Clay started as a smarter spreadsheet for enriching lead lists. Today it's a full go-to-market platform, with its own AI agents, a workflow builder, an email sequencer and ad audiences, all built on data from more than 200 providers.
This guide walks through how Clay works, from data and enrichment to its AI agents, then covers what it costs, where it falls short and how it compares with ZoomInfo, which takes a different approach built on its own data.
What Is Clay?
Clay is a go-to-market platform that helps teams find, enrich and act on account and contact data. It works like a spreadsheet: each row is a company or person, and each column runs an action, such as pulling an email from a data provider, researching a website with AI or pushing a record to your CRM. That design makes Clay a data orchestration layer as much as a data source.
In practice, teams use Clay to:
Import or sync lists of companies and contacts from a CRM, CSV or Clay's own search
Enrich them with emails, phone numbers and firmographics from many providers
Research accounts with AI, such as summarizing websites or finding recent news
Score, route and act on the results through the CRM, email campaigns or ad audiences
Clay Labs was founded in New York in 2017 by Kareem Amin, now CEO, and Nicolae Rusan, with Varun Anand joining as co-founder in 2021. The company raised a $115M Series D in 2026 at a reported $7.1B valuation, has passed $100M in annual recurring revenue and says more than 500,000 GTM teams use it. Its customers include OpenAI, Anthropic, Rippling, Intercom and Verkada.
Clay also popularized the GTM engineer, a technical role that builds automated go-to-market systems. Clay is built first for these users, which shapes how the platform works and why it's often grouped with other GTM engineering tools.
How Clay Works
Clay is a set of building blocks rather than one tool. Teams combine them into plays, from a simple enriched list to an always-on inbound workflow.
Data: Tables, Audiences and Waterfall Enrichment
Work in Clay starts in tables, where you import, find or sync records, and in Audiences, which brings your first-party data from the CRM, data warehouse and call recordings together with third-party data.
Clay sells access to data through a marketplace of 200+ providers, and it can also find net-new companies and people in its own dataset. Its signature feature is waterfall enrichment: Clay checks providers one after another until one returns a match, which raises coverage for work emails, mobile numbers and other data points beyond what most single data enrichment tools offer.
Signals
Signals watch for buying signals and other changes worth acting on, such as job changes, promotions, new hires, job posts, company news and, on Growth plans, website intent. A signal can start a workflow automatically, so a champion's move or a new funding round triggers the next step.
Workflows and Functions
Workflows, now in open beta on every plan, let teams build plays visually, with agents and code, then run them across millions of records. Functions package reusable logic so teams don't rebuild the same steps in every table, a core idea in sales workflow automation. Teams can also build in Clay from a coding agent through Clay's CLI and API.
Activation: Sequencer, Ads and MCP
Clay now acts on its data, not just prepares it. Its Sequencer sends cold email campaigns natively, Ads syncs audiences to LinkedIn, Meta and Google, and a Clay MCP connection lets reps use Clay inside AI assistants. Most teams still connect a CRM such as Salesforce or HubSpot, and many pair Clay with a separate sales engagement platform.
Clay's AI Agents
AI runs through almost everything in Clay. It started with Claygent, an agent that researches one row at a time, and now includes Account Agents that work across whole segments and a global agent that plans and builds complete plays.
Claygent and Account Agents
Claygent is Clay's AI research agent. It visits websites and reasons over your data to return structured answers no provider sells, such as a company's open roles, recent news or a lead score based on your criteria. It's often used for AI account research and meeting prep. Clay says Claygent has run more than 5 billion times.
Claygents come in two types. General-purpose Claygents run one row at a time in tables and workflows. Account Agents, in beta on paid plans, run across every account in a segment, draw on all the data in Audiences and remember what changed.
Clay's Global Agent
Clay unveiled its global agent at Sculpt, its October 2026 conference, as the first building block of what it calls a self-learning revenue engine. Instead of building each step yourself, you describe the outcome you want and Clay plans the work, builds it across your workspace and hands back what it made.
How a Task Works
Everything the agent does for one request lives in a task. A typical task runs like this:
Describe the outcome. Clay's own suggested prompts include routing inbound leads, building a prospecting workflow, scoring accounts and building an enriched lead list. Clay advises asking for something you can use, such as a saved segment or a workflow, rather than a list to look at.
Say what to leave out. Naming existing customers or accounts already in play keeps them out of the results.
Answer its questions. Clay asks for missing details before it builds.
