Clay pricing for local business leads: what a 1,000-business list really costs

As of November 2026, Clay costs $0 on Free, from $185 a month on Launch and from $495 a month on Growth when billed monthly ($167 and $446 a month billed annually), and each paid price is an Actions tier plus a Data Credits tier. For a 1,000-business local list with emails, Launch's included 2,500 Data Credits cover it if email finding averages up to 2.5 credits per business; above that you top up at a 30% premium. Clay doesn't publish per-enrichment credit costs, so the worked example below shows the range rather than one number, plus three cheaper routes.

What are Clay's plans and prices in November 2026?#

Clay sells two meters: Actions for platform work and Data Credits for marketplace data. Every paid plan is a choice of Actions tier plus a choice of Data Credits tier. These are the entry points on Clay's pricing page:

The headline numbers on the page are the annual ones ($167 and $446); the FAQ quotes the monthly ones ($185 and $495). Adding the cheapest Actions tier and the cheapest Data Credits tier gives exactly those totals, which is how the table above reads them.

What changes by plan, for local list building:

• Free: multi-provider waterfalls, Claygent, bring-your-own API keys, 200 rows per table. No phone number enrichment.
• Launch: adds phone enrichment, scheduled runs, email sending and 50,000 rows per table.
• Growth: adds CRM auto-sync, HTTP API integrations and webhook signals.

How do Clay's Actions and Data Credits work?#

Actions measure what you do in Clay; Data Credits buy data from providers in Clay's marketplace. The rules that matter for cost, from Clay's pricing page and FAQ:

What Clay doesn't publish on that page: how many Data Credits each enrichment costs, how many Actions a given column uses, and whether the Google Maps source itself costs credits. Costs vary by provider, and Clay shows them on the column before you run it. Check there, run ten rows, and multiply.

What does a 1,000-business local list cost in Clay?#

Somewhere between the Launch base price and roughly double it, depending on how many Data Credits your email step uses per business. Here's the arithmetic for a common job: 1,000 HVAC companies in one metro, each with a sendable email, on Launch billed monthly.

Fixed part: Launch at $185 a month includes 15,000 Actions and 2,500 Data Credits, and a 50,000-row table holds the list. Free doesn't work here: its tables stop at 200 rows.

Actions: Clay doesn't publish Actions per row. Even at 10 Actions per business across source, cleanup, enrichment and export, 1,000 businesses use 10,000 of the 15,000 included.

Data Credits: this is the variable. The table assumes every business is enriched; in practice rows without a website don't run, and empty results aren't charged, so real use is lower.

At 5 credits per business, moving to the 6,000-credit tier ($290 instead of $125, so $350 a month) costs about the same as topping up. At 8, the 10,000-credit tier ($460, so $520 a month) is cheaper than top-ups. Both assume the 30% premium applies to the $0.05 base rate, which Clay's page doesn't spell out.

Per business: $185 to $542.50 for 1,000 businesses is $0.19 to $0.54 each, before verification. If your Clay workflow doesn't include a verifier step, you'll also pay a verifier before sending; our guide to how email verification works explains what that step checks.

Two things push the real number down: Data Credits bank on paid plans, so a lighter month carries forward, and rows that return nothing are free. Two push it up: Claygent research per row, and re-running a table after editing a column.

What drives Clay's cost up on local lists?#

Enriching rows that should never have been in the table. Local lists have three kinds of waste, and each one spends Actions or Data Credits:

1. Duplicates. Overlapping radius searches return the same business several times. Dedupe on Google Place ID before any enrichment column runs.
2. Out-of-area and wrong-trade rows. A Maps search for "plumber" in a city also returns businesses just outside it and adjacent trades. Filter on city or ZIP and category first.
3. Rows with no website, or a social page as the website. Clay's own guide warns that many "website" values are Instagram, Facebook or Linktree pages, and its claybook notes enrichment won't run where there's no website. Filter those out before domain-based email finding.

