Apollo vs Clay
A side-by-side comparison of capabilities, autonomy, integrations, and pricing to help you choose.
Short answer: choose Apollo if you want b2b sales intelligence and engagement platform with ai gtm agents (Supervised agent, freemium); choose Clay if you want programmable gtm data platform with ai research agents (claygent) (Supervised agent, freemium).
| Apollo | Clay | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | B2B sales intelligence and engagement platform with AI GTM agents | Programmable GTM data platform with AI research agents (Claygent) |
| Type | product-with-agents | platform |
| Autonomy | Supervised agent | Supervised agent |
| Pricing | freemium · Free $0; Basic from $49/user/mo (annual) | freemium · Free tier; paid Launch from ~$185/mo (after March 2026 pricing change) |
| Best for | smb, mid-market, enterprise, developers | smb, mid-market, enterprise, developers |
| Deployment | saas, api | saas, api |
| Modalities | text, email, voice, api | text, browser, api |
| Models | gemini, model-agnostic | model-agnostic, gpt, claude |
| Protocols | mcp, rest-api, function-calling | rest-api, function-calling |
| Integrations | Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Zoho, Gmail, Outlook | HubSpot, Salesforce, Apollo, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Slack, Gmail |
| Capabilities | 4 documented | 5 documented |
Apollo
- +Affordable all-in-one database plus sequencing with a free tier that lowers the barrier
- +Fast, intuitive filters and prospecting
- +Developer-friendly: REST API, MCP server, CLI, and published llms.txt
- -Data accuracy varies, with reported bounce rates and weaker international coverage
- -Credit-based consumption can inflate real costs
Clay
- +Composable enrichment: waterfalls across 150+ providers in one workflow beat any single-vendor dataset on match rate
- +Claygent plus Navigator can extract bespoke data (and interact with pages) that fixed providers miss
- +Free tier and broad integrations make it accessible, with API and webhooks for programmatic use
- -Steep learning curve; getting value requires building and tuning workflows, not just turning it on
- -Credit-based costs (split into Data Credits and Actions after the March 2026 pricing change) can be hard to predict at scale
Which should you choose?
Apollo is b2b sales intelligence and engagement platform with ai gtm agents, best for smb, mid-market, enterprise, developers. Clay is programmable gtm data platform with ai research agents (claygent), best for smb, mid-market, enterprise, developers. The right choice depends on the autonomy level you want, your existing integrations, and your budget, all compared above.