Clay API: What You Actually Get (And What You Don't)

If you're searching for "Clay API," you're probably trying to figure out if you can integrate Clay programmatically into your workflows. Here's the short answer: Clay doesn't offer direct API endpoints for external querying. But before you click away, there are still ways to work with Clay programmatically, and the platform itself lets you connect to basically any external API.

This gets confusing because "Clay API" can mean two different things:

Let's break down both, plus everything you need to know about making Clay work in your tech stack.

Does Clay Have an API?

No, Clay doesn't offer a traditional public API for developers. Clay's architecture is built around table-based processing where enrichments happen in specific table instances, making it difficult to expose as a clean, stateless API endpoint.

According to Clay's documentation, they get this question a lot. The platform was designed as a visual, spreadsheet-like interface for data enrichment and automation, not as an API-first product. That said, there are three workarounds if you need to interact with Clay programmatically.

1. Webhooks (The Most API-Like Option)

Webhooks enable Clay to automatically receive data from other applications through HTTP POST requests in JSON format whenever specific events occur. Every Clay table has a unique webhook endpoint. You can push data into a table from anywhere-a form submission, your CRM, a custom script-and Clay will start processing it immediately.

Once enrichments finish, you can use HTTP actions to push the cleaned data back to your CRM, Google Sheets, or outreach tool. After enrichments run, you can use HTTP actions to push the data back out to your system of record. This is the most API-like workflow and is ideal for automating lead flow or enrichment jobs.

This is the closest you'll get to an API-like workflow. It's perfect for automating lead flow or enrichment jobs where you need Clay to sit in the middle of your data pipeline.

Important webhook limitation: Webhook sources are limited to 50,000 submissions, and this limit persists even after deleting rows. Once you reach this limit, you'll need to create a new webhook to continue receiving data. However, Enterprise Plan customers can enable auto-delete (also called passthrough tables) to automatically process and delete rows, allowing unlimited webhook submissions.

2. Third-Party Wrappers (Make, Zapier, Replit)

If you absolutely need an endpoint, you can use tools like Make, Zapier, or even a custom script on Replit to act as a middleman. You can send data to Clay via webhooks and use the HTTP API integration to push data to external services. For programmatic use: send input data to webhooks, process it in Clay, then use HTTP API to output results to other tools.

These tools receive your API request, trigger Clay to do its thing, and return results once processing is complete.

The catch: Clay's enrichment model means responses might take a minute or more. You'll need to build logic that waits for results or checks back later. Not ideal for real-time use cases.

3. Enterprise API (Limited Access)

For Enterprise customers, Clay offers a limited but fast API for accessing its proprietary People and Company data. You can send an email or LinkedIn URL to get back basic person details, or a domain to get company info. This is useful for lightweight lookups and lead enrichment, but it doesn't include deep enrichment like verified emails, phone numbers, or revenue data.

You'll need to contact Clay's GTM engineers to access this.

What About Clay's HTTP API Feature?

This is where things get more useful. Clay's HTTP API integration lets you connect Clay to virtually any external API. This means you can pull data from APIs that Clay doesn't natively integrate with, or push enriched data to custom tools.

HTTP API facilitates seamless integration and connectivity with any APIs. It's one of Clay's most powerful features for teams that need flexibility beyond the native integrations.

What You Can Do With HTTP API in Clay

The HTTP API feature is available starting on the Explorer plan ($349/month or $314/month billed annually). The Starter plan lets you use your own API keys for enrichment providers, but HTTP API access is locked behind the Explorer tier.

How HTTP API Works

You set up an HTTP API column in your Clay table and configure the request method (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE), endpoint URL, headers, authentication, and body. Clay will execute this API call for each row in your table, pulling in the response data.

You can control how many API requests you send within a given time frame. Check your API documentation for rate limits. Clay's rate limit configuration lets you set both a request limit and duration in milliseconds to stay within external API constraints.

