What for: a GTM engine that enriches leads from 150+ data sources and puts AI agents to work researching and personalizing outreach at scale.

What it is and who it's for

Clay is a GTM engineering platform: in a spreadsheet-style builder you enrich lists of companies and contacts with data from 150+ sources and turn AI agents loose to research leads and personalize outreach at scale. Built for RevOps, founders and sales operators who want control over every enrichment rule instead of a "black box". It stands out for the breadth of its sources (waterfall enrichment), its flexibility, and the fact that its AI agent has already run 1.5B+ tasks for 10k+ customers (including OpenAI and Anthropic).

Key features

Waterfall enrichment: 150+ company and contact data providers in a single table.
Lookalike account search and contact-level signals.
AI agents (Claygent) — web research and rule-driven field filling.
Outreach personalization at scale on top of enriched data.
Integrations with CRMs and outreach tools; segment export.
Provider marketplace — you pay only for the sources you actually use.

Getting started in 5 minutes

Sign up at clay.com (there's a free plan with credits).
Import a list or build one in the table; add enrichment columns (email, role, tech stack).
Plug in Claygent for research/personalization and push the segment to your CRM or outreach tool.

When to use it and when not to

✅ Use it if you need full control over enrichment and GTM data personalization.
✅ Use it if you're building complex lead pipelines and want a waterfall across many sources.
❌ Skip it → go with "Apollo" if you need a large ready-made B2B contact database plus outreach/dialer out of the box.
❌ Skip it → go with a simple outreach service if all you need is basic sending without complex enrichment.

Honest pricing

Free plan with credits; paid plans are priced by credit/row volume and features; provider data is billed separately through the marketplace. Exact numbers are on the vendor's site and do change.

Gotchas

Steep learning curve: this is a builder for operators, not a "get leads" button.
Credits and third-party sources stack up — costs are easy to underestimate.
Data quality depends on the providers; always validate email deliverability.
Cold outreach is regulated (GDPR, CAN-SPAM and others) — stay compliant.

🤖 Prompt booster

"I'm building a GTM pipeline in Clay for <describe your ICP: industry, size, roles>. Help me design the table: which enrichment columns to use and in what waterfall order of sources (email, role, tech stack, signals), what prompt to give Claygent for research and for personalizing the first line of the email, and a checklist for data validation and compliance before pushing to outreach."