Claygent pricing, features and alternatives

The short answer

Buy Claygent if you already run Clay, somebody owns writing and testing prompts, and your ICP screen turns on things like a hiring signal or a line on a company's own site. Clay's Free plan carries it at $0 with 500 Actions and 100 Data Credits a month, which is enough to hand-check accuracy before you pay anything.

Skip it if you do not use Clay, because Claygent is a feature and not a product you can license. Skip it too if standard firmographic and contact fields answer your questions: a database such as Apollo.io at $49 to $119 per user per month on annual billing covers those without anyone maintaining a prompt library.

Where Claygent fits

Claygent fits a Clay-shaped team, which is a narrower description than it sounds. It is a column in a Clay table: you write a question about each company or person, the agent searches the live web, and the answer lands next to your enrichment data ready for scoring and segmentation. Everything commercial about it belongs to Clay, so if Clay is not already in your stack or on your shortlist, this page is not your decision and the full Clay review is.

The work it does well is the research a data vendor will not sell you. Whether a company is hiring for a role, the substance of a recent announcement, which tools a prospect names on their own site: those sit on web pages rather than in a contact record, and a fixed database cannot carry them. One review calls Clay combined with Claygent the best enrichment setup on the market for exactly that reason. That is a review's opinion rather than a tested claim, and it points at the right boundary: Claygent extends your data enrichment layer, it does not replace it.

It needs an owner, and this is the part teams underestimate. Prompts have to be written narrowly, tested on a sample, and maintained when the question changes. The honest workflow is the one in our own evaluation notes: run one research question on one segment, hand-check fifty rows, and scale only when the error rate is something you would put your name on. If no name sits next to prompt maintenance in the rollout plan, you have bought a column of plausible sentences.

Model choice is a real lever, not a setting to leave on default. Reviews note that some Claygent models are better at structured extraction than at reasoning, so match the model to the task: extraction for simple fields such as a headcount or a technology mention, a stronger reasoning model for a qualification judgment such as whether a company sells to enterprises. The two cost differently as well, which is why the model picker and the bill are the same conversation.

Claygent earns its place in an account-based selling motion with a tight list, where thirty accounts justify a bespoke research question each. It earns it least in high-volume spray outbound, where the error rate reaches prospects before anybody reads it. Our ideal customer profile template is the document to fill in before you write the first prompt, because a research question is only answerable once you can say which answer disqualifies an account.

Worth saying plainly: the source material on Claygent is thinner than on a standalone platform, because it is a feature. There is no Claygent pricing page, no Claygent contract, no Claygent support tier and no separate review corpus. The facts on this page that are specific are Clay's plan rates and meters, and the rest is how the agent behaves inside them. Anyone presenting Claygent as a platform with its own commercial terms is describing something that does not exist.

Claygent pricing

Claygent is not priced. Clay is, and the rates verified in our September 2026 check are $0 on Free, $185 a month on Launch, $495 a month on Growth, and a custom quote on Enterprise. Claygent is included on all of them, including Free, and billed through Clay's two meters: every run spends Actions, and the AI model the run calls spends Data Credits. Clay says 80% of models, including its own native ones, charge a flat number of Data Credits per task, while advanced models show an estimate marked with a tilde and bill on actual token use with no markup.

Clay plans that carry Claygent

Free

$0. 500 Actions and 100 Data Credits a month, unlimited seats, up to 200 rows per table. Claygent included, which makes this the accuracy test rather than a demo.

Launch

$185 a month, or $167 a month billed annually. 15,000 Actions a month, unlimited seats, 50,000 rows per table. The plan card says 3,000 Data Credits a month and Clay's own FAQ says 2,500, so get your allowance in writing.

Growth

$495 a month, or $446 a month billed annually. 40,000 Actions and 6,000 Data Credits a month, plus CRM sync, the HTTP API, web intent signals and unlimited rows.

Enterprise

Custom quote on an annual commitment. 200,000 or more Actions a month, 100,000 or more Data Credits, SSO, RBAC, the Clay API and a dedicated Growth Strategist.