Review what it built. Everything the agent made appears in an artifacts panel. Clay notes the agent can make mistakes, so its output needs checking.
Schedule it. Scheduled tasks rerun the play daily, on weekdays, weekly or monthly, and keep a record of every run.
Where the Agent Gets Its Context
The agent starts from Clay's Knowledge Hub, where teams store their ICP, personas, positioning and documents. In a message, users can reference specific Knowledge Hub sections, call workspace skills (instructions the team writes for repeat work) or attach a file of up to 50MB. When the agent spots a pattern, such as a segment that converts well, it suggests an update for a person to approve.
What the Agent Can Reach
Where in Clay | What the agent does there |
Workflows | Reads, builds and updates workflows, and can add enrichment and Account Agent steps |
Audiences | Reads records and creates or updates segments and fields |
Find leads | Finds net-new companies and people in Clay's own dataset |
Sequencer | Creates and edits campaigns and sends a test email, while you launch the campaign yourself |
Signals | Creates common signals, such as job changes, new hires and news, which stay paused until you resume them |
Tables | Reads, queries and analyzes tables, and can rebuild one as a workflow, while building or editing tables stays with Sculptor |
Permissions, Approvals and Cost
Each task and schedule runs at one of two permission levels. Allow changes, the default, lets the agent edit freely and run test data, but it waits for your approval before running a workflow on real records or deleting a workflow, Claygent or schedule. Allow everything removes those checkpoints. Plenty of credit-spending work goes ahead without asking, such as enrichments on a segment's members or creating a signal, so Clay recommends checking what the agent built before running it.
The agent also holds back on purpose in a few places. It won't launch or send a campaign, it creates signals in a paused state, it won't build or edit tables (Sculptor does that) and it won't delete a campaign.
The agent is in alpha on Launch, Growth and Enterprise plans, and it's rolling out gradually through Clay's beta program. Using the agent is free during the alpha, but the enrichments and workflow runs it triggers use credits as normal.
Sculptor and the Inbound SDR Agent
Sculptor, Clay's earlier AI assistant, now focuses on building and editing tables and writing Claygent prompts. Its old entry points in Workflows, Search and the home screen now open the global agent, which handles work that spans Clay, such as finding accounts, building a workflow, drafting a campaign or setting up a signal.
At Sculpt, Clay also previewed an Inbound SDR Agent: an AI seller that learns from sales call recordings, gives inbound buyers personalized product demos, qualifies them and routes the right ones to reps. It's available only through a waitlist for pre-beta partners.
What Clay Costs
Clay charges for two things: Actions, which measure platform usage, and data credits, which buy data and AI from providers in its marketplace. Every Clay plan bundles both.
Free: $0, with 6,000 Actions and 1,200 data credits a year, Claygent and up to 200 rows per table, but no phone enrichment
Launch: from $167 a month, adding phone enrichment, signals and Clay's Sequencer
Growth: from $446 a month, adding CRM and data warehouse sync, web intent signals and ad audiences
Enterprise: custom pricing, with SSO, role-based access and credit budgets by workbook
AI has its own pricing logic. Each Claygent prompt uses one Action plus data credits that vary with the model and the complexity of the request. Annual billing saves 10%, and every plan supports your own API keys for providers you already pay.
Where Clay Falls Short
Clay's flexibility comes with trade-offs that matter more as teams scale, and they show up consistently in Clay reviews.
It Needs a Builder
Clay rewards technical skill. Getting value from it means understanding conditional logic, data structure and prompt writing, so most teams rely on a dedicated GTM engineer or RevOps builder.
When that person leaves, the workflows they built can be hard for anyone else to maintain. As Ted S. puts it on G2, "There's definitely a learning curve, especially if you're not familiar with enrichment logic or building workflows."
Credits Are Hard to Predict
Usage depends on how many providers each waterfall checks, how many rows you run and how often tables re-run.
Reviewers on G2 consistently report credits running out early. Chris J., a product marketing manager, says, "Failed enrichments still burn credits, and we've blown through monthly credits early a couple of times." Teams should model real workflows before scaling.
Data Quality Depends on the Providers
Clay's enrichment runs on third-party providers, so accuracy and freshness vary with the sources in each waterfall.
Rajat S., a G2 reviewer, says, "Sometimes the data is not fully correct, so I still need to check it myself." Outdated records still use credits and add to B2B data decay in your CRM.
