Hey there Asher thanks for reaching out, to clarify when searching for individuals in a company there is no credit charge for the basic profile import.
The easiest way to estimate the number of credits you’ll need is by:
1. Deciding which data points, you need for Companies, then estimating that cost. For example - If you want headcount and industry for every company, you’ll need 1 credits per company for the Enrich Company action
2. Doing the same for people. For example - If you need validated emails, LinkedIn profile, and job title info, that’ll be ~3 credits per validated email, and 1 credit for each LinkedIn profile which includes job title
3. Estimating your AI costs. For example - if you’re generating an AI subject line and email first line, that’ll be 2 credits per contact.
Using the above example, if you’re reaching out to or enriching 1000 people at 1000 companies a month, you’d need 1000 credits for the companies, and 5000 credits for the people, putting you at ~6,000 credits.
However, you also have the option to use your own API keys with many of these providers which could help decrease your overall costs i.e. using your own account with AI tools which plenty of users already do and save the Clay credits for providers they prefer to use Clay's API instead.
Be conservative with your credit number - buy the plan you need, and then if usage is higher, upgrade to a different plan!
For more information on how credits work, you can visit our FAQ page or try our pricing calculator.
If a company does not have a LinkedIn Profile, it will not affect the cost of finding people as previously mentioned. It just may make the process of finding leads a bit harder. There is workflow that you can use to find leads with just Company Name and domain, where you will add these data points to a blank table and then search people at these companies using the Company domain as the source for the search. This loom video can show you how to do this.:
https://www.loom.com/share/76f0eb6c94004ce08aeabeaca89a2de2?sid=ab81f89a-5e35-41c4-96e5-6e29b5eebf09
As for the cost in USD per lead in Clay this will vary depending on the plan you have as the cost of credit will vary per plan. For example in our Starter plan credit will cost around $.075 per credit so for a single person is around ~$.30 per lead. For the explorer the cost per credit is $.035 per credit and Pro is $.016 per credit.
