Apollo vs Clay: enrichment waterfall or all-in-one

Apollo has no path to a HIPAA agreement at all; Clay’s just sits outside any priced tier

Apollo names ISO/IEC 27001, SOC 2 Type II, and CASA Tier 2 among its own certifications, but a HIPAA business associate agreement, FedRAMP, StateRAMP, and GovCloud are all absent from its pages, while Clay claims an active SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 for itself and offers a HIPAA agreement only through a separate agreement that sits outside any of its published pricing tiers. Scope compared, criterion by criterion. Checked 7 September 2026.

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Apollo

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Apollo vs Clay: scope compared, criterion by criterion — checked September 7, 2026
Apollo	Clay
What each one covers
Its core job
A filterable B2B contact database, claimed at over two hundred forty million verified contacts and thirty million companies, with no stated measurement date.	Aggregating and reselling per-lookup access to third-party data vendors, in waterfall sequence, to maximize coverage at the lowest cost without claiming a proprietary database.
What it also does, more lightly
Deal management, call recording, and automated workflows exist but are capped: from two workflows per team on Free to five hundred on Organization.	Email sending and sequences through Sequencer, CRM writeback, ad audiences, and web-research AI agents: peripheral functions layered on top of the specialist tools it connects to.
What it does not do at all
No European hosting option is offered: the DPA names only US data centers, and no alternative region appears on the security page.	It does not sell a proprietary database you query on its own terms: with no vendor selected and paid per lookup, Clay itself produces no contact data point.
If you only take this one
What you give up
Bulk extraction capacity: even on the most expensive plan, a selection tops out at ten thousand records at a time, versus twenty-five on the free plan.	You lose the all-you-can-query subscription of a single vendor: every record is paid per unit, and coverage depends on which vendors you chose to enable and how you ordered them.
The workaround, and what it costs
Moving to the Organization plan raises selection to ten thousand records: one hundred nineteen US dollars per seat per month, three-seat minimum, billed annually.	Plug in your own vendor API keys, which removes Data Credits but not Actions; or move up a tier, Growth being listed at 446 US dollars per month on annual billing
The point where it stops being enough
Bulk import is indexed to annual spend: one hundred thousand rows per week from one thousand dollars, ten million from one hundred thousand dollars.	The wall is Actions: they expire each cycle and cannot be topped up separately, so crossing 15,000 and then 40,000 monthly actions forces a move up to the next tier.
If you take both
What it exposes to connect
A REST API with scoped keys, an OAuth 2.0 authenticated MCP server at mcp.apollo.io, CSV import and export, and bidirectional CRM sync.	A public API, a CLI drivable from coding agents, an MCP server limited to admin-enabled functions, inbound and outbound webhooks, and a generic HTTP connector for any other endpoint.
Which one becomes the source of truth
The CRM. The perpetual license attaches to contact data incorporated into your own systems, and platform access ends immediately upon termination.	The Audiences feature claims to unify CRM, warehouse and enrichment data into one persistent profile per contact and account, capped at 250,000 records on Growth and 25 million on Enterprise.
What the tool answers
What it measures or produces
Apollo produces verified B2B contact data — emails and phone numbers — plus outbound sequences, a dialer, and lead scores, all metered as credits per action.	Clay produces enriched tables of accounts and contacts fed by a marketplace of third-party vendors, then runs agentic workflows and pushes actions into the connected go-to-market stack.
The job it equips
The outbound SDR: account search, contact reveal, multichannel sequences, and outbound calling all live in one seat-based interface.	Clay addresses the GTM engineer and GTM Ops / RevOps teams, the people who build the data foundation feeding campaigns rather than the reps running the calls themselves.
What it cannot tell you
Apollo publishes aggregate monthly refresh volumes but never the verification date of any individual record, and none of those figures carries a publisher date.	For reasoning models billed at actual cost, Clay cannot tell you what a run will cost before it happens: it withholds an estimate, then reconciles the real amount afterward.
Cold outreach
Channels covered
Automated and manual email, calls via built-in dialer, LinkedIn and free-form tasks. LinkedIn steps are manual tasks to be completed, not automated sends.	A single native sending channel: email, via the Clay Sequencer, powered by Smartlead. Other channels go through export to third-party tools or the HTTP API.
Sending limits
Apollo publishes no sending cap per pricing tier. It publishes recommendations: 50 to 100 emails per day per mailbox, 10 to 20 per hour.	QUALIFIED ABSENCE. The daily sending limit per account is a user-adjustable setting; no numerical cap is published. The sequence itself is limited to four emails.
