Clay vs Outreach: Cross-Category Comparison
Clay covers sourcing and verified contacts while Outreach covers sending and follow-through. Which gap to close first, what a year costs, and whether a team needs both.
Close the data gap first when the list runs out. Clay covers sourcing and verified contacts from $167 a month on the annual basis, while Outreach covers sending and follow-through and names no price on its own page. Buy the sending side first only when meetings are already being booked and lost after the reply arrives.
Key takeaways
- A Clay plan headline is two sliders added together. Launch is $54 plus $113 a month on the annual basis, which is the $167 the page leads with.
- Outreach publishes four Amplify packages and no price, with AI credits the only public number: 10,000 on Essentials rising to 100,000 on Pro.
- Half of this stack can be budgeted from public pages and half cannot, so treat any Outreach figure in a plan as a placeholder until a quote lands.
- Data first, sending second, because a sending platform bought onto a thin list delivers the same thin list faster and hides the cause in its own reporting.
Reviewed and updated August 29, 2026
Clay vs Outreach: Cross-Category Comparison
Clay's pricing page headlines Launch at $167 a month and its own FAQ calls the same plan "Launch (starting at $185/mo)". Both Clay figures are correct, because one is the annual basis and one the monthly, and each headline is two separately metered sliders added together. Outreach sits on the other side of that line and names no price on its own pricing page, only four Amplify packages and an AI credit allowance. Reading those two shapes together is what this comparison is for.
Why Compare These Two Tools?
Data enrichment tools provide the contact data that sales engagement platforms use for outreach sequences. The question for buyers is often whether an all-in-one platform that includes data can replace a dedicated enrichment tool.
Clay is a data enrichment tool focused on B2B lead data and contact enrichment. Clay is a data enrichment and workflow automation platform with 150+ integrations and AI-powered enrichment (Claygent).
Outreach is a sales engagement platform focused on multi-channel sales outreach. Outreach is an enterprise sales engagement platform with multi-channel sequences, AI-powered deal insights, revenue forecasting, and conversation intelligence for scaling outbound sales teams.
That framing is close and it hides the thing worth reading this page for. Clay lists Clay Sequencer for email and campaign integrations, so these two are not neatly either side of a line. What follows prices both shelves from their own published figures and answers whether Outreach earns a second line on the invoice at all.
Where Each Tool Fits in Your Workflow
- Step 1Lead sourcing and data
Clay covers B2B lead data and contact enrichment, on a free entry plan.
- Step 2Outreach orchestration
Outreach covers multi-channel sales outreach.
| Aspect | Clay | Outreach |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Data Enrichment Tool | Sales Engagement Platform |
| Workflow Stage | Lead sourcing and data | Outreach orchestration |
| Primary Focus | B2B lead data and contact enrichment | Multi-channel sales outreach |
| Starting Price | Free | Contact Sales |
| Features Listed | 9 | 10 |
| Integrations | 14 | 12 |
What Each Side Actually Does in a Cold Outbound Run
A cold outbound run has a fixed shape, and this pair straddles it in a way the category labels hide. Targeting comes first, and that is a decision about who is worth writing to rather than a piece of software. Then the list gets built and a mailbox gets resolved for every person on it, which is squarely Clay's half: search filters, an extension over a profile, a spreadsheet pushed back through enrichment, and a verification pass that discards anything the provider could not confirm.
Sending is where the line blurs. Outreach owns sender accounts, sending windows, daily caps, reply detection and the record of who answered, and Clay ships Clay Sequencer for email and campaign integrations of its own. So the honest question here is whether that included sender is enough for the wave being planned. RevenueFlow runs one message per campaign either way, so nothing on that side is a bump step or a thread reply waiting to fire. A prospect who stays quiet gets re-approached later in a new campaign with a different angle, never with a second message stacked under the one they ignored, and on LinkedIn that second message does not get sent at all.
The last stage belongs to neither product. Somebody reads the reply and somebody books the meeting, and the meeting counts only against qualification criteria written down before the campaign launched.
Pricing Comparison
Clay Pricing
| Plan | Price | Actions |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Free | 500 actions/mo, 100 data credits/mo |
| Launch | $167/mo | Starts at 15,000 actions/mo |
| Growth | $446/mo | Starts at 40,000 actions/mo |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom actions |
Those two paid headlines are the annual basis. Every paid Clay plan carries a 14 day trial and Clay's annual toggle is labelled Save 10%.
Source: Clay Pricing
Outreach Pricing
| Package | Price | AI credits |
|---|---|---|
| Amplify Essentials | Request pricing | 10,000 AI Credits |
| Amplify Core | Request pricing | 25,000 AI Credits |
| Amplify Plus | Request pricing | 50,000 AI Credits |
| Amplify Pro | Request pricing | 100,000 AI Credits |
Outreach sets out on the same page that it prices on a combination of seats and AI credit consumption.
