THE CLAY ALTERNATIVE

Clay Is Where You Build. Datamagnet Is What You Call.

Clay is a GTM workspace: spreadsheet-style tables, waterfall enrichment across 150+ data partners, AI research agents, CRM sync and a native sequencer. Datamagnet sits one layer below that — a live people & company data API you call from your own code. Clay does now ship a developer API, CLI and MCP plugin, but they are built to drive Clay itself; its per-record people and company lookup API is still Enterprise-only.

Get API Key View Pricing
Datamagnet
Clay
Per-record enrichment API, self-serve
Enterprise only
Data freshness
Live at request
Marketplace records
Entry paid plan
$39/mo
$185/mo
Visual workflow builder
Emails & phone numbers
Clay tier required for its people & company lookup API
EnterpriseClay tier required for its people & company lookup API
Clay's entry paid plan; Datamagnet Starter is $39
$185/moClay's entry paid plan; Datamagnet Starter is $39
Per live Datamagnet profile lookup
1 creditPer live Datamagnet profile lookup

Datamagnet vs Clay: the short answer

Clay and Datamagnet sit at different layers, so the choice is rarely close. Clay is a go-to-market workspace: spreadsheet-style tables, waterfall enrichment across 150-plus data partners, AI research agents, CRM sync and a native email sequencer, from $185 a month. Datamagnet is the data layer itself — POST a LinkedIn URL to a REST endpoint and get structured JSON fetched live, from $39 a month. Pick Clay if a revenue team is assembling workflows in a UI and needs emails and phone numbers. Pick Datamagnet if your own code is the caller and you want per-record lookups without an Enterprise contract.

Our verdict

Clay is a genuinely excellent product that is a different shape from a data API. If your team lives in the canvas, needs emails and phone numbers, and wants enrichment written back to Salesforce on its own, nothing on this page beats it — and Datamagnet does none of those things. Clay has narrowed the developer gap with an API, CLI and MCP plugin, but those drive Clay's own searches, functions and workflows; the per-record people and company lookup stays on Enterprise. When the caller is a service or a pipeline that just needs a profile, an endpoint is the simpler purchase.

Which one should you pick?

Straight guidance, including the cases where we're the wrong answer.

Choose Datamagnet if

  • The thing asking for data is your product, a pipeline or an agent — not a person in a browser tab
  • You want per-record person and company lookups without an Enterprise contract, which is where Clay's lookup API sits
  • You need the profile as it stands right now, not a record bought from a provider marketplace
  • Post content, commenters, reactors and reposters have to arrive as JSON rather than as table columns
  • A $39 or $99 line item fits your budget better than $185 a month before any data is bought
  • You want one credit currency with a published cost per endpoint, not Actions plus Data Credits

Choose Clay if

  • You need email addresses and phone numbers — Datamagnet returns neither, on any plan
  • The people building the workflows are RevOps operators who need a UI, not engineers who want an endpoint
  • Enrichment has to land in Salesforce, HubSpot or Pipedrive without you writing the sync
  • Waterfalling one field across many providers until something hits matters more than a single live source
  • Outreach, sequencing and ad-audience sync should live in the same tool as the data
  • Procurement needs SOC 2 Type II plus SSO and role-based access control, which Clay puts on its Enterprise tier

Datamagnet vs Clay, feature by feature

What each tool actually returns, how fresh it is, and what it costs to run.