Mailbox warm-up
Available but not native: provided by a third party, Warmbox.ai. One mailbox per seat on paid plans; each additional mailbox costs 200 credits per 30-day period.	Native warmup included: automated sending and receiving from the connected account, through Smartlead's warmup pool. Domain rotation and alias management announced on the product page.
Personalization
Dynamic variables with nested conditional logic, comparators and case modifiers. AI research consumes one run per enrichment field, per saved contact.	AI personalization uses snippets: each run consumes 1 action plus variable data credits depending on the model chosen. Each lead sequenced separately consumes 1 action.
Reply detection
Default rules distinguishing a human reply from an out-of-office: contact marked finished on reply, paused on out-of-office reply, resuming if a return date is detected.	The sequence stops automatically when a lead replies, with out-of-office replies detected and worked around. Reply events may appear with a 15 to 30 minute delay.
Where the contacts come from
Three sources: the built-in database, file import, and a Chrome and Edge browser extension working on LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, Gmail, company websites and CRMs.	Contacts come from third-party providers, never from a Clay database claimed as such: over 10 prospecting sources including LinkedIn, Google Maps and Github, and over 75 enrichment tools.
CRM synchronization
Bidirectional sync with HubSpot, Salesforce or Pipedrive, one CRM connected at a time. The required tier is not named in the publisher's documentation.	Import, creation, update and management of CRM objects from Clay. HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Close and Loxo are named. Each CRM export or sync consumes actions.
Outreach compliance
The unsubscribe link is optional and can be switched off by the user. Three GDPR settings can forbid prospecting, sending and tracking towards European residents.	Optional unsubscribe link, conditional on HTML being enabled, and a blocklist preventing unsubscribed leads from being re-added to later campaigns.
The data and how fresh it is
Database size
The publisher states “240M+ contacts and 30M+ companies” on its homepage. No measurement date accompanies this figure, and no counting method is published.	Clay states it is not a data provider itself: it publishes no size for a database of its own, only integration with third-party providers in a waterfall. No total record count is published.
Freshness and verification
Real-time refresh on signal, monthly database checks, seven-step email verification. Two different accuracy rates coexist across the publisher's own pages.	Verification is built into the waterfall: it stops at the first result judged valid, with four validation strategies. Refresh can be scheduled down to hourly (Enterprise only).
Intent data
Present, but the publisher contradicts itself on the provider and the topic volume. Two official pages give two providers and two incompatible orders of magnitude. I do not arbitrate.	Clay offers signals (web intent, visitors, job changes, news, social listening). Web intent costs 1 action plus the data credits of the chosen de-anonymization provider, cached for 30 days.
Phone numbers
“Do Not Call” screening against seven countries' national registries, off by default and activatable by an administrator only. Credits are charged even for a listed number.	No database of its own. Cost varies by the provider called: from 2 credits, up to 5 (People Data Labs), 13 (Selligence), 15 (ContactOut) or 25 (Datagma) per mobile number found.
Credit model
Email, mobile and export credits. Renewal on the first day of the billing cycle; expiry at cycle end, no rollover. Annual plans unlock everything at the start of the cycle.	Two distinct counters, in USD: Actions (orchestration capacity, a few tenths of a penny each) and Data Credits (purchase of third-party data, a few pennies each).
GDPR compliance
Legal basis invoked: legitimate interests. Email notification of new contacts in the European Union, United Kingdom and Switzerland. Outsourced DPO and named Article 27 representative.	Clay commits to providing a data processing agreement on request, to never using customer data to train its AI models, and to selecting compliant providers.
US geographic coverage
No US volume published: only undated global totals, 240M+ contacts and 30M+ companies, appear on the pages tested as of 2026-09-07. No regional breakdown at all, so no imbalance to report. The product page sends the buyer to run a search inside a free account instead.	No US volume published, while European volumes are — the imbalance is the fact. It matches what Clay writes about itself, “Clay doesn’t have any native data”, the volumes it cites belonging to its provider network. Its only US claim is qualitative: “Highest data quality and coverage”.
What comes out of it
Export formats
The documented export format is CSV. The real ceiling is the record selection limit: 25 on Free, 1,000 on Basic, 2,500 on Professional, 10,000 on Organization.	One documented file format, CSV, downloaded from the Actions menu; everything else leaves through connectors into CRMs, warehouses, sequencers and webhooks rather than as a file.
Shareable reports
