Clay vs Apify
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Clay and Apify.
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Verdict: Apify wins
Apify scores 4.3/5, edging out Clay at 3.9/5. Developers and data teams who need web data as a recurring pipeline — prebuilt scrapers to start, custom Actors and proxy infrastructure as they scale.
Clay AI-powered data enrichment and outreach | Apify Web scraping and automation platform | |
|---|---|---|
| Rating | 3.9 (1 review) | 4.3 (1 review) |
| Pricing Model | freemium | freemium |
| Starting Price | Free tier available | Free tier available |
| Best For | GTM engineers and outbound teams who will pay for data quality and want one workbench for enrichment, signals, research, and campaign prep. | Developers and data teams who need web data as a recurring pipeline — prebuilt scrapers to start, custom Actors and proxy infrastructure as they scale. |
| Free Tier | ||
| API Access | ||
| Team Features | ||
| Open Source | ||
| Tags | free tierteam features | free tierapi accessopen source |
| Visit Clay → | Visit Apify → |
Clay
Pros
- + Waterfall enrichment cut my blended per-contact cost roughly in half versus single-provider lookup (71% email coverage on 500 companies across three providers)
- + Two-meter pricing (Data Credits + Actions) is clearer than the old unified credit; Clay claims marketplace data prices dropped 50–90% in the redesign
- + 200+ data providers in one contract replaces a stack of separate enrichment subscriptions
- + Claygent research answered structured questions with source URLs on most rows in my test — useful when staged behind cheaper filters
- + Financially credible and shipping fast: $115M Series D at $7.1B valuation (clay.com/blog/series-d), 17k+ customers claimed
Cons
- - Real entry price is $185/mo (Launch) plus credit burn — the legacy $149 Starter figure floating around aggregators is outdated
- - Waterfall ordering is unforgiving: putting an expensive provider first tripled my credit burn for 5% more coverage in one test
- - Generalist automation is out of scope — no arbitrary SaaS triggers, no self-hosting; GTM data motions only
- - Some Series D "self-learning revenue engine" claims are roadmap, not what ships today; treat the agent story as vendor vision
- - Email accuracy still depends on underlying providers — I saw mid-single-digit bounce rates on best-effort results and ran downstream validation
Apify
Pros
- + Genuine free sandbox: $5 monthly credit covers real test runs of store Actors, not just a feature tour
- + Store breadth — flagship scrapers (Google Maps, Instagram, SERP) show 4.6–4.7 ratings across hundreds of reviews in their own store stats
- + Billing is itemized per compute unit, proxy GB and storage operation, so I could attribute a run's cost down to cents
- + First-class developer tooling: Crawlee (open source), Python and JS SDKs, CLI deploys, scheduling, webhooks, REST API
- + Proxy network (datacenter, residential, Google SERP) is integrated rather than a third-party add-on, with country-level rates published
Cons
- - Real cost is a stack of meters (Actor per-event price + compute units + proxy GB + storage) and is hard to forecast without test runs
- - Store catalog is noisy with heavy duplication — one reviewer counted 12,000+ job scrapers alone; long-tail quality is unvetted
- - Anything past running a prebuilt Actor requires coding skills and proxy knowledge
- - SSO is Enterprise-only; personal training is $150/hour; support is community-only below the $19 tier
- - Vendor's headline customer and catalog counts are self-reported and undefined — I could not verify them independently
Frequently Asked Questions
Which is better, Clay or Apify?▼
Apify scores higher at 4.3/5 vs 3.9/5 for Clay, making it the better-rated option in our comparison.
What is the difference between Clay and Apify?▼
Clay: Clay is a sales and marketing data platform that pulls contact and company data from 200+ providers, enriches it with AI agents, and powers targeted outreach for go-to-market teams. Apify: Apify is a marketplace and platform of ready-made web scrapers and automation actors, with tooling to build and host your own.
Is Clay or Apify more affordable?▼
Clay starts at €0/mo, Apify starts at €0/mo. Check the comparison table above for current pricing.
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