Clay also supports using HTTP API as a source, which lets you import data directly from an external API to create a new table. Note that pagination is not currently supported. If your API returns paginated results, you'll only get the first page (typically 10-100 records).

Understanding API Types: REST, SOAP, and GraphQL

When working with Clay's HTTP API feature, you'll likely encounter different API architectures. Understanding these differences helps you configure your Clay integrations properly.

REST APIs

Representational State Transfer (REST) is a widely used architectural style for building web services and APIs. REST was first introduced in 2000 by Roy Fielding in his doctoral dissertation. Fielding, who was also one of the primary authors of the HTTP protocol, defined REST as an architectural style that is based on the principles of the web.

REST APIs are the most common type you'll connect to through Clay's HTTP API. They use standard HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE) and typically return data in JSON format. Most modern SaaS tools offer REST APIs, making them straightforward to integrate with Clay.

SOAP APIs

Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) is a messaging protocol used for exchanging structured data between different systems over the internet. SOAP is an XML-based protocol and is considered one of the earliest web service protocols.

SOAP is still widely used in healthcare applications, especially in electronic health records (EHR) and health information exchanges (HIE). This is because SOAP provides a secure and reliable way to transmit sensitive patient information between different systems. SOAP is also still used in financial applications, such as payment gateways and trading platforms.

GraphQL APIs

GraphQL is a query based API type that allows us to create an API with only one endpoint. This flexibility gives clients the ability of retrieving the data they want. GraphQL is flexible and growing in popularity. The latest version of GitHub's API is published using GraphQL. Yelp publishes its API in GraphQL, as does Shopify.

When connecting to GraphQL APIs through Clay, you'll typically use POST requests with query bodies that specify exactly what data you need. This can be more efficient than REST for complex data requirements.

Clay Pricing and API Access

Understanding what you need to pay for API-related features is crucial for budgeting. Clay's pricing has evolved significantly, and costs can add up quickly if you're not strategic about credit usage.

Clay's Pricing Plans (Current)

Free Plan: Start with 1.2K credits per year (100 credits per month) at no cost. No API key support, no HTTP API access. Good for testing the platform but insufficient for any serious work.

Starter Plan ($149/month, $134/month annual): The Starter Plan comes with either 24K credits per year (2K monthly) or 36K credits per year (3K monthly). You can use your own API keys for enrichment providers (saves Clay credits), but access phone number enrichments and utilize your own API keys to create your own integration accounts. No HTTP API access on this tier.

Explorer Plan ($349/month, $314/month annual): The Explorer Plan offers three credit tiers: 120K credits per year (10K monthly), 168K credits per year (14K monthly), or 240K credits per year (20K monthly). This unlocks HTTP API integration, webhooks as a source, and access to email sequencing integrations, including Outreach and Salesloft. This is the minimum tier for serious API work.

Pro Plan ($800/month, $720/month annual): The Pro Plan offers four credit tiers: 600K credits per year (50K monthly), 840K credits per year (70K monthly), 1.2M credits per year (100K monthly), or 1.8M credits per year (150K monthly). Includes CRM integrations (Salesforce, HubSpot), everything from Explorer.

Enterprise Plan (custom pricing): The Enterprise Plan offers tailored controls to support your entire organization, with customizable credit amounts. Build tables with unlimited rows using Passthrough Tables, run up to 40 column actions per table, receive dedicated AI prompting support, access the Snowflake integration, receive dedicated Slack support, gain insights into your credit usage with credit reporting analytics, and manage employee access with SSO.

According to third-party data, the median contract value of Clay's Enterprise plan is $30,400/year based on data from 19 purchases with the highest reported price going for $154,000/year.

Understanding Clay Credits

Clay credits are the "currency" you use to purchase different data points and actions in Clay. The average cost of a data point or action varies depending on the provider and the data point in question. The vast majority of actions in Clay are either free, or cost 1-2 credits.