What research at list scale spends

The cheapest way to run Claygent at volume is your own model API key. Each run then counts as a single Action and spends no Data Credits, and you pay the model provider directly. Researching 5,000 rows that way spends 5,000 Actions, a third of Launch's 15,000 monthly Actions. Launch is $185 x 12 = $2,220 a year on monthly billing, or $167 x 12 = $2,004 billed annually, so the annual commitment saves $216 a year at that tier.

On Clay's own credits the cost depends on the model and the prompt length, which means no page can quote you a per-row figure honestly, including this one. The method that works is dull: run the prompt on 50 rows, read the credit cost per row off the table, then multiply by your real list size before you let it touch everything. Do that once per prompt, because a longer prompt on a reasoning model is a different unit cost from a short extraction on a native one.

The tier jump is the number to model, not the entry rate. Growth is $495 a month against Launch's $185, a gap of $310 a month or $3,720 a year, and what you buy with it is 40,000 Actions instead of 15,000 plus unlimited rows, CRM sync and the HTTP API. Annual billing puts Growth at $446 x 12 = $5,352 a year against Launch's $2,004, so the honest question before you upgrade is whether your Action burn is genuinely above 15,000 a month or whether two prompts need tightening. Our sales tool ROI calculator is where to put the Action count next to the meetings it produced.

Claygent's cost is Clay's cost plus the usage your prompts choose, and the usage is the half nobody models. Settle three things before you scale a prompt: the Data Credit allowance on your plan in writing, given that Clay's plan card and FAQ disagree on Launch; whether you are bringing your own model key, which collapses the meter to one Action per run; and the measured credit cost per row on a 50-row sample. Our how we review software page explains why a feature inside another product gets its parent's price table here rather than one of its own.

What Claygent gives up

You give up buying it at all. Claygent is a feature within Clay, not a separate product, so there is no Claygent license, no standalone contract and no way to put it in a stack that does not already contain Clay. That also means every commercial lever you have is a Clay lever: the plan, the Action allowance, the Data Credit allowance and the annual commitment. If your evaluation is at bottom about whether to adopt Clay, run that evaluation and treat the agent as one column of evidence in it.

You give up trusting the output without checking it. An agent searching the live web can be wrong, out of date, or confidently vague, and the failure mode is the dangerous one: a fluent sentence with no source behind it. Require a source URL with every answer so a rep can check the claim before it goes in an email, and hand-check a sample on every new prompt rather than on the first one only. A wrong fact in a cold email costs more than the credit that produced it.

You give up a predictable bill. Cost per row moves with the model and the prompt, and reviews describe a trade-off between research quality and resource use, which is the same thing said politely. There is also a documented inconsistency on Clay's side: the Launch plan card lists 3,000 Data Credits a month while Clay's FAQ says 2,500. That is a 500-credit gap on the plan most teams land on, and it is the sort of thing you want settled in writing rather than discovered mid-month.

You give up the low-volume case. The agent only pays for itself where enough rows justify writing and maintaining a prompt, and reviewers say Clay plus Claygent is hard to justify at low volume. Below the threshold, a person doing the research by hand is both cheaper and more accurate, which is an uncomfortable sentence for a software page but the right answer for a team sending thirty emails a week.

You give up running it carelessly. Claygent will happily research rows you have already filtered out, so the guard conditions on the column matter as much as the prompt in it. Decide which rows the agent is allowed to touch, set the condition before the run rather than after the invoice, and keep one prompt in testing while the proven one runs in production. Our software pilot plan template is where to write the accuracy threshold down before anyone is emotionally attached to the column.

How Claygent compares

Clay is not an alternative to Claygent, it is the prerequisite, so the comparison set is other ways to answer a research question at list scale. The split that decides it is where the answer comes from. Claygent reads the live web, which is why it can answer questions nobody has packaged, and why it has to be checked. ZoomInfo Copilot and 6sense Revenue AI put AI research on top of a database they already sell you, so the answers are narrower and more consistent. Common Room answers a different question entirely, from product and community activity rather than the open web, and publishes an Essential tier at $2,500 a month. Apollo.io is the honest comparison for a team that thought it needed research and in fact needs contact data at $49 to $119 per user per month on annual billing. Three of the five below quote rather than publish, so the price column says so.

