9Alternatives to Clay for Data Enrichment
Clay has dominated the data enrichment space for years. It offers 100+ data sources, powerful workflow automation, and deep customization. But it's not without problems.
Pricing starts at $149/month for just 2,000 credits. Phone enrichments burn through credits fast. API calls that return no data still cost you. And the learning curve is steep enough that most teams never unlock its full potential.
I tested 9 Clay alternatives for data enrichment and GTM automation:
Freckle.io – best for ease of use and natural language enrichment
Airscale – best for list building and cost efficiency
Apollo.io – best all-in-one platform with built-in outreach
FullEnrich – best for contact-only waterfall enrichment
Cargo – best for production-grade GTM orchestration
Exa Websets – best for simple natural language searches
Floqer – best for CRM cleaning and workflow automation
Cognism – best for European contact data
Tapistro – best for company research and intent unification
1. Freckle.io – Best for Ease of Use
Best for: Teams frustrated with Clay's complexity. Anyone who wants enrichment without choosing data sources manually. HubSpot and Salesforce users who need CRM sync.
Freckle.io launched recently with $5M in funding and a fundamentally different philosophy. Instead of forcing you to select specific data providers, you describe what you want in plain English. Freckle handles the rest.
The interface mirrors Clay's spreadsheet-style layout but feels lighter. Creating tables works through CRM imports, CSV uploads, Google Maps searches, or company lookalikes. In testing, a lookalike search based on three competitor URLs returned accurate results within seconds.
What stood out in testing:
The natural language approach removes friction entirely. Adding a column labeled "CEO's LinkedIn profile" triggered Freckle to query the right sources automatically. No waterfall configuration. No provider selection.
Custom enrichments work surprisingly well. A column checking whether companies had SOC 2 compliance pages returned accurate yes/no results across 50 test records. Freckle's crawler handled the verification without manual setup.
The onboarding deserves mention. A guided checklist awards bonus credits for completing each step. Small touch, but it accelerates time-to-value.
CRM sync works bidirectionally. Enriched data flows back to HubSpot or Salesforce automatically, keeping your CRM as the single source of truth.
Limitations:
Freckle tracks around 40 data sources versus Clay's 100+. For niche enrichments like podcast appearances or GitHub activity, Clay still wins.
Custom columns occasionally miss context. In one test checking for customers of a specific vendor, Freckle detected only 1 of 5 known customers. The inference engine has limits.
No integrations with Pipedrive, Microsoft Dynamics, or other CRMs yet. If you're not on HubSpot or Salesforce, you're stuck with CSV workflows.
Pricing: Free tier with 500 credits. Pro at $99/month for 2,500 credits. Emails cost 1 credit. Phone numbers cost 5 credits. Clay customers can exchange remaining credits for equivalent Freckle credits.
2. Airscale – Best for List Building and Value
Best for: SDRs building outbound lists at scale. Budget-conscious teams. Anyone who needs LinkedIn scraping and Google Maps extraction.
Airscale focuses on one thing: helping you build prospect lists efficiently. The interface isn't pretty, but it's functional. Three tabs greet you after signup: Find People, Find Companies, and Monitor.
The list-building options rival Clay's. Sales Navigator extraction, LinkedIn post engagement scraping, Apollo imports, and Google Maps searches all work natively.
What stood out in testing:
LinkedIn engagement scraping performed flawlessly. Extracting everyone who liked a specific post returned names, companies, and titles within minutes. The Google Maps scraper handled a search for accounting firms in Chicago without issues.
The pricing model deserves attention. At $49/month for 4,000 credits, Airscale delivers roughly six times more credits per dollar than Clay. Phone numbers run $0.20 each. You only pay when valid data is found.
Credits roll over monthly. Unlimited users on all plans. These details matter for growing teams.
Limitations:
The job posting search needs work. A search for companies hiring "RevOps Manager" returned unrelated roles like "Operations Coordinator" and "Office Manager." The matching algorithm lacks precision.
Free trial restrictions are aggressive. Enriching even a single contact requires a paid plan. The lookalike feature is paywalled. Testing before buying is difficult.
No native CRM integrations. You're exporting CSVs and importing manually.
Pricing: Starter at $49/month for 4,000 credits. Scale at $99/month for 12,000 credits. Growth at $189/month for 25,000 credits. All plans include 30+ data providers and unlimited users.