However, some data points are harder to find and just more expensive as a result - like mobile phone numbers. While Find Mobile Number starts at 2 credits, it can cost 5 (People Data Labs), 13 (Selligence), 15 (ContactOut), or even 25 (Datagma) credits depending on the provider.

Generally, the higher the plan, the lower the cost per credit. For example, on the Starter plan, you might pay around $75 per 1,000 credits, while on the Pro plan, that cost could drop to as low as $16 per 1,000 credits. The higher your Clay plan is, the lower your cost per credit will be. Our Pro plan is up to 7x cheaper than our starter plan.

Bringing Your Own API Keys

Using your own API keys saves Clay credits entirely - you won't be charged when using your own subscriptions, though you need at least the Starter plan ($149/mo) to connect personal API keys. Cost: Using your own API keys is free - you won't be charged Clay credits when you bring your own API subscriptions. However, you need at least Clay's Starter plan ($149/mo) to use your own API keys - this feature isn't available on the free plan. Without your own API keys, Clay charges 2 credits per enrichment when using Clay-managed accounts.

This is crucial for teams doing high-volume enrichment. If you already have subscriptions to tools like Apollo, Hunter, OpenAI, or People Data Labs, connecting your API keys can dramatically reduce your Clay costs.

As a general principle, any actions by Clay that clean or format data are free. Any external CRM connections or Emailers are also free (on the Pro Plan!). We only charge credits for data points where we have to pay a cost for access or use. So think company revenue, fully scraped LinkedIn profiles, phone numbers, contact research, AI, and others. Additionally, if you have your own API key for any of the data providers that we connect with (e.g - OpenAI for AI calls), then you can connect your own API key and use that action in Clay free of charge.

HTTP API Rate Limits in Clay

Clay lets you configure rate limits in your HTTP API settings to avoid hitting external API limits. You set a request limit (like 30 requests) and duration in milliseconds (like 60000ms for 1 minute).

The problem: the current rate limit can't be lower than 5 requests per second. Many public APIs have stricter limits. For example, the UK Companies House API allows 600 requests per 5 minutes (effectively 2 per second). Clay won't let you set the rate that low.

How to Configure Rate Limits

To set up a rate limit of 30 requests per minute in the HTTP API integration: locate the "Define rate limit" section in your HTTP API settings and set the following values: Request Limit: 30 and Duration (in ms): 60000 (since 60000 milliseconds = 1 minute). This configuration will ensure your API requests are limited to 30 calls within each 60-second window.

If the API documentation specifies limits, configure them in your enrichment. This prevents your requests from being throttled and ensures smooth processing.

Rate Limit Workarounds

When Clay's minimum rate limit is too high for your API:

If you're running a large table, requests get queued and processed with concurrency limits. If your API rate limits you, Clay will retry failed requests. Those retries compound over time because we send a request, it fails due to rate limit, then we try again, and that can slow down the whole run. That also explains why only a small number of cells were processed so far.

Some users have reported frustration with this limitation, particularly when working with government APIs or specialized data sources with strict rate requirements.

Clay's Data Enrichment Capabilities

Clay data enrichment transforms simple contact or company records into complete, actionable profiles. It fills in missing details like phone numbers, job titles, company size, tech stack, and buying intent. All data is pulled from real-time, verified sources.

How Waterfall Enrichment Works

Most tools rely on a single data provider. Clay takes a different approach. It connects to over 50 trusted sources, including top B2B data vendors like SMARTe, ZoomInfo, Clearbit, and People Data Labs. This gives you fresher, more diverse, and highly accurate information.

Clay uses a "waterfall" technique for enrichment, meaning it checks each data source in its library one at a time to find a piece of information, like a work email address. Once it finds one, it will ping the server to confirm that the email address returned is valid. There are some prebuilt waterfalls in Clay, but companies often need to tweak them or build their own depending on the geos and verticals they serve.

