. For LinkedIn profile-level data (contact work history, skills, activity), use Clay's dedicated LinkedIn enrichment column, which pulls from LinkedIn's data via Clay's own infrastructure.
How do I avoid running out of Clay credits mid-workflow?
Three practices: (1) Always test on 20 rows before running the full batch. (2) Build waterfalls with strict stop conditions so expensive fallback providers only run when cheaper ones fail. (3) Use Clay's credit cost preview feature before running any enrichment on a full table -- it shows estimated credit consumption before you commit. Check your credit balance before any large run.
Does Clay integrate with my CRM to avoid contacting existing customers?
Yes. Clay connects to HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, and most major CRMs. You can pull your existing contacts or accounts into Clay and use a filter to exclude any domain that already exists in your CRM before exporting. Build this deduplication step as the last filter before export or push -- it prevents the embarrassing situation of cold emailing your own customers.
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