Custom reports can be shared per user or team with three permission levels, or set to “Everyone” visibility. No PDF export or scheduled delivery is documented.	Sharing a table or workbook produces a template: the column structure plus a single sample row, via a public link or named email addresses, never the full dataset.
API access
Quota is counted in requests per minute, hour, and day, per team: 50/200/600 on Free, 200/400/2,000 on Basic and Professional, 200/600/6,000 on Organization.	Public API and CLI are open on every plan, free and trial included; the quota unit is search results, from 100 per month on Free to 10 million per year on Enterprise.
What it connects to
Native integrations
The only publisher-stated count, “50+ tools,” appears in the marketplace page's meta description, not on the page itself. Salesforce, HubSpot, and Outreach matter most.	The Integrations page advertises “200+ providers”; the three that shape real usage are Salesforce and HubSpot on the CRM side and Snowflake on the warehouse side, both as source and destination.
Google tools it connects to
Per the grid, the Free plan connects Gmail and Microsoft mailboxes; paid plans accept all providers. A Gmail extension ships on all four plans.	Google Sheets exposes three native actions — add a row, look up a row, and look up / add / update — authenticated through a connected Google account; Google Docs and Google Translate have their own integrations.
Bringing your existing data across
CSV import requires at least one of company name, website, LinkedIn URL, or email, and the publisher advises against files over ten thousand rows.	A table starts from four documented sources: a CSV import, a HubSpot or Salesforce connection, an inbound webhook, or the “Find Companies” and “Find People” list builders.
Getting started, and the fine print
Support
Basic email support covers all four plans; chat and priority email start at Basic; GTME expertise is reserved for the Organization plan.	The one publicly documented channel is email at support@clay.com; the Growth tier adds priority support and Enterprise adds a dedicated Slack channel plus an assigned growth strategist.
Where the data is hosted
The United States. The DPA names outsourced US-based data center providers and frames transfers with the EU Standard Contractual Clauses.	The documentation names a single region: the United States, on AWS US-East infrastructure, for primary processing of customer data.
What happens if you leave
Yes, with conditions: a perpetual license covers contact data already incorporated into your systems, but resale, redistribution, and model training remain prohibited.	Cancelling moves the account down to the free plan at the next billing date; deleting the account deletes the data with it, and a deleted workspace is purged after thirty days.
Minimum seats billed
One seat suffices on Basic and Professional; the Organization plan requires a three-seat minimum. The free plan drops to one seat after one hundred days of active use.	No minimum is billed: the pricing page advertises unlimited seats starting on the free plan, and the workspace separates Admin, Editor, Viewer and Sales rep roles.
Data residency and regulated cloud
Apollo hosts in the US with no region named (AWS, Google Cloud, Databricks, Snowflake, OpenAI). Own certs: ISO/IEC 27001, SOC 2 Type II (A-LIGN), CASA Tier 2. FedRAMP, StateRAMP, GovCloud, BAA absent.	Clay names one region, AWS US-East, and claims for itself an “active” SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 compliance. A HIPAA BAA is available only via a separate agreement, outside any pricing tier. FedRAMP, StateRAMP and GovCloud are absent from the pages read; the Trust Center could not be accessed.
What it costs
The entry price and what it includes
The first paid tier, Basic, costs 49 US dollars per seat per month billed annually, with thirty thousand credits per seat per year granted upfront.	A free plan gives 500 Actions and 100 Data Credits per month, capped at 200 rows per table. The first paid tier, Launch, is listed at 167 US dollars per month on annual billing on the pricing page, and at 185 in the vendor's own documentation
What pushes the bill up
Phone data: one email costs one credit, one phone number costs eight, and the US dialer costs two credits per call minute.	Three levers: the add-on Data Credit tier, starting at 54 US dollars a month on Launch and 185 on Growth; the provider you pick per lookup; and one-time top-ups sold at a premium.
Sales tax and nexus
Apollo shifts the tax burden onto the customer (ToS §4(c)(iv)): taxes owed except those on Apollo's own net income. No tax policy page, list of states, nexus statement, or per-state/local calculation are published on 2026-09-07.	Clay charges US sales tax and itself bears nexus, calculated from product taxability and the customer's address; amount remitted, no state named. Exemption via certificate; no calculation offered for the customer's own sales.
Procurement and invoicing
Net-30 in USD (ToS), late interest 1.5%/month, subscriptions non-cancelable and nonrefundable. Major cards accepted (PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay excluded). ACH only for Organization/Custom plans, on request. PO and W-9 absent.	Clay: card only, no purchase orders, net-30, ACH, or W-9; Enterprise alone (annual quote) sits outside self-service. Contradiction: Free $0, Launch $167/mo ($1,620/yr), Growth $446/mo ($4,016/yr) vs FAQ “$149/mo,” “Pro Plan.”