A key feature is Clay's waterfall enrichment. You can set the order of your preferred data providers. Clay checks them one by one until it finds the needed information. This boosts accuracy and reduces costs by skipping expensive sources when not needed.

Clay's 100+ Data Integrations

Clay gives you immediate access to 100+ premium data sources (+ your own API keys) in one subscription: no contracts, renewals, or implementation hassle needed. This includes popular providers like:

Enrichments: Access premium data from 150+ providers: identify new leads, score accounts and contacts, and personalize outreach. Intent signals: Take instant action when prospects change jobs, visit your website, mentions your company online, and more.

AI-Powered Research with Claygent

Clay also uses AI-powered tools to find data that others miss. Its AI web researcher scans the internet for company domains, job titles, emails, and phone numbers. This adds extra value when standard sources fall short.

Simply provide Claygent with a list of companies or domains, and it will scour the web to find relevant information like case studies, technology stacks, SOC-II compliance, and more. Claygent continuously learns and improves its research capabilities to deliver increasingly valuable insights over time.

Real-World Use Cases for Clay API Workflows

Even without a traditional API, here's what people are building with Clay:

Lead Enrichment Pipelines

Form submissions hit a webhook, Clay enriches the data with company size, tech stack, and contact information, then pushes it to your CRM with proper lead scoring. Integrating HubSpot with sales tools like Clay can save sales teams an average of 4 hours per rep each week, simply by avoiding manual exports and keeping CRM records synced automatically.

Trigger-Based Outreach

Monitor funding announcements, job changes, or technology adoption via external APIs. When a trigger fires, Clay enriches the lead and triggers personalized emails through your outreach tool. This creates highly timely, relevant campaigns that convert better than generic cold outreach.

Custom Data Sources

Pull data from niche APIs (DNS records, government databases, proprietary tools) and enrich it in Clay tables. Finding local businesses is something most data vendors aren't good at. In r/coldemail, a Redditor created a workflow in Clay that scrapes 50k restaurant names and 30k contacts by location overnight.

Automated List Building

Query multiple databases to assemble prospect lists based on specific criteria, then export to your outreach tool. For example, find all SaaS companies in healthcare with 50-200 employees that recently raised Series A funding and use Salesforce as their CRM.

CRM Data Hygiene

The platform has direct integrations with popular CRM and marketing automation platforms like HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zoho CRM and Microsoft Dynamics 365. This makes it easy to import your existing business contacts and set up destinations for your enriched data, such as syncing back to your CRM or triggering workflows in tools like Salesloft or Outreach. Clay's pre-built integrations and webhooks make it easy to automate your data flow without needing extensive technical skill.

Account-Based Marketing (ABM) Campaigns

Clay lets you group leads by industry, company size, role, tech stack, and more. You can create smaller, focused segments that match your messaging. This makes emails, ads, and campaigns more relevant. Personalized outreach leads to higher engagement and conversions.

Clay works best as a data enrichment and automation layer in your stack, not as a standalone API product.

Clay vs. Competitors for API Workflows

When evaluating Clay against alternatives, consider what matters most for your use case:

Clay Strengths

Clay Weaknesses

Alternative Tools

For teams that need true API-first data enrichment:

For more on alternative tools, check out our guides on best sales intelligence tools and B2B lead generation tools.

Best Practices for Using Clay's HTTP API

Based on Clay's official documentation and user experiences, follow these best practices:

Configuration Best Practices

Always review the API documentation before configuration. It contains everything you need: methods, endpoints, authentication, headers, parameters, and response formats.

Test with a single row. Verify the configuration works. Check the response data. Then run on full table. Why: Saves credits and catches errors early.

Never hardcode API keys in requests. Use Clay's secure account connections to store credentials safely.

Data Management

Benefits: Faster processing, cleaner data, easier to work with. Remove unnecessary fields and normalize data before pushing to external systems.

