I tried 9 alternatives to Clay – here’s some I actually liked

Last Updated: November 17, 2025

Clay is an amazing tool for GTM teams and sales ops professionals. I’ve been using it for a while now and it’s one of the tools where you ask “Why did it take this long for someone to create something like this?!”

There’s just 1 big problem with it.

Their pricing can make you want to rip someone’s head off.

For example, in 2 weeks, I burned through over $700 on phone credits. And most of them were wrong. That’s close to $200 gone. And they don’t give $$$ back if you make mistakes or your API calls return no data.

So I was curious and tried several alternatives. Some of them made me crawl back to Clay, while some seemed more valuable for specific use cases.

If you’re busy, you can click through to a particular tool below. As a bonus, there’s also a DIY alternative if you want the most cost-effective alternative.

Note: This space is moving very fast, with new competitors entering everyday. So, I’m planning to completely revamp this list for 2026. If you’re building a Clay competitor, email me at henley@revealera.com if you want to be considered for the 2026 list.

What to look for in a Clay alternative

First is price. Clay’s cheapest plan is $149/month for 2,000 credits. That’s $0.07 per credit. New users blow through $500-$800 their first week learning.

What to look for: Transparent pricing models. Flat monthly fees or pay-per-success pricing. Tools that don’t charge you for failed enrichments or inaccurate data.

Clay also has a steep learning curve. Many companies hire Clay consultants or GTM engineers just to operate the tool.

What to look for: Intuitive interfaces your team can actually use without engineering support. Simple onboarding that takes hours, not weeks.

Then there’s data quality. Stale contact information. Poor coverage for SMBs and service businesses. Phone numbers that don’t work.

What to look for: High match rates with verified data. Providers that specialize in your market. Waterfall enrichment that actually improves coverage.

CRM integration is essential for most GTM teams. With Clay, you need the $800/month Pro plan just to connect to Salesforce or HubSpot.

What to look for: Native syncing with Salesforce, HubSpot, and other major platforms without paying premium prices.

Finally, you need features that match your actual workflow. Clay tries to do everything, which means you’re paying for capabilities you’ll never use.

Now let’s get into the list.

1. Freckle.io – Best for ease of Use and ability to try everything

Pros: Easy to use, free self-serve trial, simple pricing, quick to release new features

Cons: No signal orchestration, supports Hubspot/Salesforce CRMs only

Freckle.io is a relatively new Clay competitor (they recently raised $5M in funding). It’s built especially for connecting to your CRM, cleaning/enriching your contacts and synching that data back.

If you’re not using a CRM though, you can also create your initial table by uploading a CSV, searching Google Maps, finding company lookalikes, or simply manually adding rows.

Though the options are a bit less than what Clay offers, I did find all of them fairly robust. For example, when I tried creating a lookalike list from 3 websites: unifygtm.com, commonroom.io, and pocus.com, it generated a very accurate list of lookalike companies

Once you create your initial table, the user interface looks very similar to Clay’s as you can see in the screenshot below. I actually found it a bit more cleaner, faster, intuitive, and robust. It’s very similar to Clay, except it doesn’t come with a steep learning curve.

Once you have your table created (whether it’s by importing from Hubspot, or creating it from scratch), you can start adding columns to enrich your data… and this is where their simplicity/ease of use shines.

Instead of choosing what specific data source you want to use, you just use natural language to describe your field, and Freckle does all the work in deciding what data source to query in the backend.

Let me show you what I mean…

In the screenshot above, I added a column and literally typed “The business phone number for this person”, and Freckle.io was smart enough to know that I wanted the phone number for each row. When I saved and ran this for all the rows, Freckle.io did all the hard work of going through their contact data providers to find the phone number for each contact.

I didn’t need to choose which data sources to query, in what order, etc. Freckle.io hides all of that for you, to keep things simple.

What if there’s no data source for what you want?

Even if there’s no data source for what you want, Freckle.io goes out and searches the internet to find the information.