3. Apollo.io – Best All-in-One Platform
Best for: Teams that want prospecting, enrichment, and outreach in one tool. Anyone tired of juggling multiple platforms. Sales orgs that need a built-in dialer and email sequences.
Apollo.io goes beyond enrichment. It's a complete GTM platform with 275M contacts and 73M companies in its native database. You're not building lists from scratch. You're searching Apollo's existing data.
The value proposition is consolidation. Prospecting, enrichment, email sequences, phone dialer, LinkedIn automation. Everything lives in one interface.
What stood out in testing:
The prospecting filters are granular. A search for Directors of Marketing at healthcare companies with 200-500 employees using Salesforce returned 1,800 results. You can layer on hiring signals, funding events, and technology usage without leaving the platform.
Waterfall enrichment arrived recently. Apollo now falls back to secondary providers like Prospeo or ZoomInfo when its own database misses. In testing, adding Prospeo as a backup raised email match rates from 58% to 79%.
The workflow from enrichment to outreach is seamless. Select contacts, enroll in a sequence, track opens and replies. No exports. No imports. No third-party tools.
Limitations:
Waterfall customization is limited. You can't control provider order or build conditional logic. Apollo decides the sequence.
Complex data transformations aren't possible. Clay lets you chain data sources, apply formulas, and build branching workflows. Apollo doesn't.
Per-user pricing adds up. At $79/user/month for Professional, a 10-person team pays $790/month before considering credit costs.
Pricing: Free tier with unlimited email credits and 5 mobile credits. Basic at $49/user/month. Professional at $79/user/month. Organization at $119/user/month with minimum 3 users. Credits don't roll over.
4. FullEnrich – Best for Contact Waterfall Enrichment
Best for: Teams that need maximum email and phone coverage. Anyone frustrated with single-provider hit rates. Users who want simple CSV-in, CSV-out workflows.
FullEnrich does one thing exceptionally well: waterfall enrichment across 15+ data providers. Upload a CSV with names and companies. Download a CSV with verified emails and phone numbers. That's the entire product.
The approach aggregates data from Apollo, Hunter, Lusha, and others. Providers run sequentially until a match is found.
What stood out in testing:
Match rates exceeded single-provider alternatives consistently. A test batch of 50 contacts returned verified emails for 41 (82%). The same list through Apollo alone yielded 29 (58%).
The interface requires zero learning curve. Upload. Wait. Download. Verification indicators show email validity clearly.
Pay-per-result pricing means you're not charged for failures. Credits only deduct when data is successfully found.
Limitations:
This is purely a contact enrichment tool. No list building. No workflows. No CRM integrations. You're managing CSVs manually.
Phone number enrichment costs 10 credits per result. At volume, this adds up quickly.
No real-time enrichment. You're batch processing, not enriching on the fly.
Pricing: Free trial with 50 credits. Starter at $29/month for 500 credits. Pro and agency tiers available with custom pricing. Emails cost 1 credit. Phones cost 10 credits. Credits roll over for 3 months.
5. Cargo – Best for Production-Grade GTM Orchestration
Best for: Revenue teams that have outgrown spreadsheet-based workflows. GTM engineers building scalable, systematic processes. Companies that need enterprise-grade governance with retry policies and versioning.
Cargo is a Y Combinator-backed platform that positions itself as "Clay for adults." The pitch: turn experimental enrichment workflows into production-grade systems with proper error handling, fallback logic, and team governance.
The architecture differs fundamentally from Clay's spreadsheet approach. Cargo treats workflows as modular building blocks. You combine components—triggers, enrichments, actions—with full control over retry policies, versioning, and conditional logic.
What stood out in testing:
The governance features solve real problems. Retry policies handle failed API calls automatically. Workflow versioning lets you roll back changes. Fallback conditions route around errors without breaking entire processes. These details matter when workflows run at scale.
Lead routing and territory management work natively. Clay requires DIY logic for assigning leads to reps or managing capacity. Cargo includes these features out of the box.
The AI agents handle research and qualification autonomously. Point an agent at a prospect list, and it enriches records, scores leads against your ICP, and categorizes by tier. The output feeds directly into your CRM or outreach tools.
