How much are Clay credits? A real cost calculator

Most answers to how much are Clay credits quote a plan price. That tells you what a month of credits costs, not what one contact costs, and the second number is the one your budget runs on. Clay prices every job in two units, and only one of them is called a credit.

This page stays on the job. For what each Clay plan includes, see Clay pricing plans, with every price dated, and for the wider field of tools, see Clay AI alternatives and competitors.

If you would rather read prices than estimate them, see this workflow priced in Oneprofile, where each enrichment shows its cost before it runs.

How much are Clay credits? The answer in one place

Here is what Clay itself publishes, and where:

• The price of a credit. Clay's pricing FAQ says data credits start at $0.05 each and actions at less than $0.01 each. We read it on Oct 16, 2026.

• The count per job. Clay's docs say data credits vary by data type, and put it plainly: "emails are cheap, phone numbers are expensive."

• A whole record. The same docs say a fully enriched record typically costs 6 to 20 data credits, depending on the data types, your own API keys and waterfalls. We read them on Nov 9, 2026.

• The exact figure. Clay shows it next to each enrichment option inside the product, not on a public page.

So the honest answer is a price per credit times a count per job, plus the actions the job spends. Clay publishes the count for some jobs and not for others, which is why the calculator on this page leaves some of Clay's inputs for you to fill.

How do Clay credits work? Two meters on every job

Every Clay enrichment draws on two balances at once. They pay for different things:

• Actions pay for platform work: running a table, calling a data partner or a model, and sending or exporting data. They reset each billing cycle and never roll over.

• Data credits buy data and AI from Clay's marketplace. On Launch and Growth they roll over, up to 2x the monthly amount.

• AI models. 80% of them cost a flat number of data credits per task. Token-heavy models bill by the tokens they actually use, shown as an estimate in data credits.

• Your own API key costs one action and no data credit.

• No result costs no data credits and no actions.

The two balances run out on their own schedules. A month of cheap email lookups leans on actions. A month of phone numbers leans on data credits, and the meter that empties first sets your bill.

A small opinion, and not one that sells anything: credits as a currency are a habit the whole category picked up, ours included, and they make shopping harder than it needs to be. A price per credit says very little until you know how many credits a result takes.

Using the Clay pricing calculator on your own list

The calculator opens on Clay for this page. Four inputs set the scenario:

• Contacts a month: how many people you work each month.

• Share of lookups that find an answer: every tool here charges nothing for a lookup that finds nothing, so lowering this lowers every tool's cost.

• Billing: monthly or annual, which changes the plan prices.

• Jobs for each contact: a work email, a verification, a phone number, a company or person enrichment, or AI research on the company.

The first result table gives each tool's cheapest published plan that fits, its minimum, and any extra credits on top. For Clay, the need is shown in both meters, data credits and actions, because a plan has to cover both.

Below it, every credit cost is an input. A figure a tool does not publish in our sources starts empty and reads Not published, so the result for that tool waits for your number instead of guessing one.

Say you work 1,000 contacts a month and want a work email and a phone number for each. Pick both jobs and Clay's line stays blank until you type the data credits your Clay table shows for a phone number. That blank is the point: Clay has not published that figure, and we will not invent it.

How much are Clay credits per job: what the data shows

Anyway, back to what Clay actually prints. Every Clay figure in the calculator comes from one of three pages: clay.com/pricing, checked Oct 16, 2026, and two Clay docs pages, Actions & Data Credits and AI pricing, read Nov 9, 2026.

Two of those deserve a caveat. The email and profile figures come from a worked example in Clay's docs, not a price list, so your own data sources may cost more. And the extra data credit price is stated on the pricing page as a premium, not a price per credit: the calculator reads it as a premium on your plan's own data credit rate, which is our assumption and an input you can change.

The other three tools publish more or less. Airscale's pricing page and public docs price all six jobs. Bitscale's pricing page prints a work email, a phone number and deep web research, and leaves verification, company and person enrichment unpriced. Databar's pricing page prints none, so its figures come from Databar's own public pricing summary, which prices four of the six jobs.

Oneprofile's figures come from its own enrichment catalog, shown as a range from the cheapest source to the dearest. That range is real: each lookup is charged the source that answered it.

Clay credits: strengths and limits

Clay's billing gets several things right, and they are worth saying before the limits.

Pros

• An enrichment that returns no result costs no data credits and no actions

• Your own API key runs a data source for one action and no data credit

• Data credits roll over on Launch and Growth, up to 2x the monthly amount

• The exact cost of each enrichment shows next to it in the product before you add it

• 80% of Clay's AI models cost a flat number of data credits per task, by its own pricing page

Cons

• Two meters on every job: each enrichment spends actions and data credits, and either can run out first

• No per-job data credit cost is published for a phone number or a company enrichment

• Actions reset each billing cycle and never roll over

• Extra data credits on Launch and Growth cost a premium, and Free cannot buy more

• Token-heavy AI models bill by the tokens they use, shown as an estimate in data credits

How much are Clay credits next to one credit meter

The question underneath how much are Clay credits is usually a different one: what will next month cost? On two meters, the answer is two forecasts.

Oneprofile bills on one. Each enrichment shows its price before you run it, and where its data sources are priced differently, it shows the most a lookup can cost. Each lookup is then charged the source that answered it, nothing when none does, and nothing for an answer reused from an earlier run. Buying extra credits never carries a premium, and paid credits never expire.

Find work email checks its data sources in an order set by accuracy, not price, and stops at the first answer. You never pick the order, and you never pay for a source that came back empty.

Whichever tool you pick, a few steps make the comparison fair:

• Pull last month's Clay usage and note which meter ran out first.

• Copy the data credits your table shows for phone numbers and company data into the calculator.

• Set the share of lookups that found an answer to what you actually saw.

• Compare the total cost of ownership over a year: the plan, the extra credits, and the hours someone spends keeping the setup running.

Then price the same job in Oneprofile on 20 contacts you already know, and read each enrichment's cost before it runs.