During my trial, I tried adding a column to indicate whether the company website had a security trust center. It enriched each of my rows, and accurately displayed YES or NO. I imagine they had a web crawler that crawled each company’s website to check.

Once you’re done with enriching, Freckle automatically syncs everything back to your CRM. This keeps your HubSpot as a single source of truth instead of becoming a messy data mess.

A brief note on their onboarding: I was very impressed with Freckle’s onboarding process. A lot of tools just leave some onboarding video or docs and expect you to learn everything yourself. With Freckle, they have a nice, simple check list. And they even incentivize you with credits for completing each step (smart!)

Innovation Score: Very High

Freckle.io ranks very high in terms of innovation and their ability to release new features. In the past 8 months (Feb – October 2025), they’ve added: WhatsApp integration, HubSpot native integration, blur column feature, sentiment analysis capabilities, and company lookalike imports. They’re also moving beyond simple enrichment into automation, scoring and routing.

I would not be surprised if Freckle.io adds on GTM orchestration and more automation features in the near future.

Limitations

The major limitation of Freckle is their 40 data sources.

Clay, on the other hand has more than 100+ data sources, whether it’s tech stack enrichment with BuiltWith, or simply more email enrichment sources.

Though I had success with their custom columns, it did fail a few times.

For instance, when I added a custom column to indicate whether the company was an UnifyGTM customer, Freckle.io didn’t detect it for 4 of 5 customers of UnifyGTM (it detected it for UnifyGTM itself, which was… fairly obvious). I can’t say for certain if more data sources would’ve made them successful, but that’s something to keep in mind.

Lastly, they’re Hubspot + Saleforce-focused right now. I couldn’t see any integrations with Salesforce (Update: Freckle.io integrates with Salesforce!), Microsoft Dynamics, Pipedrive or any other CRM. So if you need to sync data from other CRMs, you either need to manually import/export a CSV, or try another tool.

Pricing

In terms of transparency, I hate it when companies hide their pricing behind a “Call for a Demo”, and Freckle doesn’t do that. Their pricing breakdown is clear as day, so you can make a decision on whether the cost is worth it for you.

Freckle offers a generous free tier with 500 credits to get started. After that pricing starts at $99/month for 2500 credits, with phone number enrichments costing 5 credits.

In addition, for the time being, they’re offering any Clay customers to exchange their remaining credits for the equivalent # in Freckle.

Freckle’s pricing page: https://www.freckle.io/#pricing

2. Airscale – Best list building and value alternative

Pros: Much less expensive than Clay, robust list-building features. Slow speed in releasing new features.

Cons: Lacks GTM orchestration, inability to try everything out during the trial

Now on to Airscale.

When I first signed up for an Airscale trial, I liked how simple and easy it was to navigate around. Now, it wasn’t the prettiest UI by any means (definitely not easy on the eyes like Clay/Freckle), but I appreciate simple UIs!

Right away, after I signed up, I see 3 tabs: Find people, Find Companies, and Monitor.

Airscale has more options than Freckle.io to build your initial list. Almost as many as Clay. For instance, you can extract Sales Navigator search results directly, scrape LinkedIn post likers and commenters, or extract leads from Apollo.

I tried scraping all the people who liked one of my recent posts, as a test, and Airscale handled it just fine. It returned the first and last name, the company they were from, and other details (though I had to pay to enrich all of their emails/phone numbers, as I couldn’t so during the trial)

Airscale also has a Google Maps scraper, that works great for finding local businesses. I searched for ‘financial advisors in the US’, and it returned a list of relevant companies back from Google Maps.

All in all, Airscale really excels in helping you build your initial list.

What about Integrations,?

OK, let’s talk about integrations. Airscale claims to have 30 integrations, which is a bit less than Freckle.io.

Innovation Score: Very Low

I couldn’t detect any new feature announcements in the past 8 months (Feb – October 2025). Their core feature set seems to have remained the same, for the most part this year: Linkedin scraping, email finding and enrichment.