AI Needs Tuning
Claygent and the global agent are only as good as the prompts and context they get. Clay itself notes the global agent can make mistakes, and reviewers say writing effective prompts takes practice.
Compliance Spans Many Sources
Clay holds SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 and ISO 42001 certifications and supports GDPR and CCPA. But data bought through a marketplace of 200+ providers comes from many sources, so teams in regulated industries need to review how each provider collects its data.
The Newest Features Are Early
The global agent is in alpha, Account Agents are in beta, Workflows is in open beta and the Inbound SDR Agent is a preview. They're promising, but teams should expect them to change.
Clay vs. ZoomInfo: Two Approaches to GTM Data
Clay and ZoomInfo are often evaluated in the same buying cycle, but they're built on different ideas.
Clay gives teams a flexible layer to assemble data, workflows and agents from many sources. ZoomInfo is an all-in-one AI GTM Platform built on three capabilities: its own data, an intelligence layer and access everywhere teams work. It's why 37 of the top 40 AI companies run their GTM on ZoomInfo.
Data Foundation
Clay's coverage depends on which providers you connect and how you configure each waterfall. ZoomInfo starts from its own data foundation of 500M contacts, 100M companies, 135M+ verified phone numbers, 120M+ direct dials and 200M+ verified business emails, verified by 300+ human researchers with up to 95% accuracy on first-party data. GTM Studio adds built-in waterfall enrichment across 25+ vendors for any gaps, and its Records Under Management lets teams pay for a record once and re-enrich it free for up to a year.
Intelligence: The GTM Context Graph
Clay's agents work from the data and context you assemble. ZoomInfo's GTM Context Graph processes 1.5B+ data points daily, fusing ZoomInfo's data with your CRM records, conversation intelligence, buyer intent and behavioral signals. That lets ZoomInfo explain not just what happened in a deal, but why, and decide which accounts deserve attention now.
That context powers AI that can:
Identify in-market accounts
Surface the key stakeholders in each buying group
Prioritize outreach based on intent signals
Draft messaging informed by real engagement data
AI Agents: Clay's Global Agent vs. ZoomInfo Agent Teams
Clay and ZoomInfo have both launched AI sales agents that turn a goal into a running GTM play. ZoomInfo Agent Teams is built on technology from its acquisition of DoubleO.ai.
The two reflect different philosophies. Clay's agent is a builder: it helps a GTM engineer plan and assemble work across Clay, and Clay's workflows follow the paths you build. Agent Teams is a runner: it carries whole GTM motions end to end for every rep, working from each account's current state rather than a flowchart. Teams hand over the work and keep control, with monitoring, admin controls and role-based access built in.
Clay's global agent | ZoomInfo Agent Teams | |
Built for | GTM engineers building plays across Clay | RevOps and GTM teams running plays across the whole revenue team |
How you start | Describe an outcome, answer clarifying questions and review what Clay builds | Give it an outcome in plain language or code, or start from 50+ ready-made agents |
Data it works from | Business context in the Knowledge Hub, Clay's own dataset and Clay's marketplace of third-party providers | ZoomInfo's verified data and unified person and company identity, plus your CRM records, calls, emails and notes in the GTM Context Graph |
What starts it | A request, or scheduled tasks toward a goal | Signals such as job changes, form fills and intent spikes, plus CRM events, website visits, schedules and webhooks |
How it runs | Plans and builds workflows, segments, signals and campaigns inside Clay | Specialist agents share context across steps, a supervisor agent checks each step against your rules and real-time evaluations stop drift |
Where it acts | Inside Clay, with campaigns launched by you | GTM Studio, or through GTM.AI ZoomInfo's headless layer |
Controls | Approval before full workflow runs and deletions, while campaigns and signals wait for you | Monitoring, admin controls, role-based access and a credit estimate before each play runs |
Availability and cost | Alpha on paid plans, free to use, with the work it runs billed in credits | Available now in GTM Studio, with no new SKU, using AI credits on your existing contract |
How Each Agent Handles a Champion Tracking Play
Take a champion tracking play, where a past buyer moves to a new company.
In Clay, you'd ask the agent to set it up. Based on what Clay's docs say the agent can reach, it could create a job change signal, build a workflow to enrich the new contact and draft a campaign in Sequencer. The signal stays paused until you resume it, and you launch the campaign yourself, so a person stays in the loop at the key moments.