Add notes about what each setting does. Document field mappings. Include example responses. Makes troubleshooting easier. Simplifies replication to other tables.

Error Handling

Ensure keys are separated by commas. Watch for extra spaces, colons, and brackets when configuring JSON bodies.

Copy your body into a plain text editor. Look for invisible characters from API docs. Clean and repaste into Clay if you're experiencing formatting issues.

Credit Optimization

Credit-based pricing has pushed teams to care more about data quality. In 2026, wasting credits on bounced emails, outdated roles, or duplicate records is no longer acceptable. Many teams now run verification and deduplication before triggering any credit-heavy action.

Build conditional logic to skip enrichment when data already exists or when records don't meet quality thresholds. Use Clay's formula columns to check if a field is empty before running expensive enrichment providers.

Security and Compliance Considerations

Account security: Your API credentials are stored securely and won't be exposed in the table configuration. Clay encrypts API keys and authentication tokens.

However, Clay itself is compliant, but third-party providers may not be. When building workflows that handle personal data, verify that your chosen enrichment providers comply with GDPR, CCPA, and other relevant regulations.

For healthcare and financial applications, understand which providers meet HIPAA, SOC 2, or PCI DSS requirements. Not all of Clay's 100+ providers maintain the same compliance standards.

Should You Use Clay for API-Heavy Workflows?

If you need a true API-first data enrichment platform, Clay isn't it. The lack of a public API and the minimum rate limit restrictions can be frustrating if you're trying to build custom integrations or handle high-volume, low-rate-limit APIs.

But if you're looking for a no-code way to connect dozens of data sources, enrich leads at scale, and automate workflows without writing code, Clay's HTTP API feature is powerful. Just know you'll be working within its limitations.

Clay is a strong choice for technical operations teams that enjoy building enrichment waterfalls and managing multiple providers. But for sales leaders who need compliance, mobile numbers, and predictable pricing, consider alternatives or a hybrid approach.

Clay is Best For:

Clay May Not Be Ideal For:

For teams that need API access for enrichment and prospecting, check out tools like sales intelligence platforms or cold email software that might offer more direct API support.

Integration Examples: Clay + Popular Tools

Clay + HubSpot

Enrich without breaking your CRM: Clay's waterfall enrichment is powerful, but match by HubSpot ID and use "ignore blank values" to protect clean fields. Tag everything for attribution: Add a campaign name to every record in Clay so you can track performance in HubSpot Campaign Reports later.

Prove ROI in dashboards: Associate enriched contacts to deals, then use HubSpot Campaign Reporting to connect campaigns to real revenue. No more guesswork: You'll know exactly which workflows, campaigns, and signals led to pipeline.

Clay + Salesforce

Similar to HubSpot, Clay's Salesforce integration enables bidirectional sync. Pull leads from Salesforce views, enrich them with missing data points, then push updates back while preserving existing field values. Use Salesforce campaign members to track which Clay tables generated which opportunities.

Clay + Cold Email Tools

Some cold email platforms, like Reply.io, now have a native Clay integration. No Zapier required. Create contacts automatically from Clay (no manual CSV uploads). Push contacts directly into campaigns for instant outreach. Keep data in sync → if Clay updates a contact, Reply gets the update too.

Similar integrations exist for Instantly, Smartlead, Lemlist, and other outreach platforms. These native connections are more reliable than webhook-based workarounds.

Common Troubleshooting Issues

Webhook Not Receiving Data

When a webhook fails, first verify the endpoint URL is correct and accessible. Inspect the payload data for formatting errors and ensure your server is sending a successful (2xx) HTTP status code in response. Using tools to log and review incoming requests can help quickly diagnose the root cause of the issue.

Check that your webhook URL is public and not behind a firewall. Test with tools like Postman or webhook.site before connecting to Clay.

HTTP API Returning Errors

If there is an error sending data, you can click on the cell in the HTTP API column to see the error message returned by the API, including the reason for the failure.