Integration coverage is solid. Salesforce, HubSpot, Clearbit, Apollo, ZoomInfo, Instantly, and 50+ other connectors. New integrations ship weekly.
Gorgias reportedly saw a 70% increase in conversion rates after implementing Cargo's dynamic content workflows compared to static segmentation.
Limitations:
The learning curve is real. This isn't a tool you configure in an afternoon. Expect to invest time architecting workflows properly. Someone on the team needs to think systematically about process design.
Pricing isn't cheap. Cargo targets companies with proven GTM motions ready to scale, not early-stage teams still experimenting. The investment reflects that positioning.
No self-serve trial for the full platform. You can start with 100 free credits, but enterprise features require a sales conversation.
Pricing: Free trial with 100 credits. Paid plans scale based on credit usage, starting around $0.25 per credit with volume discounts. All plans include unlimited workflows, territory management, and access to community tools. SOC 2 Type II certified.
6. Exa Websets – Best for Simple Natural Language Searches
Best for: Users who find Clay overwhelming. Teams that want quick company or people lists without configuration. Anyone who values simplicity over depth.
Exa Websets takes the natural language approach further than any alternative. A single search bar accepts queries like "Series B fintech companies in Austin" or "Heads of Growth at product-led SaaS companies." Exa generates a spreadsheet of matching results.
The underlying technology comes from Exa's AI search engine. Results pull from web-wide data rather than traditional B2B databases.
What stood out in testing:
Company searches performed well. A query for "developer tools startups with recent funding" returned relevant results with accurate enrichments for revenue estimates, CEO profiles, and tech stack.
The enrichment workflow mirrors Freckle's approach. Describe what you want in a column, and Exa determines the data source automatically.
Email and phone enrichments showed solid hit rates in testing. Most contacts returned valid business emails.
Limitations:
People searches show freshness issues. Several results included individuals who had changed roles within the past 60 days. The LinkedIn data doesn't refresh daily.
No signal monitoring or alerting. Exa Websets is static list building only. You can't track job changes or company events over time.
Pricing gets expensive at scale. Each matching result costs 10 credits before any enrichments. A 200-person list costs 2,000 credits just for the initial search.
Pricing: Free tier with 1,000 credits. Core at $49/month for 8,000 credits. Pro at $449/month for 100,000 credits. Results cost 10 credits each. Emails and phones cost 5 credits each.
7. Floqer – Best for CRM Cleaning and Workflow Automation
Best for: Teams with messy CRM data. Anyone who needs ongoing contact monitoring. Users who want to chain enrichment with outreach triggers.
Floqer positions itself as a GTM orchestration platform. The core value is CRM hygiene: finding missing data, updating stale records, and monitoring contacts for changes over time.
Waterfall enrichment runs automatically on CRM records with gaps. Job change detection updates titles, companies, and emails when contacts move.
What stood out in testing:
CRM cleaning performed reliably. Intentionally removing emails and phones from 10 HubSpot contacts, then connecting Floqer, resulted in 9 successful re-enrichments.
The intent signal templates are useful. "Companies hiring aggressively" and "New executives hired" work as saved searches that update daily with new matches.
AI-powered scraping handles edge cases. Pasting a URL from a conference exhibitor list and requesting "company names and booth numbers" extracted 50+ records accurately.
Workflow chaining works as advertised. A trigger watching for new CRO hires, enriching contact details, checking company size, and enrolling qualified leads in sequences ran without issues.
Limitations:
Floqer doesn't send emails or LinkedIn requests. It builds workflows that integrate with Instantly or similar tools for actual execution.
Data provider coverage (80 sources) trails Clay's 150+. Niche enrichments may require supplemental tools.
No published pricing. Sales calls required for quotes.
Pricing: Custom pricing only. Sales team claims 20-30% lower cost per enrichment than competitors.
8. Cognism – Best for European Contact Data
Best for: Teams selling into EMEA markets. Anyone who needs GDPR-compliant data. Users who value phone-verified mobile numbers.
Cognism specializes in European contact data. The differentiator is verification methodology: real humans call to confirm phone numbers. This manual process yields higher accuracy than purely algorithmic approaches.
The platform integrates natively with Salesforce, HubSpot, and other major CRMs. Automatic enrichment rules update records in real-time as new leads enter.