A cheap habit: import with "Save and don't run", filter, then run enrichment on the remaining rows only.

What are cheaper ways to build a local business list?#

There are three, and the right one depends on whether you need Clay for anything after the list exists.

Bring your own keys. Clay's FAQ says a run on your own API key counts as one Action and uses no Data Credits. Clay's local-lead claybook uses Serper.dev for listings and notes Serper's first 2,500 queries are free. You trade Clay's billing for each provider's, and you manage the keys.

Import a finished list. If the list arrives deduplicated, inside your territory and with verified emails attached, Clay only enriches what's missing: owners, extra research, scoring. Our Clay and Google Maps guide covers the CSV and webhook imports step by step.

Skip Clay. Clay is an orchestration tool, and it earns its price when you use the orchestration. If you only need a sendable list, a Google Maps lead tool that finds and verifies emails can push straight to Instantly, Smartlead or lemlist.

For the same 1,000 HVAC companies in Leadraft: 1,000 business credits, plus one checked-email credit for each Verified email you take out. Accept-all and Invalid grades don't use checked-email credits. Starter is $19 a month with 25,000 business credits and 1,000 checked-email credits, and unused credits roll over while your plan is active. The caveat is in the yield: in our measurements about 54% of business websites give up an email (found, before verification), so expect fewer than 1,000 Verified addresses from 1,000 businesses, whichever tool you use. See pricing for every plan.

Where does Leadraft fit for local leads?#

Leadraft is built for the list itself: every business of a trade inside the area you choose, one row per business, with emails from each business's own website checked against the live mail server. It doesn't do AI research columns, multi-provider waterfalls or CRM routing; that's orchestration work, and if your team does it, you import the finished list into Clay and enrich only the gaps.

For the job this page prices, the difference is concrete:

If the goal is one city's businesses with checked emails in a sending tool this week, build the list in Leadraft and push it to your sequencer. If Clay is part of your stack for other work, Leadraft is still where the list comes from, and Clay starts from clean rows.

FAQ#

How much does Clay cost?#

As of November 2026, Clay's pricing page lists Free at $0, Launch from $185 a month billed monthly ($167 a month billed annually) and Growth from $495 a month billed monthly ($446 a month billed annually), with Enterprise on custom pricing. Each paid price is an Actions tier plus a Data Credits tier, and both can be scaled up.

What is the difference between Clay Actions and Data Credits?#

Actions pay for platform work: running tables, calling AI models, enriching and exporting. Data Credits pay for data bought from Clay's marketplace, such as emails, phone numbers and company data. If you bring your own API key, a run counts as one Action and uses no Data Credits.

How many credits does an email lookup cost in Clay?#

Clay's pricing page doesn't publish a per-enrichment table, and costs vary by provider, so check the cost Clay shows on the enrichment column before you run it. Clay does say lookups that return no result aren't charged Data Credits or Actions.

Can I build a local lead list on Clay's free plan?#

Only a small one. The Free plan includes 500 Actions and 100 Data Credits a month and up to 200 rows per table, as of November 2026. That's enough to test a workflow on one neighborhood, not to build a city-wide list.

Do Clay credits roll over?#

Actions reset every billing cycle. On Launch and Growth, Clay's FAQ says unused Data Credits can bank up to twice the monthly amount, though the plan table on the same page words the cap differently. Free has no rollover.

Sources#

1. Clay, Pricing (plans, Actions and Data Credits tiers, rows per table, rollover, top-ups, empty-result and own-key rules, FAQ), checked November 2026.
2. Clay, How to scrape Google Maps for leads (Maps source fields, website cleanup).
3. Clay University, Turn Google Maps listings into a target account list with contacts and emails (Serper.dev template, 2,500 free queries, no enrichment without a website).
4. Clay University, CSV import overview ("Save and don't run").
5. Leadraft, Pricing.