In Agent Teams, the play runs on a schedule against a ZoomInfo audience of past champions. When one moves to a target account, the Agent Team resolves the person and company, reconstructs their role in the original deal, checks for an open opportunity or a different account owner, drafts outreach grounded in that relationship and briefs the owner in Slack. If the champion visits your pricing page two weeks later, the play picks up where it left off rather than starting over, and every step is written back to Salesforce or HubSpot.
Which Agent Fits Your Team?
Choose Clay's agent if you have GTM engineers who want help building inside Clay, and you're comfortable with an alpha product and Clay's provider-based data.
Choose Agent Teams if you want to hand over whole GTM motions and keep control: plays that run for every rep on verified data, with live triggers, CRM write-back and governance from day one.
Access: Workspace, Studio, Agents and MCP
Clay is a builder's tool, with results flowing to the CRM, Sequencer or ad platforms. ZoomInfo puts the same intelligence wherever each team works:
GTM Workspace, where sellers research accounts, find buying groups and act on prioritized recommendations
GTM Studio, where RevOps and marketing teams build audiences, run plays and launch Agent Teams
GTM.AI, ZoomInfo's headless layer for AI agents, which brings ZoomInfo data and intelligence into any tool or agent through API, CLI and MCP
Operational Complexity
With Clay, teams typically choose providers, configure waterfalls, manage credits and maintain workflows as sources change. With ZoomInfo, the data, enrichment and intelligence come built in, and CRM data enrichment keeps records current through native sync. Teams spend their time running plays rather than maintaining infrastructure.
Syncro is one team that runs its plays this way.
"ZoomInfo is as much a data company as it is a go-to-market company. And so it just made perfect sense to stick with ZoomInfo for that reason."
For a detailed head-to-head, see the Clay vs. ZoomInfo comparison. We've also compared Clay with 6sense and Attio.
Is Clay Right for Your Team?
Clay is a strong choice for teams with GTM engineers who want maximum flexibility, custom AI research and control over every step. Its new global agent makes building faster, though it's still early.
ZoomInfo fits teams that want verified data, an intelligence layer and agents that run whole GTM motions end to end. Agent Teams turns signals into finished plays for every rep, on every account, with governance built in.
Whichever way you lean, Clay can look simpler in a demo than in production. Before committing, ask:
Who will own and maintain our workflows, and what happens if they leave?
How long until we get usable output?
How many credits will our real workflows use at full volume?
Which providers will we rely on, and do they meet our compliance standards?
How will reps actually use the output, and what other tools will we need?
Are we comfortable building on agent features that are still in alpha or beta?
If you're still comparing options, our Clay alternatives guide covers other tools, and our roundups of sales intelligence platforms and lead generation software go wider.
To see how ZoomInfo handles the same work on your own accounts, book a demo.
Frequently Asked Questions About Clay
What Is Clay Used For?
Teams use Clay to build and enrich prospect lists, research accounts with AI, track signals such as job changes, route inbound leads and send the results to their CRM, sequencer or ad platforms. Common use cases include outbound prospecting, CRM enrichment, account research and inbound lead routing.
Is Clay a CRM?
No. Clay is a data orchestration and workflow platform that sits alongside a CRM such as Salesforce or HubSpot. It enriches and updates CRM records and can send email campaigns, but most teams still keep their CRM as the system of record.
Who Owns Clay?
Clay, legally Clay Labs Inc., is a private, venture-backed company based in New York. It's led by co-founder and CEO Kareem Amin and raised a $115M Series D in 2026 at a reported $7.1B valuation.
Is Clay Free?
Clay has a Free plan with 6,000 Actions and 1,200 data credits a year, unlimited seats and Claygent, but no phone enrichment. Paid plans start at $167 a month for Launch.
What Is Claygent?
Claygent is Clay's AI research agent. It visits websites and reasons over your data to return structured answers, such as a company's open roles or a lead score. It's available on every plan, and each prompt uses one Action plus data credits.
What Is Clay's Global Agent?
Clay's global agent, announced at Sculpt in October 2026, turns a plain-English goal into a running play. It plans the work, builds workflows, segments, signals and campaigns inside Clay, and waits for approval before running a workflow on real records. It's in alpha on paid plans and free to use, though the enrichments and workflows it runs still use credits.
How Is Clay Different From ZoomInfo?
Clay is a flexible layer for assembling data from many providers into custom workflows, best suited to teams with GTM engineers. ZoomInfo is an all-in-one AI GTM Platform with its own verified data, the GTM Context Graph and Agent Teams, which runs whole GTM motions end to end for every rep without building them from scratch.