What stood out in testing:
European coverage exceeded expectations. Contact records for UK, German, and French companies included verified mobile numbers at higher rates than US-focused alternatives.
CRM integration setup took minutes. Connecting Salesforce and enabling automatic enrichment required no technical configuration. New leads populate with contact data immediately.
The phone verification process shows in the data quality. Connect rates on Cognism numbers ran noticeably higher than aggregated waterfall providers in a 200-call test.
Limitations:
Cognism is a single data source. Either they have the contact or they don't. No waterfall logic. No fallback providers. Coverage gaps exist outside EMEA markets.
Pricing requires a sales conversation. No published rates. The platform tends toward enterprise pricing that may exclude smaller teams.
This isn't a Clay replacement. Cognism handles contact enrichment specifically. No workflow automation, no custom enrichments, no signal monitoring.
Pricing: Custom quotes only. Enterprise-focused pricing. Contact sales for specific rates.
9. Tapistro – Best for Company Research and Intent Unification
Best for: Enterprise teams running account-based motions. Anyone who needs to unify intent signals from multiple sources. Companies with complex ICP definitions requiring deep research.
Tapistro brands itself as an AI GTM Autopilot. The core value is unifying disparate intent signals—LinkedIn Ads, G2, Clearbit, website visitors, product usage—into a single prioritized account view.
AI agents handle custom company research. Define questions like "Is this company B2B or B2C?" or "Have they announced layoffs recently?" Tapistro crawls websites, press releases, and job boards to answer them.
What stood out in testing:
The signal unification genuinely reduces noise. Instead of checking five dashboards for buying signals, Tapistro consolidates everything. Accounts surface with composite scores based on all signal sources.
The research agents answered company-specific questions accurately. Queries about recent funding, office expansions, and technology changes returned correct results for most test accounts.
Pre-built connectors cover major intent sources. G2, Clearbit, RB2B, Factors, and standard CRM platforms integrate natively.
Limitations:
This is a platform, not a point solution. Implementation takes time. Expect to invest the first month configuring workflows and learning the interface.
AI research agents depend on digital footprint. Companies without active press releases, job postings, or web presence return sparse results.
No published pricing. Custom quotes based on team size and use case.
Pricing: Custom pricing only. Contact sales for quotes.
Which Tool Should You Choose?
The right choice depends on your specific workflow.
Choose Freckle.io if:
You want Clay's power without the complexity
Natural language enrichment appeals to you
HubSpot or Salesforce is your CRM
You value transparent, predictable pricing
Choose Airscale if:
List building is your primary use case
Budget matters more than polish
You need LinkedIn and Google Maps scraping
Six times more credits per dollar sounds good
Choose Apollo.io if:
You want prospecting, enrichment, and outreach unified
Built-in dialer and sequences matter
You prefer searching existing data over building lists
Consolidation trumps flexibility
Choose FullEnrich if:
Maximum email/phone coverage is the goal
Simple CSV workflows work for you
You don't need list building or automation
Pay-per-result pricing makes sense
Choose Cargo if:
You've outgrown spreadsheet-based workflows
Enterprise governance matters (versioning, retry policies)
Lead routing and territory management are requirements
You're ready to invest in systematic GTM infrastructure
Choose Exa Websets if:
Simplicity matters most
Natural language search appeals to you
You want quick lists without configuration
Static enrichment is sufficient
Choose Floqer if:
CRM data quality is your main problem
Job change monitoring matters
You need workflow automation with triggers
Custom pricing conversations don't bother you
Choose Cognism if:
European markets are your focus
Phone-verified mobile numbers matter
GDPR compliance is non-negotiable
You're okay with single-source data
Choose Tapistro if:
Intent signal unification is valuable
You run complex account-based motions
AI company research fits your workflow
Platform investment makes sense
The Bottom Line
Clay built this category. It remains the most flexible option for complex data orchestration with 100+ data sources and deep customization.
But flexibility comes with costs. Steep learning curves. Aggressive credit consumption. No refunds on failed lookups.
The alternatives prove there's room for different approaches. Freckle.io and Exa Websets simplify with natural language. Airscale wins on value. Apollo.io consolidates the entire GTM stack. FullEnrich maximizes contact coverage. Cargo adds enterprise governance.
Pick the tool that matches your actual workflow. The "best" alternative is the one that solves your specific problem without creating new ones.