Limitations

Not every list building feature worked perfectly. For example, finding companies with a specific job posting did not seem to work at all when I tried it.

When I tried to search for “GTM Engineer”, it showed results like “Market Place Manager” and other seemingly unrelated jobs. I don’t know exactly what Airscale was searching for, but it definitely wasn’t GTM Engineers! If you’re reading this Airscale team, Bloomberry has an API for job postings 🙂

In addition, they only give you a limited number of credits during their free trial. Enriching just 1 stinking contact required a paid subscription. Trying their Company Lookalike feature also required a paid subscription. I felt like punching their website because the free trial was way too limited 😤.

Lastly, I couldn’t spot any integrations with Hubspot, or any other CRM for that matter.

Pricing

Let’s compare the pricing between Airscale and Clay:

At $49 per month for 4,000 credits, Airscale’s cost per credit comes to just $0.01225, whereas Clay charges $149 monthly for only 2,000 credits – a much steeper $0.0745 per credit.

This means that for every $100 spent, users get approximately 8,163 credits with Airscale compared to only 1,342 credits with Clay. So, Airscale delivers over six times more credits per dollar than Clay. Extremely good value.

With Airscale, when you use their contact enrichment, you only pay when they actually find valid contact information, which is a pretty good deal. Phone numbers run as low as $0.20 each.

Airscale’s pricing page: https://airscale.io/pricing

3. Exa Websets – easier and simpler to use than Clay

Pros: Easy to use, ability to try everything during the free trial, incredible speed in releasing new features

Cons: Pricing not as easy to understand, no GTM orchestration, only integrates with Hubspot/Salesforce CRM.

Exa Websets is a relatively new tool that you won’t see recommended in many of these generic “Clay alternative” articles. But if you’re frustrated with how hard Clay is, then Exa Websets might be right up your alley. It’s very similar to Freckle.io, in that you don’t have to worry about deciding what enrichment source you want to use – you simply use natural language to tell Exa what you want.

When you sign up to use Exa Websets, you’re greeted with a very simple search bar. You can choose to search for People, or Companies, and all you have to is enter what you’re looking for in natural language, such as “VP of Sales of fintech startups in NY” or “Fintech startups based in the NYC area”.

After that, Exa generates a spreadsheet (very similar to Clay) that will slowly go out and retrieve what you’re looking for. You can also add enrichment columns. If you don’t find any that match what you’re looking for, you can just describe it and Exa will intelligently determine which data source to get it from.

During my trial, I searched for companies that were “SaaS companies of GTM tools and companies”, and enriched them with the CEO LinkedIn url, the company’s estimated revenue, and the outreach tool they used. The list of companies they returned back, and the enrichments, for the most part, matched what I was looking for.

However, when I searched for people, it was a bit hit and miss. I searched for “Head of Partnerships in GTM Tools”, with work email, and phone numbers as enrichments columns.

Exa then generated a list that looked solid, at first glance, but once I delved into the people, a small # of them were people who changed jobs (no longer holding the title of Head of Partnerships) recently. Most of them were people who changed jobs within the past month. I imagine Exa probably doesn’t refresh their Linkedin people database everyday, which is understandable, so you might have to live with a few inaccuracies.

Exa did do a good job of retrieving phone numbers and business emails for most of the contacts, and most of them were correct.

Innovation Score: Very High

Exa releases new features almost every week, and technically impressive ones too. In the past year, they’ve developed a custom transformer model, a proprietary vector database (for searching companies), multiple AI models (Exa Fast, Exa Deep, etc) and more.

Limitations

Exa Websets doesn’t come up with any signal-based orchestration. For example, you can’t have it monitor all of your people results to alert you when someone has changed their jobs. Nor can you monitor all of your company results to alert you when one of them has posted a job posting for a certain job title. Exa Websets is mostly for simple data enrichment.