Source: Outreach Pricing
Reading the Two Price Shapes Together
Clay meters two allowances separately, actions and data credits, each on its own published slider, so a Clay headline is two numbers added together. Clay's pricing page headlines Launch at $167 a month and Growth at $446, which are the annual components summed: $54 plus $113, and $185 plus $261. The same page's FAQ names the monthly basis for the same plans, calling them "Launch (starting at $185/mo)" and "Growth (starting at $495/mo)", which are the monthly components summed the same way. Both sets are Clay's own and cover the same plans on two billing bases, so either figure without its basis is only part of a fact.
Outreach publishes packages and no prices on that page. It lists Amplify Essentials, Core, Plus and Pro, each behind a Request pricing button, and it states there: "Outreach uses a combination of seat-based pricing and consumption-based pricing powered by AI credits." The credit allowance is the one public number: 10,000 on Essentials, 25,000 on Core, 50,000 on Plus and 100,000 on Pro. Seat count and AI usage therefore move a quote independently.
Those are two different kinds of number and they do not compare directly. Clay publishes a rate a team can multiply out before speaking to anybody; Outreach publishes a shape and produces the rate on a call. Half of this stack can be budgeted today and half cannot, so a plan treating the Outreach line as an estimate is guessing at the larger of the two numbers.
What One Year of This Stack Actually Costs
Take an invented but ordinary case: a two person GTM team enriching around 15,000 rows a month. The rates below are Clay's own published figures; the team and the volume are invented so the arithmetic is concrete.
Clay Launch on the annual basis is $167 a month, or $2,004 for the year, and seats do not change that: Clay's Free plan lists "Unlimited seats and tables" and each paid plan lists everything in Free. On the monthly basis the same plan is $185, or $2,220 a year, so the annual commitment saves $216 and Clay's own toggle labels that saving at 10 percent. Stepping to Clay Growth is a larger move than the headline suggests: $446 a month annually is $5,352 a year, which is $3,348 more than Launch for a jump from 15,000 to 40,000 actions a month.
Read that as a volume decision. Clay charges for work performed rather than for people, so the bill moves with how many rows the workflow touches, including the ones it touches and discards.
The Outreach side of that year cannot be added, which is the finding rather than a gap in the research. Outreach's pricing page carries four packages and a Request pricing button on each, so any figure in a plan for it is a placeholder until a quote lands.
Feature Highlights
Clay Key Capabilities (Data Enrichment Tool)
- 150+ data provider integrations
- AI-powered enrichment (Claygent)
- Unlimited users on all plans
- Credit rollover
- Workflow automation
- Data waterfall enrichment
- Custom API key support
- HTTP API integration
- Webhooks
Outreach Key Capabilities (Sales Engagement Platform)
- Multi-Channel Engagement and Sequences
- AI-powered email generation and optimization
- Conversation intelligence with call recording
- Deal health scoring and pipeline management
- Revenue forecasting with scenario planning
- Real-time analytics and reporting dashboards
- Sales rep coaching and performance insights
- Automated task management and reminders
- A/B testing for email templates
- Governance and compliance controls
Where the Two Actually Overlap
Clay reaches further into sending than its category label suggests. Clay's own pricing page lists Clay Sequencer for email on the free plan and email campaign integrations from Launch upward, so Clay lists a way to send as well as a way to build the list. Outreach lists data enrichment among its Amplify capabilities, so the overlap runs in both directions and the useful question is which product a team wants to be the source of record for a contact.
Both lists are the vendors' own wording, so the honest reading is that Clay lists these capabilities and Outreach lists those. A feature named on a plan card is a claim about scope rather than a measure of quality, and the overlap that matters in practice sits at Salesforce and HubSpot, where both products write to the same record.
Integration Ecosystem
Clay Integrations
Clay connects with: Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Close, Apollo.io, Clearbit, ZoomInfo, Lemlist, Instantly, Smartlead, OpenAI, Google Sheets, Airtable, Notion.
Outreach Integrations
Outreach connects with: Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365, HubSpot, Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Gong, Chorus, Drift, 6sense, Zoom, Slack.
Shared Integrations
Both tools integrate with: Salesforce, HubSpot. This shared ecosystem means they can work together in your tech stack.
When to Choose Which
- Your biggest gap is in lead sourcing and data
- You already have a solid sales engagement platform and need specialized B2B lead data and contact enrichment capabilities
- You need enterprise-grade B2B lead data and contact enrichment features
- Your team's primary bottleneck is B2B lead data and contact enrichment
- Your biggest gap is in outreach orchestration
- You already have a data enrichment tool and need better multi-channel sales outreach
- You need enterprise-grade multi-channel sales outreach features
- Your team's primary bottleneck is multi-channel sales outreach
Read that split as a question about which gap is open rather than about which product is better. Clay answers a sourcing question and Outreach answers a sending one, and a team that names the wrong gap buys a capable tool that changes nothing.
Do You Need Both, and in Which Order?
Most teams reading this page do not need both yet. Clay lists Clay Sequencer for email and campaign integrations, which is enough to run a first wave and find out whether the list is the problem. Buying Outreach alongside it in the same month buys a better sending experience before anyone knows whether sending is what is failing.
