Clay vs Apify

AI Automation comparison · Updated Mar 2026

🏆
Quick Verdict
Clay wins overall
Clay edges ahead with overall stronger positioning. Choose Apify if you need Rich Actor marketplace.
✍️ Writing Clay
💻 Coding Apify
👥 Teams Clay
💰 Budget Clay
🏢 Enterprise Clay
Choose Clay if…
Powerful enrichment; AI research capabilities
Visit Clay →
Choose Apify if…
Rich Actor marketplace; Scalable infrastructure
Visit Apify →

At a Glance

Clay 🏆 Apify
Category AI Automation AI Automation
Pricing freemium freemium
Starting Price Freemium Freemium
Best For sales-automation, data-enrichment, outreach web-scraping, automation, data-extraction
Features Listed 6 6

Feature Comparison

Clay 🏆 Apify
Waterfall enrichment Actor marketplace
75+ data providers Headless browsers
AI research agent Proxy management
Personalized outreach Cloud infrastructure
CRM integrations API access
Claygent AI Scheduled runs

Pricing Comparison

Clay
freemium
Best Value
Paid
Free with 100 credits/mo. Starter $149/mo. Explorer $349/mo. Pro $800/mo.
Apify
freemium
Paid
Free with $5/mo platform credits. Starter $49/mo. Scale $499/mo. Enterprise custom.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Clay 🏆
Pros
  • +Powerful enrichment
  • +AI research capabilities
  • +Multi-provider waterfall
  • +Great for sales teams
Cons
  • Expensive at scale
  • Credits can run out fast
  • Learning curve
  • Complex pricing
Apify
Pros
  • +Rich Actor marketplace
  • +Scalable infrastructure
  • +Good documentation
  • +Generous free tier
Cons
  • Learning curve for custom actors
  • Compute costs add up
  • Complex pricing
  • Debugging can be hard

Winner by Buyer Type

Buyer Type Best Pick Reason
Solo Developer Apify Dev-friendly features + low cost
Marketing Team Clay Content creation & collaboration
Enterprise Clay Scalability & admin controls
Budget-Conscious Clay Best value at lowest price
Content Creators Clay Output quality & creative tools
Technical Teams Apify API access & developer features

Final Recommendation

🏆 Overall Winner
Clay
Clay comes out ahead in this comparison. At Freemium, it offers powerful enrichment. If Apify fits your workflow better based on the use-case breakdown above, go with that — but for most users, Clay is the safer default choice.

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