Pricing

Exa’s pricing can be a bit hard to understand and a tad pricey. For starters, they charge 10 credits for each result that match your query. This doesn’t even include any special enrichments (except for the standard ones they provide for every company/person). So right off the bat, if your query generates 100 people, that will cost you 1000 credits.

Emails and phone numbers each count 5 credits each, and all other enrichments cost 2 credits each.

Exa’s pricing page: https://exa.ai/websets/billing

4. Persana – Best for Signal-Based GTM Orchestration

Pros: has GTM orchestration, easy to use,

Cons: Can’t try out anything without a demo, non-transparent pricing, only supports Hubspot/Salesforce CRMs

If you need more than simple data enrichment, then Persana might be a good alternative – it’s a full-blown orchestration platform.

Like Clay, and the other aforementioned tools, once you log into the platform, you have the option to create a lead list from scratch, or import a CSV of leads you want to enrich.

If you want to build your own lead list, you can use natural language to describe the people or companies you want, such as “Find all healthcare companies in the United States”. Alternatively, you can just use standard filters instead.

Persana also has something called Persana Quantum Agent (their own version of Claygent). You can describe exactly what you want the agent to try and retrieve such as “Visit the website of the company, then identify the most advanced features they offer and how it differs from the basic features available”.

All of this seems pretty standard so far.

OK, let’s talk about what differentiates Persana for other tools like Freckle, Airscale and Exa Websets: signals and signal orchestration.

Persana has over 75+ different signals (ie job changes, hiring trends, funding, website visits) already integrated into the platform.

You don’t need to manually add columns for each signal either. Persana automatically tracks them in the background. After you create a table, Persana alerts you automatically when someone changes jobs or their company starts hiring, for instance.

In addition, instead of manually monitoring signals, you can also turn on Autopilot, which watches for these triggers and automatically takes action when the timing is right.

Most users integrate Persana with dedicated email sequencers like Instantly or Smartlead to handle the actual sending, while some use Persana’s native email capabilities. You can also configure Autopilot to update your CRM or send alerts to Slack. The workflow is really flexible depending on your existing tech stack.

Another of Persana’s unique features is their “Enrich Full Person Profile” enrichment. The results were surprisingly useful when I tried it.

What I did was import a bunch of Linkedin URLs of people I was interested in contacting, then click “Enrich Profile” to activate the AI enrichment.

Persana then generated columns like “highlights” (career achievements), “intro lines” (AI-generated conversation starters), “”how To use their personality for sales” (tactical selling tips), “Icebreakers” and more. This is really useful in crafting the right outreach message to these prospects, and something I didn’t see in Freckle or Airscale.

If you prefer a tool where a lot of things are configured for you, Persana is a better tool for you.

Innovation Score: Medium

Persana releases new features in a regular cadence – not as fast as Exa, but definitely not slow either. Major launches in the past year included: Quantum Agent, AI SDR agents (Perry, Nia, Alex), Waterfall Enrichment, Vibe GTM, SalesGPT 2.0, ABM Tracking, GPT-5 integration.

One thing that lowers their score here is there doesn’t seem to be anything particularly technically innovative they’re building here. They seem to integrate a lot of data sources, and have an AI agent, but there’s nothing I could see that tells me it’s more advanced, or special than what the other competitors are using.

Limitations

If there’s 1 thing I disliked about Persana is that credits burn faster than you’d think. Finding one phone number = 10 credits, so you need to be strategic about what you’re enriching. That and you need to go on a demo to actually get a chance to try the platform – there isn’t a self serve option.

Most people who use Persana also require an email/contact sequencer like Instantly or SmartLead, as Persana doesn’t have a mature platform for doing so.

Pricing

Persana’s pricing page: https://persana.ai/pricing

5. Floqer – Also good for Signal-based GTM Orchestration

Pros: has GTM orchestration, easy to use

Cons: Lack of transparent pricing, and can’t try everything unless you have a demo.