Data & API coverage

Data & API coverage: Datamagnet compared with Clay, feature by feature
FeatureDatamagnetClay
Per-record enrichment API on self-serve plans YesEnterprise plan only
Data collected at the moment of request YesProvider marketplace records
Person profile from a LinkedIn URL1 credit Yes
Company profile enrichment1 credit Yes
ICP people & company search10 credits/page Yes
Post, comment, reaction & repost dataDedicated endpointsInside a table workflow
Job-change & engagement signals6 signal types Yes
Signal delivery by webhookHMAC-signedGrowth plan and above
No charge when a request returns nothing Yes Yes
Email addresses, verification & phone numbers No Yes
Visual workflow builder No Yes
Workflow API, CLI & MCP plugin for coding agents NoOpen beta, all plans
CRM auto-sync (data warehouse sync on Enterprise) NoGrowth plan and above
Email sequencing & ad-audience sync No Yes
Entry paid plan$39/mo$185/mo

Clay capabilities are summarized from their public documentation and pricing pages, last checked July 2026. Products change — verify against their current offering before you buy.

Clay's API drives Clay. It is not a per-record lookup.

Clay shipped a real developer surface in July 2026: an Agent Plugin bundling an API, a CLI and an MCP server, in open beta across all plans. What it exposes is Clay itself — Searches for finding companies and people, Routines for running functions and workflows, and Tables for querying data you already hold, with Tables marked Enterprise-only and Workflows still alpha. Separately, Clay offers a people and company lookup API restricted to Enterprise customers, which its docs describe as limited: an email or LinkedIn URL in, basic person details out, without the deeper enrichment the platform is known for. Both are sensible designs for a workflow product. Neither is a per-record enrichment endpoint you can buy on a $39 plan.

  • Enrich — POST a LinkedIn profile URL to the Person endpoint and get the live profile back for 1 credit
  • Search — ICP search, live people search or a Sales Navigator URL returns 25 results a page for 10 credits
  • Watch — six signal types arrive as an HMAC-signed webhook your service handles like any other event
Enterprise
The Clay tier required for its people and company lookup API, on an annual commitment. Datamagnet's API starts on the free plan.

Pricing, side by side

What you pay Clay versus what you pay us, for the same work.

Clay

Two currencies. Data Credits buy data from Clay's marketplace of 150+ data partners; Actions meter the platform work around it. Seats are unlimited on every plan. Prices below are month-to-month.

Free500 actions + 100 data credits/mo · 200 rows per table
$0
Launch15,000 actions + 2,500 data credits/mo · $167/mo billed annually
from $185/mo
Growth40,000 actions + 6,000 data credits/mo · $446/mo billed annually
from $495/mo
EnterpriseAnnual commitment · adds Clay API access, SSO and RBAC
Custom

Datamagnet

Credits, not seats. Charged only on successful requests, and 10 free credits to test before you pay anything.

FreeOn signup, no card
10 credits
Starter1,000 credits/mo
$39/mo
Pro10,000 credits/mo
$99/mo
Scale25,000 credits/mo · webhooks + bulk export
$199/mo
Pay-as-you-go200 credits $10 → 100,000 credits $2,000
from $0.02/credit

Clay Data Credits start at $0.05 each and Actions at under $0.01; annual billing saves 10%. Clay states that an enrichment returning no result costs neither Data Credits nor Actions; Datamagnet likewise charges only for successful requests. Competitor pricing is taken from their public pricing page and was last checked July 2026; list prices change and negotiated rates differ. See Datamagnet pricing for our current plans.

Where each tool genuinely wins

No tool wins everywhere. Here's the honest split.

Where Clay wins

  • The table-and-waterfall workflow builder is the best in the category, and Datamagnet has nothing resembling it
  • Email addresses and phone numbers waterfalled across 150+ data partners until one returns a hit — Datamagnet returns neither
  • Claygent, an AI research agent that answers arbitrary questions about a person or company from the open web
  • CRM auto-sync to Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive and Dynamics from the Growth plan, with warehouse sync on Enterprise
  • Signal breadth well past our six types: web intent, tech-stack changes, funding and news, and social listening across LinkedIn, Reddit and YouTube
  • A native sequencer and ad-audience push to LinkedIn, Meta and Google — outreach execution Datamagnet does not touch
  • An Agent Plugin — API, CLI and MCP server — that lets a coding agent run Clay searches, functions and workflows directly
  • SOC 2 Type II, plus SSO and role-based access control on Enterprise, which shortens security review considerably
  • An enormous ecosystem — Clay University, templates, a large community, and GTM engineers who already know the tool

