The free Clay alternative
OpenClay does Clay's AI research at zero platform cost, using your own API key. Here is exactly what each tool is best at, so you can tell in a minute which one you need.
Updated August 2026
The short version
Clay is two products in one. It is a data aggregator, querying 150+ providers like Apollo, ZoomInfo and Clearbit in a waterfall until one returns a verified record. It is also an AI research agent, Claygent, which reads the open web and answers a question per row.
OpenClay does the research half, and does it without a subscription. If Claygent is what you actually use Clay for, your own API key does the same work for a fraction of a cent per row. If you also need licensed contact data, run both: they complement each other well.
Side by side
| Clay | OpenClay | |
|---|---|---|
| Platform fee | $149 – $800 per month | $0 |
| AI research per row | Consumes Clay credits | Billed by the model provider directly |
| 1,000 researched rows | Draws down your credit quota | From $0.08 in API usage |
| Model choice | Whatever Claygent runs | 28 models across 4 providers, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint |
| Verified emails & phones | Yes, 150+ data providers | Pair with a data provider |
| Waterfall enrichment | Yes | Single model per run |
| CRM sync | Yes | CSV and XLSX export |
| Where your data lives | Their servers | Your browser |
| Rate-limit handling | Managed for you | Backoff, retry and tunable concurrency |
| Source code | Proprietary | Open source |
| Account required | Yes, plus a card | No |
Clay pricing from their public pricing page and subject to change.
Choose OpenClay when
- You mostly used Claygent, and the credit burn is what pushed you to look elsewhere.
- Your research questions are custom and don't fit a data provider's schema.
- You already get raw lists out of Apollo or lemlist and only need the enrichment layer.
- Your data can't go to a third-party server for policy reasons.
- You want to see, and change, exactly what prompt runs against each row.
Keep Clay for
The two tools solve different halves of the problem, and plenty of teams run both. Clay remains the right choice for:
- Verified email addresses and phone numbers from licensed contact databases.
- Waterfall enrichment that falls back across several providers per field.
- Native CRM sync, scheduled refreshes and a shared team workspace.
- A commercial support contract with an SLA behind it.
A common setup is Clay or Apollo for contact records, OpenClay for the research columns around them, at no additional subscription cost.
What it actually costs
There is no platform fee, ever. You pay the model provider at their published rates. A 1,000-row job with four researched columns starts at about $0.08 on Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite, including web-search fees.
The tool quotes an exact figure after a five-row test, before you commit to the batch, and reports token usage, peak tokens-per-minute and a blank-cell count while it runs. Full breakdown on the model pricing page.
Moving a workflow across
- Export your table from Clay as CSV.
- Load it into OpenClay and pick the columns that identify each row.
- Re-describe your Claygent prompt in plain English, or paste it into the template editor.
- Test five rows, compare against what Clay returned, then run the batch.
- Download and push back into your sequencer or CRM.
Related
- Claygent alternative: the direct swap if AI research is the only Clay feature you use.
- Clay pricing compared: the arithmetic at 1,000, 5,000 and 25,000 rows.
No account, no card, no platform fee.
Bring your own API key and pay the model provider directly.
Try it on a Clay export