Floqer is very similar to Persana, and another platform that attempts to orchestrate your entire GTM workflow.

Floqer’s first core feature is CRM enrichment and cleaning. So, if you got contacts with missing data like emails or phone numbers, Floqer uses a waterfall enrichment to find those emails/phone numbers. During my trial, I intentionally removed emails and phones for 10 of my contacts in Hubspot, and Floqer was able to repopulate 9 of them. I used Hubspot, but Floqer integrates with most of the other major CRMs like Salesforce.

Beyond cleaning, Floqer also updates your stale data. For example, it keeps monitoring your contacts for job changes. If someone moves to another company, it updates their company, email, and job title automatically.

What if you don’t have any contacts or you don’t even use a CRM? That’s where their list building comes into play. Floqer helps you find NEW prospects by using intent signals. They have an entire section devoted entirely to “Intent Signals”, where you choose templates like “companies hiring aggressively” or “new executives hired.” 

During my trial, I decided to give their “Track job postings” a try, and searched for companies that posted a job posting for a CRO. I got back 20 companies back and the great thing is the list updates every day as new companies match the criteria.

Sometimes you need prospects that aren’t in any database though. That’s where their AI agents come into place. During my trial, I found an URL that had a list of some companies that were presenting in Salesforce’s DreamForce convention. When I pasted the URL into their scraper, and wrote “get company names and booth numbers”, Floqer’s agent went out and extracted 50+ exhibitors in two minutes.

A few times, their AI agent screwed up, or didn’t completely extract everything. For instance, when I pasted a list of stores in the Faire Marketplace, it had trouble paginating through all of them. But for the most part, I was impressed with how intelligently it was able to scrape the fields, and rows I needed.

The last thing that Floqer offers is workflows that chain everything together. I built a workflow that says: when “New CRO” signal fires, enrich that person to get their contact info, check if their company has more than 100 employees, and if yes, kick off an email sequence. Intro email, wait 3 days, follow-up if no reply, LinkedIn connection request.

1 thing to note is that Floqer doesn’t send the actual email or Linkedin request itself. It just helps you build that workflow. Instead it integrates with an sequencer like Instantly, where the actual messages get sent.

Innovation Score: Low

I couldn’t detect any new features they announced in the past 8 months, so I’m giving them a very low innovation score. They seemed to have pivoted from being an email personalization platform to a full-fledged GTM orchestration platform.

Limitations

The platform has 80 data providers versus Clay which has with 150+. For standard B2B emails and phone numbers I didn’t notice a gap. If you need niche data though, like podcast appearances or GitHub activity, or deep technographics, the narrower options might matter.

Pricing

Floqer doesn’t publish pricing. I had to get on a call with sales to get a quote. They said credits cost 20-30% less than competitors per enrichment, but I couldn’t verify that.

6. Apollo – Best for All-In-One Platform

Pros: easy to use, has GTM orchestration and engagement, can test everything before paying, supports Hubspot, Pipedrive, Salesforce and many more CRMs

Cons: more expensive than the other options

Apollo.io goes beyond both Persana and Floqer, and provides everything to you, from prospecting, enrichment, and outreach. It’s an all-in-one platform that is meant to replace Clay, signal data providers, and outreach tools.

Using enrichment in Apollo is ridiculously easy: I upload a CSV of contacts or companies, and Apollo enriches it with emails, phone numbers, job titles, and company data from their database.

The CRM integration is where it gets really useful. I was able to connect Apollo to my Salesforce account and set up automatic enrichment rules. Now when a new lead enters my CRM with incomplete data, Apollo automatically fills in missing contact details in real-time.

It used to be that Apollo didn’t do waterfall enrichment, but that changed recently a few months ago. Before, you were stuck with just Apollo’s database. Now you can set up a waterfall that tries Apollo first, then falls back to other providers like Prospeo, ZoomInfo, or Lusha if Apollo doesn’t have the data.