Where Datamagnet wins

  • Per-record person and company lookups on every plan, including the free one, rather than only on Enterprise
  • Every profile fetched live at request time instead of bought from a provider marketplace
  • Post content, comments, reactions and reposts as first-class endpoints, not table columns
  • Six signal types delivered by HMAC-signed webhook, verifiable with the X-Datamagnet-Signature header
  • One credit currency with a published cost per endpoint, instead of Actions plus Data Credits
  • Starts at $39/mo, with 10 free credits and no card to check the response shape first
  • Nothing to learn — a POST body, not a platform
  • Works as a source inside Clay itself, via the HTTP API integration on Clay's Growth plan and above

Datamagnet vs Clay: FAQ

Yes, though not the kind most people mean. Clay launched an Agent Plugin in July 2026 bundling an API, a CLI and an MCP server, in open beta on all plans; it exposes Clay searches, functions and workflows, with table queries reserved for Enterprise. Clay also sells a separate people and company lookup API to Enterprise customers only, and its docs call it limited: an email or LinkedIn URL in, basic details out. Neither is a self-serve per-record enrichment endpoint.

Only partly, because the two products sit at different layers. Clay is a workflow platform that orchestrates data from more than 150 providers and adds CRM sync, AI agents and outreach on top. Datamagnet is one of those underlying data layers: a REST API returning live person, company, post and search data as JSON. If you were using Clay purely to fetch public profiles from a script, Datamagnet replaces it. If you were using the canvas, it does not.

Clay's paid plans start at $185 per month for Launch, which includes 15,000 Actions and 2,500 Data Credits, and $495 per month for Growth, with 40,000 Actions and 6,000 Data Credits. Annual billing saves ten percent, bringing those to $167 and $446. A free plan gives 500 Actions and 100 Data Credits with a 200-row cap per table. Enterprise is custom-priced on an annual commitment. Seats are unlimited on every plan, so cost scales with usage rather than headcount.

Yes. Clay's Growth and Enterprise plans include an HTTP API integration that can call any external endpoint, so you can add a Datamagnet column to a table, POST a LinkedIn URL and map the returned JSON into your fields. Each run consumes one Clay Action plus the Datamagnet credits for that endpoint. It is a common pattern for teams that want Clay's orchestration with a live data source underneath it.

No. Datamagnet does not return email addresses, does not verify deliverability, and does not return phone numbers. It returns person and company profiles, post and engagement data, search results and change signals, all fetched live at request time. Clay's waterfall across more than 150 providers exists precisely for contact discovery, so teams that need email and phone coverage typically run Clay, or a dedicated contact provider, alongside Datamagnet.

Sources

Every competitor claim on this page traces back to one of these.

  1. 1.Clay — Pricing (plans, Actions and Data Credits, pricing FAQ) — checked July 2026
  2. 2.Clay Docs — Using Clay as an API (Enterprise-only people & company lookup) — checked July 2026
  3. 3.Clay Docs — Plans & billing — checked July 2026
  4. 4.Clay Developers — API, CLI and MCP server (Searches, Routines, Tables) — checked July 2026
  5. 5.Clay Blog — Introducing Clay’s Agent Plugin (open beta, all plans) — checked July 2026
  6. 6.Clay — Signals (job change, web intent, social listening) — checked July 2026
  7. 7.Clay — Ads (audience sync to LinkedIn, Meta and Google) — checked July 2026
  8. 8.Clay Blog — Clay is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant — checked July 2026
  9. 9.Datamagnet — Pricing — checked July 2026

Try Datamagnet against Clay on your own data

10 free credits, no credit card. Run the same lookups through both and compare the JSON yourself.

  • Live data at request time
  • Charged only on success
  • No seats, no annual contract
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