Key takeaways

Clay names a HIPAA path Apollo does not have at all

Apollo’s own certifications stop at ISO/IEC 27001, SOC 2 Type II audited by A-LIGN, and CASA Tier 2, a Google-specific security assessment; a HIPAA business associate agreement is absent from its pages entirely, alongside FedRAMP, StateRAMP, and GovCloud. Clay instead claims an “active” SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 compliance for itself, and does offer a HIPAA business associate agreement — though only through a separate agreement, outside any of its published pricing tiers, with no minimum plan named as a gate.

Neither one names a region, on two different continents of infrastructure

Apollo hosts in the US without naming a region, spread across AWS, Google Cloud, Databricks, Snowflake, and OpenAI. Clay names exactly one region, AWS US-East, for its primary processing — a narrower, more specific claim than Apollo’s multi-provider list, though neither publishes FedRAMP, StateRAMP, or GovCloud.

The tax burden runs in opposite directions between the two

Apollo’s own terms, at section 4(c)(iv), put sales tax on the customer, excepting only taxes on Apollo’s own net income, with no tax policy page, state list, or calculation published. Clay instead charges US sales tax itself and bears its own nexus, calculating the amount from product taxability and the customer’s address before remitting it, though it offers no equivalent calculation for the customer’s own downstream sales.

One accepts net-30, the other accepts a card and nothing else

Apollo bills net-30 in US dollars, at one and a half percent monthly late interest, accepting major cards while excluding PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Pay; ACH is limited to Organization or Custom plans, on request, with purchase orders and a W-9 absent entirely. Clay narrows further still: card only, at every tier, with Enterprise alone requiring an annual quote outside self-service — and its own FAQ names a “Pro Plan” priced differently from anything on its actual pricing page.

What a HIPAA-bound buyer actually gets from either one

A buyer who needs a signed HIPAA business associate agreement gets no offer at all from Apollo, regardless of tier or spend. Clay’s offer exists, but arrives through a separate agreement rather than a named plan, with no minimum published — a real path, just not one either company puts a price or a tier next to.

Frequently asked questions

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jordan@bulldozer-collective.com

Can a buyer get a HIPAA business associate agreement from Apollo?

No: Apollo has no path to a HIPAA business associate agreement at all, the label absent from its certifications alongside FedRAMP, StateRAMP and GovCloud. Clay does offer one, but only through a separate agreement sitting outside any published pricing tier. For a buyer under HIPAA, neither vendor bundles this compliance into a standard subscription.

Between Apollo and Clay, which one bears its own US sales tax nexus?

Clay: it charges US sales tax and bears the nexus obligation itself, calculating the amount from product taxability and the customer’s address, though it names no specific state and offers no calculation for the customer’s own sales. Apollo instead shifts the entire tax burden onto the customer by contract, with no tax page, state list or nexus statement published.

Can a buyer pay Clay by purchase order?

No: Clay accepts card payment only, with no purchase order, net-30, ACH or W-9 at any published tier; only its Enterprise plan sits outside self-service, through an annual quote. Apollo, by contrast, grants net-30 billing in US dollars by contract, though ACH there stays reserved for the Organization or Custom plans on request.