The order that works is data first, sending second, for reasons of measurement rather than preference. A sending platform bought onto a thin list delivers that list faster and its reporting will blame the quiet quarter on copy. A list deep enough to keep a wave fed shows its problems within one campaign, and those problems are the brief for the sending purchase.
One case honestly reverses it. A team already booking meetings and losing them to disorganised follow-through has a workflow gap rather than a data gap. Outreach is the strongest of the four for that, because its packages are built around pipeline management and deal insight rather than around first touches.
Whichever way round, the two connect through Salesforce and HubSpot, and that is the surface to test during a trial rather than after one. A handoff needing a CSV in the middle is a handoff somebody stops doing in week three.
Using Both Together
Many sales teams use both a data enrichment tool and a sales engagement platform as part of their complete workflow. Clay handles lead sourcing and data while Outreach covers outreach orchestration.
Since both tools integrate with Salesforce, HubSpot, connecting them in your workflow is straightforward.
Rolling It Out Without Breaking the Run
Start with Clay, and start small. A Launch plan on the annual basis is a real commitment for a small team, so build one workflow over a list already worked, count how many rows come back usable, and read the action consumption before widening. Clay bills for work performed, so a badly ordered waterfall is expensive before it is wrong. Outreach lands second in almost every case, because its quote scales with seats and AI usage together and neither number is knowable until a wave has actually run.
Whichever order the two arrive in, keep the sending inventory out of it. Sender domains, mailbox warmup and daily caps are their own project, and a stack change made in the same week as a sending change leaves nothing to attribute a bounce rate to. Change one layer, let a full wave run, then change the next.
Two habits save real money. Trial on accounts already worked rather than on a fresh list, because the only coverage question that matters is coverage on the segment being sold to. And export what the incumbent already found before a subscription lapses: records bought once are cheap to keep and expensive to buy twice.
Decision Framework
- Name the gap before naming a tool. Write down which stage is costing meetings: a list that runs out, addresses that bounce, or messages that never go out on time. A decision made without that sentence is a preference.
- Check what the existing stack already covers. Overlapping spend is the normal failure here, and it is invisible because the two products sit under different budget lines.
- Price the whole year, not the entry tier. Seat minimums, annual billing and per-credit top-ups move the real number more than the headline does.
- Trial on the accounts being sold to. Coverage is a property of a segment rather than of a database, so a sample drawn from the target list is the only test worth running.
- Measure at the pipeline, not per tool. Both products feed one funnel, so the honest measure is meetings booked against criteria fixed in advance.
The Short Version
- Clay can be priced from its own page today, starting at $167 a month on the terms in the table above.
- Outreach names no price on its own pricing page, so the Outreach line in any budget is a quote until a call happens.
- Clay lists Clay Sequencer for email and campaign integrations, so a first wave can run without buying Outreach at the same time.
- Buy the data side first when the list runs out, and the sending side first when meetings are being lost after the reply.
- Measure the change in meetings booked against criteria fixed before launch, because that is the only number both products are trying to move.
Related Reading
- Best Clay Alternatives in 2026
- Best Outreach Alternatives in 2026
- Apollo vs Clay: Choosing the Right Data Enrichment Tool for B2B Sales
- Clay vs ZoomInfo: Data Enrichment Tool Comparison
- Outreach vs Salesloft: Sales Engagement Platform Comparison
If you would rather have this run for you, RevenueFlow books qualified meetings on a pay-per-meeting basis and publishes client results.
Pricing and features are taken from the vendors' own pages. Verify current terms with the vendor before relying on them.
Frequently asked questions.
Frequently asked questions- Do I need both Clay and Outreach, or will one do?
- Often one is enough to begin with. Clay lists Clay Sequencer for email and campaign integrations, so a first wave can run without Outreach at all, and that wave is what tells you whether sending is actually the weak link. Add Outreach when the volume or the team size makes the included sender the constraint, rather than buying both in the same month.
- How much does Clay actually cost for a year?
- Clay publishes Launch at $167 a month on the annual basis and $185 monthly, so the yearly number is arithmetic rather than a guess. Multiply the published rate by twelve and by the seats or the volume the plan is metered on, then check the billing basis, because the monthly and annual figures on these pages describe the same plan and differ by a meaningful amount.
- Why does Outreach not publish a price?
- Outreach publishes four Amplify packages and no price, with AI credits the only public number: 10,000 on Essentials rising to 100,000 on Pro. Enterprise sales engagement is sold on seats, usage and contract length together, so a public rate would be wrong for most buyers. The practical consequence for a budget is that this line is a quote, and the way to make two quotes comparable is to give each vendor the same seat count and the same volume assumption.
- What happens to the prospects who never reply?
- RevenueFlow runs one message per campaign and sends no bumps or thread replies, whichever of these products is doing the sending. A prospect who stays quiet is re-approached later in a new campaign with a different angle, and on LinkedIn that second message is not sent at all, because it lands under the one they already ignored.
About the author.
Tim Carden is CMO / CTO at RevenueFlow, which builds and operates outbound revenue engines for B2B companies. Studied at McGill University.
Tim Carden · CMO / CTO
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