I tested this by enriching a list where Apollo only found 60% of emails. I then setup a waterfall with Prospeo as the backup provider. The match rate jumped to 82%. You connect your own API keys for the backup providers, so you’re paying those providers directly, not Apollo.

Apollo’s prospecting is really robust as well. Clay doesn’t have a native database – you’re building lists from scratch or importing them. Apollo, on the other hand has 275M contacts and 73M companies built in, so I can search directly inside the platform.

During my trial, I wanted to find VPs of Sales at SaaS companies with 50-500 employees. I used Apollo’s filters for job title, industry, company size, tech stack (like “uses Salesforce”), and funding stage, and got back 3,400 results. You can filter by ridiculous specifics like “companies hiring in the last 30 days” or “uses HubSpot but not Outreach.”

The intent data filters are useful too. I can find companies showing buying signals like recent funding rounds, job openings, or technology changes. It’s not as deep as dedicated intent platforms, but it’s built right into the prospecting interface instead of needing a separate tool.

What you also get with Apollo is the seamless workflow from enrichment to outreach. Let’s say I just enriched 500 contacts with emails and phone numbers. I can immediately select those contacts, enroll them in an email sequence, and Apollo tracks opens, clicks, and replies all in one dashboard.

In addition, they also have a built-in dialer for cold calling and LinkedIn connection/messaging automation.

If you love simplicity, and a tool that does everything for you, Apollo is for you. They handle prospecting, waterfall enrichment, and outreach sequencing and execution, so you don’t need to juggle multiple tools.

Innovation Score: Medium

Apollo.io ranked average in innovation. Major launches in the past 8 months included: AI Power-ups, Workflows (replacing Plays), Win Deals solution, Ask Apollo chatbot, Waterfall Enrichment (this is the big one), and an improved deliverability suite.

They’ve released some solid, incremental improvements recently, but I wouldn’t categorize any of it as “groundbreaking”.

Limitations

While Apollo has waterfall enrichment, it’s not as flexible as Clay’s data orchestration. Here are some examples of things you can’t do (as of today):

• Customize your waterfall sequence or choose which providers to use in what order (Apollo decides for you)
• Build conditional enrichment logic (“if company has 50+ employees, use ZoomInfo; if less, use Apollo”)
• Chain together multiple data sources creatively (LinkedIn data + Clearbit firmographics + AI scoring + Apollo contacts)
• Use custom formulas or transformations to parse and manipulate data
• Build complex multi-step enrichment workflows with branching logic

If you need pure data enrichment flexibility with full control over your waterfall logic and data transformations, Clay is still the better choice.

Pricing

Apollo offers a freemium model – I started for free with limited credits, then paid plans start around $49/month for basic enrichment. They use a credit system where different data points cost different amounts of credits.

Apollo’s pricing page: https://www.apollo.io/pricing

7. FullEnrich – Best for Contact Data Waterfall Enrichment

Pros: Easy to use, free trial lets you try everything, reasonable pricing

Cons: Only specializes in contact enrichment, Only supports Hubspot CRMs

Unlike all the other tools I tried so far, FullEnrich does only 1 thing exceptionally well: waterfall contact enrichment across 15+ data providers. So if you simply need to get the most accurate emails and phone numbers possible FullEnrich is your tool.

How FullEnrich works is it aggregates contact data from providers like Apollo, Hunter, Lusha, and more, running them sequentially until it finds a match.

IWhen I tested it, the email match rates were noticeably higher than using any single provider alone. And it was really stupid easy to use too. I simply uploaded a CSV with names + companies, and FullEnrich enriched it with contact data, spitting out a CSV back I could download.

In my test of 4 contacts, FullEnrich successfully found and verified emails for 3 out of 4 (75% match rate, and that 1 was because they detected a catch-all email), with clear verification indicators next to each email address.