Common issues include:

Credits Depleting Faster Than Expected

Credit usage (and costs) can vary wildly depending on how workflows are configured. While this flexibility is attractive to technical teams, it creates challenges for sales leaders who need predictability, compliance, and speed. Automations can burn through credits even faster, especially when waterfall enrichment cascades into higher-cost providers.

Review your waterfall order to prioritize cheaper providers. Use conditional logic to skip enrichment when not needed. Monitor credit usage through Clay's analytics to identify expensive operations.

Getting Started With Clay

If you want to test Clay's HTTP API capabilities, you'll need at least the Explorer plan. Clay offers a 14-day free trial with 1,000 credits, giving you access to webhooks, CRM integrations, email sequencers, and HTTP API capabilities. Phone number enrichments aren't available during the trial period. To access this feature, upgrade to a paid plan.

The trial gives you enough credits to test API workflows and understand if Clay fits your needs before committing to a paid plan.

Getting Started Steps

  1. Sign up for the free trial: No credit card required for initial access
  2. Connect your first data source: Import a small list from your CRM or CSV
  3. Build a test enrichment workflow: Add 3-5 enrichment columns to understand how waterfall works
  4. Set up a webhook: Test receiving data from an external source
  5. Configure an HTTP API call: Push enriched data to a test endpoint
  6. Monitor credit usage: Understand what operations cost and optimize accordingly
  7. Review Clay University: Take advantage of free training resources

Ready to try it? Start with Clay here.

Alternative Approaches to Clay API Limitations

If Clay's limitations are deal-breakers, consider these hybrid approaches:

Clay + n8n/Make

Use automation platforms as intermediaries. n8n offers self-hosted workflows with unlimited rate limiting control. Make (formerly Integromat) provides visual automation with better error handling than direct webhooks.

Flow: External trigger → n8n processes → Clay webhook → enrichment → n8n retrieves → delivers to destination

Clay + Custom Middleware

Build a lightweight Express.js or Flask app that:

This gives you full control over timing, retries, and data transformation.

Clay + Zapier for Simple Workflows

For non-technical teams, Zapier's Clay integration provides a middle ground. While slower than direct API access, it's reliable for simple "when X happens, enrich in Clay, then do Y" workflows.

Good for: Form submissions, new CRM contacts, spreadsheet updates. Not good for: High-volume operations, real-time requirements.

The Future of Clay's API Capabilities

While Clay hasn't officially announced plans for a public API, the platform continues evolving. Recent additions include:

The company's focus remains on making enrichment accessible to non-technical users rather than building developer-first API products. This makes sense given their market position and customer base.

For developers hoping for a traditional REST API, it's unlikely to arrive soon. But webhook and HTTP API functionality continues improving, making programmatic access increasingly viable for specific use cases.

Final Thoughts

Clay doesn't have a traditional API, but that doesn't mean you can't use it programmatically. Through webhooks, HTTP API integration, and third-party automation tools, you can build sophisticated data enrichment pipelines that scale.

The key is understanding Clay's strengths and limitations upfront. It excels at aggregating data sources, building no-code enrichment workflows, and making complex automations accessible to non-technical teams. It struggles with real-time responses, strict rate limits, and direct API access.

Access 100+ premium data sources and AI research agents in one platform, then automate growth workflows to turn insights into revenue. That's Clay's value proposition-and it delivers on that promise.

For teams building custom applications that need Clay data, plan for asynchronous workflows, budget extra time for webhook setup, and consider middleware solutions. For teams using Clay as an enrichment layer between data sources and outreach tools, the platform works beautifully.

Ultimately, whether Clay works for your API needs depends on your use case, technical requirements, and willingness to work within its architectural constraints.

For more on data enrichment and automation tools, check out our guides on best CRM software and B2B lead generation tools. If you're building outbound campaigns, explore our resources on cold email tools that integrate with Clay.