Clay vs Apollo: Which One Fits a Small Agency's Outreach

Clay vs Apollo comes down to whether you want a database or a workflow builder. Apollo is a contact database with email sequences and a dialer in one workspace. Clay sells data from other providers through its marketplace and lets you build enrichment workflows on it. Pick Apollo to search and send from one place. Pick Clay when you want to design the data process yourself.

This comparison uses only what each product's own website said on Nov 10, 2026. It makes no claim about whose data is more accurate or whose screens are easier to use. One section covers Leadodo, for agencies whose real question is how to find businesses with weak websites.

Clay vs Apollo, how do they compare?

Apollo sells its own database with outreach built in. Clay sells access to other providers' data and the tools to work on it. The table sets the two side by side on the points an agency asks about.

What does Clay do?

Clay is a data enrichment and workflow tool that buys data from other providers. Its homepage describes "Infrastructure to get any data, run agentic workflows, and launch GTM plays."

The site names waterfall enrichment, Claygent AI research agents and a workflow builder called Sculptor. It also lists signals tracking, CRM enrichment, and account and lead scoring. Data is bought with credits from Clay's marketplace. The pages we read give no count of contacts or companies, and they give three counts of data providers, 50+, 150+ and 200+.

Sending is part of the paid plans. The pricing table lists email campaigns sent "natively in Clay or via integrations with email campaign providers" on Launch, Growth and Enterprise.

The homepage says "GTM engineers build on Clay". The Launch plan is "For small teams building and automating prospecting workflows".

Pricing has a Free plan, then Launch, Growth and Enterprise. On Nov 10, 2026 the Launch card and the FAQ on the same page gave different starting figures, and the page did not label the card price as monthly or annual billing. This page quotes neither. See Clay's pricing page. The Free, Launch and Growth cards carry a "Start 14-day trial" button.

What does Apollo do?

Apollo is a contact database with email sequences and a dialer built in. Its site describes a workspace "for prospecting, outreach, and dialing".

You search the database with what Apollo counts as "65+ filters". Apollo says it holds "240M+ global contacts" and "30M+ global companies". Its data page names five sources. They are a contributor network, bounce and reply tracking from outreach, third-party data providers, public web data and local business data from Google Maps. The homepage calls the data "regularly updated" and gives no interval.

Outreach sits in the same product. Sequences run steps "across email, call, and networking platforms", and a parallel dialer logs calls to your CRM. Apollo syncs with Salesforce, HubSpot and Pipedrive.

The homepage title reads "The AI GTM System for Go-to-Market Teams". The pricing page calls the Free plan "Good for founders and early-stage teams".

Paid plans are priced per seat. On Nov 10, 2026 Apollo's pricing page listed a Free plan at $0 and the Basic plan at $49 per seat per month, billed annually. The price with monthly billing was not in the text we read. Basic and Professional carry a "Start 14-day trial" button.

Which should you pick, Clay or Apollo?

Pick by who will run the tool and what you already own. Neither website settles whose data is more accurate, so this is a choice of shape.

1. Pick Apollo when you want the list and the sending in one product. Its plans join the database, the sequences and a dialer. It also lists a Free plan at $0.
2. Pick Clay when someone on your team will build workflows. Clay's own homepage says "GTM engineers build on Clay". It fits a team that wants to combine data from several vendors and score accounts its own way.
3. Pick neither first when your buyers are local businesses and your pitch is their website. Both sites describe work on company and contact data. The pages we read describe no check of a prospect's own website.

Both products have more rivals than each other. Our pages on alternatives to Apollo and alternatives to Clay cover them, and Apollo vs ZoomInfo compares two databases.

Where does Leadodo fit, and where does it not?

Leadodo is software for web design and marketing agencies. A general sales team that is choosing between Clay and Apollo should stay with those two.

If you searched Clay vs Apollo because your agency needs clients, your real question may be a different one. How do you find businesses with weak websites, and how do you reach them? That is the job Leadodo is built for.

• Find. Leadodo finds businesses with a Google Maps scraper and a database of 460M+ contacts. You search by industry, area and company size, plus 20+ more filters.
• Score. Twip AI scores every website in a search out of 100 across 10 domains. Lower means a weaker website and a better lead. Sites that score below 40 form the shortlist.
• Reach. Your Outbound Machine runs six steps over 19 working days. A posted letter arrives on day 1, emails follow on days 4, 7 and 11, and LinkedIn steps on days 15 and 19. Twip's findings become the opening line of each letter and email.

Leadodo never contacts anyone itself. You send, under your own name. A posted letter in the US costs about 86 cents, for one page in black and white, sent First Class. Leadodo's own pricing is on request.

The score matters because of who replies. In our own test of 3,570 cold emails, businesses with the weakest 20% of websites replied positively 1.60% of the time to a generic email. A random sample from the other 80% replied positively 0.50% of the time. That is about 3.2 times as often. The test covered Dutch companies and email only, and the method is in our write-up of the test. Our guide to lead scoring with the website as the score explains the idea.

Where Leadodo does not fit. Leadodo is built for one job, finding businesses with weak websites and starting the conversation. Clay and Apollo do other jobs. A team that builds its own data workflows should pick Clay. A company that sells software to job titles inside larger companies should pick Apollo or Clay. Keep your CRM for what follows.

Questions

Is Clay a database like Apollo?

No. Apollo says it holds 240M+ contacts and 30M+ companies in its own database. The Clay pages we read give no count of contacts or companies. Clay sells data from other providers through its marketplace, paid with credits.

Does Clay send emails?

Yes, on the paid plans. Clay's pricing table lists "Launch email campaigns natively in Clay or via integrations with email campaign providers" on Launch, Growth and Enterprise. The Free plan does not include it.

Apollo vs Clay, which has more data?

The two cannot be compared by count from their own websites. Apollo states a size for its database, 240M+ contacts. Clay states none. Its records come from the providers in its marketplace. Ask each for sample rows in your own trade and area before you pay.

Do Clay and Apollo have free plans?

Both list one. Apollo's Free plan is $0 with "900 credits per seat per year, granted monthly" and 2 sequences. Clay's Free plan card says "Start building in Clay for free" and lists "1.2K data credits/yr". Both also show a 14-day trial button on paid plans.

Do Clay or Apollo cover local businesses?

Apollo's data page names local business data from Google Maps among its sources. The Clay pages we read do not say which providers cover local businesses. Neither set of pages describes scoring a local business's website, which is the check an agency that sells websites needs first.

---

Checked on Nov 10, 2026. Every detail about Clay and Apollo comes from their own websites on that date. If a detail about your product is out of date, tell us and we will correct it.

Next step. See how Twip scores every website in a search before a single message goes out. See Twip AI analysis.