Innovation Score: High

In the past 8 months, FullEnrich has released a solid amount of new features: a Chrome extension, V2 launch, a Clay integration, and a n8n integration. For a small team (40 or so employees), this is fairly impressive.

They seem to be very responsive to user feedback, as they released a Clay integration because it’s something a lot of their users asked for.

Limitations

FullEnrich is mostly a contact enrichment tool, so it won’t help you build lists, create workflows, or automate outreach. If you need those capabilities, you’ll need to pair it with other tools.

The lack of native CRM integrations is another limitation. You’re working with CSV uploads and downloads, which means manual work if you want to sync data back to Salesforce or HubSpot.

But if your only focus is enriching a CSV with contact data, FullEnrich is probably the best tool for your use case.

Pricing

FullEnrich offers transparent, credit-based pricing.

FullEnrich’s pricing page: https://fullenrich.com/pricing

8. Cognism – Ideal for contact data for European companies

Pros: Excellent European contact data, supports a lot of CRMs beyond Hubspot/Salesforce

Cons: Only specializes in contact data, no transparent pricing, need a demo to try it out

Cognism is another tool like FullEnrich that specializes mostly on contact data enrichnment, but their specialty is European markets

Like FullEnrich, their user interface is also really simple. I simply upload a CSV of contacts or companies, and Cognism enriches it with verified emails and phone numbers.

Unlike FullEnrich though, you’re not just limited to CSV files. As you can see in the screenshot above, they offer integrations to many CRMs like Salesforce, so that it can enrich your records automatically.

During my trial, I connected Cognism to my Salesforce account and set up automatic enrichment rules. Now when a new lead enters my CRM with incomplete data, Cognism automatically fills in missing contact details in real-time.

What makes Cognism stand out is their phone-verified mobile numbers – they actually have real people calling to verify contact information, which means higher accuracy rates than most providers. This ensures you’re not wasting time on outdated or incorrect numbers.

Innovation Score: Average

Cognism seemed to have just 1 major feature in the past year: Sales Companion, which is a AI-powered sales assistant that provides insights and research. Other than that, I couldn’t find anything else that was new. I got the sense that they spend a lot more time in marketing, holding events, and building their community (which has its own advantages!)

But in terms of raw innovation, unfortunately I think they’re just average in that department.

Limitations

Unlike FullEnrich, Cognism is a single data source. I’m querying their proprietary database – either they have the contact info or they don’t. While FullEnrich aggregates data from 15+ providers to maximize coverage, Cognism bets on the quality and verification of their own dataset, particularly for European contacts.

Also, while it may sound obvious Cognism is not a full-blown Clay replacement. They specialize mostly on European contact data. If that’s what you want though, then Cognism is for you.

Pricing

Cognism’s pricing isn’t transparent, so you’ll need to request a custom quote, which can be frustrating if you’re trying to budget or compare options quickly. The platform also tends to be on the pricier side, making it less accessible for smaller teams or startups.

9. DIY Approach with Google Sheets, N8N and Apify

If you prefer a DIY approach and aren’t afraid of work, you can try implementing your own Clay alternative with inexpensive tools.

As an example, I decided to build my own lead gen system from scratch using N8N, Google Sheets, and open AI APIs. This isn’t some half-baked hack either. I built a fully automated system that scrapes leads, enriches data, finds emails, and even drafts personalized outreach – all on autopilot.

What This System Does

Here’s what I managed to automate:

• Scrapes 250+ leads/day from LinkedIn Sales Navigator
• Enriches every contact with AI-generated company descriptions and website URLs
• Validates emails using a two-layer waterfall (Prospeo → Scrap.io)
• Writes custom outreach using GPT based on enriched data
• Logs everything in Google Sheets with a clean, spreadsheet-style interface

The Tool Stack

Here’s what I used to build it:

• N8N – The automation brain (free, self-hosted)
• Google Sheets – My makeshift CRM
• Apify – For LinkedIn Sales Navigator scraping
• Perplexity AI – Generates company context and finds websites
• Prospeo + Scrap.io – Email waterfall enrichment
• OpenRouter (GPT) – Auto-drafts personalized emails

Total cost? Just API credits. No monthly subscriptions.

