Cost Comparison: OpenAPI/Claude API on Clay vs. Managed Account

Literally hundreds of times cheaper

You pay API tokens rather than clay credits. Most api calls cost you less than a hundredth of a cent

Hey Surya K., I built my own credit calculator for this before. Take one example - Assuming you are using the Explorer Plan (349 USD/month), the cost per credit is $0.035 But when you use your own API key, you can set the limit to $0.001 In fact, when you are doing simple stuff like 'Given a person's name and title, help me find their LinkedIn Profile', that action might even cost less than $0.001! So yes, definitely use your own API key if you can!

oh wow

this is super helpful

as of now, we mostly use clay for enrichment (person enrichment, email, phone number). Do you use any APIs for that or just clay? asking since it's different from using an AI agent Mitch M. Asher thanks in advance!

Surya K. It does depend on your volume! But if the volume is large, you really should use APIs. Personally for me:

Icypeas actually have a ‘enrich person’ capability, and it just costs 1 Icypeas credits which is about $0.089 if you use their 89 USD per month plan.

Personally for me, I almost always have too much Clay credits leftover every month, which isn’t a bad thing for me! The only downside with using APIs is that many of them are monthly subscriptions. So you have to pay monthly regardless if you use them or not.

ah ok - we do decent volume but probably aren't going to go through the hassle of getting subscriptions for a bunch of different vendors and tying to together (at least for now)

Surya K. Might suggest that you start with just 1 or 2 vendors. For example, when it comes to email finding

You really just need to waterfall 2 providers or max 3 to get at least 85% of coverage Hope that helps!

Asher is correct. Find the tools you burn the most clay credits with, and get commercial contracts direct w those vendors for API access. Leadmagic and bounceban are two that I use the most frequently.