What to test in a Claygent trial

You can run the whole of this on Clay's $0 Free plan, which is the single most useful fact on this page: 500 Actions and 100 Data Credits is enough to measure accuracy, and accuracy is the only thing worth measuring first. Every step below is designed to produce a number you can defend, not an impression.

1. Write one research question against one segment, with a required source URL in the output, and run it on 50 rows. Grade all 50 by hand and record the error rate as a fraction, not as a feeling.
2. Read the credit cost per row straight off the table, then multiply by your real list size. Do it for each prompt you intend to ship, because a reasoning model on a long prompt is a different unit cost from an extraction on a native one.
3. Run the same question through two models, one tuned for extraction and one for reasoning, and compare accuracy against cost per row. Reviews say the models differ on exactly that axis, so find out which side your question sits on.
4. Test the same prompt with your own model API key. Each run should count as one Action with no Data Credits, which is the configuration that changes the economics at volume.
5. Set the guard condition on the column so the agent skips filtered rows, then deliberately feed it a filtered list and confirm nothing ran. This is the cheapest mistake to prevent and the most common one to make.
6. Ask Clay in writing how many Data Credits your intended plan includes. The Launch card says 3,000 a month and Clay's FAQ says 2,500, and you want that resolved before it matters.
7. Take ten of the agent's answers to a rep and ask whether they would send an email built on each one. If the answer is no on more than one, the prompt needs narrowing before the list does.

Claygent questions buyers ask

How does Claygent work?

Claygent is an AI agent inside Clay that searches the internet for real-time information about companies and people, based on a prompt you write, and returns the answer to a table column.

How much does Claygent cost?

Claygent is included in every Clay plan, including Free. Runs use Actions, and the AI model costs Data Credits per task unless you bring your own API key, in which case each run is one Action (checked September 2026 on clay.com).

Is Clay AI worth it?

Reviewers say Clay plus Claygent is valuable for teams with enough outbound volume and someone to build workflows. At low volume, some users say it is hard to justify.

Is Claygent accurate?

It depends on the question and the sources available. Always check a sample by hand and require source links for anything used in outreach.

Can I use Claygent without Clay?

No. Claygent is a feature within Clay, not a separate product.

What does Claygent do?

Claygent runs a research question you write against each row of a Clay table. It searches the live web for the answer about that company or person and writes it into a column, which is how teams get facts that no contact database sells, such as whether a company is hiring for a role.

Is Claygent free to use?

Claygent is included on Clay's Free plan at $0, which carries 500 Actions and 100 Data Credits a month and up to 200 rows per table. That is enough to hand-check accuracy on a sample before paying, but not enough to run research across a real list.

Is Clay an AI agent?

Clay is a table and workflow product; Claygent is the AI agent inside it. The distinction matters commercially: you license Clay, at $0, $185 or $495 a month on its published plans, and the agent comes with it rather than being bought separately.

Is Clay better than Apollo?

They answer different questions. Apollo.io sells contact and firmographic data at $49 to $119 per user per month on annual billing. Clay with Claygent researches what databases do not carry, at $185 or $495 a month plus usage, and needs someone to build it. Pick by which gap you have.

Who are Clay's main competitors?

For AI research on prospects, ZoomInfo Copilot and 6sense Revenue AI are the usual comparisons, both quote-only, and both built on their own data rather than the open web. Common Room competes from a different angle, using product and community signals, with an Essential tier at $2,500 a month.

Related

Claygent only exists inside Clay, so start with the full Clay review for the plan, the meters and the build effort. The alternatives worth pricing next are ZoomInfo Copilot for AI research on a licensed database, 6sense for account-level intent and Common Room for product and community signals. The full set sits in our AI prospecting software directory, the head to head buyers ask for most is Clay against Apollo.io, and our ideal customer profile template is the document that turns a vague research idea into a question with a disqualifying answer.

Claygent sits in our AI Prospecting Software directory.