How It Works

Step 1: Scrape Targeted Leads From LinkedIn Sales Navigator

I use Apify’s LinkedIn Sales Navigator scraper to pull leads based on my ICP (job titles like CEO/Founder/CMO, company size 11-50, SaaS industry, etc.).

The scraper grabs:

• First and last name
• Job title
• Company name
• LinkedIn URL

This data flows directly into Google Sheets with a status of “Pending Enrichment.”

Step 2: Enrich Each Company With AI

Next, N8N triggers a daily workflow that:

1. Pulls companies from Google Sheets where the description/website is empty
2. Sends the company name to Perplexity AI with the prompt: “Find the official website and 1-sentence description for [company name] in [location]”
3. Parses the AI response and updates the sheet automatically

Now I have context on every company without manually researching them.

Step 3: Email Enrichment Waterfall

Here’s where it gets good. I set up a two-layer email waterfall:

First layer: Prospeo
N8N calls Prospeo’s API with first name, last name, and domain. If Prospeo finds a verified email, it saves it to the sheet.

Second layer: Scrap.io (fallback)
If Prospeo fails, the workflow automatically falls back to Scrap.io with the same parameters. This significantly increases my match rate.

The sheet now shows:

• Email address
• Email status (Valid/Invalid/Not Found)

Step 4: Auto-Draft Emails Using GPT

Finally, for contacts where I found an email, N8N triggers an OpenRouter GPT node with this prompt:

“Write a 2-line personalized cold email to {firstName} {jobTitle} at {companyName}. Use this company description: {description}. Keep it casual, no links, max 100 words.”

GPT drafts the email and appends it to a new column in Google Sheets.

The Results

I now have a self-updating database that:

• Scrapes 250+ qualified leads daily
• Enriches company info automatically
• Finds verified emails via waterfall
• Drafts personalized outreach

All on autopilot.

Pricing

This is where the DIY approach shines:

• N8N: Free (self-hosted) or $20/month (cloud)
• Apify: ~$0.10 per 100 leads scraped
• Perplexity API: ~$0.002 per enrichment
• Prospeo: ~$0.02 per email found
• Scrap.io: ~$0.01 per email lookup
• OpenRouter (GPT-4): ~$0.01 per email draft

For 5,000 leads/month enriched with emails and AI-drafted outreach, I’m spending roughly $150-200 in API costs. Compare that to Clay’s $800+/month for similar usage.

Limitations

Let me be honest – this isn’t plug-and-play:

• Setup time: Took me about 4 hours to build and test all the workflows
• Technical skills needed: You need to understand APIs, N8N workflows, and basic scripting
• Maintenance: Occasionally APIs change or break, and you need to fix them yourself
• No fancy UI: Google Sheets works fine, but it’s not as slick as Clay’s interface

If you’re not comfortable with technical setup or don’t want to maintain your own system, stick with one of the SaaS alternatives I covered above.

But if you want maximum control, minimal ongoing costs, and don’t mind getting your hands dirty? Building your own system is absolutely worth it.

Which One Should You Choose?

• Overall ease of use, transparent pricing and ability to try almost everything before paying? Freckle.io or Exa Websets
• Building outbound lists all day? Airscale
• Need enrichment with real-time buying signal orchestration? Persana or Floqer
• Need enrichment with outreach workflows built-in? Apollo.io
• Need just US contact data enrichment? FullEnrich
• Need European contact data enrichment? Cognism
• Don’t mind a DIY Approach? Google Sheets + N8N + Apify

Clay isn’t going anywhere. But these alternatives prove there’s real competition out there, often at better price points or with more specialized features for specific use cases.

Try a few, and see what clicks with your workflow!